Muslim Village Intellectuals: The Life of the Mind in Northern Pakistan
Author(s)
Marsden, Magnus
Abstract
Today more than ever before, there is a need for sophisticated anthropological insight into the forms of individual and collective self-transformation for which the problematic term “Islamization” has come to be widely used. Among both academics and popular commentators, the “Islamizing” process is often represented as a matter of irresistible pressures to embrace a single, all-powerful model of moral and spiritual perfection based on behavioural codes derived either from Qur’anic texts or from the teachings of Islamic jurists and other authorities. In this article I present a very different account of the processes of Islamization in Chitral, a region of northern Pakistan which has been profoundly affected by movements of both local and global Islamic activism, including the rise and fall of the Taliban regime in nearby Afghanistan, and the effects of regional conflict involving the region’s majority Sunni and Shia Ismaili sectarian communities.
