Sana Haroon discusses Islamic revivalism and Sufism

Working with archival sources, rich family collections, and twentieth century printed materials, Sana Haroon, the Malathy Singh Visiting Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow at the South Asian Studies Council, is undertaking a broad survey of religious change in Muslim north India from the eighteenth to the late twentieth centuries. This project explores new social and intellectual practices in north India that gave rise to movements for channeling popular devotionalism, and comes to focus on the structures of Sunni ‘orthodox’ leadership, organization and devotion in contemporary Pakistan. On February 1, 2011, Sana will give a talk in the South Asian Studies Colloquium, titled “Sufi Practice in the Age of Print and Islamic Revivalism” exploring the role of Sufis in facilitating the emergence of an Islamic revivalism in the regions of Sindh, the United Provinces, Kashmir and Hyderabad.

4.30pm • February 1 • Room 203, Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue

Asking who the religious actors were who engaged with social organization and processes of social change, Sana finds that this early phase of Islamic revivalism depended on ‘reformed’ Sufis, who came up with innovative uses of the poetical form and the congregational space to define social practices. These spaces permitted greater fluidity between religious and social identities, while reformed Sufis widened the autonomy of religious practice around mystical devotional traditions. 

Sana’s current project builds on her earlier research, recently published as Frontier of Faith: Islam in the Indo-Afghan Borderland ((Hurst and Co., 2007, and Columbia University Press, 2008).  This work is situated historically in the period 1880-1950, in the region of the Northwest Frontier Provinces (presently the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) at the border of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Under the British colonial government, the Northwest Frontier was deemed a non-administrative zone, giving considerable power to local and regional leaders, widely referred to as mullahs.  In Frontier ofFaith, Sana explores how religious and geopolitical landscapes of this region become interlinked through the practices of mullahs as religious and political leaders and, in many cases, important intermediaries with the Afghan government.

During her tenure at the South Asian Studies Council, Sana is teaching two courses: Islam in Contemporary Pakistan and South Asia and the Gulf.