Re-centering the Sufi Shrine: A Metaphysics of Presence
by Dr Irfan Moeen Khan
De Gruyter 2023, 242pp

Reviewed by: Dr Ali Gibran Siddiqui, IBA (Karachi)
29 November 2024
Download PDF

Re-centering the Sufi Shrine: A Metaphysics of Presence by Irfan Moeen Khan places itself in the midst of different anxieties surrounding the practice of haziri (lit. “presence”) or shrine visitation in Pakistan. These anxieties stem from the gap between popular practice and statist/orthodox prescription, the incongruities between prayers for the souls of dead saints and prayers to living embodiments of divinity, and from the scholarly tendency to favor textual sources over sensory experiences. Outlining these anxieties, the work emphasises that prior scholarship relying solely on either textual criticism or ethnography has not explained them adequately. Re-centering the Sufi Shrine instead champions a more measured approach, placing lived sensory experiences alongside didactic treatises, polemics, and devotional poetry within the re-centered space of a shrine. Positioning the shrine as an arena where a tussle between devotees and an orthodox governmental bureaucracy plays out, the monograph posits that haziri being a mode of worship, as well a subversion of modern centralised sovereign authority, invites prescriptive interventions from the Pakistani state.

Re-centering the Sufi Shrine consists of six chapters. The first places the shrine visitation practices of fatiha, or prayers “sending pious merit to a deceased Sufi saint”, (30) and haziri, or “presenting oneself” (21) to the “immortal body” (52) of a saint, within the framework of ethnographic comparison. Constructing a typography of practices, the chapter presents fatiha – premised on the mortality and hence the divinely non-immanent character of a saint – as an intervention intended to assuage orthodox anxieties created by haziri to an immortal body. The chapter uses this dichotomy between living and nonliving, statist and popular, and texts and practice to develop the anxiety permeating the remainder of the monograph: haziri being shirk, defined as “idolatry” (17) by the author, is unpalatable to the modern Islamic nation state of Pakistan. Seeking a monopoly over expressions of sovereignty as well as a centralised uniformity of Islamic practice, the fatiha is its consequent statist intervention.

The second chapter frames popular shrine ritual within an exceptionalism it reserves for “Indus Sufism.” It stresses that prior scholarship with its singular focus on texts cannot adequately explain ziyara or pilgrimage. As a centre of sensory experience, a channel to communicate with the embodied presence of a saint, and a stage to enact devotional performance, the shrine is situated beyond texts restricted to a strict dichotomy between life and death. A study of the shrine therefore requires an approach privileging praxis over text.

Chapter 3 studies the history of anti-shrine polemics in South Asia as well as attempts by the modern Pakistani state to control popular devotional practices at shrines. Though Re-centering the Sufi Shrine studies Indus Sufi practices against the foil of a modern religious bureaucracy, this chapter traces the origins of such statist controls to scholarly discourse in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mughal Hindustan. In this manner, it ostensibly draws a straight line between the writings of Shaykh Sirhindi, through the nineteenth century Tariqa-yi Muhamadiyya, to the modern Department of Auqaf. This study of Sufi didactic and polemical texts explores varying approaches to the questions of sovereignty and embodiment in South Asian history. It thus reveals a modern nation state that considers popular praxis a threat to its sovereignty and empathises with similar fears exhibited by earlier Sufi reform movements.

Chapter 4, a biography of Baba Bulleh Shah, centers the idea of ishq i.e divine love within his poetry (i.e. kafi) as “living verse” that engenders “corporeal perception” (123). The ishq that permeates Bulleh Shah’s kalam sparks a longing within its audience for divine love; that divine love may be sought in the living body of the entombed saint. Similarly, Chapter 5 delves into the theopoetics of the urs (lit. “wedding”) or the death anniversary of a saint. It charts the phenomenological dimensions of the urs as a mela or festival via the kafis of Bulleh Shah. The chapter casts the festival as a sacred heirophany where the kafis by virtue of being performed are rooted in praxis and not metaphysical speculation. The act of recitation as a sensorily charged performance thus elevates the entire festival to a performative mode of worship.

