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"Despite its pervasive reputation as a place of religious extremes and war, Afghanistan has a complex and varied religious landscape where elements from a broad spectrum of religious belief vie for a place in society. It is also one of the birthplaces of a widely practiced variant of Islam: Sufism. Contemporary analysts suggest that Sufism is on the decline due to war and the ideological hardening that results from societies in conflict. However, in Sufi Civilities, Annika Schmeding argues that this is far from a truthful depiction. Sufi communities have worked as resistance fighters, aid workers, businessmen, actors, professors and daily workers in creative and ingenious ways to keep and renew their networks of community support. Based on long-term ethnographic field research among multiple Sufi communities in different urban areas of Afghanistan, Schmeding examines navigational strategies employed by Sufi leaders over the past four decades to weather periods of instability and persecution, showing how they adapted to changing conditions in novel ways that crafted Sufism as a force in the civil sphere. This book offers a rare on-the-ground view into how Sufi leaders react to moments of transition within a highly insecure environment, and how humanity shines through the darkness during times of turmoil"--
List of contents
List of Figures
Note on Transliteration Acknowledgmentsix
Introduction
1. Navigating the Past: Sufi Strategies of State Alignment, Contestation and Strategic Distance
2. Navigating Insecurity: Mullahs and Sufi Lodges
3. Navigating the Interior: Sufi Poetry as Islamic Education and Heritage
4. Gendered Navigation: Equality in Difference
5. Navigating the Divine through Dreams
Conclusion and Epilogue on Transitions
Glossary
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Annika Schmeding is a cultural anthropologist and senior researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam.