Chapter 6 looks at the relationship between haziri and sama or audition, as the performance of haziri involves the audition of sacred music at the shrine. The chapter describes the various ecstatic states experienced by audiences e.g. haal and wajd, or ecstatic states, as intrinsic parts of the haziri. The corporeal and collective audition of sama become a form of worship in this framework. The author conversely juxtaposes the formal fatiha prescribed by the state as a textual intervention not rooted in praxis and lacking any sensory experience. He further stresses that such intervention ruptures the connection between devotee and saint.

Re-Centering the Sufi Shrine is a series of conversations spread across these six chapters. Each conversation enclosed within each chapter primarily engages with the work of a handful of scholars. Chapter two, for example, amplifies the author’s own voice as it expounds upon divine authority, saintly charisma, and baraka in conversation with the writings of Clifford Geertz, Mark Woodward, Pnina Werbner, and Omid Safi. Chapter three similarly sustains this discursive tone as it positions the monograph’s own framework alongside Katherine Pratt Ewing’s own focus on ambiguities where explanations of popular praxis eschew both ideology and orthodoxy. One wishes this work had included more recent works from the broader field of Sufi studies. For example, it could have engaged with the work of Waleed Ziad (2021) to reveal how Indus Sufism had historically thrived via its connections to larger Sufi networks. It could have similarly drawn upon the work of James Pickett (2019). While not strictly engaging with the study of South Asian Sufism, Pickett’s work is representative of the shift away from the Sufi/Ulama dichotomy, which has been all but discarded in the broader field of Sufi studies. These works were however likely not included because the author’s 2019 dissertation apparently did not undergo major revisions as a book manuscript should. It therefore missed an engagement with these monographs from 2021 and 2020. Given this publication timeline, other omissions are far more glaring. Most conspicuous is the absence of Sufi Shrines and the Pakistani State: The End of Religious Pluralism by Umber bin Ibad (2018). This absence is especially noticeable as the Department of Auqaf, as the active agent imposing state orthodoxy, is a main character in Re-Centering the Sufi Shrine; Ibad’s book is a meticulously researched work dedicated to the history of this department and its role in controlling shrine spaces.

Re-Centering the Sufi Shrine’s premise is promising but suggests rushed publication rather than careful refinement. Though the work does not claim to be a book – it accepts that it is indeed a dissertation (VII;1;7;9;11;14;29;52;107;193;200;202;215) – developing it into a book via more expansive and engaging writing would have held greater appeal for subject specialists and non-specialists alike. The cohesive narrative structure of a book would also have helped tie together the methodologically disparate chapters for a non-specialist audience. Any dissertation-based book should also incorporate new scholarship published after the defense. The reader is also left wanting more vividly thick descriptions of shrine spaces and practices; the few that have been published offer a palpably reified tableau of the abstract concepts discussed in the work. Expanded into a book, Re-Centering the Sufi Shrine could have provided further examples of such descriptive writing for readers lacking firsthand experience of visiting a Pakistani shrine. Additionally, the work could also have amplified voices from shrine spaces. The concise structure of the dissertation format only allows the audience a single instance to listen to such voices: a devotee at Qasur explains kaifiyat, or spiritual experience, via a powerfully affective gesture (213). This captivating interaction impresses upon the audience the role of non-verbal and affective communication in shrines in a way that engagements with scholarly discourse do not. Other parts of the book would have also benefitted from more nuance via expansive writing, especially chapter three where the succinct nature of writing turns Ahmad Sirhindi, the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya, and the Department of Auqaf into strawmen strung along a linear teleology. Furthermore, Indus Sufism as well as its exceptionalism requires some qualification. This unqualified exceptionalism appears especially fraught when practices like sama that are used to define Indus Sufi exceptionalism are supported with examples from the lives of Hindustani Sufis like Amir Khusrau (185). Any meaningful study of Sindhi language sources is also conspicuously absent and this absence is made starker with the repeated reference to the eponymous Indus Sufism. This omission perhaps lends itself to irony as the dissertation, which excoriates the modern centralised nation state, centers Punjabi sources and spaces while relegating Sindh to a periphery. Lastly, the quality of the publication would have been markedly improved via the inclusion of a standard transliteration scheme. The transliteration for names and terms from non-Latin script sources has been done in an arbitrary manner e.g. Khusrau (41) and Khusraw (185),‘ibādat and ‘ibāda (8), Ṭahir-ul-Qādirī (9) and Ṭahir al-Qādirī (37,38, and 41) or ḥastam instead of hastam (28).

© Bloomsbury Pakistan 2024

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *