Mapping the Assembly of Muslim Exceptionality and Exceptional Muslims in Colonial Modernity Ismaili Muslim Encounters Through Di

Mapping the Assembly of Muslim Exceptionality and Exceptional Muslims in Colonial Modernity

Ismaili Muslim Encounters through Discourses, Bodies and Space

in the Canadian Colonial Nation

Salima Bhimani

A thesis in conformity with the requirements

For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Education

Graduate Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Mapping the Assembly of Muslim Exceptionality and Exceptional Muslims in Colonial Modernity

Ismaili Muslim Encounters through Discourses, Bodies and Space in the

Canadian Colonial Nation

Salima Bhimani

Doctor of Philosophy of Education

Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

2013

Abstract

What is produced through the encounters with specific “modern Muslims” in the Canadian colonial nation state? In the last decade in Canada there have been efforts to engage in a demarcation between Muslims and other racialized groups in order to define some bodies as part of the nation whilst others outside of the national imaginary. This is particularly important in the nation-building project of Canada in retaining a tolerant, liberal and multiculturally celebrated society. This critical feminist ethnography makes visible the encounters and present economies of sociopolitical currents in which the Ismailis, as a Muslim community and gendered ethnicized bodies, move and animate in Canada as a settler colonial race formation as well as in a broader geography of Muslim social and cultural politics. It is in the constitutions and movements of their collective subjectivities as a religious community and in their ethnicized gender, race, and class difference that they locate and engage in interlocking systems of power rooted in nation, empire, colonialism, modernity, and religion. This thesis aims to show that in order to make sense of Ismaili

encounters it is necessary to map multiple pasts and multiple presents, which they are part of and that shape them. Different from most studies on the Ismailis in Canada, I also place Ismailis’ entrance and settlement in Canada within a broader dynamic of colonial power and management of racialized peoples and within current shaping of Muslims as racial constructs.

This thesis argues that Ismailis are becoming Muslims of “exceptionality.” First, through their high level public encounter with the colonial settler Canadian nation state; second through their intersecting encounters with other Muslims and non-Muslims in Canada; and third in their encounters with each other as Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian Ismailis. These three encounters intervene the discourse of pluralism of which the Ismailis are becoming advocates and Canada its global exemplar. It is through seeing what is produced between these “bodies” in specific moments of their meeting in Canada that, bodily, spatial and discursive practices of social relationship making emerge. These show the paradoxical outcomes of embodying modern coloniality and Muslim exceptionality.

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Acknowledgements

We begin by remembering the sound and feeling of the One Being, The well spring of Love. We affirm that the next thing we experience shimmers with the light of the whole universe. - Sufi Saying - This thesis is a labour of mind, body, and spirit. It is in service of the world and to the Divine. To say that it “takes a village” to raise a PhD is no exaggeration. I must begin then, with my thesis committee-community, Ruben, Heather and Sarfaroz, through whom I have grown tremendously. I have come to see myself as a scholar because of their willingness to bring their best to me. As an integral part of this community a great supervisor is one who understands the whole person in the student they mentor. Dr. Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez’s steadiness, wisdom, insight, and incisive intellectual nudging provided the right balance of belief in me when I waivered and trust that there were some things I needed to figure out on my own in the puzzle of this thesis and PhD life. Mentorship is not limited to the thesis and so all the opportunities to learn the different aspects of what it means to be an academic that works in the world, I owe largely to Ruben. Being a whole person in academia also means that our emotional, intellectual, spiritual and political being is interconnected. Dr. Heather Sykes is a mentor that not only understands but has the presence, leadership and acute insight to show how to be an ally, an intellectual guide, a teacher of human relationships, a being who hears deeply and is infinitely capable of helping one see the many hues in any given situation. These lessons, particularly as women in academia, have made me a better teacher and academic, something only Heather could have taught me. There are other wonderful professors who have given me opportunities to teach and to be in generative conversations that have shaped me greatly. Dr. John Portelli has taught me much about living theory as your practice and making the practice, your theory. Thank you also Tara Goldstein, Lance McCready, Roland Sintos Coloma, Kathy Bickmore, Kathy Broad, and Usha James for your gifts to me. Also, thank you to the administrative staff, Cheryl, Danny, Terry-Louise, Karolina, amongst others for your help

throughout the years. Finally I want to thank my thesis defence committee and in particular Sunera Thobani, the external examiner, whose insightful feedback and necessary intellectual challenges provided a dialogue with the thesis and me that I had been longing for. A thesis is not simply words on a page or research in narrative form. In this thesis it is the very lives of people that are present. Without the participants’ generous sharing this thesis would not be what it is. Thank you for your honesty, trust and willingness to voice the complexity of your experiences. Thank you also to the Ismaili community for giving me a space to do such work. The friendships made while in academia are possibly quite unique as it is rather difficult for those not in the throws of PhD life to really understand its many nuances, grooves, tensions, joys, struggles and opportunities. Kirk and Jaddon made coming to OISE an event that was always uplifting. They managed to transform an office space into a home away from home. I am tremendously grateful to have had a community of powerful women - up and coming scholars who were my embodied academic sisters in solidarity: Sameena, Christina, Zahra and Chandni. Christina, Zahra and Chandni provided the intellectual circle where I could walk in my work through their questions, readings of draft chapters, and feedback only these brilliant women could provide. You were integral in helping me see how to put the puzzle together in those early stages. After years of writing and coming to the last sentence of the thesis, it is hard to always know whether in fact one is saying anything of value. Thank you Zahra, Fayaz, Chandni and Shaira for reading my thesis and helping me see it for what it is and for asking questions that reminded me of the gaps, silences and gems. Sometimes in this academic circle, one also needs someone who will firmly hold your hand and remind you of where you want to go, no matter what. Chandni has been that person, without whom that last year of the PhD would not have been what it was. My friends outside of OISE have carried the weight of this process for me and with me as well. Thank you to Zainab, Samira and Amina. Finally, to my sister Shaira, who is not only one of the most amazing women in my family lineage but is also my teacher, my friend, my intellectual partner, and the centre of my soul. Not having to leave home to bring home the excitement and challenge of the intellectual journey reminded me that this is the work of our family, not just my own. Thank you for this very special space you made available to me. When we write and create from a place of producing ripples in the world, one inevitably reflects on the impact this can have on family. Thank you, (Zainab, Alikhan, Sherrise, Riaz, Mo, Murad, Munir, Rahim, Didar Mama, Amina Mami, Parin Mami, and Fui’s and Fua’s) for standing

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by me, even when you didn’t always understand what I was doing and for “having my back.” To my sisters, Ferenaz and Nimira, I know I can always count on you and know that I will be held in love and confidence. You have done this and more, for me, throughout this process. To my nieces and nephews, Amy, Jenna, Imaan, Noah, Maya and Azaan this work is as much for you and your future, as it is for this moment. I hope the courage of this work will continue to inspire and feed your own incredible spirits and life purpose. Thank you to the McMonagles – Michelle, Uncle Fionn, Greta, Melinda and Kevin for showering me with that special McMonagle laughter and love that sustained me through these years. I grew up with my mom telling me that a child’s joys, sorrows and successes belong to the parents, as much as they are the child’s. All of who I am and what this work is I owe to my parents. Thank you for the tiniest to universe-enveloping bits of love, understanding, dedication and generosity of every kind. Dad, you taught me to work hard and to do what you need to in life. It’s a lesson I carry with me all the time. Mom, you are one of the greatest inspirations in my life. You never asked me to leave myself or be to anyone less than who I am. You are the spark that lit my fire to continue to be a woman who matters in the world. Every prayer, all the rotis, all the hugs that only you could give is what gave me the courage to walk the path I have in life and in this PhD. Finally, to my love, Colin, you inevitably bring me to more of myself. You have walked with me, held me, lifted me, and gone into light and darkness with me and nourished all of me through these years. No words can ever fully express who you are and what you do. I am infinitely in gratitude for you.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... vi

Table of Contents ...... ix

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Ismailis and the Muslim Socio-Political Landscape in Canada ...... 7

Organization of Dissertation ...... 10

Chapter 2: Background ...... 14

Canada and Coloniality ...... 26

Ismailis, Other Muslims and Multicultural Arrangements and Disciplining ...... 33

Afghans and Canada ...... 43

Pakistanis and Canada ...... 47

South Asian Indians (Muslims) and Canada ...... 50

Summary ...... 53

Chapter 3: Research Methodology ...... 56

Critical Ethnography and its Dystopias ...... 57

Inside Out, Outside In, Cycling… ...... 60

Participant Invitations ...... 68

Narrative Interviews ...... 74

Field observation ...... 76

Texts: Speeches, News reports, Government Documents ...... 78

Coding and Data Analysis ...... 79

Discourse analysis of public texts ...... 83

Validity ...... 85

Participants Biographical Sketches ...... 89

Adam ...... 89

Neikbakhat ...... 91

Akbar ...... 92

Khalil ...... 94

Gulam ...... 95

Maryam ...... 96

Sameer ...... 97

Kesar ...... 98

Zaafra ...... 99

Anjum ...... 101

Shazia ...... 102

Garima ...... 103

Rehan ...... 104

Rabia ...... 105

Begum ...... 106

Khan ...... 108

Summary ...... 109

Chapter 4: Theoretical Framework ...... 110

Encounters ...... 110

Gendered, Colonial Race Nation ...... 121

Nation-State, Nation Building and Difference ...... 121

Muslim Exceptionality ...... 130

Chapter 5: Muslim Exceptionality and Exceptional Muslims: Arrival, Values and Spatial Formations ...... 138

Creating Exceptionality and Embodying the Exceptional ...... 143

Narrating Arrival ...... 145

Working Values for Exceptionality ...... 156

Exceptionality through Spatial Re-formations – The Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat ...... 165

Nature and Exceptionality ...... 168

Excellence and Exceptionality ...... 175

Summary ...... 178

Chapter 6: Cycling Bodies, Temporal Movements: The Work of Becoming Cool, Fake and Scary Muslims ...... 180

What does it Mean to be Cool, Fake and Scary? ...... 184

Becoming Fake, Cool and Scary: Simultaneous Secular-Religious Muslim ...... 189

Suspicion and Forming the Cool, Fake and Scary Muslim ...... 193

Modern Genderedness and the Scary, Cool and Fake Muslim ...... 195

Status, Class and Becoming Fake, Cool and Scary Muslims ...... 198

Inner State of Being as the Cool, Fake and Scary Muslim ...... 201

Affective Responses and States through the Cool, Fake and Scary Muslim ...... 205

Ethnicized Cool, Fake and Scary Muslim ...... 207

Uncommon Scenes in Common Lingo: Canadian Muslims working Against the Trilogy ...... 209

Final thoughts ...... 214

Summary ...... 216

Chapter 7: Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismaili Ethnobody Encounters within the Ismaili Community in Toronto ...... 218

Orienting Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis ...... 220

Vertically Orienting Indian, Afghan and Pakistani Ismailis ...... 221

Orienting a Middle ...... 223

Orienting to “Not that kind of Immigrant” ...... 226

Orienting a Past and Culturalization ...... 230

Becoming Oriented as Khoja ...... 232

Figuring Ethnobodies ...... 234

Figuring Afghan Men ...... 235

Figuring Afghan Women ...... 239

Figuring Pakistani Men and Women ...... 242

Figuring Indian Men and Women ...... 248

Proxi-mating ...... 253

Aiding ...... 261

Aiding as Development ...... 262

Contradictions of Help through Aiding ...... 264

Aiding In-equity ...... 267

Summary ...... 270

Chapter 8: Intervening Modernities Paradigms: Pluralism, its Logics and Ismaili Exceptionality . 273

Enter Pluralism ...... 273

Distinguishing Pluralism ...... 277

Defining Pluralism in the Pluralism Paper ...... 281

Embodied, Spatial and Discursive Interventions of Pluralism ...... 283

Common Humanity ...... 286

Unity ...... 288

The Individual, Compromise, Obligation ...... 289

Practices, Outcomes, Intentions ...... 293

The Stakes of Modern Coloniality and Ismaili Muslim Exceptionality ...... 303

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Appendix 1: Email Invitation ...... 313

Appendix 2: Invitation Letter ...... 314

Appendix 2b Informed Consent Letter ...... 316

Appendix 3: Interview Protocol ...... 319

Appendix 4 Themes and Codes ...... 322

Appendix 5: Sample Memo ...... 324

References ...... 325

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Driving across one of Toronto’s major highways, two large structures (still in construction) ascend to the side of the Don Valley Parkway – the Aga Khan Museum and the Ismaili Centre and park. On May 28th 2010, like many Ismailis in the Greater Toronto Area, I too gathered at the

Exhibition grounds to watch the Foundation Sacrament of this site. With all the ceremoniousness of a high profile event, the live-to-air video cast showed the Canadian government’s highest dignitaries and the Ismaili communities’ elite leadership walk the red carpet to their seats. Even though all of us were watching the event across the city on the big screen, the excitement in the air was palpable as not only would Ismailis see their Imam, the Aga Khan IV, but also members of all levels of government in Canada honour the vision and construction of this site. The vision is said to bring the

“best of Islam” to Canada. Along with the Aga Khan, Prime Minister Harper was also a keynote speaker at this event. He noted:

We Canadians are rightly proud of the fact that we have built one of the most ethnically and

culturally diverse and harmonious societies on earth. This achievement is rooted in our

founding values: freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. But it’s also rooted

in our unique history and the heroic agreements our founding peoples made to acknowledge

and accommodate their diversity. As you yourself have said, your Highness, and I quote,

“We cannot make the world safe for democracy unless we also make the world safe for

diversity.” If I may say so, sir, you sound like a Canadian. (2010)

Beholding the speeches, the handshakes, the unveiling of the art to be housed in the museum, the model of the buildings that would represent Ismailis on Turtle Island, my catechization began.

What is this moment doing? What is it saying? The flash of this encounter stories the Ismaili

Muslims as an immigrant community in the “imaginary” (Anderson, 1983) and multicultural body and nation scapes (Ahmed, 2000) of the Canadian state. They are not only welcomed but also embraced as symbols of “integration.” Canada as a multicultural nation-state that has provided opportunities for immigrants to succeed allows such a story to be told.

Since their arrival into Canada in the 1970s, the Ismailis as a collectivity through the guidance and support of their Imam have set up “home” (Karim, 2011), and established their

“permanent presence” in Canada (Aga Khan, 2008). The Ismailis’ tiller is planted in a metropolis set in the wild, occupied geographies of Canada. This rootedness, however, is built from a more centralized and dispersed religious “home,” that integrally defines and shapes them as a community.

As a minoritized Muslim community, Ismailis are grounded within a Shi’a tradition of Islam.

Through this tradition, their Imam and his institutions play an integral role in organizing, shaping and defining the Ismailis as Muslims in concrete social, economic, cultural and political ways, transnationally. Steinberg (2011) argues that the Ismailis as a global network operate in a “parallel sphere” for citizenship and membership for Ismailis, to that of the nations in which they live (p. 6).

Even so, Ismailis’ membership in Canada and locations as Canadians, are part and parcel of being in this Ismaili trans-nation. In other words, it is in their religious worldview and approach that Ismailis are to “belong” to Canada. This can be traced back to Ismailis’ emergence as Muslims of modernity.

The former Aga Khan III (1877-1957) socialized the Ismailis as a community and individuals into modern embodiments as religious Muslims. The Aga Khan III impressed upon his followers that becoming modern Ismailis was on the one hand a strategy to secure them against further marginalization and exclusion living in different parts of the world, and on the other a way to be at the forefront of a changing world. By adapting the values of human progress through

3 education, capital, and individual determination tempered by an Islamic ethic of responsibility to humanity, Ismailis could be “players” in the shifting “post-colonial” world. Part of this edict also included that Ismailis be loyal to the countries in which they live, and to take on the normative culture and ways of those countries (Aziz, 1997). Within such a vision there was also the mobilization of notions of integration, dialogue, equality and diversity inclusion, as a way to build human relationships in which Ismailis had often found themselves marginalized. This marginalization was based in a past where they were outcast and persecuted as Muslims amongst their coreligionists (Daftary 1998; Virani, 2007), or were navigating colonialism (Asani, 2010).

From this history and in the present, Ismailis mingle in temporalities in which they impel and animate tradition and modernity and continue to push out of their marginalization as Muslims. In this way, Ismailis seen through the prism of “integrated” Muslims in Canada and their own mobilization of themselves as such is not surprising. Ismailis have thought about their “encounters” in Canada as revelatory of their belonging and acceptance, rooted in multi-cultural felicity through and in Canada (Gova, 2005; Jamal, 2009; Kanji, 2009; Karim, 2011; Mathews, 2000, 2007;

Mukadom & Mawani, 2006; Murji, 2006; Versi, 2010).

Ismailis’ notion of encounter has catalyzed their own cultural and religious diversity and that of the world’s, through conceptions of pluralism, civilizational dialogue and understanding. Like many Muslims, the Ismailis through the Aga Khan, have sought to address the demonization of

Islam and Muslims in a long history of orientalism (Said, 1979). Long before September 11, the Aga

Khan, following his grandfather (Aziz, 1997), argued that there is a great misunderstanding between

Islam and the West, which has caused many conflicts and tensions. Since 9/11, the Aga Khan (2008) has more assertively put forth that Muslims and the “West” are not dealing with a clash of civilization, but a “clash of ignorance.” “Pluralism,” as coined by the Aga Khan, is becoming the

4 concept through which such ignorance can be addressed by promoting tolerance, unity and diversity, as an asset of human relations. In this way, their humanist Islam and humanist approach to bringing divergent groups together is linked back to their own sense of what is required in human relationships, and how Canada has made great strides in this respect. Both the Ismailis as examples and proponents of a common humanity, and Canada as a nation-state, which has successfully facilitated and made commonness possible, are converging. Amyn Sajoo (1995) suggests that the humanistic tradition of Islam, and the modern projects of pluralism from this tradition, necessarily have a “full pluralist agenda,” which he defines as “an extensive tradition of tolerance and engagement… democracy and social justice to the rights of minorities and the equality of women”

(p. 587). Canada’s own articulation of such goals, articulated through Harper’s words quoted above, map Canada and the Ismailis onto each other in a seamless comfort. As Karim (2011) notes:

Multiculturalism emerged as a Canadian solution to a particular historical and political

problem. The policy was primarily aimed at resolving conflicts between competing interests

in the nation-state, which is a product of the modern age. Ismailis, finding themselves part of

this modernist project, are also applying this approach to their own communities’ diverse

traditions. (p. 287)

Unlike other Muslim collectivities in Canada, such a story of the Ismailis as partially unmarked bodies is distinct. To be in the projects of modernity is to be both its interlocutors and its beneficiaries. In order for the story of this Muslim community and Canada to be told in this way, many things must be obscured and left out. Firstly, Muslims of modernity must be taken outside of coloniality. Second, the Canadian nation-state must be invisible as a colonial formation (Lawrence

2002; Razack 2002; Thobani, 2007). Third, multiculturalism as a technology for the colonial management of Indigenous Peoples and people of color must also be absent (Bannerji, 2000;

Mackey, 1999). In this way, Muslims are not relationally constituted through the Canadian state, but simply settle and move in it. Fourth, the relationship between immigrant communities to each other, to Indigenous Peoples and to the State, are mediated through logics that over determine them in rapports of synthesis and competing “interests” of their own design. Fifth, particularly since 9/11, mechanisms that have aimed to constitute, discipline, manage, and quarantine Muslims in civilizational paradigms as a prerogative of the Canadian nation-state, must also not be critically evoked (Arat-Koc, 2005; Dhamoon & Abu-Laban, 2009; Razack, 2008; Thobani, 2007; Zine, 2012).

Lastly, subject production processes through modernity as an inherently colonial project, must also remain unseen (Goldberg, 1993; Mignolo, 2011; Wynter, 2003).

Rather than taking for granted that Ismailis are Muslims of belonging in Canada and the

State, their benevolent enabler in modernity’s business, this feminist, critical ethnographic study aims to make visible the politics of Muslim relationality in Canada. Dominant and normative multicultural enunciations of such meetings as the one I describe above, proffer belonging and obscure the social relationships of power that make them. This ethnography disrupts the obscuration of social relationships in such constructions of Ismaili Muslims to Canada, and their relationships within and to others, as racialized Muslim bodies. In doing this it becomes possible to make sense of the Ismailis in their multiplicity of experiences as Muslims and gendered, racialized bodies in

Canada. Moreover, how Ismailis animate in the coloniality of modernity today can be further understood through their past encounters as Muslims of survival to other Muslims and Muslims of empire through colonialism.

As I will argue in this thesis, such encounters of the Ismailis with and in the Canadian state, in fact, underscore the ambivalence through which Muslims become exceptional. Neither blank nor neutral, such encounters highlight how the national space and the body of Ismailis’ as racialized

Muslims are built in relationships of power. To this end Ahmed (2000) argues that:

Encounters are meetings, then, which are not simply in the present: each encounter

reopens past encounters…The face to face meeting is not between two subjects who are

equal or in harmony; the meeting is antagonistic. The coming together of others that

allows the ‘one’ to exist takes place given that there is an asymmetry of power…The

particular encounter hence, always carries traces of those broader relationships. (p. 8)

Ahmed (2000) elucidates the encounters in post-colonial and imperialist multicultural nation-state contexts for what they conceal about social relationships, and what work they do. In a broad stroke, what this thesis aims to show is how Ismaili Muslims as a collectivity, and in their ethnicized difference, come to be modern religious bodies in this specific moment in Canada through an assemblage of social practices that are affective, bodily, spacial and discursive. The aim is to also show what work such Muslims do for unequal processes of community and nation building. In doing this, I turn to meta-narratives the Ismailis have stock in as a collective in Canada, as a way to show what such discourses are doing in this moment. Moreover, I bring forward the narratives and life experiences of Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis, who begin to unravel the many contradictions that Ismailis experience and embody as racialized, gendered and classed

Muslims in Canada, further rupturing notions of belonging and benevolence. Bannerji (2000),

Dhamoon (2009), Razack (2008), Thobani (2007) and other women of color scholars argue that in

Canada, as a colonial white settler society, we understand how bodies are constituted in particular paradigms in order to make sense of practices of inclusion and exclusion against and through

Others. As Muslims, in their gendered, raced and classed formations are not in fixed locations, positions or aspects of social relationships in their encounters, they are also organized and arranged through existing imaginaries and political processes that can determine their location, relevance and place. There is, therefore, a play between the fixing and non-fixity of subject formation and social

7 relationality in terrains of power in which Ismaili Muslims take shape. In this dynamic the relational placing and production of Indigenous, racialized, immigrant and marginalized communities to each other, is part and parcel of making hierarchies, contradictions and managerial techniques for arranging ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’ in the Canadian gendered colonial race nation (Arat-Koc,

2005; Bannerji, 2000; Razack, 1999; Thobani, 2007).

Ismailis and the Muslim Socio-Political Landscape in Canada Since 9/11 in particular, scholarship on and about Muslims in the public domain and their

‘relationship’ to the state, to each other and to non-Muslims, has necessarily focused on the isolation and detention of Muslims who pose a threat to the state, their lack of integration, Muslim accommodation, paternalistic intervention and concerns on Muslim women’s bodies (Arat-Koc,

2005; Dhamoon & Abu-Laban, 2009; Dhamoon, 2009; Haque, 2010; Jiwani, 2011; Patel, 2012;

Razack, 2008; Thobani, 2007; Zine, 2012). Further, questions of Muslim values, loyalties and uncritical support of the Canadian state in its projects of war and empire also circulate in public discourse (Sharafy-Funk, 2012; Thobani, 2010; Zine, 2012). In this way, the relationship of

Muslims to the state since 9/11 has primarily been about surveillance, discipline, obedience, management, detention and eviction. Muslim speech acts in the public domain in relation to these

“concerns” have often been presented through the media as opposing perspectives with either those that are as ardent allies of the state, or those that are deemed Islamist by taking a stance as Muslims who push back against particular policies, regulations, racism or Islamophobia (Thobani, 2007). At the same time, Zine (2012) argues, debates that have played out publically are in fact presenting

“productive tensions” that “have led to the negotiation of Islam in the public sphere” (p. 15). The extent to which the debate has allowed for a wide range of Muslim voices are still under question.

Zine (2012) also argues that “The Canadian Muslim diaspora is a complex, contradictory, and hybrid space filled with a mix of liberatory possibilities and productive tensions” (p. 2). In this space, Muslims’ relationship to themselves and to non-Muslims has had a hyper focus on policing, integration and proving the kind of Muslim one is. Even as the enrapture with Muslims and Islam is potent in Canada today, the range of what is understood about Muslims, their communities and their experiences within Canada, is still limited. In this respect, Ismailis own community dynamics and its constitutions within “ethnic” differences has largely been articulated and understood purely through the purview of multiculturalism and pluralism. What this thesis also seeks to do then, is to complicate the narrative of Ismaili cohesion and pluralism through making sense of how Ismaili social relationships are constituted through ethnicized, gendered and classed difference, embedded in the coloniality of modernity.

Ismailis as a Muslim community are located in such landscapes often without publically engaging such issues, or seriously taking up their implications within their own community context.

In part, this is the condition of being Muslims who are under constant scrutiny, and to exist in positions of privilege requires that the dominant paradigms through which Muslims come to be constructed are not directly disrupted. In this way, Ismailis shift the optics and arrangements of

Muslim politics in Canada. The necessary obscuration against and within such a terrain, both homogenizes and makes them coherent, as a Muslim community of diversity.

This ethnography makes its project, how it comes to be the case that Ismaili Muslims in fact, occupy multiple, contradictory and simultaneous subjectivities, making them bodies of power, complicity, marginality, oppression and privilege in colonial Canada. I argue that in Ismailis being referenced as modern liberal religious subjects, invested in making diversity an asset and securing themselves against marginality, what emerges are Muslims of exceptionality and exceptional

Muslims. This work therefore complicates and adds new dimensions to how we can understand the

9 place and work of Muslims in the post 9/11 Canadian state, not simply with or against the grain, or located as suspect, unwanted or model minorities and bodies of belonging.

Examining three layers of encounters between Ismailis and the Canada nation, Ismailis and other Muslims and non-Muslims, and between Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis in the Ismaili community, I trace the work of particular spaces, discourses and bodies in shaping the flesh and contours of social relationships. Prior histories of determination and emergences of present encounters are necessary to make sense of these meetings (Ahmed, 2000). Traveling into these encounters, the affective, material and discursive effects of meeting, facing, melding and intersecting of Ismailis as a collectivity, and of Ismailis as ethnicized bodies, comes to the surface.

In order to take up such an examination I ask the following questions,

(1) What is produced when minoritized Muslim communities, such as the Ismailis, meet in

institutionalized relationship with the Canadian State?

(2) What is produced when minoritized Muslim communities, such as the Ismailis, meet Other

Muslims and non-Muslims in Canada?

(3) What is produced when ethnicized Ismaili Muslims (Afghan, Pakistani, Indian) meet each

other within Ismaili community contexts in Canada?

(4) What do the intersections of all these encounters say about the discourse of pluralism?

Pedagogies of community and nation building are social practices of power. To make visible such practices is an educational imperative. In this way, this ethnography offers the necessary wrestling that Muslims are in, bringing forward the challenge of disentangling with projects of dominant powers. Even as Ismailis exert their many agencies, they are in the theatre of empire. The hope through this work then is that the scintillation of paradoxical bodies emergent in rough courses activates a brassy, ulterior praxis of life.

As a practicing Ismaili Muslim “brown” woman, I don’t come to this research as a

“distanced” ethnographer or outsider researcher. Every word, every exploration, every question, ever story, deeply sits in me, stays with me, comes with me wherever I go. There has been nothing easy about undertaking this process. It’s been many days and nights and weeks and months and years of wrestling with the tensions of telling a story that complicates how we see ourselves as racialized, minoritized people. Why undertake such a project when the stakes and risks are high?

Muslims live in varying degrees of vulnerability today, and Ismailis specifically, continue to grapple with the prejudice and exercises of material and discursive violence, being minoritized in many parts of the world. Ismailis as a collective also enjoy the fruits of privilege and influence. As a community that believes strongly and has invested in building a world where equality can be realized, this research is an invitation, an evocation, an interruption, in recognition that such goals cannot manifest without entering into how we as Muslim racialized communities, are produced in and produce contradictory effects of the work we do or hope to do in the world. This is a step into discomfort, tension, ambiguity – a paradox of “being” in times of war, terror, capital, patriarchy and colonial and imperial power. It’s asking where we’ve been looking, what questions we’ve been asking, who we’ve turned to, where we’ve turned, what is informing how we make sense of ourselves, others, and the very materiality of life. I hope this thesis raises more questions about our responsibilities, our choices, and where we struggle, that inevitably impact all of us directly and indirectly. This project is in service of creating a more equitable and just world.

Organization of Dissertation As I have outlined, the project of this ethnography is to understand what emerges through the encounters of the Ismailis to the Canadian nation state, to other Muslims and non-Muslims, and in their ethnicized relationships with each other. To this end, the journey of this thesis begins in the

11 first chapter with a more detailed contextualization of Ismailis as a Muslim community, part of a larger Muslim Ummah in the gendered colonial race formation of Canada. I examine how Ismailis and other Muslims have sought to make sense of themselves and understand their experiences in

Canada.

The research methodology chapter will situate how this study is a critical ethnography. I also place this critical ethnography as feminist, antiracist and decolonizing. The chapter will go through my positionality in relationship to the participants and the various issues, concerns and experiences raised through our engagements. Next, I share my research process. I share the search for and inviting of participants to the journey of this ethnography, and the challenges, tensions and outcomes of this process. Narrative and discourse analysis were my research methods and so I provide an overview of these in relation to gathering the various kinds of data I collected, and the analytic process I undertook. I explore the issue of validity and some of the participants’ hopes for this project, as well as participant biographical sketches.

The theoretical framework chapter presents the key analytic tools I use to engage the explorations of this study. Three overarching theoretical tools are central to this ethnography: encounters; gendered, colonial race nation; and exceptionality. Within those theoretical frames I include related concepts such as modern coloniality, governmentality, liberalism, subjectivity and spiritual based conceptions of human relationships. By presenting these many approaches of theory from which I draw, I hope to engage the next chapters with them in mind, but also allowing the encounters to challenge and inform them, making the work of this thesis one of theory building and an iterative process of praxis.

Chapter 5, “Muslim Exceptionality and Exceptional Muslims” presents many pieces and layers of data from speeches, news reports, field observations and spatial analysis, to uncover the way in which Ismailis become exceptional at a national level in relation to the Canadian nation.

Through examining these various pieces of data, I argue that three themes of exploration and analysis are significant to making sense of Muslim exceptionality: arrival narratives, values, and spatial formations. Chapter 6, “Cycling Bodies, Temporal Movements” examines how Ismailis come to have meaning and relevance in their meetings with other Muslims and non-Muslims in

Canada. Through the participant narratives I argue that a trilogy of the cool, fake and scary Muslim emerges, in how they come to embody Muslim subjectivity. We explore various themes that make visible the workings of the trilogy – the modern religious; the ease and comfort of non-Muslims’ bodies; the emergence of the “Muslim human;” and the Canadian states’ demands of self- regeneration. Chapter 7, on ethnobody encounters of Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis in

Toronto, looks at the meeting of these Ismailis and what practices of social relationship making emerge. I argue that four practices allow us to understand the raced, gendered, and classed experiences of these Ismailis amongst each other. The four practices are: orienting, figuring, proximating, and aiding. Each of these practices reveal something about the governmentality of the community, the production of ethnicized bodies, the operations of proximity, distance and help as an ethical manoeuvring between Ismailis, and what symbolic, material, discursive, spatial, bodily and transcendental affects are at stake.

The final chapter of this thesis takes a critical look at the concept of pluralism as mobilized by the Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa, a project of the Aga Khan and the Ismaili community in partnership with the Canadian government. I use what emerges from the encounters explored in chapters 5, 6, and 7 to critique pluralism as a corrective to challenges posed by “diversity.” I use the position paper by the Centre for Pluralism, called, “What is Pluralism?” to do this, along with the participants narratives about pluralism. This chapter also provides insight into why this concept is important to the participants and Ismailis in general. The last part of this chapter is dedicated to what

13 is at stake through the explorations of this thesis in the paradigms of modernity through which

Ismailis are instrumentalized and through which they constitute themselves.

Chapter 2: Background

Exhortations to Canadian Ismailis by the global leader of the community, His Highness

Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, to make Canada their home as well as to support the

transnational activities of the Aga Khan Development Network, have produced a sense of

belonging to both the Canadian nation and the Ismaili transnation. (Karim, 2011, p. 266)

Karim’s words are becoming a well-worn projection about the Ismailis in Canada. This narrative of “belonging” as a form of acceptance, to be part of, to in habit, as a possession, is situated within Canada’s multicultural mosaic, in which the Ismailis as a collectivity inhere. As

Karim (2011) goes on to say, Ismailis’ sense of belonging is tracked to their ease with the modern.

It is an ease that allows Ismailis to be “themselves” as a collective religious community, while still being “Canadian.” Evidence of Ismailis’ collective belonging and acceptance in Canada is often connected back to their many successes over the last 40 years. Major institutions have been built in partnership with the Canadian government, such as the Aga Khan Foundation, the Centre for

Pluralism, the Delegation of Ismaili Imamat building in Ottawa, and the Ismaili Centre and

Museum. Success is also traced through specific individual Ismaili achievements such as the first female Muslim liberal MP, Yasmeen Ratansi, or the first Muslim women senator, Mubina Jaffer, or the current Mayor of Calgary, Nahid Nenshi. It is also manifested in the presence of various young

Ismaili personalities in the media, such as Ali Velshi at CNN, Huse Madavji, movie and TV actor,

Farah Nasser, anchor with CP24, and Nahid Nader at the helm of corporate institutions such as

Roger’s Communications.

Belonging is also mobilized through the Ismailis’ own celebrated diversity. Even as this belonging has mostly been articulated through the lives and experiences of Ismailis from East Africa

(the largest groups of Ismailis in Canada) Ismailis from various parts of the world such as India,

Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Northern China are also subsumed in the Ismaili collective identity of belonging to the community and to the Canadian nation in which they too symbolically and materially emerge as successful citizens.

In this framing of Ismaili belonging and multicultural Canada, the two are constituted through a prism that makes visible precise aspects of what characterizes the state and its citizens.

Tolerance, benevolence, and acceptance are naturally endowed and linearly evolved dispositions of the Canadian state as a modern space of diversity. The Ismailis as a collectivity are neatly placed as an enabled religious community in this space. In such a framing, both the Canadian state and the

Ismailis are imagined to reiterate each other. Bannerji (2000) says that Canada itself is “a construction, a set of representations, embodying certain types of political and cultural communities and their operations” (p. 274), reminding us that the ease to belong, to be known, and to accept are political processes. At the same time, the multicultural nation and the bodies in it do things and have material relevance, as Ahmed (2000) argues:

The nation becomes imagined and embodied as a space, not simply by being defined against

other spaces, but by being defined as close to some others (friends), and further away from

other others (strangers). (p. 100)

Unlike the public anxiety about Muslim integration particularly since 9/11, Ismailis are seemingly outside of such concerns. As Ahmed (2000) points out, processes of differentiation between Others is necessary in the embodied space of the nation. Both the Ismailis, as a collectivity belonging to the global network of Ismaili transnation, and Canada, obscure and forecloses what rationalities underscore what is sayable, knowable, and visible in the venerations of Ismaili Muslims

16 and the Canadian nation. This does not allow for understanding how the Canadian nation can be constructed and mobilized as a multicultural mosaic, and what uses it has in being framed in such a way. Nor can we make sense of the Ismailis in Canada as a constituted religious community through difference in a broader terrain of Muslim politics and colonial modernity. Therefore, how Ismailis come to take up certain positions in the Canadian context, in what way they are constituted, and how they encounter and emerge from social relationships of power, requires attention. Further, making visible the work of liberal Muslim bodies in this current moment in Canada allows us to consider what Ismailis do as bodies of difference for nation building and in the relational production of social relationships between bodies of color. Rather than taking for granted Ismailis belonging and the

Canadian state’s embrace of them, I ask the questions of what emerges from the encounters between the Ismailis and that Canadian nation-state, from Ismailis and other Muslims, and from non-Muslims and Ismailis amongst themselves. In asking these questions, I attend to the paradoxes of how

Ismailis in their gender, race, and class difference are materially and symbolically useful to the

Canadian nation and their own community building and survival through colonial modernity. This chapter will map out some of the critical terrains that provide contexts for these encounters.

In this chapter, I make visible prior encounters and present economies of sociopolitical currents in which the Ismailis, as a Muslim community and gendered ethnicized bodies, move and animate in Canada as a settler colonial race formation as well as in a broader geography of Muslim social and cultural politics. It is in the constitutions and movements of their collective subjectivities as a religious community and in their ethnicized gender, race, and class difference that they locate and engage in interlocking systems of power rooted in nation, empire, colonialism, modernity, and religion. In this way, the chapter aims to show that in order to make sense of Ismaili encounters between the Canadian nation-state, other Muslims, and non-Muslims and to their own ethnicized

17 difference, the mapping of multiple pasts and multiple presents, which they are part of and that shape them is required. Different from most studies on the Ismailis in Canada, I also place Ismailis’ entrance and settlement in Canada within a broader dynamic of colonial power and management of racialized peoples and within current shaping of Muslims as racial constructs.

To build such a narrative, I draw on the work of scholars who trace marginalized histories. I also present various ethnographic and qualitative studies that examine how Muslims and Ismailis are subject to and engage with the settler multicultural logic in Canada. In addition, I utilize government documents, cultural artifacts, and news sources to show the linkages between the imagined geographies and material relationships of Canada to that of countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, which contribute to the production of Muslims and Islam as racialized ethnicized bodies in Canada.

Coloniality, Ismaili Modernization and Canadian Settler Formation

The racial and gendered politics of the state were organized through a complex triangulation

of relations, with indigenous peoples marked for physical and cultural extinction, European

settlers for integration, and people of color for perpetual outsider status as “immigrants” and

“newcomers. (Razack, Smith & Thobani, 2010, p. 5)

Much of the sense-making of Ismaili experiences in Canada is situated within a multicultural state and framed in a multicultural logic (Gova, 2005; Jamal, 2009; Kanji, 2009; Karim, 2011;

Mathews, 2000, 2007; Mukadom & Mawani, 2006; Murji, 2006; Versi, 2010). In some instances, there have been challenges to such a contextualization and framing as a way to connect gendered, classed, and religious experiences of Ismailis to sexist, racist, and Islamophobic mechanisms of management in the Canadian state (Bhimani, 2003; Dossa, 1994, 2009; Hirji, 2010; Mohamed,

2002). Overall, however, the bifurcation of the Canadian experience between a once racist past and a multicultural present distances Ismailis from the coloniality of the Canadian state. The state’s mechanisms of gendered and classed “racial politics” which “has continued to shape processes of racialization within the settler society” (Razack, Smith & Thobani, 2010, p. 5) have been left unexplored. In the following section, I offer a brief reading of what constitutes the colonial settler formation of Canada and how it is connected to broader projects of coloniality in which Ismaili

Muslims too are imbued and from which they emerge.

The colonial settler formation of Canada was premised on an epistemological, ontological, and spatial violence on the bodies, cultures, and relationships of indigenous peoples. The colonial logic and framework used to build the settler nation of Canada was deeply connected to larger colonial projects of the Americas and other parts of the world, even as the actual manifestations of colonialism were different (Lawrence, 2010; Mignolo, 2011; Thobani, 2007). In this way, Muslims and Ismailis from various parts of the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, were subject to colonial violence that was predicated on a theocentric logic, which determined them to be barbarian others in their profanity (Wynter, 2003). Sardar (1999) argues that for Muslims, however, this process of

‘sacred’ differentiation began much earlier than the 15th century. Since the 7th century, Christian religious leaders were framing Muslims as the amoral subhuman. Crusader accounts of Ismailis from the 11th century relayed a mythology of hashish smoking killers that Europe should be weary of (Daftary, 1998).1

1 Mignolo (2011) states that the, “historical foundation of the colonial matrix (and hence of Western civilization) was theological: it was Christian theology that located the distinction between Christian, Moors and Jews in the “blood.” He goes on to say, “Although the three religions of the book has a long history, it has been reconfigured since 1492, when Christians managed to expel Moors and Jews from the peninsula and enforced conversion on those who wanted to stay. Simultaneously, the racial configuration between Spanish, Indian and African began to take shape in the New World” (p. 8).

Further, the colonial process led by Europe from the 19th century onwards was fuelled through a civilizational difference between Europe and the lands and peoples of elsewhere through which Muslims came to be known as the “Oriental” (Said, 1979).2 This difference, however, was also based in a racial logic imprinted on non-European bodies in “biocentric” terms through science that built from the former classifications of the heathens and non-heathens (Mignolo, 2011; Thobani,

2007; Wynter, 2003). Further reshaping conceptions of identity and subjectivity were imposed onto colonized population as a way to regulate them in colonial regimes. For instance, Ismailis in India were affected through the British Empire’s definition of Muslim that attempted to make clear boundaries for what constitutes Islamic practices, identity, and community formation. Ismailis, like other Muslims, became bound to a closed notion of “Muslim” that cleansed them of their cultural hybridity and their Islamic uniqueness (Asani, 2010). Such tactics of constituting and bordering community identities for the purpose of colonial control and management of colonized people was taken to other parts of the British Empire, including Canada, in which Indigenous Peoples, families, and communities would be fragmented and forever disturbed (Lawrence, 2010).3

The civilizational differences of coloniality took shape not only by identifying the racialized non-white as barbarous and primitive and needing to be eliminated or tamed, but also through myths

2 It would be difficult to make broad claims about the specific impacts of these processes for Ismailis of different colonial lands from the 15th century with the beginning of the Inquisition to the actual implantation of colonial authorities onto non-European lands, as many Ismailis would have been living under conditions of persecution from their Muslim co-religionists, and were at times living under other identities. Ismailis were also scattered through the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and Africa.

3 In the 19th century with Ismaili Imam’s move into British India, the Ismaili community itself would come to be defined and legitimated through the colonial courts. There had been rifts within Ismaili communities in India and in parts of East Africa over who had actual authority in the community, and how finances should be allocated and therefore, a case was filed against the Aga Khan III, then Imam of the Ismailis. In 1905 the British court in Mumbai ruled in favour of the Aga Khan and clarified his authority as the rightful leader of the Ismailis, a sect of Sh’iism (Daftary, 1999). In this way, the British were key to establishing the legitimacy of his centralized leadership and the identity of the Ismailis as Shi’a Muslims. This allowed for him to later secure resources and services for his communities through the British Empire.

20 about “discovery,” empty lands, and European claims over lands of Other worlds, which cemented their authority as sovereign subjects (Goldberg, 1993; Mignolo, 2011; Thobani, 2007). Thobani

(2007) argues that the legitimation and grounding of the colonization of Indigenous People and lands can be found in particular notions, although mobilized in colonial processes differently,

Indigenous people were not fully human; they were not Christian; they were not civilized;

they had not evolved; they were doomed to extinction by history and progress, they had no

recognizable legal systems or concepts of property rights and were thus lawless, and they did

not cultivate their lands. (p. 41)

In the colonial experiences of non-Europeans in the 19th century, Ismailis in colonized countries would have had differing experiences in the colonial process. However, Ismailis as a collectivity were being shaped in another kind of relationship to colonial powers of the British

Empire in particular, through their Imams. The centrality of the Imam, for the Ismailis, is rooted in the Ismailis’ Shi’a Muslim theology. Ismailis, as a Shi’a Muslim community, are an outgrowth of the initial split between Shi’a and Sunni branches of Islam over leadership soon after the Prophet

Muhammed’s death in 632AD. The Shi’as believed that the Prophet had left behind a lineage of

Imamat, that is the person(s) who are Divinely ordained to lead the Muslims. The Ismailis trace their linage back through their 49 Imams to the Prophet and his family. The place of the Imam, therefore, in the life of the Ismailis is integral as the Imam provides both spiritual and material guidance in his

Divine authority. The Imam is also the sole interpreter of the Qur’an that guides his people to live according to the times in which they exist (Daftary & Hirji, 2008).

Born into this legacy and the continued violence of the 19th century colonial world, the Aga

Khan III, Sultan Mohamed Shah, would be the first amongst his patrileneage to develop an intimate

21 and co-beneficial relationship with a colonial power. What his example showed are the gender, race, and class hierarchies in which non-white colonial bodies were positioned within the Empire’s goals. At the age of eight, he succeeded his father, Aga Ali Shah, to become the 48th hereditary

Imam of the Ismailis. His great grandfather was the first to have made contact with the British after problems with a Shi’a Qajar empire in Persia when he had shown interest in establishing an Ismaili

Kingdom again in Iran. Although the Ismaili Imams and the Qajars had been friends for some time, this request put his life at risk, and he escaped to Afghanistan and came under the protection of the

British. In doing so, he provided services to them in exchange for a monthly pension (Daftary, 1998;

Grondelle, 2009).

This escape was marked by a series of prior events in which Ismailis had suffered persecution in the effort to cleanse away Ismailis both physically and in the imaginary of the

Muslim world. In this way, from the 9th century onwards, as the Ismailis began to take prominence as a Muslim community and Shi’a power, there began a concerted effort to discredit them as

Muslims by their Sunni co-religionists (Daftary, 1990). Prior to the invasion of the Mongols in

1256, the Ismailis had two periods where they established major Muslim Empires. The Fatimids in

Cairo, Egypt was the first (909-1171) and Alamut (1090-1257) the second in Iran. The Fatimids became known for their policies of inclusion, their intellectual innovations, and their contributions to philosophy, art, and social justice, etc. Negative accounts written about the Ismailis not only claimed that the Ismailis were heretics, but altogether, propagated that they had falsified their lineage back to the Prophet Muhammed. The antagonism against them focused on making them a real threat to Islam and a force to be squashed (Daftary, 1990). Shafique Virani (2007) states:

The political successes of the Fatimids alarmed their rivals, and the ʽAbbasids reacted

fiercely, encouraging and commissioning numerous defamatory polemical works. The panic

caused by the triumphs of the Shiʽi Ismailis can be gauged by the tone of some of the barbs

directed against them. (p. 7)

The Mongol invaders also proclaimed edicts for Ismaili eradication. Between the anti-Ismaili sentiment and persecution of them amongst their co-religionists and the Mongol invasion, it was thought for a long time that Ismailis had long been decimated (Virani, 2007). This idea began to unravel 200 years ago when the Russian Scholar, Vladimir Ivanow encountered living Ismailis

(Daftary, 1990; Virani, 2007). When he brought back this news to his European academic colleagues he recounts this:

My learned friends in Europe plainly disbelieved me when I wrote about the community to

them. It appeared to them quite unbelievable that the most brutal persecution, wholesale

slaughter, age‐long hostility and suppression were unable to annihilate the community.

(Virani, 2007, p. 11)

These relationships of antagonism are significant between Ismailis and their Muslim co- religionists as they continue to play out in the imaginaries of Ismailis and in their social relationships even today. These are aspects of “prior histories of determination” (Ahmed, 2000) that play into the Ismaili encounters explored in this thesis.

Coming from this legacy of displacement, the Aga Khan III, over the course of his life, became intertwined with the British and the colonial world, both as an ally and supporter of the

Empire, but also as an advocate and agitator for Muslim rights in India, and for the survival of

Muslim world powers (Daftary, 1990; Grondelle, 2009). This moment in Ismailis’ history is particularly important as the Ismailis as a community is highly influenced by colonial modernity. In this way, the life of Aga Khan III and his relationship with colonial powers had a major impact on

Ismaili self-identity and global formations of the community and its infrastructures. Grondelle

(2009) argues that from the birth of this Aga Khan, the British Empire had taken a keen interest in him, perhaps because he was a Persian royal and could serve the interests of colonial expansion and management. By the time he was 21, he became knighted by Queen Victoria. Not having had major political power for centuries, such an honour would mean much to an Ismaili Imam, without a state or empire to call his own. It was this visit that made Aga Khan III a visible public figure within the

British Empire, but also internationally (Grondelle, 2009). He would come into various positions of major influence within the Empire but also in the Muslim world, who were now building relationships with him as a Muslim leader (Daftary, 1990; Grondelle, 2009).

In fact, he became a prominent voice amongst Muslim leaders and initially participated in and later came to lead major conferences addressing Muslim constitutional rights in India

(Grondelle, 2009). He was also well known for his advocacy of women’s suffrage. Many of his opinions and perspectives on these issues and others at the time were written and published for public consumption in the British Empire. Largely, his opinions favoured the British, but often he did push back, mostly subtlety and a few times explicitly. For example, with regards to women’s rights in India he made the following comments recorded in The Times, London, August 1919:

Sir James Meston’s statement that female enfranchisement would present many

difficulties, practical and social, is an instance of the regrettable fact that while many

conscientious British officials spend their working lives in administrative duties in India,

they never enter into a real understanding of the life or aspiration of the people –national,

social or religious. Only one man in a hundred, a Woodroffe in Calcutta, a Pollen or a

Beaman in Bombay, gains such real understanding of the people he serves. It is painful to

Indian readers that men who have attained high distinction in the Civil Service should have

to be seriously asked if they would be shocked at the inclusion of women in the electorates.

No Indian, not even the most conservative, will be shocked by the proposal that now that

the sacred right of enfranchisement is to be given on a substantial scale to men, women

share it, just as they share the sacred right to property. (As Cited in Aziz, 1997, p. 646)

With his robust public life, Aga Khan III also dedicated much of his time and life in bringing the Ismaili community under one centralized institution of his Imamat in a modern formulation. The guidance of the Aga Khan for the Ismailis to become modern and his modernizing policies were instrumental in creating a pan-community subjectivity through the prism of modernity. Mignolo

(2011) writes that modernity is a mirage in that, “it is a narrative that builds Western civilization and its achievements while hiding at the same time its darker side, ‘coloniality’” (pp. 2-3). The establishment of the Ismailis through the colonial period and their emergence as a modern Muslim community is therefore part and parcel of the many logics of coloniality. In part of the modernizing work with the support of the British Empire, the Aga Khan III set up local councils in the various

East African countries where Ismailis were present. He implemented local constitutions through which the community formalized its membership, and later a similar process was undertaken in

India and Pakistan. In this way, particularly in East Africa, the Ismailis became far more established than other South Asian counterparts. There began the creation of services ranging from Aga Khan hospitals, schools, libraries, to sporting clubs (Steinberg, 2011). Financial institutions were also set up to support poor Ismailis. These institutions also had the goal to establish an East African Ismaili upper class as a way to create a capitalist outlook and skill-base for modernizing Ismailis (Steinberg,

2011). The social and political modernization policy of the Aga Khan III was explicit for his followers. He urged them to become like the dominant in the countries in which they lived, as a way to assimilate and avoid marginalization as minorities. This went as far as adapting particular forms of dress and becoming socialized to the cultural environment. For example, in a speech at the

Aga Khan student union in London 1951 he stated, “Whatever country you choose to live in, work

25 for it, mix with its people, achieve its outlook and keep religion in its proper place – in your soul. If you do this, you will find many problems solved” (As cited in Aziz, 1987, p. 1278). Putting all his efforts into building a global Ismaili community, sophisticated and well-versed in the social, legal, political and cultural ways of modernity, Aziz (1987) says the following:

To his Muslim followers and fellow-believers he showed the path to a liberal and rational

interpretation of Islam, the acceptance and practical interpretation of which would bring

them into the mainstream modern life without in the least betraying the fundamental tenets

and injunctions of their religion. (pp. xxv-xxvi)

Steinberg (2011) argues that the modernity evoked by the Aga Khan III and through the current Aga Khan (IV), the socialization of the community into modernity focused on capitalism, liberal individualism, rational humanism, and I would add liberal notions of equality and rights.

What is evident from the relationship that the Aga Khan III had to the Empire is the gains he made for the Ismailis in service to the Empire, and also the Aga Khan’s far reach of influence, establishing him as a serious and respected Muslim leader, modern and moderate, that could work in tandem with colonial powers, rather than against it. Grondelle (2009) states:

It is clear that the Aga Khan did not hesitate to address wide-range of issues to government

running risk of being either misunderstood or ridiculed because his thoughts were so

contrary to spirit of the times. He seems to have acted from a deep sense of dual loyalty: to

Britain and to Islam. (pp. 39-40)

In Boivin’s (1994) reading of the Aga Khan III policies, this modernization and embrace of modernity was not simply one that mimicked Europe, but there was something specifically Islamic to it. Although, he argues that incorporating European modernity informed a lot of his guidance to his people. As we shall see through the encounters explored in this thesis, prior mappings of

Ismailis in modernity play significantly into their social relationships and current constitutions as

Muslims in Canada.

Canada and Coloniality The reaches of the British Empire were great, and existing under the violence of colonial power did not accord everyone the prerogative to be its interlocutors, as in the case of the Aga Khan.

The very premise of the colonial domination was that racial, class, and gender hierarchy was established and able to justify different forms of colonial regulation and management. Thobani

(2007) states that within the British mechanisms and logic on the lands that would come to be known as Canada:

British and French sovereignty over Aboriginal peoples and their lands was legitimized

ideologically through claims to Christian and European civilizational superiority, and legally

through the assertion of sovereignty by the colonizing powers, who sometimes negotiated

treaties with some indigenous nations. (p. 41)

Lawrence and Amadahy (2009) argue that the colonial process would not have been evenly experienced between all Indigenous nations in Canada however:

On the whole, though, control of most Indigenous communities has been maintained, since

the 1870s, through a centralized body of legislation known as the Indian Act, which controls

“Indian” identity and entitlement to land, as well as most other aspects of existence for those

recognized “Indians” who come under its policies. (p. 113)

Taking over the lands and eventual displacement, genocide and encampment of Indigenous

Nations was a long process in Canada in which the European settlers would come to play an integral part. The colonial project was supported and reinforced by settlers through their overall agreement

27 in the demonization, displacement and eradication of Indigenous Peoples and their own innocence in this violence. The colonizer and settlers worked together to constitute Canada, and the Canadian

(Thobani, 2007).

Borrows (1997) traces the challenge that many Indigenous Nations posed to this violence through attempts at forging ties and relations with the British and French colonial powers, reiterating

Indigenous Peoples agency from the 16th century. He shows however, that by 1763, as a way to extinguish the tensions between settler and Indigenous Peoples and to secure a position of power for the British, the Royal Proclamation was drawn up without the consent or input of Indigenous

Nations. Yet First Nations that participated in a proclamation meeting at Niagara also set the terms of treaties through their “oral statements and belts of wampum,” speaking to First Nations’ own understanding of what it meant to be in treaty relationships with the British (Borrows, 1997, p. 161).

The terms of the original proclamation were in contradiction to the treaty agreements made at

Niagara. For many years to come this treaty would be brought up in guiding other agreements for

First Nations. This understanding of First Nations was not honoured and ultimately reworked, as one of the many violations that led to the Indian Act of the 1870s, which Thobani (2007) states was a:

Racialized and gendered a piece of legislation as one might encounter anywhere under the

auspices of the empire, has been aptly described as representing the ‘Euro-Canadian

government’s apartheid system’ and the ‘bureaucratized hatred’ of Native Peoples. (p. 48)

During this time of Canada’s colonial settler formation, the first Muslims of European descent also arrived as settlers. Hamdani (1984) describes that it was around 1840 when a few

Scottish Muslim families came to Canada for agricultural opportunities in Upper Canada and skilled

28 work in the lowlands. It was their linguistic, race, and cultural privilege that allowed them to fit in with other settlers, although ultimately they lost their connection to Islam due to the lack of a

Muslim community.

The colonial settler formation of Canada was premised on an epistemological and ontological logic that was grounded in a larger colonial project of producing the racialized barbaric

Other to European white civilization, the explicit stealing of land, and the eradication of peoples and cultures. The colonial settler formation of Canada was also a legalized operation that built Canada as a state, sanctioning the sovereignty of white European settlers, even as settlers themselves would have been diverse; ethnically, linguistically and religiously (Thobani, 2007). Razack (2002) states that as a white settler society evolves it:

continues to be structured by a racial hierarchy. In the mythologies of such societies, it is

believed that white people came first and principally developed the land; Aboriginal peoples

are presumed to be mostly dead or assimilated. European settlers thus become original

inhabitants and the group most entitled to the fruits of citizenship. A quintessential feature of

white settler mythologies is, therefor, the disavowal of conquest, genocide, slavery, and the

exploitation of the labour of peoples of colour. (p. 2)

Within this colonial settler logic and techniques of differentiating between some European and white settlers and Indigenous Peoples, came the emergence of further development and deployment of Canada as a race nation in its systemic white supremacist underpinning. The colonial settler nation and race nation are not distinct, but point to the various logics and mechanism through which particular bodies and groups are arranged in the Canadian state in a “triangulation.”

Muslims from non-European countries from the Middle East such as Lebanon, Syria and

Turkey, arrived in the 1900s when the Confederation of Canada had already started to allow the entrance of “lesser races.” This included those of “unbecoming parts” of Europe such as the

Ukraine, as well as Chinese, Japanese and Indians from India (Abdi & Gosh, 2004; Abu-Laban,

1983, 1980; Hamdani, 1984; Stasiulis & Jhappan, 1995). These Muslims would have come as labourers that worked to build the railroad of Western Canada. About 1500 Muslims were present in

Canada by 1911 (Abu-Laban, 1983; Hamdani, 1997). Even though between 1880-1920 restricted entrance of racialized immigrants was allowed, those in Canada faced great trials with poor living and working conditions, to denial of rights, to internment, to the barring of further entry of immigrants from Japan and India. These mechanisms of controlling who could be in Canada and how was a way to maintain a pristine white country (Stasiulis & Jhappan, 1995). With the technique of marking out enemy aliens during World War I and an existing racial exclusion in Canada, Abu-

Laban (1983) states that Muslims of Turkish origin were evicted from Canada, and this may have contributed to the relatively small number of Muslims entering Canada until the 1950s. Until the

1960s, the explicit criteria based on race and geography for entering Canada was well established, and the whites only country remained a guiding policy for expanding the population. This also meant that those communities of color within the Canadian borders through the Canadian state’s systemic apparatus, were set in a situation where they were fighting their own marginalization and racialization, as Indigenous populations continued to be in processes of enslavement and eradication. Muslims themselves were impacted by and intertwined within the settler formation of

Canada, and the race nation deployments.

Recorded arrivals of Ismailis began in the 1950s, when the first Pakistani Ismaili came as a student (Karim, 2011). He most likely arrived as a student filling the quota of the number of

Pakistanis (100) allowed entrance into Canada at that time, under the new Immigration Act of 1952

(Haque, 2012). In 1962, with requirements for even more labour in the post-war economy, there was another shift in the immigration policies of Canada in which explicit “discrimination based on color, race or creed” was to be eliminated (Haque, 2012, p. 34). The bill of rights presented by John

Diefenbaker, was the government’s statement that they could no longer operate through explicit exclusionary criteria (Haque 2012). Haque (2012) and Thobani (2007) argue that this was a way to not be seen as racist in a global time of post-colonial and anti-colonial movements in which membership and participation “in the United Nations and multi-racial commonwealth” would have been important to be seen as a modern state. These policy shifts therefore were also about changing the status and stature of Canada in the global arena.

The point system, under which Ismailis would enter Canada mostly beginning in the 1970s was itself problematic, as now immigration was operationalized through a “rationalization of immigration through “objective” terms of evaluating those wanting to come to Canada (Arat-Koc,

1999, p. 208). This meant that immigrants would be valued based on their “formal education and training, occupational skills, occupational demand, occupational experience, knowledge of Canada’s official languages, and age of the applicant” (p. 208). More subtly, operating through a race and neoliberal logic, the immigration point system discriminated against those that did not meet these objective criteria. Arat-Koc (1999) argues that the definition of women’s work for instance, based outside of market value would automatically exclude entire groups of women. Kymlicka’s (2004) analysis of the initial whites only policy and then point system criteria of Canada, points out the benefits of them in establishing a successful multicultural Canada. He argues that the limited number of “illiberal” Muslims allowed into the country ultimately has been responsible for Canada’s success as a multicultural nation. Unlike other Western nations, Canada has largely come to be

31 without the problems of uncivilized Islam and Muslims. In the settler race nation formation,

Muslims themselves, including Ismailis, were from the moment of their arrival in a relationship of colonial racial logic with the Canadian state.

As the largest group of Muslims to be accepted to Canada at one time, Ismailis from East

Africa, escaping their expulsion from Uganda (and precarious positions in other parts of East Africa) came to Canada through the point system (Nanji, 1983). They came during the time when Canada again went through a shift in the explicit logic, identity, governing mechanisms and policy of the

Canadian nation-state. Multiculturalism as an official government discourse was an outgrowth from the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in 1963. The Commission stated that,

“steps should be taken to develop the Canadian Confederation on the basis of equal partnership between two founding races, taking into account the contribution made by other ethnic groups to the cultural enrichment of Canada” (Gupta, 1999, p. 191).4 Trudeau was hailed as the architect of the multiculturalism policy of 1971, which allowed the entrance of Ismailis as he was implementing a management response to the arrival of large numbers of non-white immigrants. It was through the personal relationship of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau and the Aga Khan IV that Ismailis from East Africa came under a unique agreement made between them. Their relationship harkens back to the former Aga Khan’s relationship with the British Empire in securing material resources and livelihood for some Ismailis.

4 The question of the French in Canada and Quebec was a sore point even prior to Confederation in which the French did not hold equal status to the British. Through the Royal Commission there was an establishment of the centrality of two founding cultures to the Canadian nation building project, but with the question of a separate French Canada, Quebec and the preservation of French language was a concern posed to Federalists, notable in the rise of francophone demands of the 1960s which continue till today.

Born in 1936 in Geneva, France, Aga Khan IV was educated in elite institutions including a

Harvard education in Islamic History. He became Imam at the age of 21. Aga Khan IV continued policies of hybrid Islamic and Western liberal humanism, global capitalism and the embrace of modernity. With the changed socio-political and economic environment from his grandfather’s time, this would now be done through nation-states and through transnational networks. Like the constitutions his grandfather established, the current Aga Khan installed a global constitution binding Ismailis from all around the world together. Steinberg (2011) argues that this was a major step in cementing the globality of the Ismailis, as a corporate, cultural, and spiritual network.

During Trudeau’s speech in the October 1971 unveiling of the multiculturalism policy, he stressed that Canada should not be divided, rather that everyone, even citizens, are simply to be known as “Canadian.” In the logics of capital, liberalism and culturalization of racialized peoples,

Trudeau said that multiculturalism “is basically the conscious support of individual freedom of choice. We are free to be ourselves. But this cannot be left to chance. It must be fostered and pursued actively.”

“Free to be oneself” and its fostering meant that immigrants like the Ismailis came to Canada to be ascribed into the political identity of individual and “cultural” groups. The freedom to be cultural in the multiculturalism policy is a race blind and racially constituting category through which all non-white peoples became the multi-cultures the state has to manage, and through which they are also constructed as cultural Others (Bannerji, 2000; Mackey, 1999). Erasing the presence, struggles, and tensions faced by racialized communities already present in Canada, and further collapsing Indigenous concerns into just another category of diversity to be dealt with, the multiculturalism policy had contradictory effects (Lawrence, 2010). The Multiculturalism Act was passed by the conservative Mulroney government in 1985. The shift from policy to Act made it a

33 constitutional and legal apparatus of the state in which the official Languages Act, the Citizenship

Act and the Human Rights Act, are named and enshrined as multicultural operatives.

Thobani (2007) argues that it is against the sovereign body, that is the “exalted subject” that

Muslim Others are produced as multicultural. In this way, Muslims in Canada have been subject to and engaged others, themselves and the state, in a racial and multicultural framework. In part this may be the case because multiculturalism, as the only hegemonic state ideology and governing apparatus of cultural Others, has strongly shaped the vocabulary and perspectives through which immigrants understand themselves and others. Although, this is not uniformly the case as many feminist anti-racist strides have been made to push out and against multiculturalism as an organizing logic and mode for social relationship making (Bannerji 2000; Gupta, 1999; Razack, 1999; Thobani,

2007). Multiculturalism, as an additional racializing construct to the colonial settler logic, has brought about particular responses, relationships and constitutions of Muslims to themselves, the state, and to others.

Ismailis, Other Muslims and Multicultural Arrangements and Disciplining Prior to 9/11 the purview of Muslim experiences in Canada focused heavily on integration, citizenship and accommodation. Both Abu Laban (1980) and Hamdani (1984) argue that at least up to the 1980s, most people in Canada knew little of Islam and Muslims. Scholarship on Muslims largely focused on acculturation or assimilation. In this way, some of the earliest academic writing on the Ismailis in Canada pointed out East African Ismailis adaptive qualities, owed to both the highly organized Ismaili community infrastructure in East Africa and to their “excellent background in commerce” (Fernando, 1979, p. 364). With the involvement of the Canadian ambassador in the

Iran crisis in the 1970s, Islam and Muslims started to take shape in the collective imaginary of

Canada. This collective imaginary was building a particular orientalist and Islamophobic tone

34 through which Muslims in Canada experienced their difference. For instance, Shahnaz Khan’s

(2002) study on Muslim women’s hybrid identities explored the lost promises of multiculturalism in its particularly orientalist impacts. The participants in her study argued that naming violence or patriarchal aspects of Muslim communities in Canada brought about great concerns of reinforcing misconceptions about Islam and Muslims in general. Further, the impetus for my own work on

Muslim women’s representation in Canada, came from the gendered anti-Muslim sentiment that I had experienced growing up in the 1980s and 1990s in Toronto (Bhimani, 2003). The preoccupation with the Ismailis and the Aga Khan in Canada prior to the late 1990s focused on the Aga Khan, as a

Muslim leader of unfamiliar oddity. Ismailis’ ‘secretive’ Islamic practices and their leader’s wealth and hobbies were the lens through which they were talked about. The construction of the extravagant, overly wealthy, articulate Muslim religious leader was a distinct concern. Although, outside of the construction of the feared Muslim leader, it was that he sat outside of such a constitution that made him strange, simultaneously making him an oriental fascination.

Since 9/11 – security, terror, exclusion, and belonging have expanded the terrain of discussion on Muslim lives in Canada. Zine (2012) argues, however, that there are still unexplored areas in the varied cultural politics of Muslims in Canada. Since 9/11, what has it meant to engage state and each other through multicultural logic? A logic that has evoked particular racial constructs through a civilizational paradigm, in which the West and Islam, Muslims and Others, orient/occident reanimate. Race thinking and Muslims as racial constructs have particular salience. This does not mean that the Ismailis and other Muslims exist in simple binaries. As Ahmed (2000) has argued, the multicultural nation is involved in processes of differentiation in which it claims difference and incorporates it, as it constantly reconstitutes what is more Other than Other and who are more strange than strangers, which define boundaries within the nation and between bodies.

Both Arat Koc (2005) and Sherene Razack (2008) suggest that civilizational discourses have reemerged since 9/11 in the Canadian political vernacular, in order to create boundaries and camps between which Others are the measure of civility, and which inherently lack Western civilization’s reason and personhood. Thus, a reinvestment in race thinking and white identity has been central, but particularly as it relates to expounding the relationship between Muslim and the Canadian state, and by extension multiculturalism. Arat Koc (2005) advances that white settler identity through an alignment with the West, has given steam back to racialization myths of Canada. The use of civilizational discourse as a technique of demarcating bodies relies on race thinking.

Razack (2008) argues that race thinking creates a dichotomy between civilized and uncivilized, modern and pre-modern, and social hierarchies of descent. White Europeans or people from the North, are determined as “naturally able to govern themselves and more rational” (p. 8).

Race thinking thus not only includes color or nationality, but also geography and religion. Razack advances that race thinking does not involve simple prejudice, but is an organizing principle because race thinking and bureaucracy come together through state mechanisms of security and surveillance.

The clash of civilizations discourse directs where others are positioned in the Canadian state, but also justifies social, legal, political, economic actions taken against the threatening Others. The Aga

Khan has seen these clashes, as pointing to ignorance rather than to the political processes Razack points out, showing the Ismailis’ liberal approaches to dealing with the challenges of Muslims.

Koc (2005) says that the move in the reconfiguration of Canada along civilizational lines is not only its ties to Europe, but also in alignment with “US imperialism and US power” (p. 35). This relationship or alignment with the US, particularly in the war on terror, has meant that empathy, over valuation and political solidarities with the US as victims, invigorates political moves within

Canada such as detaining Muslim men without cause. Rhetoric that reinforces a defensive and offensive stance against threatening Muslims is bolstered by inscribing within the Canadian

36 collective memory the attack on the US and the pain, which Canada shares with them. Ismailis in

Canada have largely been articulated outside of such logics, and thus have been able to mobilize the multicultural nation as supportive and constructive in producing a space of acceptance and belonging.

Within the multicultural framework of the country, in the context of Muslims as racial constructs, Zine (2012) argues that Muslims are the prominent unmanageables in Canada, particularly as the country is in a renewed project to recuperate whiteness that bolsters the liberal democratic nature of the country. This has included determining how Muslims are terror threats, evicted, deemed strangers, foreigners, and require discipline and containment (Dhamoon & Abu-

Laban, 2009; Patel, 2012; Razack, 2008; Thobani, 2007; Zine, 2012).

With such concerns there are calls to redefine Canadian tolerance. Tolerance, as a character of the multicultural state, both requires refashioning and reclaiming. Tolerance acts as a discursive technique to mark what and who should be tolerated. Indeed, this means that there are things that require tolerance in multicultural relationalities. For instance, Muslim women’s bodies measure tolerance within the multicultural state by making their body, their living and death, a national narrative and crisis. Haque (2010) makes visible how Aqsa Parvez, a young Pakistani woman killed by her male family members, became a national crisis for the Canadian state in which white settler civility was rearticulated through the reproduction of the intolerable Muslim.

Some Muslims themselves, giving into tolerance as a regulating mechanism, are involved in a public proclamation of what non-Muslims and the Canadian state should tolerate about Islam and

Muslims. Women such as Raheel Raza and Irshad Manji have been on the forefront of this debate in Canada (Sharify-Funk, 2012). Although Manji and Raza have different agendas and approaches, each propagate their own version of tolerance that wants to be loyal to Canada. Manji argues that

Islam itself requires a renewal, as it is itself flawed and thus, non-Muslims do not need to tolerate

37 such an Islam. Whereas Raza speaks to claim Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance, as she condemns those Muslims who claim Islamophobia or racism. She deems such claims as scapegoats for Muslims who refuse to embrace and acknowledge the freedoms accorded to them by Canada.

These are disloyal Muslims. Even the Ismailis have been involved in tolerance speak within Canada.

In this respect, the current Aga Khan the IV has both applauded Canada for its tolerance as a pluralist model, and for the need to reclaim tolerance as a spiritual ethic in relation to embracing human diversity (2008).

The limits of tolerance are in constant articulation, particularly in its gendered and raced formations in the Canadian nation-state. In October 2001, Sunera Thobani, the president of the

National Action Committee on the Status of Women, made a keynote speech that challenged US imperialism and militarism post 9/11. Thobani became the target of investigations by the police and received threats for being “disloyal” to Canada and to feminism. To challenge the logic, actions and support systems of imperialism had grave repercussions, which are a reminder that tolerance towards Muslims requires their compliance with and unfettered loyalty to the nation. In this way, tolerance is both accorded to Muslims’ bodies as it is taken away, showing that these bodies require it to begin with. Multicultural rationalities for non-white bodies must have mechanisms like tolerance to regulate, discipline, and allow some bodies of difference to reiterate it.

Muslims continue to make demands for accommodation and recognition as debates continue about what multiculturalism and the Canadian state tolerate. Zine (2012) cites the Bouchard and

Taylor report on religious accommodations in Quebec, in which they argue that multiculturalism creates ghettoization. They offer interculturalism as the alternative, stating that when people of different cultures interact, inevitably they are transformed to a collective identity, while also keeping

“basic social values.” Yet Adams (2007) shows in his Environics study on Muslims in Canada that in fact some Muslims don’t see themselves as ghettoized through multiculturalism. In the survey,

38 most Muslims said that multiculturalism was a strong factor for them in being proud Canadians.

Further, in relation to the general population, they were more likely to highlight multiculturalism as a “Canadian virtue” (p. 92). Even though this is the case, Muslims still felt that they were subject to discrimination in Canada because they are Muslims, and were considered on top of the list of the most discriminated in the responses of non-Muslims. Ismailis generally as a community have not been involved in making accommodation requests, and rather, have sought to engage in activities that make them civic participants such as through their community led, nation-wide activities such as the Partnership Walk, Milad un Nabi celebrations or youth civic engagement initiatives (Karim,

2011). With regards to embracing multiculturalism, Thobani (2007) argues that:

Not all immigrants, of course, have sought to counter the framework of multiculturalism.

Indeed, many of them have embraced it whole-heartedly as a celebration of their existence

in the country. Many have sought to reflect back to the state the image of their

communities as homogenous through attempts to suppress the fissures and dissidents

internal to these social groupings. (p.165)

For the Ismailis, this has often meant privileging their collective identity whilst mobilizing their ethnic differences as a way to affirm diversity. In this way, the discourses and concept of pluralism has been key. Pluralism, the Aga Khan (2010) says, is an ethic, a process and an asset.

Both Canada as a pluralist nation, and the Ismailis as advocates and examples of pluralism, are central to the Ismailis’ own diversity being reified in this frame. The diversity policy of the Aga

Khan, as some call it, has been central to promoting integration and accommodation of Ismaili in their community context (Karim, 2011; Murji, 2006).

For instance, in a report on a study conducted by Rani Murji (2006), she makes the argument that the multiculturalism policy of Canada is grounded in people enjoying equal rights and responsibilities and able to share their cultural heritage, which are aligned with the Aga Khan’s

39 diversity policy. The collectivized religious identity takes precedent over other cultural markers.

Ismailis’ own difference in ethnicity, race, gender and class are diminished, and Ismailis’ shared ethics with Canada and each other are made visible. In this respect, Ismailis’ own ethnic differences between Afghan and Khoja Ismailis are situated in a diversity policy of the Ismailis that obscures relations of power in the community.

Aligned with this kind of analysis of Ismailis, multiculturalism and Canada, are those that have gone further to suggest that the Ismaili religious approach and curriculum to inclusion and diversity, is based on a humanist liberal model of dialogue and intercultural harmony and peace.

Gova (2005), in his thesis on the social imaginary of the Ismaili Muslim community in Canada, argues that Ismailis do not grapple with modernity and its problems (and they don’t have to) because they exist within a transcendental social imaginary grounded in God consciousness. Because of this, social issues, matters of inequity, or oppression are automatically dealt with through the individual existing within a moral and ethical order. In this way, Ismailis’ own ethnic, race, gender and class difference are not of any real consequence. The collective sense of the “Ismaili” harmonizes with

Canadian multiculturalism in its liberal, individualized, and culturalized approach to diversity management. Further, acculturation strategies into Canada for some Ismailis has produced a sense of identity rooted in language and religion, which has allowed Ismailis to produce a positive identity as

Ismailis and Canadians (Mukadam & Mawani, 2006), making invisible how difference is constituted within their community, in relation to the state and other racialized bodies.

Further, Ismailis’ diversity policy and multiculturalism and their symbiosis, has also been mobilized through moral proclamations, which Goldberg (1993) argues is integral in differentiating between bodies in modernity. For instance, Karim (2011), citing a study conducted by Hyndman,

Jamal and Meadahl (2006), argues that, “sociological research has shown that young Ismailis in

British Columbia generally approach Canadian and Ismaili values without dissonance” (p. 286).

Such a perspective, he says, is representative of the Ismailis in the rest of Canada as well, as he argues that “Canadian multiculturalism has played a critical role in the establishment” of Ismailis (p.

286). In this respect, multiculturalism is a positive force in Ismaili lives because it offers a way for them to continue to be Ismaili in its framework, whilst celebrating their own diversity and integration into the Canadian mosaic (Murji, 2006; Matthews, 2000, 2008). In this way, multiculturalism is accepted through gender, class, and race blind and neutral rationalities and moralities.

In the case of Muslims speaking louder and prouder of Canadian multiculturalism, we might think of this as a response to the geographies of threat in which Muslims are located. What is secured, at least in theory, when reiterating national belonging as a way to appear homogenous with official State discourse? Some scholarship on Ismailis has brought forth that multiculturalism is something that all people should live up to and be accountable towards. This approach outlines that for some Muslims, including Ismailis, multiculturalism legitimizes their presence in Canada, as one of the “multi-cultures” and that some level of respect, equality and inclusion can be accorded through it (Hirji, 2010; Mathews, 2000, 2007), particularly as some forms of discrimination still exist. This kind of relationship with multiculturalism in Canada is in concert with other Muslim populations that also claim their Canadianess, and their location as citizens through multiculturalism, particularly as they find themselves in precarious positions of citizenship (Handa,

2003; Nagra, 2011). Multiculturalism then, rightly becomes the only mechanism through which equality, inclusion and belonging can be imagined, enacted and fought for. The Canadian state, in most of these studies on Ismailis, is largely taken for granted as a multicultural nation without any critical consideration of what this means and how it is part and parcel of a larger settler colonial project. Further, there remains a big gap in mapping how Ismailis come to be in relationship with the

Canadian state. What mechanisms and powers make this possible? How do such relationships get

41 constituted within already existing techniques of constituting non-white bodies relationally in the

Canadian settler colonial state?

This story of collectivized Ismailis, has mostly been told through the lives and perspectives of East African Ismailis as I stated earlier, and in this way the narrative of the community is very much located in an ethnicized dynamic, even as most scholarship on them does not make this explicit. Moghissi et al. (2009) argue that focusing heavily on Islam and religious identity has obscured the possibility of understanding the full range of concerns in Muslim communities, often also silencing those that do not adhere to an outward Islam or claim their Muslimness in explicit terms, or those who are more cultural Muslims, or have a more contradictory relationship in their ethnic and cultural communities. For instance, Parin Dossa’s (2009) work “Racialized Bodies,

Disabling Worlds: Storied Lives of Immigrant Muslim Women” presents the narratives of Iranian and South Asian Muslim women with disabilities. Her study makes visible how race, religion, class and ability intersect in Muslim women’s lives. Navigating the Canadian state and their own community contexts presents inter-related challenges for these women.

Largely absented out of how Muslims come to be in relationship with each other through interlocking systems of oppression and resistance in a multicultural purview, some attention is being given to how religion, race, ethnicity and gender interact in Muslim relationships, in particular community contexts. Both Paul Eid (2007) and Amarnath Amarasingam (2008) argue that looking at the intersection of ethnic and religious identities in Muslim communities in Canada has had little attention. Attending to this absence Eid (2007), Amarasingam (2008), and Akseer (2011) examine why the crossing of religious and ethnic identities becomes relevant to the symbolic and material connections between community members. All of the studies embrace the notion of ethnic identities as referring to geographical and cultural origins. In a comparative approach, Ajrouch and Kusow

(2007) argue that race, ethnicity, and religion figure prominently into the way in which Lebanese

Muslims and Somali Muslims experience belonging and acceptance in the US and in Canada. The ethnic diversity of the Ismaili community has largely been unexamined, outside of a few studies that have interviewed Afghan Ismailis, but have largely told their stories from the perspectives of Khoja

Ismailis, which ultimately dismissed relationships of inequality or power within community dynamics (Kanji, 2009; Murji, 2006). Mathews (2000, 2007) makes specific links between Ismailis’

East African identities, religion, and their prior experiences as middle minorities in East Africa. She argues that because these Ismailis have been exposed to various languages, cultural, political and economic systems, they have been adept at finding belonging in Canada. Even though her participants acknowledge some integration issues that arise from having other ethnicities present in the Ismaili community, ultimately these are seen as growing pains that are healed through the

Ismaili diversity policy. Not taking into account race or ethnicity, others have focused on how

Muslims of various sectarian orientations including Ismailis, relate to one another in situations of solidarity to educate Canadians on Islam and Muslims since 9/11 (Hamdon, 2010).

Within the Ismaili community, the notion of difference has largely been unexplored, however a few studies such as those of Dossa (1994) and Mohamed (2002) make critical contributions to how the gendered experiences of East African Ismaili women and the elderly are constructed through discrimination and inequity, at times related back to broader challenges faced by these groups in Canadian society. Difference, as Bannerji (2000) reminds us, is central to the multicultural mechanisms of constituting non-white bodies in the Canadian nation state. She argues:

By our sheer presence we provide a central part of the distinct pluralist unity of Canadian

nationhood; on the other hand the centrality is dependent on our difference, which denotes

the power of definition that “Canadians have over others. (2000, p. 96)

Mohanty (2006) states that difference therefore, is an effect of social relations and power which:

Means that we understand, race, class, gender, nation, sexuality and colonialism not just in

terms of static, embodied categories, but in terms of histories and experiences that tie us

together – that are fundamentally interwoven into our lives. So, “race” or “Asianess” or

“browness” is involved in my relation to white peoples as well as people of color. (p. 191)

Ismaili mobilization of multiculturalism in the ways we have explored so far, and the lack of focus on difference, has obscured yet another important aspect of Ismaili social relationships and experiences that are integral to understanding Ismailis in the politics of difference. There is an absence of thinking through how ethnicized Ismailis are located in the larger neoliberal, terror, war, and surveillance contexts in Canada. Focusing on the experiences of Afghan, Pakistani and Indian

Ismailis in this ethnography, I situate them within the broader politics and geographic imaginaries of

Afghans, Pakistanis and Indians, that animate in the Canadian nation, unsettling the notion of the

“collective Ismaili” experience.

Afghans and Canada Afghanada was first launched in November 2006 by the CBC as a radio drama. The story line attempts to provide a real life listening of the lives of mainly four Canadian white soldiers, whose humanity and courage are constantly brought up against the roughness of Afghanistan and

Afghans. As the creators of the show stated, they wanted to portray the Canadian combat mission and a “grunt side view of soldiers on the ground.” (“In the beginning,” n.d.). The point therefore of the show was to tell the stories of soldiers on the stage of Afghanada, the true Afghanistan. The war trodden life in this hybrid non/fictitious narrative intrigues Canadians nationally, and provides a portrait of Afghanistan and Afghans.

According to the Canadian government, Canada and Afghanistan first came into formal relationship in 1968, where Canada provided monies for humanitarian aid. It wasn’t until the events

44 of September 11, 2001, that precipitated Canada to enter Afghanistan as a foreign military force.

They joined mission “Enduring Freedom” led by the US and British, to “root out terrorism in

Afghanistan.” In 2014, Canada has stated it will exist in Afghanistan in this capacity (“Canada’s engagement in Afghanistan,” n.d.). The purpose of Canada’s involvement, all point to self-interest with three resounding reasons often noted; security of Canadians, “betterment” of Afghan peoples living conditions and human rights advocacy, and finally, to be an ally in international efforts to security (Boucher, 2009, p. 713).

In the Canadian national imaginary, Afghanistan is a “war zone,” and therefore the relationship of Canadians to Afghanistan and Afghans is one based on emancipation, moral fortitude and self-preservation. Looking at the representation of Afghan women in the globe and mail from

2000-2007, Jiwani (2009) argues:

To demonstrate constructions of Afghan women as quintessential innocent victims

requiring rescue, wherein such a rescue mission produces and reproduces the chivalric

code of masculinity that is the inverse of the hard power of the security state. Thus,

conquest and containment (through profiling and security certificates) are legitimized

through the soft power of intervention through rescue and aid leavened by civilizational

discourses. (p. 729)

The perspective of Afghans themselves about the mission in Afghanistan is mixed with some believing they have gone to “help” Afghans, and others feeling like NATO has done more damage than good, and even those that see themselves outside of even these perspectives.5 “Knowing”

Afghanistan is through an imagined geography of a distraught and destructive people caught in

5 See http://www4.carleton.ca/jmc/cnews/20102006/n2.shtml for stories of other Canadian Afghan perspectives on the mission in Afghanistan.

45 ethnic, political and violent conflict. The imagined geography of a ‘far away Afghanistan” is brought home through “our war” and at the same time, the “Canadian” born Egyptian male figures, such as Omar Khadr, plays prominently into imagining the “Afghan” amongst us. His detention in

Guantanamo Bay over the last decade and recent resisted transfer to Canada by the Canadian government sparked a national debate about whether Canada wanted him. When the transfer happened, the Canadian government, calling him a “known terrorist” reminded Canadians of the danger and threat he and his family pose to Canada.

Further, the Afghan woman as Jiwani (2009) shows carries this Afghanistan with her through apparent cultural and religious practices such as honour killings. For Afghan Ismailis living in Canada then, although they believe they are to some extent distanced from “such Afghans,” they still identify as Afghan and with Afghanistan as home, even if many of them have no intention of returning and therefore are affected symbolically and materially in Canada’s injections into

Afghanistan, locatable on Afghan bodies here.

Coming to Canada and settling has been difficult, as many of the participants in this study note, and yet their difficulty to some extent has been tempered by institutional support from the

Ismaili community, to the extent that they entered Canada to an organized and established community with certain resources. Many Afghan Ismailis moved to Pakistan, Russia and India, then made their way to Canada. The first Afghan Ismailis arrived in Canada in the late 1970s, although most in the 1990s. In an article on Ismaili.org, the website writers describe how Ismailis entered

Canada under agreements made between the Canadian and Quebec government:

Driven by an ethic of care and responsibility towards the disenfranchised, the Ismaili

Council for Canada initiated its first protocol agreement with the Quebec government in

September 1992. Under this agreement, the Council sponsored 350 Afghan refugees to

come to Quebec over a one year period. Based on the success of this initial agreement, the

Quebec government and the Ismaili Council signed five additional protocol agreements

between April 1994 and August 2001. Over 1600 Afghan refugees settled in Quebec under

these agreements, and the community has since grown to 5000 through family-sponsored

migration and new births. (“Gala strengthens partnership,” n.d.)

The article goes on to say that at a Gala held by the Ismaili council with the Quebec government:

President Mohammed Manji of the Ismaili Council for Canada thanked the Premier for the

province’s generosity. “Premier Charest, today, on behalf of the Ismaili Community,

particularly the 5000 Ismailis of Afghan origin who have made Quebec their home, I want

to express our most sincere gratitude to the government and people of Quebec for opening

your hearts and home to us,” he said. “Your generosity, your hospitality, your compassion

and your warm welcome that allowed Ismailis to become part of the culturally rich Quebec

family will be remembered for generations to come. (“Gala strengthens partnership,” n.d.)

The Quebec context and that of Ontario are quite different, but from conversations with those working with Afghan Ismailis in Quebec, they are a struggling population, disconnected, marginalized, and very much underprivileged economically. In my own experience of working with

Ismaili Afghan women in Ontario, the embodied injuries of war and post-war traumas changed social, economic, and cultural dynamics unsettling their experience for themselves individually and for their families in Canada in general, and within the Ismaili community. In the ethnographic work of Parin Dossa (2008), one of her participants relates her struggle in Afghanistan to her on going struggle in Canada:

Sixty-three-year old Roshan, for example, stated that she was unhappy that her son and her

widowed daughter, Meena, had not found work in Canada. She recognized that the family

had not been in Canada for more than two years. Her concern was that the job prospects for

her children were dim because her children did not have much opportunity to learn English

(2.5 hours of English as a second language every day) and were not registered in a

vocational program. Her first words to us were these: “Will they give a job to my son?”

“Will they give a job to my daughter? (p. 14)

Although there is no publically available data on Ismaili Afghans, drawing on a study conducted by Moghissi et al. (2009), Afghans generally have legal status in Canada, although there are many who do not. Afghans tend to have a very low level of education with Afghan females being less educated than males. In terms of employment, Afghans tend to have the lowest rates of participation in the labour market, and some of the lowest employment incomes compared to other

Muslim communities such as Pakistanis, Palestinians and Iranians.

Ismailis in Afghanistan are comprised of ethnic tribal clan groups. Among the many groups,

Badakhshan Afghan Ismailis are large in numbers and are geographically secluded from the rest of

Afghanistan by inhabiting the “extreme north east” (Vogelsang, 2008, p. 30). These Ismailis are considered to be Tajiks. In the north east of Central Afghanistan, the Ismailis here are known as the

Hazaras. There are also other group classifications. Ismailis in Canada represent this diversity.

Pakistanis and Canada One of the most prominent Pakistanis of late is Tarek Fatah, the leading voice of the Muslim

Canadian Congress, a secular organization that is an outspoken ally to rooting out terrorism and

Islamists within Canada. He has also been as outspoken about Pakistan and the roots of its evils, such as terrorism, government corruption, violence against its own people, sectarian tensions, etc.

Fatah and many of his colleagues at the Muslim Canadian Congress are contentious Pakistani figures because of their unfettered celebration of Canada and being Canadian, and quick constructions of Muslims as Islamists if they challenge the Canadian state, want religious accommodations, or do not reiterate a simple analysis of Muslim issues. Most recently, Senator

Salma Ataullahjan, a Pashtun Pakistani, also made headlines when she visited Malala Yousufzai, the young Pakistani girl attacked in Pakistan for advocating for girl rights to education. The Senator says on her website:

I thank you all for the overwhelming support that I have received from individuals and

communities across the Great White North. You have spurred my ongoing dedication to

human rights, women's issues, youth and the inclusion of ethnic minorities in our national

fabric. (Ataullahjan, n.d.)

Most Pakistanis living in Canada find themselves contending with not being the loyal

Pakistani. The Aqsa Pervez case became a prominent story in bringing an “understanding” of the life of Pakistani Muslims in Canada to everyday Canadians. As the National Post, citing a study conducted by Chesler and Bloom (2012), state:

More than any other single crime, the murder of Aqsa Parvez by her Pakistani-Canadian

Muslim family woke Canadians up to the phenomenon of honour killings… particularly

dominant in Western-resident Pakistani-origin immigrant communities, where the

“immoral character” motive accounted for 65% of honour killings in the authors’ studied

sample (with 97% of the murders being committed by the woman’s family, and 59% of the

victims being tortured before death). On this point, they speculate: “This may be because

there are so many more opportunities for ‘immoral’ assimilation/independence in the West,

and young Pakistani women living there may be pushing boundaries more forcefully. In

that regard, Aqsa Parvez is a tragically representative example. (Kay, 2012)

The Parvez case, as many have argued, conflated honour killings without understanding how her case could be understood under the rubric of violence against women, where patriarchy and misogyny cannot be exported to other geographies and Othered cultures. The place of Pakistani

Muslims in the Canadian imaginary ferries between those who represent the grateful and secular

Muslim, to those who embody the worst kind of “traditionalism.” In this way, the place of Canada to that of Pakistan and Pakistanis both here in Canada and in Pakistan shores up rescue moralities, deepening the notion of Pakistan as only a troubled Muslim country.

In the official speak of the Canadian government Pakistan is an “ally” to Canada against the war on terror. The relationship is also one of economic dependence and military and political vulnerability. The government of Canada describes the relationship this way:

Canada pursues a broad range of interests in the context of bilateral relations with Pakistan,

including: development cooperation; people-to-people links; regional security and defence;

governance and human rights; trade and investment. Pakistan remains an important ally for

Canada in the global fight against terrorism. Canada and Pakistan continue to work

together to enhance mutual regional security interests. Canada believes that democracy is

integral to a peaceful and prosperous future for Pakistan and to this end, supports programs

that help strengthen democratic institutions. (Canada-Pakistan relations, 2011)

Pakistan is also considered ripe for Canadian business and economic interests, whilst also having large numbers of Pakistanis immigrating to Canada who are welcomed by the Canadian government, according to their script on Pakistan (Canada-Pakistan relations, 2011). Through the participant experiences in this study and reports on Pakistanis, emigrating from Pakistan has become far more difficult since September 11. Sponsoring spouses and family members is either thought of as impossible or many years of waiting is expected (Haider, 2012).

In the Moghissi et al. (2009) study, more than half of Pakistanis (57%) had Canadian citizenship, with others were still under refugee claims, and a small number living with illegal status. Pakistanis, like other Muslims, tend to be highly educated but of their other Muslim counterparts, have the lowest education level. Pakistani women tend to be more educated than

Pakistani men. Over 50% of Pakistanis participate in the labour market, with an over 60%

50 employment rate. However, Pakistani women tend to have lower employment rates than Pakistani men. According to the Canadian census, Pakistani born immigrants are the second immigrant group most vulnerable to poverty, even though many of those living under the poverty line are doctors and engineers. Given that Pakistanis who came in the 1960s and 70s were primarily those of the

“educated” class, there is also a contingent of Pakistanis considered “well integrated” into Canada

(Khan, 2002, pp. 27-28). Ismaili Pakistanis tend to be represented as middle to upper class, and highly educated, although again there are no official statistics. The first Ismaili to come to Canada from Pakistan arrived in 1952, as I mentioned above. He arrived as a student and then ended up staying in Canada. Since then, Ismaili Pakistanis have arrived under the immigration point system and under sponsorship from family members, most after 1975.

South Asian Indians (Muslims) and Canada Russel Peters has become a prominent Indian figure in the Canadian national imaginary.

Whether he is speaking about his father’s escapades in becoming Canadian, or all the self deprecating Indian follies, Peters paints the picture of the fun Indian immigrant to be laughed at and laughed with, and the one who has to scheme for acceptance. Real experiences of racism, exclusion and demonization, are notable in various high profile cases such as the Reena Virk case or the Sikh terrorism case, and often considered the “bad lights” of South Asian Indians in the mainstream imaginary.

The Reena Virk case in 1997 was splashed all over the media telling a story of “girl on girl violence.” As Yasmin Jiwani (1999) argued, the Reena Virk case highlighted how “race, sexism, pressures of assimilation” and “her construction as an outcast were rarely addressed” in determining why she was killed by a group of young white girls (p. 180). The “Sikh terrorism” case in Canada, following the bombing of Air India flight 182, was where Sikh Canadians had to contend with who

51 is really a Sikh Canadian. In fact, most recently on Prime Minister Harper’s visit to India, Prime

Minister Manmohan Singh urged Canada to be vigilant against anti-India sentiment in Canada through weeding out Sikh terrorism. The goals of security and a peaceful world reiterated the intolerance both countries have for such movements (India warns Harper

About Sikh extremism in Canada, CP24, 2012).

In contrast to India, its neighbours Afghanistan and Pakistan is where Canada is involved in military incursions, and Islam is under surveillance. In this way, Canada and India are more like partners in an increasing economic relationship of hopeful “mutual benefit.” The Canadian government states this about the relationship:

Canada and India have longstanding bilateral relations, built upon shared traditions of

democracy, pluralism and strong interpersonal connections with an Indian diaspora of

more than one million in Canada. This expanding bilateral relationship is supported by a

wide range of agreements and by PM Singh and PM Harper’s commitment to increase

annual bilateral trade to $15 billion by 2015. Canada’s priorities in India include

infrastructure, energy, food, education, science and technology. India is an important

source country for immigration to Canada. (“Canada-India relations,” 2013)

In addition, as far as security goes, Canada and India are presented as invested in world peace together towards other countries such as Afghanistan:

Canada and India are also strong partners in addressing a variety of regional and

international challenges. Our two countries regularly engage in dialogue to discuss our

shared commitment to global peace and security. This past summer in Tokyo, Canada and

India joined more than 60 other countries and 25 international organizations in pledging

support to help Afghanistan become a more stable, more secure, and democratic country.

As Commonwealth countries, we work together to promote democracy and respect for

human rights and the rule of law, and we regularly cooperate through the UN…(“Canada

India Relations,” 2013)

South Asian Indians make up the second largest non-European ethnic group in Toronto, and one of the largest ethnic groups in Canada. “East Indians” as statistics Canada calls them, are mostly Hindu and Sikh, suggesting that there are smaller numbers of Muslim Indians in Canada.

Indians in general, however, tend to be highly educated, and many of who are said to have postgraduate degrees surpassing national averages of other groups. Indian men and women tend to overall be in the employment sector more than the national average. (East Indian community in

Canada, Statistics Canada, n.d.). There seems to be less information about Indian Muslims specifically, and there is no official data on Ismaili Indians in Canada. Anecdotally, Ismailis from

India living in Toronto tend to be smaller in numbers then other ethnic groups. Indian Muslims, however, as Muslims, are also under scrutiny and face challenges of racism and Islamophobia. One of the issues for some Canadian Indian Muslims has been raising the profile of Indian Muslims as a community and group, and putting in supports for them. Further, creating alliances with other

Indian communities such as the Sikh communities in Toronto has also been part of the work they are doing (Khan, nd.). Unfortunately, religious and ethnic politics from India have also made their way into Canada, such as right wing Hindu groups mobilizing against Muslim communities, creating rifts in the possibility of a shared Indian identity. The Canadian Hindu Advocacy group, for example, protested against prayer accommodations of students in a middle school in Toronto just in the past few years (Godfrey, 2011).

The very constitution of Ismailis in Canada is relational to other racialized and Indigenous

Peoples. This very difference plays out not only within the Ismaili community, but also in their encounters with other Muslims and non-Muslims. Sara Ahmed (2000) argues that the relational projects through which some bodies are marked in difference, can not be understood through a

53 generalizable Other to dominant groups. Rather, to make sense of how bodies come to have relevance and meaning in multicultural colonial and imperialist nations, we must attend to processes that demarcate between those who are already constructed as Others, to those who become Other

Others. These processes are affective, social and economic. This approach to making sense of social relationships is central to this study as I examine the paradoxes of Ismailis and their ethnicized difference to the various encounters in Canada. Therefore, discourses of belonging, integration, diversity, or pluralism cannot on their own map out the workings of particular Muslim collectivities and bodies who are in an assemblage of relationships. These relationships emerge through the layers of systemic, bodily, discursive and spatial dynamics in the geographies of colonial multicultural

Canada.

Summary The Ismaili community has been in Canada in recognizable numbers since the 1970s. The large contingent of Ismailis from East Africa have been integral in setting up the community and its institutions. In this sense, their presence within the community is pronounced. Much of the research on Ismailis in Canada, although quite small, has examined their experiences, at times including the experiences of other ethnicized Ismailis from their vantage point. Even though there has been some acknowledgement that Pakistani and Indian Ismailis might have a different experience in the community context, they are often brought under the umbrella of the South Asian experience (Gova,

2005; Kanji, 2009; Karim, 2011; Murji, 2006). Therefore, the absence of their perspective and what their experiences look like, feel like, and mean within the community and in Canada, can reveal more of an understanding of how social relationships are constructed. This is also true of Afghan

Ismailis, but their experiences are further hidden and unspoken given their more apparent differences as non-South Asians. Their experiences have also been told through the vantage point of

“Khojas,” and in particular East African Ismailis, without consideration of their realities from their own perspective. This is also true of what their experience of settling in Canada has been. In this way, these Ismailis complicate the narrative about Ismailis from within, but also from without.6 It’s not that Ismailis are not aware that there are issues of discrimination in the community, or that diversity does not exactly automatically equal “unity.” Rather, there has not been a way to understand what the social relationships look like and what happens in the process of Ismailis meetings each other, other Muslims, non-Muslims and the Canadian State.

Given the growing mainstream high level appearance of Ismailis and the Aga Khan in the public sphere in Canada, there has not been an examination of what this means, taking into consideration the many nuances and contradictions of how this can be understood and looked at.

This will become an imperative area of study as the relationship between the Canadian gendered colonial race state, the Aga Khan and the Ismailis, continues to grow even deeper and wider. I did not want to take for granted that I knew what these relationships mean, despite some of the official speak in the community and outside of it. I did not want to make easy sense of what was happening and why. I wanted to understand the work of these encounters in this present moment.

Finally, I feel this study is particularly relevant and significant in light of the Ismaili official discourse of pluralism and unity across diverse cultures and traditions in the community, and the concept of pluralism advocated for by the Aga Khan with the Canadian state. What understanding social relations does is speak back to these discourses and makes what Madison (2005) suggests is the role of the critical ethnographer as she “takes us beneath surface appearances, disrupts the status

6 As I will explain later, I used a narrative interview approach as one aspect of understanding the encounter in which stories, scenes, memories, events and their telling are significantly important in participants speaking and making sense of their experience. Razack (1999) cautions about the use of stories without understanding the relationship between the personal and political in the actual telling, and the effects of what stories do in work focused on social change.

55 quo, and unsettles both neutrality and taken-for-granted assumptions by bringing to light underlying and obscure operations of power and control” (p. 5). Doing such a study questions official and popular discourses, and unearths hidden and counter discourses.

This is also a unique exploration of Muslims in Canada as no research has been done on

Muslims’ encounters in this way. Neither have “liberal Muslims” really been examined nor their place in the sociopolitical landscape of Canada. This study makes a major and much needed contribution in expanding the way in which we can understand Muslims, their relevance and contradictory place in community and nation building in paradigms of colonial modernity.

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

It’s Saturday night and Neikbakhat and I meet up to attend a “dandia raas” event together.

Dandia raas are two forms of folk dance originally from Gujarat India, more commonly known as

“garba.” The Ismaili community, particularly those of South Asian descent, have adopted it and often dance it communally during celebrations commemorating a special religious event such as the

Persian New Year Nawruz, or the Aga Khan’s birthday. This celebratory event was held after the formal Jamat Khana prayer session. First there was a meal, followed by dandia raas.

Neikbakhat and I travel through the crowd, talking to different people. I see my cousin and he jokingly says, “You’re talking to everyone here. You’ve been going to these things forever dude.” Having lived in Toronto my whole life and being an active participant in the community, “I am surely no outsider,” I say to him. I pause thinking about what I just said. We end up being introduced by a mutual friend to a guy who has just returned from working in Afghanistan, a young

South Asian man in his late 20s. He starts speaking at us, very proudly about his work in

Afghanistan. I notice that while talking, he is not making eye contact with Neikbakhat, and mostly talking over me. After about five minutes, I jump in to get a word in edgewise and say, “Hey,

Neikbakhat is actually originally from Afghanistan.” He seems unaffected by this news. He asks her about where exactly she is from, and then continues on talking about Afghanistan as the expert, and now even more oddly continuing to ignore Neikbakhat’s presence. After he leaves I look at her and say, “Why was he not making eye contact with you? He was behaving like you weren’t even in the conversation.” She replies, “Oh, I’m used to that.”

Later we move into the dandia space where the music has begun. A circle has started to form in the centre of the floor. Everyone’s body is moving in a flow. I notice that although the dance is

57 folk, peoples’ steps have a contemporary rhythm. One step forward clap, one step back clap, turn and repeat. Neikbakhat and I join in the revolution. A few minutes in my steps begin to widen, my body sways even more loosely, and my hands in lotus mudra circle in the turn. My steps are rhythmically on beat but noticeably off from others. As I am turning again I catch a glimpse of

Neikbakhat. She is smiling, fully immersed in the music and turning the opposite way of everyone else.

Critical Ethnography and its Dystopias The ongoing debates about the qualitative research endeavour in representing and reproducing the ‘other,’ points on the one hand to the colonial, racist and sexist history of research, illuminating the dangers of academic research projects in continuing oppressive relations (Dei,

2005; Denzin et al., 2008; Mutua & Swadener, 2004; Smith, 2006). It also points to the many interventions, departures, and transformations from such history, and the ongoing challenges that anticolonial, anti-racist feminist research attends to. For example, women of color and third world feminists have challenged western feminist researchers and others for their ongoing complicity in re- orientalizing, colonizing and subordinating Muslim women, women of the south and Muslim communities – through white western feminist reason of liberation, rescue missions, essentialization, “ethnocentric universality,” homogenization, race and class blindness (Ahmad,

2000; Bannerji, 2000; Dua, 1999; hooks, 2000; Mahmood, 2005; Mohanty, 2006; Moraga and

Anzaldua, 1981). Research as the production of knowledge – to instruct and construct the narrative of particular peoples, history, and civilization – Said (1979) reminds us is embedded in the power to create an Other. In this way, ethnography as a project of narrativizing the lives of people is imbued in the problems of interpretation, translation, and representation.

Given the colonial history of anthropology and ethnography, critical ethnography challenges traditional ethnographic practices and goals. It often makes its goal to work with communities and those who experience multiple forms of marginalization, to engage in processes of understanding inequity, oppression and injustice. Critical ethnography opens up the possibility of working with communities with a perspective that understands the research process as a power imbalanced endeavour, whilst engaging possible processes to makes sense of lived experiences, while also creating opportunities for transforming social relations. The goal therefore is not to re/produce

“truth” (Foucault, 1980; Riessman, 1993) but rather present complex puzzles that are people’s lives in processes of power. Critical ethnography is very much couched in projects of social justice, transformative politics and anti-oppression across the systemic, collective and individual practices of shaping human relationships (Madison, 2005).

Doing critical ethnography raises the question of what theoretical approaches the researcher uses to conceptualize inequity, anti-oppression and social injustice. Through this project, I rely on critical race, poststructural and anticolonial feminist theories. Thus, using critical ethnography must be rooted in a critical race, anti-colonial, post structural feminist methodology. As this project examines Canada as a colonial and imperialist multicultural state, relating to the colonization of

Indigenous peoples and to the ways in which techniques of domination, management and discipline have worked against and through racialized and minoritized communities – an anticolonial methodology is necessary. Thus, following Fanon (1963), Mohanty (2006) outlines that decolonization:

Involves profound transformations of self, community, and governance structures. It can

only be engaged through active withdrawal of consent and resistance to structures of

psychic and social domination. It is a historical and collective process, and as such can

only be understood within these contexts. (pp. 7-8)

A decolonizing research approach can’t take for granted that the transformations which

Mohanty (2006) and Fanon (1963) understood, are necessary or obvious from locations of the margins, particularly to communities that exists in the intersections of marginality and privilege like the Ismailis. Rather, it is through a critical commitment to exposing what colonialism and imperialism as a current phenomenon (connected to history) means in specific contexts (the nation and communities), the way it operates transnationally and the intersections, complicities and contradictions within which Indigenous, racialized and minoritized communities are in these dynamics.

As such, a critique of the Canadian state requires that structures of imperialism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, capitalism, power, and nation, are taken into consideration in how women and men of color encounter each other in an “ongoing and situated negotiation of self- naming and being named by others that relies on visible and nonvisible markers of difference and is implicated in power relations” (Coloma, 2008, p. 20). In this way, this research argues that it is through layers of encounters that Ismailis come to embody exceptionality and also become exceptional.

With a real discomfort in the “liberatory” aspect of some critical ethnography, I believe this project does not exist nor make its aim, the binary project of addressing oppression and creating liberation. Rather, this research attunes to the complexity with which the effects of power produce a matrix of struggle, tension, collusion, complacency, belonging, exclusion, and resistance in Muslim communities like the Ismailis. Coloma (2008) argues that doing anti-imperialist work involves a

“series of interventions, tools, and perspectives for engaging the im/possibilities of response (to movements against empire) in order to make legible transformative modes of praxis” (p. 20). I believe this statement allows me to think about this research process and project as revelatory, and an ongoing work in progress that will bring forth convolutions of how Muslim racialized

60 communities, the state and others, are in relationship with one another and what work these relationships do, in the hopes that this will lead to a myriad of stories and responses, some of which will productively be paradoxical.

Inside Out, Outside In, Cycling… I am not outside of the exploration of this research but deeply imbedded in it, as so much of where I began and where this research has gone has been a labour of spirit, mind, body, and energy of years and years culminating together. I too am encountering, in the encounter, having been encountered.

I am at crossings of unsettled histories, ambivalent experiences, dis/locations, and im/possibilities. Born in 1975, I entered the world and Canada as a brown female body, around the same time Canada repositioned itself as multi-cultural. The benefit of this policy allowed my parents to enter Canada, and at the same time became a managerial mechanism of Indigenous and racialized peoples, in which my family and I are included. For my mother born in Uganda, and my father a migrant from India living in Uganda, their violent removal from Uganda, a place where they too were settlers, was tempered by knowing that there was somewhere to go, somewhere to be welcomed into – Turtle Island. The irony is perhaps most evident in my critique of that moment and the uneven subsequent effects of it. How could I be so invested in a project of intervening the place where my parents came to be settled and built home? Re-turning to India to visit family, my parents are nostalgic of the past and take in the present but always come back to Canada saying, “I am so glad to be home. I could not live anywhere but in Canada.” There is something real and tangible about how my parents feel about Canada and their place in it – living their “double consciousness”

(Du Bois, 1994) of struggling as racialized, working class Muslim people with a normative sense of

61 comfort and safety here on this colonized land.7 Perhaps it is coming through this history and parents that the ambivalence of being immigrant citizens, like a divining rod, points to/in the contradictions I am in all the time – brown, dubious Muslim-Ismaili, working to middle class, educated, heterosexual, able-bodied, woman, British subject, Canadian citizen, stranger, Other, one of “us.”

No one tells you that welcome has sharp edges that scrape, cut and bruise. The first five years of my life clarified that I could not pretend to be white. There is no pretending in my body.

Whether it was the cursing stings of the word Paki, vandalization of our homes, teachers telling me/us we don’t need higher education because we will be married off anyways, or the feeling that you could not escape being a threat as a Muslim, or that I was not Muslim enough (told to me by non-Ismaili Muslims) – my consciousness, theorization and action against racism, sexism, classism, orientalism, internal/Islamophobia – was/is a necessity. This lived experience, consciousness always seemed to be in some kind of tension with particular messages from all around me, but especially from my Ismaili Muslim community who espoused – when in Rome, be like the Romans, except also be a real South Asian girl and a good Ismaili Muslim. My early feminist fire was lit from hearing the Aga Khan speak about the centrality of educating women, of not being limited in what we could do in this society. I am indebted to my Muslim feminist roots, the critical race feminist and anticolonial teachers and activists who taught me that there is a revolution needed, its begun, and I am an integral part of it.

As an ethnographer in the position of doctoral student in a research process with a community that I was born into, have lived and participated with and have a stake in, there is

7 I use Du Bois’ term double consciousness here to emphasize the struggle of having multiple positionalities and carrying psychically their subjectivities as Muslim racialized people living in a racial state.

62 nothing that feels inside or outside. Insider-outsider refers to how a researchers’ identity and subject position can place them within or outside of community structures, conceptions of belonging, and aspects of relatedness. Kusow (2003) argues, citing Narayan (1993) and Parameswaran (2001):

That the insider/outsider dichotomy assumes the existence of a normatively and

collectively shared understanding of who is an insider and who is not based on some

generalized socio demographic, racial, and cultural attributes when, in fact, the distinction

remains contested. (p. 593)

To engage in an ethnographic process therefore for me, is to unravel an entanglement of religiously structured, gendered, classed, and raced social relationships. When Zaafra and I met to talk about her participation in the research, one of her concerns was that, “You know too much about us.” Her concerns continued, “And at the same time, you don’t do Ismaili things anymore, so how could you possibly know what’s going on in the community.” When I asked her what she meant by “not doing Ismaili things” she replied, “well, you don’t go to social events, nor do you stick around after Jamat Khana to socialize too much.” For Zaafra, I was the ‘intelligence’ Ismaili and the ‘gradated’ Ismaili. Although this encounter might be construed as an insider-outsider moment, I argue that in fact this moment represents the simultaneity of how I am in the community that is rooted in discernments and ‘baggage’ of participation, and cycles of positionality.8

Zaafra’s words reach deep within and pull out my anxieties of the last years spent contemplating and shaping this project. The anxiety culminates – I just received approval from the

Research Ethics Department at the University of Toronto to begin this ethnographic study. I decided to go to Jamat Khana that evening. Like most days, for me – Jamat Khana during prayer times – is a

8 Coloma (2008), using feminist theory on subjectivity and intersectionality, argues that insider-outsider presents the problems of understanding the “compartmental, intersectional and constitutive – that foreground the tensions between how I identified myself and how others perceived me” (pp. 11-12).

63 place of letting go and melting into the arms of the spiritual, an inner space of contemplation and stillness. That day I feel filled to the rim in an anxious panic. I can feel myself expanding like a trepidation balloon ready to pop and release tears any second. Sitting in prayer pose on the soft fluffy carpet with my eyes closed, surrounded by hundreds of my community members, I feel the energy of every single person directed at me. I am an incubator of tension. Prayers are finally over and I get up quickly, wanting to leave right away. I hear my inner voice say that maybe I can share this monumental feeling with someone here.

As I turn right, I practically bump into a respected elder and long time scholar in the community. She greets me in her normal loving tone and right away asks, “Salima, did you start your research yet?” I blurt out, “I’m anxious and scared.” She just smiles and says let me tell you a story. Many, many years ago there was a young PhD student like yourself, who had embarked on research that related to the community. In fact, he had received an Aga Khan scholarship. His thesis was looking at a particular religious expression. Through his process he discovered that something the community had believed for decades, was in fact not true. He knew that this discovery would potentially raise tensions and even discord amongst the community members. He could not ignore what he had learnt, nor could he continue his work without considering the implications of revealing this research. He was under so much pressure and stress that he finally went directly to the Imam and told him what he learnt. The Imam looked at him and said one line, ‘be true to your scholarship’. So you see Salima, be confident in what you are doing, and be true to your work and process. I practically leap into her arms giving her a hug of gratitude and feel my shoulders drop down a bit, releasing some weightiness.

The anxiety of doing this research within my community rests at once in the vulnerabilities of being the person who takes on the project of saying lets look at ourselves and think about things that reveal the uneven, complicated, difficult, yet encouraging aspects of the collectivized Ismaili

64 and the individual Ismaili. Ambivalence is something that can be even more vulnerable than an either or approach. To say that this project is either about celebration or emancipation provides a perceived stable goal. To be bodies of power, privilege and complacency, and also to be bodies of exclusion, inequity and struggle, can really unsettle and really bring us into the “contingency” as

Puar (2007) would say, of social relations and our lives as “events.” This can feel disrupting for those Ismailis who find deep comfort and hope in a privileged Ismaili identity in Canada, and which most definitely has its role in being vulnerable Muslims in many parts of the world.

The anxiety also sits in making multiple meanings out of the encounter between the Ismailis and the Canadian State. There is so much at stake in doing so, and yes – due indeed to the precarious positions of Muslims in the world today – but also because the optics of who communities are and where they belong, particularly racialized Muslims, is along the simultaneities of inclusions, exclusion, belonging and distance. To make this known is a necessary relief so as to not exist in the binaries of non-Western/Western, modern/traditional, and subjugated/free Muslims. But it also raises the question of what then is done with ambivalence, and by whom? And it’s not because the ambivalence is not already in existence, but now exposing it disrupts neat packages of perception, identity, and place in multicultural Canada9. It means taking responsibility as Ismailis that speak to our multiple subjectivities, and how that can play out through the state and in relation to other racialized and Muslim bodies.

9 Cherrie Moraga (1981) in her piece “La Guera” talks about the benefits of wanting to forget one’s position as a racialized woman in order to live economic privileges, and the affects it raises to forget to mask our interlocking positions and experiences in the world. As Razack (1998) argues, the historic specificity of our experiences and complicity in and power of hegemonic systems, allows us to trace our “privilege and penalty” – both of which are at work in interlocking system of oppression. Her arguments speak as a responsibility we have in understanding this, in order to attend to the complicated aspects of changing systemic and individual forms of inequity.

Being able to do research from within the Ismaili community is in and of itself, a privileged position – because of being able to actually pursue this very project, particularly as a community that guards itself through institutional and other forms of filters. The responsibility therefore, is even greater. As critical ethnographer Madison (2005) says, “Positionality is vital because it forces us to acknowledge our own power, privilege…” (p. 7). Privilege for me is a priori to the research process. For some members of the community I am not just read as a co-adherent, but rather recognized through my past work with youth and women in the community, as someone who has had a “leadership” role in some capacity. I was on the roster of speakers who would go to Jamat

Khanas across Canada. I would do lectures and workshops on topics such as Islamophobia, antiracism and Muslim women, Islam and gender, spirituality and art, and media representations; cementing for some the “kinds of topics I am into.”

Many of the participants who had either never met me or knew little about me, assumed that

I was East African. Khan and I were talking about Indian Ismailis in Canada, and he like many other participants said that they did not know very many of them. Khan asked, “Are there really

Indian Ismailis here in Toronto?” I raised my hand to say, “You’re looking at one.” He responded,

“Yeah but your family is really East African right?” I asked him why he assumed that? “Well, you just seem like it.” This was a running theme for the other participants to the extent that Garima wholly dismissed that one side of my family was in fact directly from India, because my mother and her siblings were born and raised in Uganda. I realized that assumptions about being East African were in reference to my apparent class privilege, as a PhD student. As Gulam told me, “Well I thought that because you people are very educated.” This class privilege and status of being educated, for some participants, conferred a status and authority on me. Sometimes in our conversations, during interviews or informally, they would defer to me about certain things and say,

“You’re the ‘scholar,’ you should know.” I attribute this in part to my power as researcher, but also to a culture within the community where Ismaili scholars are given some level of authority “to know,” even if people actually disagree with such a perspective.10 This kind of privilege does give a sense of “legitimacy,” but as Binaya Subedi (2009) shares from his experience of being a “halfie researcher,” that “status” is unstable (p. 316).11 This is where the power dynamics between the participants and myself, require further demystification.

The religiously sanctioned liberal politics of gender equality within the Ismaili community context in Canada, give women to some extent voice, space and positions in the community. These policies consider women equal players in community dynamics and religious affairs. This also develops a culture where women’s roles in the community are said to be valued. At the same time the liberal approach to what feminists have called the “add and stir method,” has often left the more complicated and sometimes obvious dynamics of gender, invisible and unspoken.

My place as a woman researcher, who is also known for working on women’s issues, allowed some of the women to feel that they could reveal more and speak more about their particularly gendered experience, especially because this is not a topic that many women feel they have a space to talk about. At the same time, this meant that sometimes I needed to make myself vulnerable and share my own experiences as a woman, so that privileges read on my body did not block the possibility of us finding experiences within our intersectional subjectivities. For instance,

10 However, in one instance, I was told by another prominent woman in the community that I should turn to senior male scholars to see if my research makes sense. There was something particularly gendered about her comment and I wondered if she would have said that if I were a male junior scholar.

11 For Subedi (2009), his halfie status was based on doing research in Nepal, his “home” country, but having lived in countries other than Nepal. The “in-between” status presents deeper issues of accountability to the research. This notion of in-betweeness is useful in so far as it points out how – to be an academic or scholar is about being spatially located as a community member, but also somewhere else that is a space of authority that is outside the community space. Therefore, how you are seen to be accountable shifts, and your sense of accountability as researcher is compounded.

Garima told me that I probably wouldn’t know much about economic struggles having been born in

Canada, when I shared with her my parents’ working class background and my own economic status as a student. As Michelle Foster (1994) reflects, the position of “insider” researcher is “constantly tested and renegotiated” and differences between the researcher and participants in “gender, generation and geography produce varying degrees of solidarity” (p. 144).

The engagement with the male participants had its own dynamics. Due to the liberal gender politics in the community, and the religiously understood equality between genders, men and women do have relative access to each other, although specific cultural norms shift what this looks like. In the case of me approaching Afghan men, I was hyper-conscious of the in/appropriateness of my interactions with them, particularly if they did not know me through a woman in their life. I noticed for instance that my interaction with Sameer was made easier as we spoke through his capacity as a leader. Whereas with Gulam for instance, if I saw him while in Jamat Khana, I would notice that our interactions and conversations were short; I could see his boundaries were very clear.

The vulnerability of being a female researcher also became clear to me with some of the male participants.12 In a conversation with one of my participants, he made the distinction between

Khoja women and Afghan women stating, “Khoja women are more forward.” Realizing what he said, he quickly interjected himself, “but not you of course.” I felt the unease of his comments and the unease of the gaze I felt myself under. At another time, a male participant making a comment about togetherness as a community grabbed my hand to make the point but something in me knew that it was 10 seconds too long. I quickly pulled my hand away and found myself reiterating

12 Sharing these experiences is of particular concern to me, especially as a Muslim woman researcher with Muslim men and the potential it has to reiterate orientalist conceptions of male dominance. This speaks back to the concern other women have had in sharing experience of gendered violence or inequity in their communities, from the consciousness of how this gets read. See, hooks, 1994; Khan, 2002; Mirza, 2012.

68 boundaries in my body language. These experiences were a reminder of the gendered nature of research, and how I as a woman had to navigate and work against male power and its many subtle and sometimes explicit manifestations.

What these experiences trouble is the notion of the researcher in a fixed power position. The uneven material manifestations of gendered social relationships, layered through cultural and social codes, and conceptions of liberal equality in the encounters of Ismaili religious bodies speaks to the on-going centrality of gendered modes of ascribing meaning to bodies. Further, the bodies of women researchers are always in the possibilities of being sexually interpreted with male participants maintaining women in positions of vulnerability.

Revealing these experiences is part of a reflexive approach to ethnography. Dei (2005) suggests that antiracist research is, “an opportunity for the researcher to critically engage his or her own experience as part of the knowledge search” (p. 2). This has been imperative for me as I consider my shifting, simultaneous and constitutive locations, and relevance to this research project.

Participant Invitations In the absence of hearing and understanding the experiences of these collectivities within the community and in relations to others and Canada, I invited those Ismailis that identified as Pakistani,

Indian and Afghan to participate in the study. Interestingly, I received many more inquiries from

East African Ismailis, either just to say that this was an interesting study, or to ask if they could be included, even though they did not identify as Indian, Afghan or Pakistani. Of course, there was also a couple of complications in wording it in this way as some East Africans, although not having any familial connections to India for some generations, still consider themselves as Indian. Second, some participants saw themselves as hybrids with parents from both Pakistan and India. I had to make a decision about how to account for these multiplicities in identification by potential

69 participants in my selection criteria. I decided to only include those that identified directly with

India, as Indian Ismailis, and to engage with the cross background of Pakistani and Indians. For instance, although Rehan’s mother has lived in East Africa she was born and raised in India and identifies with India in terms of her family history and background. Rehan too makes these identifications. As well, the criteria was that participants lived in Canada for more than one year and are able to speak to their encounter with some breadth of time. I realized the importance of this after a few conversations with potential participants who had lived in Canada for only about a year, and both said that they were still discovering their relationships in the community and in Canada, and felt they could not speak with any depth. I also limited the study to those that had a working knowledge of the English language, although I am relatively fluent in understanding Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu, and have no language skills in Farsi. Further, I wanted to engage with Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis who live in the GTA and account for their experience in a city like Toronto where dynamics between racialized communities can be unique to its setting. In this way, Toronto as a “global city” to borrow from Sassen (2005), often brings together particular transnational and global processes such as capital, culture and migration, enriching what is possibly analyzed in relation to peoples social relationships. Given also that the largest communities of Ismailis live in

Toronto, I felt this might also provide a greater range of experience, background and voice.

I also was committed in having a balanced number of men and women and to also encourage those who are differently abled, Queer, and converts to participate in the study, interrupting heterosexist, abled and “original” Ismaili narratives. One way I tried to do this is by getting in touch with the Ismaili Queers group to whom I sent my invitation letter. I also spoke with some of their members about the project who were really interested in participating, and wanted to talk about how it would be a ‘safe space’ for their experiences. Disrupting “normative” stories about Ismailis, and bringing in perspectives of those often unheard or unconsidered in the dominant mainstream, is a

70 major focus of this research. This was also a way to expand the community self-narrative and constructions of Muslim communities through the Colonial Canadian state.

I recruited participants using a range of strategies, each of which had its own limitation and challenges. I firstly let family, friends and those in my social network within the community know about the research. I quickly found out that many of the people I knew did not identify as Indian,

Pakistani or Afghan. And those I did know who did, were already interested in the study. Family and friends however became centrally important in introducing me to people. Often this would happen in Jamat Khana or over email.13 Having friends, family and some participants as connectors does not guarantee access or secure participants. As Kusow (2003) shares from his experience as a

Somali researcher researching Somali youth in Toronto:

Problems of access and rapport are not resolved even if respondents make the referrals—

the classic snowball method of sampling. Such referrals can become more problematic in

13 Often times with critical ethnographic approaches,.or “ethnography from the margins,” or community based research, it is more common for researchers to explore sites and let the research focus and participants emerge through the process of interacting in the field (Abu-Lughod, 2011; Ristock & Penell 1996; Madison, 2005). In many respects I had been in the “field” for much of my life and therefore identifying a research project and participants came out of my observations, experiences and queries over the years of being in the Ismaili community in Canada. In this way I came into the project with what some might call, “a bias.” However I spent a year before actually beginning the research to have informal conversations with friends and acquaintances about the potential focus of this research and to get a sense of what kinds of things were on the minds of other community members. Further given the very explicit messaging of the community about diversity and pluralism and relationships of unity and sisterhood/brotherhood in the community, the impetus for this research project comes out of existing discourses, experiences and practices of ‘integration’ and ‘inclusion’ in the community. Finally, having been involved in equity, ‘diversity’ and social justice based work for large parts of my life the focus of this project is also in conversation with these experiences. I was very interested in how other Ismailis make sense of their experiences and social relationships as a way to complicate my own narratives, experiences and perspectives about the community and how communities such as the Ismailis are in relationships with state structures. Developing open ended questions for the research project and being in a reflexive relationship with what I was hearing from the participants to my own experiences was a strategy for me to remind myself of the larger objectives of this project, which is to present a matrix of lived worlds, life stories, social relationships and political effects. This often meant journaling and explicitly checking in with myself about how I was processing the encounters I was in with the participants and in my observations.

certain situations. Some respondents may not turn you down altogether because someone

they trust referred you to them and thus they do not wish to disappoint that person. (p. 596)

He goes on to share how he met one person through a friend and that participant ended up sabotaging the interview by only giving one word answers. I had a similar incident with a male participant at an interview. He was introduced to me by a colleague, showing a lot of interest by calling me on many occasions to talk about the research subject. I learnt over time however, that his agenda was not to participate in the research study but instead, during our interview would give general statements, refuse to answer questions and change the subject.

I also used a non-official Ismaili list serve (Appendix 1 email invitation), which yielded 5-6 inquiries, although ultimately no one became a participant. For some, the timeline did not work, and others never gave me a sense of why they ultimately decided not to participate in the study. I also received a call from one man, who left me a very urgent sounding call. In our conversation over the phone, he said that he felt compelled to call me and let me know that he was really excited about the project – but that I should remember that East African Ismailis are also diverse, even if I am not interviewing them. He said he understood that it was important to hear the experiences of these marginal Ismailis who are really a “different breed.” Taken aback by his comments I felt all the more reason to do what I was doing.

Some of my mother’s friends also became allies in helping me meet Pakistani and Indian

Ismailis, many of whom were quite interested but were hesitant to participate. Some older women were worried they would not be able to articulate themselves in English, while others had concerns over what family members and husbands would think. Friends made a special effort to help me meet

Ismailis from the various Jamat Khanas in Toronto. There are about 25 Jamat Khanas and many of these are diverse and at times particular ethnicized Ismailis will go more to one Jamat Khana over others; this may also be determined by settlement patterns and socio-economic issues. For example,

72 the Don Mills and Eglinton area in Toronto is known to be a place where many newcomer Ismailis first come to. It is also one of the poorest areas in Toronto and where there tends to be a large number of Ismailis from India and Pakistan. I was therefore conscious of bringing in Ismailis from a wide spectrum of socio-economic backgrounds as well. As Kirby and McKenna (1989) argue, when doing “research from the margins,” making as transparent as possible the research focus and agenda is paramount, particularly because the recruitment process itself is revelatory in terms of how people respond to or read what you are doing. I did experience the resistances, rejections and interests as telling me something about the tugs of this research project. For instance, often in groups when talking about this research, just stating that I wanted to learn about the experiences of

Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis spurred spontaneous conversations about community dynamics. Social relationships in the community were on the minds of many even if they didn’t have many spaces to talk about it or explore it. While at a friend’s birthday party one day, a woman who had received the invitation to participate through the list serve (mentioned above) said she was intrigued and excited about the research. She ruminated about never having considered the experiences of other Ismailis, or the need to study the communities’ relationship to Canada. She said the email provoked a dialogue in her about why she hadn’t thought about this. Just stating a research focus and agenda can be provocative in community spaces, and open up self and collective dialogue, which says that the effects of such research permeates and penetrates community spaces right from uttering what it aims to do.

Trust, rapport of honesty, and integrity through being transparent about my investments and the goals of this research project was integral, so that participants felt they were really being heard and part of something that is meaningful to them (Fonow & Cook, 1991; Kirby & McKenna, 1989;

Madison, 2005) before, during and after the research process. As Neikbakhat and Zaafra reminded me when they agreed to be in the research, and at the ends of our interview and observation

73 processes together – “we are trusting you” – or as Adam, Khan and Rabia said to me – “we trust you to make decisions about what data to use.” When they used the word trust, all those that participated were asking me to hold what they said, with integrity, and to allow their voices to be used in a way that “grows us as a community,” as Adam said. In addition however, the trust was about vulnerability and letting me into their very personal, intimate, and often protected lived experiences and understanding of their lives. Many of the Afghan participants in particular, spoke about not having shared with such openness about their experiences with anyone outside of other

Afghan Ismailis. This is why for many the experience was cathartic. I feel deeply honoured and a great responsibility in carrying these realities with me, and in this work.

In the invitation letter and letter of consent (Appendix 2, 2b), I outlined the kind of participation the study would entail as a way to make sure people were comfortable with the varied aspects of it. I said we would engage in two one-on-one interviews, and also engage in “participant observation.” I made it clear that going to observe events together in the community was an option.

This was a question that came up a lot with the potential participants, as some of them worried about their anonymity, and others were extremely uncomfortable in engaging in active observation of social spaces and events in the Ismaili community contexts.

In total, 18 participants entered the study; out of which, 8 were men and 10 were women. I had 4 Afghan women participants, 4 Pakistani women participants, 2 Indian women participants, 3

Afghan male participants, 3 Pakistani male participants and 2 Indian male participants. I decided not to include 2 interviews in the thesis. In one case it was because the male interviewee did not want to continue participation. In the other case it was because the female interviewee had only been in Canada for a year and her responses were far too general.

Narrative Interviews The beauty of this method of interviewing is in the complex realms of individual

subjectivity, memory, yearnings, polemics and hope that are unveiled and inseparable from

shared and inherited expressions of communal strivings, social history, and political

possibility”. (Madison, 2005, p. 26)

I used narrative interviews for the interview approach (Gee, 2011; Mishler, 1995; Riessman,

1993). There is much debate about what a narrative approach to research entails, and what narrative is referring to. For instance, Lieblich et al. (1998) argue that narratives are stories, which are based on “core of facts or life events” (p. 8), whereas Labov (1997) states that narratives reveal personal experiences most central to the tellers. I take the approach following Mishler (1999) and Riessman

(1993) that, “narratives as socially situated actions” (Mishler, 1999, p. 19). In other words, narratives are embodied, interpretive, constructed in relation to life conditions and events related to larger social, cultural, economic and political contexts.

I conducted two, 1-1.5 hour interviews. In the second round of interviews only 15 participants participated because some people could not make the time for another. Given that narrative analysis was my research method, it was particularly useful for my interest in encounters – what happens between bodies and texts. Through the interviews and exploring the participants’ encounters I was able to explore how they, “impose order on the flow of experience to makes sense of events and actions in their lives” (Riessman, 1993, p. 2). Narrative analysis allowed me to examine how they told the personal stories of their lives in relation to others, and how they made sense of their experience “mesh(ed) with a community life of stories, deep structures…” (pp. 2-4).

This is particularly poignant given the objective of this research project was to examine relations between the individual participants’ experiences within that of the larger Ismaili community, and ultimately to that of the Canadian State.

Narrative analysis also makes explicit its focus on subjectivity and social life, and therefore

“practices of power.” As a researcher using this method, I can take on how participants speak from and about these locations through “culturally and historically contingent terms” and material realities (Riessman, 1993, p. 5). This is another important aspect of this method given the emphasis of examining encounters within the current moment in Canada I have outlined. Thus, this approach raised the politics of doing this research for the participants and myself at this current historical juncture.

In feminist research processes, researcher and participant are in a collaborative process of

“deeper probing of research issues” (Lather, 1991, p. 61). In this way the researcher does not attempt to “control” the dialogue in the interview, but rather allows the dialogue to expand and

“respects the respondents ways of making meaning” of what they are sharing (Riessman, 1993, p.

4). I did develop the interview questions prior to meeting with the participants, but also through the first few interviews changed wording or created new probes to questions I felt were not eliciting narrative responses. In addition, sometimes the participants would inadvertently rephrase the question or ask it another way, which I felt was closer to what I was asking and I would incorporate that into the interview protocol (Appendix 3).

Riessman (1993) states that open ended questions that are broad, but which have probing sub-questions, are quite effective and also allow for respondents to have more control in the interview process. At the same times she suggests that yes or no questions can prompt narrative responses, specifically in issues of inequity. Most of all the questions I used were open ended and as many of my participants commented they felt the questions were broad and focused, but not leading or attempting to garner a specific perspective. This is something they very much appreciated.

Field observation I engaged in field and participant observations of the Ismaili community over the course of one year between 2011-2012. Emerson et al. (1995) suggest that being immersed in the field allows the ethnographer to directly engage how the research participants “carry out both ordinary routines and conditions under which people conduct their lives and the constraints and pressures to which such living is subject” (p. 2). For me to decenter my own prior knowledge and history of observations was integral through centering the participants observations and being reflexive about whether I was imposing my own notions of order, space and relationality onto the participant experiences. My relationship with Neikbakhat through the research process was unique and different from my relationship with all the other participants because she and I engaged in a series of formal and informal conversations and observations. As a ‘key participant’ Neikbakhat attended at least five events with me. We also had many conversations informally about her experiences and the work. This relationship was incredibly fruitful, and through which I saw, heard and thought about things in ways that challenged, enriched and grew my own perspective. Therefore, the observations through her experience greatly provided some depth and continuity over time. Rehan and Zaafra were the only other two with whom official observations occurred at social events. Adam, Rabia and

Anjum really wanted to go and observe events but unfortunately their schedules did not make it possible. At the same time, speaking about their observations for all the participants was part and parcel of our conversations because most of the participants are active in the community, through going to Jamat Khana, as volunteers in various capacities or attending social events.

Angrosino and Perez (2000) suggest that through observation methods, “ethnographers affirm or develop membership roles in the communities they study” (p. 678). Field observation for me was an affirmation of my existing membership, as I participate in Ismaili community events and go to Jamat Khana regularly. My everyday presence in the community puts me in a place of

77 observation and participation with Ismailis and thus, I am a part of the very thing I am studying in many ways. To actively be in this process allowed me to move deeper and even more critically into my own experience in the community. I felt that there was a co-participation in the ethnographic process between myself and the research participants, as Ismailis in community spaces and the collective Ismaili culture (Tedlock, 2000). Some of the interviews with the participants took place in the social spaces of Jamat Khana. Therefore, what we were talking about became situated within a particular “field” of the Ismaili community, adding a layer of observation to the interview process.

It should be noted that participant observation can be very much a part of narrative interviews, as the process of dialogue between the researcher and participant is an embodied one, in which things such as body language, tone of voice, breath, eye movements and response times, all reveal layered information about the dialogue and issues being explored, and the experience of being, thinking and speaking in that moment (Tedlock, 2000). The affective, embodied aspect of the interview was something I took keen notes on right after the interviews with participants. This is why field notes became very important during the year of data collection, which I took attending events on my own, such as the Lafontaine Baldwin Lecture or a talk by an Ismaili media celebrity that took place. The act of observing or participating as a researcher in a community is not neutral, and is always a negotiation and choice between what I decide to look at as the researcher, and why my attention is brought to certain observations. Emerson (1995) argues that field notes:

Is not so much a matter of passively copying down “facts” about “what happened.” Rather,

such writing involves active processes of interpretation and sense-making: noting and

writing down some things as “significant,” noting but ignoring others as “not significant,”

and even missing other possibly significant things al-together. As a result similar (even the

“same”) events can be described for different purposes, with different sensitivities and

concerns. (p. 8)

Thus, field and participant observations cannot be absolute descriptions of Ismaili social relations, but rather the engagement of particular moments through specific perspectives. These research tools assisted me therefore, to enter the “encounter” to see what comes from it and to experience its doing.

The last aspect of my “field observations” was to go to public spaces related to the Ismaili community, and to engage the space in order to hear, feel, see, touch and taste what it was telling me about the community and about its relations to the Canadian nation-state. I travelled to Ottawa specifically to make observations and to participate in tours of the delegation of the Ismaili Imamat building and confederation boulevard. This was particularly important as this work attempts to look at the relationships between bodies, discourse and space in the encounters.

Texts: Speeches, News reports, Government Documents According to Thomas (1993), in critical ethnography:

The point to remember is that the data sources can include a person, a group, documents,

or any other artefact that embodies cultural meanings. But although everything we see,

hear, or stumble upon may become data, not all data are of equal quality or value. This

means that we should continually be alert for additional sources of information that reveal

the details and nuances of cultural meaning and process. (p. 36)

Thomas goes on to say, citing Glaser and Strauss (1967) that,

“Trivial data” which are data from secondary analyses (e.g., surveys or quantitative

studies) of our population done by others, can also be helpful in clarifying or verifying our

own data. (p. 36)

My data sources also included speeches made by the Aga Khan, Prime Minister Harper and other government officials. In addition, I used news sources, government reports, Ismaili related websites,

79 surveys and a paper published on the Centre for Pluralism website. It was integral to interrogate these public texts through which to make sense of and come to understand the encounter between the Ismailis, the Aga Khan and the Canadian State. These encounters could then be located within existing grand narratives, knowledge, and information circulating in the public realm. I used

Foucault’s concept of “discourse” to engage and analyze the texts, which I describe in more detail below.

Coding and Data Analysis “As French philosopher of history Michel de Certeau notes, “we never write on a blank

page, but always on one that has already been written on” (de Carteau, 1984 as cited in

Lather, 2001, p. 477).

There are many approaches and debates to what critical ethnography entails, however most all agree that ethnographers “invent” ethnographies (Goldstein, 2008, p. 87). In other words, the ethnography is not an objective reality but rather subjective, constructed and imbued in issues of power, politics and knowledge through and within the relationships between the researcher and the participants. What this means is that the narratives that weave this ethnography reveal the constructions of social relationships, which are partial aspects of experience, and yet are interconnected with broader structural and material forces that say something about how gender, raced and classed bodies and systems are relevant to particular moments, politics and social practices. Quoting Britzman (1991), Lather says that the move from "the real of ethnography" to

"the effect of discourses of the real" (p. 88) is a movement of "building suspicious texts and encouraging suspicious readings" (p. 89).

Constructing the ethnographic narrative was not an easy task given that I had a lot of data to learn from, understand and interconnect. I collected 43 hours of digitally recorded interviews, along

80 with about 50 pages of field notes, and many speeches and others kinds of texts. Narrative analysis does not compartmentalize the transcription process from the analysis process because texts reveal much to the researcher as she continually returns to it through transcribing – guiding how she will

“choose to represent an interview narrative” (Riessman, 1993, p. 60).

To begin, I first transcribed the interviews using a digital program called Express Scribe.

Once the interviews were transcribed, I went back to listen to them, checking for any errors or omissions. At this point, I returned the interview transcripts to the participants for “member check,” which meant that participants went through their interviews and made clarifications or deleted aspects that they were uncomfortable with. “Member check” as an aspect of face validity, allows the research gathered to be re-presented to the participants and to get their thoughts and feedback on it, as a way to engage them with their words (Lather, 1986; Riessman, 1993). A handful did make direct changes and delete parts of the transcript itself. Leaving out sensitive information was left to my discretion by some of the participants, as they did not want to go into the interview and make direct changes themselves. I also had informal conversations with some of the participants after the interviews, which continuously informed how I entered the interviews subsequent times. In addition, I took what was learnt from the first interview and provided the interviewees with a chance to clarify, add to, or correct things they remembered saying. I also raised questions from the first interview, or jogged them to think about what they were saying by stating, “in the last interview you talked about…” and posing a question.

I listened to the interview again to highlight what was being said or heard beyond, within or underneath, the actual words spoken. This meant listening for intonation, laughs, sighs, tears, huffs, etc. Riessman (1993) suggests that narratives are about what an experience means to a person, and thus looking for differences in tone of voice, pitch, repetition and emotion can be revealing (p. 19-

20). This was particularly important as I was very interested in the affectiveness of the encounter,

81 and to think of it as an “event,” which Puar (2007) describes as “time, space, and body against linearity, coherency, and permanency” (p. 241). In addition, I looked for evaluative clauses, which is when the participant explains how they interpret or value their experience (Riessman, 1993).

I also used the interview transcription and re-listening as an initial phase of coding. For each interview I wrote down all the words that stood out to me in relation to the questions I asked. Once I did that I looked for themes across each of the interviews, such as those related to what was common or uncommon when the participants spoke about their interactions with other ethnicized

Ismailis. For instance, I found that “dating, marriage and intimacy” was used as an example to talk about the closeness or distance between differently ethnicized Ismailis. This was not a theme that I had ever thought about, but the participant stories showed that it had some significance to how they interacted with one another and thus became a theme. Gee (2011) suggests building tasks can help to focus engagements with narrative through themes such as: “significance, practices, identities, relationships, politics, and connections” (p. 123). I used the interview questions to also help build some of the themes, such as Ismaili, youth, participation and differences.

Once I had a list of themes, I created sub themes and codes such as “about Afghan, or about

Pakistanis, belonging, welcoming, Canada, and tensions” – that I built from reading each interview transcript many times over (for themes and code list see Appendix 4). I then entered all the data into a digital data analysis program called ATLAS TI, to code all the interviews and to conduct analysis.

After the data was entered, I added the themes, sub themes and related codes, and then began coding chunks of narratives on the first round (Cabtree & Miller, 1999). Once I completed this initial round of coding I went back and coded in a more focused way, line by line, but in the chunked narratives that really spoke to the themes directly. I started to add analytical notes (for sample analytic notes see Appendix 5) to each line or narrative chunk. It became clear to me that there was a larger narrative developing because I saw that in relation to each other, the narratives were speaking back

82 or to one another. In other words – relationally, the narratives spoke about what kinds of social practices, affectiveness, concerns and story lines, were relevant to how Ismailis encounter each other. Further, some of the encounters were reiterating the nodes of interaction in which the intersectionality of race, class, gender, ethnicization and religion, had particular manifestations in specific moments in time, such as when the participants were describing and analyzing how the

Ismaili community is organized, through specific ethnicized hierarchy.

I then pulled out specific coded parts of the interviews that spoke to three layers of encounters between Ismailis, the state and the Aga Khan, and between Ismailis, other Muslims and non-Muslims. I moved away from using ATLAS and decided to print out each part of the narratives that related to the themes and codes that stood out to me, in relation to what Gee (2011) calls

“motifs” about a certain thread in the interview, such as exclusion or inclusion in relation to Ismailis relationships with other Muslims and non-Muslims in Canada. I broke those interview narratives down into stanzas, and sometimes to the word, to see how language reveals or underscores what the participant is narrating. Following is a sample of what I mean:

Anjum: Especially when I am explaining how we are to other Canadians they are pleasantly surprised. When they’re comparing When they’re thinking about like fundamentalist Muslims umm because they are so scared of that whole thing and uncomfortable with it that finding out that there are like Muslims out there that are more like them or are happily living like them, they can interact with

or they know that you know that there are ways to interact with each other peacefully It’s like a positive thing for them. Interested in what is affectively being told to me, the words and stanzas highlighted, became points of further probing to dive into the layers of what is being said, and what is at stake in

Anjum’s narrative beyond what might be apparent at first read. I then compared Anjum’s motifs in relation to the other participants, which ultimately led me to the concepts; fake, cool and scary, in relation to how I made sense of how the participants understood their subjectivity in their encounters with Muslims and non-Muslims. Such deep analysis can reveal the contradictions, anomalies, and things that may not seem to fit or make easy sense, that speak to the complexities or the unknown of social relations (Gee, 2011; Mishler, 1995; Riessman, 1993; Thomas, 1993).

Discourse analysis of public texts I used a similar process with the public texts, keeping in mind Foucault’s conceptualization of discourse. Depending on how discourse is being used, it can speak to an approach to language

“that is embedded in social practices; how language is spoken and used” (Lughod & Lutz, 2009, p.

104). Discourse has also been thought of as “verbal productions more formal, elaborate, or artistic than everyday conversation” (p. 104). Lughod and Lutz (2009) suggest that Foucault’s use of discourse has had the most influence in elaborating what discourse is and does.

Foucault advances that discourse is a “set of practices that systemically form the objects of which they speak.” It is “something which produces something else (an utterance, a concept, an effect)” (Mills, 2003, p. 17). Stuart Hall (2001) says that discourse in Foucauldian terms means “a group of statements which provide a language for talking about – a way of representing the knowledge about – a particular topic at a particular historical moment” (p. 72). The effects of discourse come to be through power, knowledge and truth. Although Foucault (1978) also says that

84 discourse can be both an instrument and a hindrance to power, a way of resisting or “opposing strategy” (p. 100).

Discourse is encapsulated within discursive structures, which make it possible for discourse to exist, and be uttered and acted. Each discourse has a discursive structure that “can be detected because of the systemicity of the ideas, opinions, concepts, ways of thinking and behaviours which are framed within a particular context and behaving” (Mills, 2003, p. 17). According to Mills

(2003), examining the structures of discourse will actually make apparent the “mechanisms which keep it in place” (p. 49). Analysis of discourse allows for consideration of degrees of power within relations between individuals, communities and the state, but as they are revealed in the language and utterance of texts, along with what is keeping them in place. This is particularly relevant to this study as I wanted to understand how power is moving through, and making possible the utterance and action of, particular public texts such as speeches of the Aga Khan or Prime Minister Harper.

Foucault (1972) argues that circulatory mechanisms are key for a discourse to have validity or worth. He suggests that circulation is dependent on commentary. When a discourse is made, the

“more it is spoken about, commented on – becomes a part of the “talk” it gains legitimacy”

(Foucault, 1972, p. 67). Thus, sanctioning for Foucault (1972) is really about thinking through the effects of sanctioning, which are produced by institutions in legitimating discourse. Who utters and how, is also of relevance to the sanctioning of discourse because such sanctioning by institutions and its circulatory mechanism, also present the limitations or the bounds of what can be spoken and what is commented on. In this way, the public texts I examined are ones that have come through

“circulatory mechanisms” and thus gain legitimacy, particularly as I look at speeches and reports.

For instance, in looking at the Aga Khan’s LaFontaine Baldwin Lecture and where the speech took place, through which institutions, and the circulation of the speeches’ concepts and utterances after

85 the event – told me how discursive power, in relation to the nation state and the Ismailis as Muslims, works to produce meta narratives about the nation and particular Muslims.

Validity Questions of validity are taken up by critical ethnographer and feminist researchers not as a corrective to positivist critiques of biased, invalid subjective research, but rather as a way to engage in a “self corrective” process as Lather (1986) calls it, in order to think through how critical ethnographic feminist research can be “confident and trustworthy” (p. 66) in the research process.

Lather (1986) and Riessman (1993) provide various sign posts to encourage validity in critical ethnography and narrative analysis.

Lather (1986) talks about triangulation, which means using, “multiple data sources, methods and theoretical schemes” (Lather, 1986, p. 67). I used multiple sources, incorporating field observations, interviews, public texts and spatial analysis of buildings, as a way to see how they inform, contradict, speak to, and represent each other. In this way, the multiple data sources allow the building of an ethnography that rests in multiples realities, giving more breadth and depth to what is being explored.

Catalytic validity, Lather (1986) says, is the most “unorthodox” because it suggests that the research process is “reality altering” and that this takes place through “gaining self understanding” and “self determination” (p. 67). This type of validity points to how the research process can have various layers of impact on a participant, although I have been cautious to not predefine or predetermine what “gaining self understanding and self determination” might mean to the participants. Some of the participants conveyed that in fact this research process did enter them into a place of gaining further self understanding, and considering other ways of being in social relationships, challenging official speak about diversity, inclusion and integration within the Ismaili

86 community, and in their experiences as ethnicized bodies in Canada. For instance, Begum expressed that she did not really think about the differences between Pakistanis, Indians and East

Africans in the Ismaili community, which made her question why she was so comfortable with compartmentalizing all Ismailis that were not Afghan, as one collective. Anjum spoke about new realizations that she had of her own experiences of racism in broader Canadian society, to how she thought about her experiences with other ethnicized Ismailis. Khan hoped that this research would provoke changes in inequitable community relations.

Reflexivity, as I mentioned above, is concerned with how researchers are accountable to participants and the ethics of doing research, and how ethnographic knowledge is crafted from participant experiences and research contexts. The work of being a reflexive researcher is embedded in politically rooted issues such as: the ideological orientation of the research; how participants realities are translated, written and spoken by the researcher; navigating complicity of researcher in oppression; decisions about what story your research will tell that may only be fragments of peoples’ complex lives; the valueladenness of research – who is the research for and how it gets taken up, how is the self present in the research process, and so on.

With this in mind, data analysis presented an opportunity to revisit the overarching research questions and over all research project itself, in order to think through my original propositions.

Because narrative analysis “privileges the tellers experience,” which will interpret and be interpreted by “social, cultural and institutional discourses” (Riessman, 1993, p. 61), the narratives made me rethink how I originally framed this research puzzle. As such, my overarching research questions and focus had a slight shift. Originally I had proposed to examine the experience of difference between Ismailis and how pluralism manifests in the community, but through the research process from data collection to analysis, I realized that my initial proposition was in contradiction to what I was in fact looking at, which was more broadly – what happens when encounters occur. Coming to

87 this realization, I was able to gain more depth and breadth of insight into the participants’ experiences, and the public documents and spaces I was engaged with. Further, by not examining the experience of pluralism, I avoided a major assumption that one, I knew what pluralism was and two, that “it” in fact is operational. Instead, I gleaned how social relations are produced and productive, what work they do and what effects they have, which then can engage with the concept of pluralism as something to be understood in relation to lived realities, and complex interconnections between bodies, spaces, discourses and systems. This was also a process of construct validity, which challenges researchers not to over determine or impose theory onto the research and data, but realize that the data itself will change, shift or challenge the theory, to bring in new understandings (Lather, 1986; Riessman, 1993). This was particularly important, as the data analysis phase became theory building to contribute to other ways of considering encounters. For instance, my very use of the concept of encounters was expanded by what constitutes the spaces of

Ismaili relationality, which are material and transcendental, or Divine, in Ismaili ethnicized social relationships. Lather (1986) suggests that this is critical to research grounded within social change politics.

I want to end this section by sharing that the interviews and research process was often challenging for the participants as it meant expressing things unsaid, making these things publically known, and living through the many states of being in talking about their lives. Many of them explained to me that the process was incredibly giving to them, in ways that I myself had not thought of or considered. Here are some excerpts of how participants described what came out of being in this process for them, and what they hope:

Adam: I just really appreciate you opening up the space, you know? It gave me a glimpse into what I was not seeing, the “blind spots,” if you will. And I have many blind spots…Because there’s so much else that’s happening around you and you’re so occupied

with your own world that you may not be seeing other things. I think it’s an immense privilege to be able to engage in this kind of discussion.

Anjum: It’s kind of just like exercising a muscle you never exercise at all. Sometimes I’m surprised at what I’m saying, and I’m like, just cringing at the thought of you, like, listening to this recording, because I’m like, “oh my God, what am I saying and how many times am I saying ‘like’?” Sometimes it’s surprising that you have all these opinions and observations that you never really talk about because there’s never really a space to talk about it. I’m really curious about this whole study; I can’t wait to see the end of it, like read it.

Khalil: It was cool, because this kind of thing isn’t really talked about much. People just assume about relationships and how they treat other people, but no one has really exposed it to be like, “You know what? There is a difference, let’s fix it.” But yeah, I would say it’s a good study, it’s cool, interesting.

Zaafra: I don’t know what’s going to come out of it. I hope it’s going to be something great and something that Hazar Imam can be really proud of, because I really feel like this is something that you could be proud of. I mean, we’re all going to be proud of ourselves, but maybe it’s not going to be a pretty picture, but I think that the fact that we’re looking we need to give some credence to the fact that we’re trying to... how are we going to get better if we’re not examining? I think Hazar Imam constantly puts that in our structures of when we do service, that evaluation has to be part of every step of service, right? So I think that, at the end of the day, we also need to evaluate our attitudes and, you know, our dynamics. I mean you’re sort of examining the social dynamics of the Ismaili community - it’s interesting.

Having space to reflect on the community, to speak about their own complex experiences, and to make known their convoluted relationship to the Canadian nation-state, was not only a meaning making opportunity, but also meaningful. In the words of these participants are great hopes

89 and intentions that their labour of telling their stories will yield new insight, recognition, and transformative possibilities that build from where the Ismailis are in this current moment in relation to each other, other bodies and the nation space. These are conversations all the participants deemed really important in order to come into something or somewhere else, something more, maybe even something new, whilst also acknowledging all the reasons they are committed to their community and hold dearly their identities as Ismaili Muslims.

Participants Biographical Sketches This next part of this chapter provides what I am calling “biographical sketches” of the participants. These are not meant to encapsulate the participants or their life experiences; rather these sketches provide multiple points of entry into the many encounters in the expanse of their lives. In writing these sketches I tried to centre my own entry into the encounters with the participants and provide a sense of how some of the dialogue went, and what personal, spiritual, affective, emotive, intellectual and embodied places we went to. The challenge is always about deciding what aspects of the participant narratives to bring together that provide a partial perspective into their lives. I chose to share nuggets that spoke to the areas of our exploration, as a way for the reader to have any entry into the participant encounters. These sketches also speak back to the participant narratives and particular experiences that thread the chapter specific stories, and overall narrative of this thesis. I also felt it was very important to give some basic biographical information, which does not always come through in the narratives in the following chapters. Some of the participants chose their own pseudonym, whilst others asked me to choose their names.

Adam

I knock on Adam’s home door. He opens it with a warm welcome. Immediately his family members also greet me. I walk by and glimpse at a photograph catching my eye. I think it’s Adam

90 from another time. Adam formally introduces me as “Salima, the one who wrote the book.” I feel a gurgle of discomfort in my belly. “How am I read, I wonder?” Sitting down for the interview, Adam looks at me like he is holding his words to some kind of test. He says, “I am excited about this interview.” I can hear English and Urdu beyond the steps.

Born and raised in Pakistan, in 1994 Adam made a move with his family. At the age of 12, migrating to Toronto was full of surprises. Adam thinks back to that time. He reflects, “no one had prepared me.” His eyes hold tensions. He goes on, “I don’t even think my parents knew.” Arriving in Toronto to the Ismaili community is not an immediate home. His confusion sets in right away, realizing that how he had been Ismaili in Pakistan is not what it looks like here. Multicultural

Canada does not provide comfort either. He has to soon pay for being brown-Pakistani. He is confused, frustrated and angry. All that runs through his head is, “everything is so contaminated here!” This world is “bizzaro.” Not speaking the language and entering into adolescence, his identity issues flood over. He feels distant even from Ismailis his own age, unless they are like him. Made fun of and beaten up for not having brand name shoes and dressing different from everyone at school, there were few recourses. He has a light bulb moment. He needs strategies. Maybe hockey would save the day! Without any interest in or care for the sport, Adam realizes - learn the names of hockey players and perhaps things will change soon enough. Not having to do it all alone, he also finds mentors and support in the Ismaili community that provide relief and guide him in his transformation. Now having lived in Canada for 18 years, Adam is deeply self-reflexive about his journey. And even those early years are far more complicated. Adam navigates belonging with much self-critique. He is now a teacher, passionate about critical learning. We end our interview with him telling me, “I’ve never liked being comfortable. It’s a bad place to be. To be comfortable is to be blind to the injustices happening around me. I wonder? What am I missing being comfortable?

I need to be cognizant of that.” We thank each other and in customary Pakistani fashion, I don’t leave without a full belly and great conversation.

Neikbakhat

Neikbakhat and I went out for sushi after an event we had gone to, our first “field observation” together. Sitting across from each other, her body seems heavy to me, her mind full. “I really want people in the community to learn about my experience as an Afghan. Often it feels like no one really genuinely cares,” she sorrowfully and strongly projects. I sit back with a tug in my heart. Feeling complicit in this I say, “I am sorry this is your experience. I’m so sorry!” We look at each other in silence and in recognition. Some weeks later, Neikbakhat and I meet in a Toronto park for our first interview.

Neikbakhat and her family left Afghanistan escaping the violence of war in the 1990s.

Arriving in Pakistan her journey of displacement begins. Unwilling to be pulled down by the loss of her home and a life she greatly appreciated, she determines to remake herself and her life. It is not a remaking divorced from everything she had learnt and been in Afghanistan, but a building from it.

While in Pakistan, Neikbakhat’s solidarity with her people (other Afghan Ismailis) commits her to providing an education for the younger Afghans. She dives into creating spaces for learning and teaching and is incredibly proud that despite conditions of living in camps and constantly feeling unsettled, the younger Afghans do incredibly well in their studies. After some years, she is chosen to come to Canada, given that she fits the criteria of the immigration points system. Arriving in

Canada in 1997, Neikbakhat is taken aback by the reception she receives from the settled Ismaili community in Toronto. She tells me, “The actions of the Ismaili community at the beginning is that they would actually think that you’re … you don’t know anything. Or can’t speak English at all. Or don’t have an education. It was really uncomfortable to see that they have this perception of you.”

Her alienation, disconnect, and sense of tension to the community is great. Harkening back to those first weeks, months and years, she looks at where she and the community are today. Much has changed and little has changed. Yet, she acknowledges and honours the productive ways in which the Ismaili community has offered her mentorship and learning, for which she says has allowed her to navigate Canada much better. After years of not having an outlet to speak her experience, our first interview ends with a release and surfacing of great sadness – tears flow. Neikbakhat also reflects on her experiences in broader Canadian society, conscious of the barriers she faces. She explains that not being Canadian born and having a non-Canadian accent, puts her at a disadvantage from others she is all too familiar with. Very conscientious of what it means to tell her story not only to the community but for it to be accessed by other Afghan Muslims and non-Muslims in Canada,

Neikbakhat carefully chooses her words to reveal her lived experiences. She is protective of keeping the integrity of the Ismaili community as much as she is invested in challenging inequity within it and outside of it. Neikbakhat is in her mid 30s and works in the health care field.

Akbar

When family and community members learnt about my research project, some of them came forward to help find participants. One night in Jamat Khana, an extended family member introduced me to his friend Akbar, an Indian Ismaili. Akbar and I chatted about the project and in a jovial voice he said, “Anything I can do to help. Let me know when you want to meet.” We set a time for an interview right there, meeting a few weeks later. Passing others to get to his office, he introduces me as Salima to his office employees. Akbar sits down in his office chair with an excited thump, almost whirling right around. His energy is big and warm, open for dialogue.

Much of Akbar’s understanding of his experience as an Indian Ismaili within the Ismaili community and outside of it is based on a comparison to growing up in the USA, and a real sense of

93 optimism about everything in life. At the end of 2000 Akbar moves to Canada from the USA, leaving behind his sister and all his friends whom he is very close with. In Canada for some time, he resists this new life and went through major culture shock. No one in the USA was ever interested in him as an “Indian.” People didn’t celebrate him for his ethnic identity. Canada definitely came to be starkly different. Over time, between school during the day and Jamat Khana in the evening, he came into a culture that felt cool and he made lots of friends his age to interact with. It was through the Ismaili community that he became heavily involved in volunteering, something not available to him in the same way in the USA. Akbar believes that there is a strong culture of volunteerism in Canada. He also feels strongly that volunteering within the community is the best way to equalize dynamics between different kinds of Ismailis because for him, people volunteer out of the goodness of their heart. To be a volunteer is to be committed to a higher purpose and to the life of the community. Despite the tensions that he’s seen between Pakistani,

Indians, Afghans and East Africans within the community, Akbar interprets it with rose colored glasses. For him, good intentions and working together as a community is what’s most important.

Being in the Ismaili community in Toronto, he really appreciates that Ismailis are not as interested in his class location, whereas in the US, this was something he was constantly battling. He does note one incident where he felt that some Ismailis in Toronto started to look at him differently, once they found out that he had become a business owner. Akbar’s sense of being a Canadian Indian Ismaili is filled with pride and patriotism. Contrasting his experience to being in the US, Canada has offered a place for him to feel more included; to be part of the nation building. Akbar is in his early 30s and lives in a joint family unit. A fact he is quite proud of.

Khalil

It’s 10 am and Khalil looks like he’s just woken up when I arrive at his house for the interview. His voice is still groggy but his mind is fully alert. He says to me in a lyrical voice, “ok, let’s do this!” Right from the start of the interview Khalil is pouring with experiences to share. He has the truth of his experience on the tip of his tongue and speaks unapologetically about the contradictions of it all.

Khalil describes himself as a “hybrid.” Both his parents are born in India, but he has lots of family living in Pakistan. His mother for a short period of time, also lived in East Africa. He tells me, “I know a little bit about all the cultures.” Although, at the end of the day if someone asks him about “what he is,” he answers “Indian but mostly Canadian” (born in Toronto). Talking about his social network both within the community and more broadly in Toronto, Khalil is right to the point about the racism he experiences, and is also clear about his “smooth” way of navigating it all. He tells a story about becoming friends with some Afghan girls and asks them to teach him a few

Afghan words, which now he uses as an icebreaker so that people can be comfortable with him. He also tries to learn Swahili words so that he can create points of connection between him and the parents of his East African friends. Khalil believes that culture and parenting have a lot to do with why people are treated unequally. Equally, he feels that culture is what allows us to become cosmopolitan. He often refers to how “you are raised” as the culprit for why people discriminate or behave inequitably. Quick on his feet and ready to laugh about anything, he takes these things seriously and at the same time often says, “It doesn’t really bother me.” This is his way of describing the inner mechanism that allows him to navigate his layered world. Being mistaken as a

Tamil, or Guyanese or Pakistani, he laughs, as it is just part and parcel of his hybrid identity politics in Canada. By the time we get to the end of the interview, Khalil seems even more energized than when we began. “I’ve been telling my friends about this and I’m like this is such a “sick” research

95 project.” He goes on, “in fact one of my friends who is Shi’a Ithnashari is like “the research is so cool because Ismailis appear as like “one” and now we can also learn about the differences.” Khalil also shares, “it feels so good to talk about this stuff. I mean me and my friends talk about it but not in this much detail. I love talking about this stuff.” Although he is not as regular in going to Jamat

Khana anymore, he still feels passionate about the community. A real sportsman, Khalil is in his mid

20s and works in the health care field.

Gulam

As soon as I met Gulam, for some reason, I felt that I only had one minute to give him the rundown on the project and spark his interest. He had a straight face throughout my entire spiel, and by the end he looked unconvinced that what I was saying was important at all. He was one of the few people to challenge me on what I was offering to do in the research study. Like Maryam, he told me, “I’ll think about it and get back to you in a few days.” Like clockwork he did get back to me and agreed to participate. A few days later, Gulam and I sat outside on a bench and began the conversation.

Gulam spent quite a bit of time in Pakistan after leaving Afghanistan. This provided him with a great socialization into another community of Ismailis and how different and similar they are.

He developed many friendly relationships with the Pakistani Ismailis. Once arriving in Canada in the 1990s, he was quite excited about meeting his Ismaili brothers and sisters here. He and his family had been sponsored by an East African Ismaili family, for which he was incredibly grateful.

It is something that he holds dear to him. He was also looking forward to building a relationship with this family, only to find out that they were not comfortable doing so. Gulam soon learnt that building relationships with non-Afghan Ismailis in Toronto was not only difficult but sometimes an uphill battle. But as he is always concerned about having a fair perspective he also holds some

Afghans accountable for not reaching out, although he has been well aware of the power dynamics in the community that has made this difficult. He sees all the dynamics as part and parcel of communities where diversity is present, but quotes the Aga Khan in that “diversity is an asset.”

Gulam’s settlement in Canada has meant that although he has educated himself and has done work that he feels good about, he laments his unrealized dreams, dreams of further education and other kinds of work, which seem impossible given all his personal responsibilities. Gulam sees the potential in multicultural Canada. He recognizes the space it gives to different cultural groups to express themselves. At the same time for him, multiculturalism has not taken up racism, and being a real aspect of Canadian life, makes the multicultural dream unrealizable. This is why he much prefers the concept of pluralism, which he argues is more universal and concrete.

Maryam

I was a bit nervous approaching people I didn’t know about participating in the study. I also wondered if it was appropriate to ask participants about joining the study, in Jamat Khana. In reality though, it’s a space that provides the most exposure to other Ismailis. One day I noticed Maryam, who I had seen before and exchanged smiles with, but with whom I never really talked. Something told me to ask her if she would be interested in the research. “Hi my name is Salima and I am conducting this study…” – I felt like a bit of a dork. Maybe because I felt like a saleswoman.

Interested in what I was saying and inquisitive, Maryam’s initial response was hesitant, maybe even resistant. “I’ll think about it,” she said. Feeling like my first cold invite didn’t go so well, I didn’t expect to hear from Maryam, but to my surprise a few weeks later she called. “I’ve been thinking about this since I spoke with you. I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I talked to my family about it too. And I think I should share my experience.” Maryam taking the time to think through participating reiterated to me that this was a risky and vulnerable offer.

Although born in Kabul, Afghanistan, Maryam’s family moved to another city to escape the fighting. But soon enough she was moving again, this time to Pakistan. She spent a year and a half there before leaving again. It’s been 11 years since she stepped foot onto Canada. Although there have been no gunfire or rockets to be heard where she lives in Toronto, being here has not been easy. With the emotional stresses of post war trauma, along with economic and social challenges of settlement, Maryam deeply feels the overwhelming aspects of both being in a new community of co- religionists and Canada. In her early 20s and now a university student, she has been aspiring for the day when she is economically independent and has passed certain trials and tribulations. One of the very first things I noticed about Maryam at our interview was the passion, clarity, and fire with which she spoke about her relationships with other Ismailis, and her general experience of being an

Afghan woman in Canada. Within the community she and other Afghans have had to “fight for their rights,” she says robustly. And yet she warmly speaks about the good and changes that have happened since she first arrived. She has great hope in the Ismaili community and often challenges her Afghan family and friends to take more part in shaping it. Within broader Canadian society, conscious of how she’s been received as an Afghan and what is known about Afghanistan, she does not hesitate to speak her mind. Maryam is also not afraid to challenge dynamics she deems inequitable within her Afghan social network either.

Sameer

When I met with Sameer for our interview, he led to me to a social space of a Jamat Khana. I was immediately concerned about protecting his anonymity. Turns out he was perfectly comfortable and unmoved by the people going to and fro, sometimes even peeking back wondering what we were talking about. Speaking with Sameer with his vast experience of working in the community took the conversations into sometimes a very philosophical place.

Sameer also left Afghanistan and then lived in Pakistan for some time. Coming to Canada has been pleasant and being with the community as he says, “a very good and nice impression.”

Sameer saw his journey of leaving Afghanistan and coming to Pakistan, and now in Canada, as a building of character and coming into a “better” way of being. He acknowledges the challenges of being an Afghan and having to learn new ways of communicating and socializing within a primarily

South Asian Ismaili community. However, he feels largely positive and constructive about the

Ismailis in Canada, and how they have made certain resources and opportunities available for the

Afghan Ismailis to integrate into the community. He strongly advocates that Afghans should take the most from the South Asian Ismailis, and even let go of things or traditions of the past that do not make sense here. Simultaneously, he recognizes the challenges of representing all the cultural diversity of the community in how it functions, but believes this is fundamentally important for

Afghans and others to see themselves represented. He also recognizes that the process of joining the

“macro” culture of Canada is a challenging opportunity. However, he is very optimistic about

Canada and the way “micro cultures” have been brought into the fold of the “macro” Canadian culture. Advocating that the role and responsibility of people such as the Afghans, both within and outside of the community, is to approach their new environment and relationships as a positive, progressive and modernizing opportunity. He says, “Mutual understanding and communication is bringing us together into another diversified and pluralistic culture. Which is completely not mine, completely not others. It is ours.” Sameer is in his 50s and lives with his family.

Kesar

I arrived at Kesar’s house a few minutes early. I could tell that she was a bit frazzled. She and her kids who were home for the summer holidays, however, greeted me hospitably. We sat down at her dining table. She made us some tea. I could tell there was something she wanted to say

99 before we started. After about 10 seconds of silence she blurted out, “I don’t know if my experience is really going to be of any consequence to your work.” I told her I was really looking forward to hearing her story.

Kesar and her husband came to Canada in 1989. Initially, her experience in Canada was difficult even amongst Ismailis, as she noticed that people really expected less of her. They didn’t grasp that she could be Pakistani and a highly educated woman with three Bachelor degrees and one

Master degree. But ultimately, she’s felt that as long as one is educated and is communicative, integration is not an issue. She felt strongly that, “if you just talk with people and relate to them it’s very easy.” After sometime they decided to move to the US for business opportunities. While there she really noticed the difference between Canada and the US. She was highly troubled by a culture that didn’t really value education she felt, both amongst Ismailis and also in general. There was more of an emphasis on becoming business people, and less focus on higher education. Kesar and her husband decided that this was not the kind of encouragement they wanted for their children and despite doing very well in the US, moved back to Canada. Since being in Canada again, she has really appreciated the way she has been able to develop a relationship with other Ismailis and with other Canadians. In part, she feels that her willingness to want to learn about other cultures and ways of life has really allowed her to grow as a person. She gives utmost priority and value to learning as a mode to transgress differences. The last time Kesar was in Pakistan was 13 or 14 years ago. She has no interest in going back. She is in her mid 40s and enjoys family dinners, and substantive conversations with her two kids and husband.

Zaafra

Zaafra and I had spoken about the research direction for this project several times before I had even begun looking for participants. Every conversation we had in Jamat Khana was exciting

100 and verbose. Often it would lead into interesting tangents. Finally, one day I decided to ask her if she would like to participate and without hesitation she said, “Absolutely. Let me know when you get started.” A few weeks went by and one day after a social event in Jamat Khana I broached the subject again, to set up an interview time. The conversation went something like this:

She looked at me and responded with a – “AH, NO!” Her response was sarcastic and I was taken aback. One, because I thought she would have said yes; and two, because of the subtext in her

NO that felt really aggressive and full of angst. I recognized immediately that there was something really important in her NO. She launched – too many of her family members have converted out of

Ismailism, and she has had to defend her faith to them. They have trashed and criticized the faith.

She is not interested in participating in something that criticizes the faith. She feels that by airing our dirty laundry, this will also give fuel to those kinds of people. Zaafra said with great force, “I feel very protective of the faith and loyal to the Imam.” The conversation went on for another hour.

A few days later she called me to say, “I want to participate in the research.” I was surprised because I understood her concerns and fears. Zaafra is vehemently committed to the Ismaili faith, and at the same time critically engaged with the community. Working in the field of mental health, she constantly takes what she learns from being an Ismaili into her work, and vice versa. She owes much of her learning about how to work with diversity to the Imam. She finds his words not only enlightening, but beyond what most other people are thinking. As an outspoken Pakistani woman in her mid 30s, she prides herself on being an advocate for the marginalized. For our first interview we met in a corridor of a Jamat Khana. Her narratives were pouring out in what sounded like a stream of consciousness, and touched on many of the barriers and tensions she and her family have experienced as Pakistanis in the community. Very self-reflexive about her entire life, she made connections of these experiences back to the barriers she faced in her field of work that is primarily

101 white and racist, as she would say. Zaafra moved to Canada in her early teens from the USA, and prior to that was born and raised in Pakistan.

Anjum

When I stepped into Anjum’s living room, she had treats and drinks set out for us.

Immediately she started to attend to me, asking if I was comfortable and if I wanted anything else.

As soon as I had mentioned this research to Anjum some weeks prior to our meeting, she jumped at the opportunity; feeling like nothing like this had been done before. She expressed passionately that it was such an important exploration. I was excited about her enthusiasm.

Anjum grew up in a smaller city in Ontario, where she quickly learnt about the difficulties of being a brown girl amongst mostly white people. She grew to learn the value of appearing “white washed.” Her family is originally from India. Her mother’s migration to Canada had a short stay in

East Africa. Her father spent a longer time there. She also has family in Pakistan. When asked however, Anjum identifies as Indian Canadian, an identity that she carries, with the struggles it comes with. Growing up in a small town also meant that the Ismaili community was tightknit and mostly of East African background, making her and her family stand out as “different.” She told a story of having to explain to her East African friends at Jamat Khana that her and her sister do “jaru”

(sweep) every night as a ritual at home. She still remembers the strange looks she got, a reminder of how being Indian was so out of place at that time. Anjum has lived in the GTA since being a university student, and often notes the major difference between being Indian where she grew up and being Indian in Toronto. It is accepted that Toronto is multicultural and she very much appreciates this. She recalls being on Toronto buses where she hears different languages spoken and different ways of interacting present. Although the big city is also alienating, which is why she has really felt the importance of Jamat Khana and the Ismaili community as a spiritual and social space.

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She thinks reflectively about her place in multicultural Canadian society, and sees its broken promises and its potential. Anjum is in her mid 20s now and is committed to working with communities of color.

Shazia

It was hard not to notice that every other word that Shazia spoke came out of her mouth in a laugh. Our interview took place on her kitchen breakfast nook. In the middle of our interview her little son came running in for breakfast and listened in quite attentively on everything his mom was saying. Shazia was nervous about the interview but very forthright in her responses.

A young couple arriving from Pakistan, Shazia remembers the initial challenges of settling in a small city in Southern Ontario for her and her husband. He was starting his Master degree and she was pregnant with their first child. She recalls vividly the support and help they received from the

Ismaili community from finding a place to live, to buying a car, to having old aunties make food just for her to satisfy her cravings during pregnancy. She carries these initial years closely to her heart and into the present moment. She has nothing but praise for the Ismaili community. Some years later they moved to the GTA and have lived here since. Since her years in the GTA Shazia has been heavily involved in volunteering in the community, but at the same time is surprised at how she has received leadership opportunities because she has never really seen herself in that way. She and her husband are very committed to making sure that her kids have a close relationship to the Ismaili faith and the community environment. When we talked about diversity in Canada and in the Ismaili community, she said laughingly that her children call her out on things that she says, especially if they seem racist. In this way, she feels that perhaps there are generational differences in whether people are racist or not, and she feels perhaps her children as tweens don’t think or experience what she and others of her generation do/have. During the first interview Shazia really struggled to talk

103 about her experiences and often retorted to generalizations, but as she explained to me, it’s difficult to really share things you think about or experience, especially when they’ve been with you and only you for so long. By the end of the interview Shazia said she “had never spoken so much about anything.” At the end of the second interview she felt that her thoughts and words came out easily, reflecting on how it’s easier to talk about one’s own direct experience than to reflect on broader issues. Shazia is in her early 40s and has a full time job as a mother.

Garima

Garima was introduced to me by a woman who works closely on women’s issues. In this way, the introduction to Garima was prefaced by her volunteer work on settlement issues within specific populations of Ismailis. Garima and I met at a library and as soon as we shook hands,

Garima seemed like her stories were at the front of her mind. We sat down and I brought out the recorder that she looked at suspiciously. I got the sense that Garima was concerned about how her interview would fare in the larger study.

Garima arrived in Canada about 5 years ago from the US, where she had moved to from

India after getting married. One of her first experiences of coming face to face with discrimination was when she was getting a marriage certificate and was told that “you Indians and Pakistanis are spoiling our country.” This experience stuck with her as it was spoken by someone from within the

Ismaili community. Since moving to Canada the transition has been difficult. The class divides between her and other Ismailis, particularly with East Africans and sometimes Pakistanis, has caused her to feel “alienated, lower, less intelligent and devalued.” She provides an example of being at a sports event for one of her daughters where she sat alone while a group of Ismaili women her age, also mothers of players, sat in a group talking about the private schools their kids go to, the designer clothes they are wearing, and the big trips they plan on taking. No one asked her to come

104 over. After some time her family moved to another Jamat Khana where things would feel better for her and her kids. As if the barriers to inclusion within the community were not clear enough to her, in her full time job she is constantly noticing her racialized work place and racist highering practices, in which all of the upper management is white. Even thinking about those positions is barred to her. Garima embodies these experiences deeply in her psyche and emotions. She talks about the ways things stay in “your heart.” Garima is astute at naming oppression, violence and inequity where she sees it. Garima is in her 30s and a mother of two living with her husband in the

GTA.

Rehan

I found myself in an informal setting with Rehan one day, where his parents were also present, and spontaneously the conversation turned to his parent’s experiences in the Ismaili community as Indians, with connections to Pakistan in the ‘70s ‘80s and ‘90s. His father recalls being told that he needs to wear suit jackets to Jamat Khana – otherwise, he is inappropriately dressed. His father used to wear a traditional pant shirt outfit worn in Pakistan, which he came to realize is deemed unbecoming and uncivilized, here in Toronto. From this conversation, Rehan passionately spoke about how he carries his parent’s experiences with him. They inform who he is.

Rehan was born in Toronto and raised in various parts of the GTA, considered “ethnic ghettos.” Although living mostly amongst people of color, growing up in Toronto in the 1980s and

‘90s, it was pretty much “uncool” to be brown. Identifying as Indian, he remembers being harassed, beat up, and dealing with racist slurs as part and parcel of everyday living. He recalls his parents

“humble roots” in India, how hard they have worked to acquire economic and cultural capital that has now brought them respect in the community, and in society in general. In some ways he seems to hold some tension that this is what it requires to be respected, and at the same time embraces this

105 idea that it’s the only way to really be understood as having value and worth, both within the community and in Canada as brown people. He is hyper conscious of how “young professionals” his age in the community, perceive him as an upwardly mobile young man. He wonders the extent to which people interact with him for genuine reasons, or because they are attracted to his success?

Playing sports was and is a major outlet, and a way to connect with “diverse” people. He sees himself as a truly multicultural ambassador having a social network with friends from all parts of the world. Having moved away from Toronto, he realized that he needed to move back. He describes this experience – “Just like a hundred miles outside of a major city, I went into a gas station to fill up gas and the whole gas station stopped and looked at me. They looked at me like I’m an alien.

When you’re from Toronto, and are exposed to diversity, you can’t go back to something else.”

Rehan is in his early 30s and a professional of the corporate world.

Rabia

I had spoken with Rabia about the research project many months ago, and right before I was about to end the interview phase of the research she called me apologizing for not having been in touch. She really wanted to be in the research project and asked if there was any way I would still interview her. Her sincere passion to tell her story was coming out so clearly over the phone. We set up an interview for the next day.

Rabia was born in Afghanistan, and like others, found herself with her family in Pakistan escaping war and civil strife. Leaving was not an easy thing for them as they had a good life in

Afghanistan prior to the war. While in Pakistan, like many others, she dived into projects of personal and political relevance to her. Passionate about singing and the arts, she used her voice as a vehicle of working through becoming a “refugee.” Arriving in Toronto in the 1990s, Rabia was in some ways glad to be in the new environment, but also deeply saddened by the cold and exclusionary

106 reception she and her family received from many Ismailis in the community. Although her and her family had been sponsored by an Ismaili family from Toronto, she found herself wondering why there was such a clear difference of treatment she was receiving as an Afghan woman than other

Ismailis. Her experiences time after time settled within her a feeling of disappointment and clarity that Afghans were so fully misunderstood and there was no desire to really know her, as a human being, as a woman, as an Afghan. Although she did find a handful of genuine friendships with non-

Afghan Ismailis, she wonders how in most cases her relationships are shallow in a community where we are supposed to be brothers and sisters. As an Afghan woman, she sees herself as an advocate for her people within the broader Canadian society too. She tells this story of being at work where “a client, a white European man,” provided a description of Afghanistan as a “lost case” where the barbarian people and culture could never reach the level of the rest of the world. Rabia, holding her tongue for a few minutes, just let her inner rage at his comments erupt; she gave him a history lesson and called him out on his racism, Islamophobia and ignorance. All the while her boss was watching this encounter. Knowing that she might lose her job over this did not stop her. She kept on until he got up and just left. Although reprimanded by her boss, she was not fired. She tells me that even if she had to do it all over again, she would. Since being in Canada, Rabia went to school and continued shaping the various forms of arts she is involved in. She sees her art as a

Divine practice and expression with great potential to change people. Rabia is in her 30s.

Begum

Begum and I met in Jamat Khana for our interviews. We sat in a quiet area. The first few minutes of the interview, Begum’s thoughts on the questions were short and very much optimistic and full of one-liners such as, “this is so nice,” “everything is great,” “people are so sweet.” After about 10 minutes though, she began to tell stories about her interactions with Ismailis and non-

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Ismailis in Toronto, and with others in Canada. Although her stories seemed simple they were layered with great complexity.

After leaving Afghanistan, Begum and her family went to India where they stayed for some years. The Afghan refugee population was large. In fact, she said that they made up more of the population of Ismailis where they were, than actual Indians. Moving to Toronto 12 years ago, she for the first time felt like a minority in the community. India provided her with a great education. As she told me, she learnt how to be comfortable with new people. Going to school there, she also felt like she was thought to be an exotic difference amongst her Indian classmates, something that she thought of as natural to being a non-Indian in India. When she and her family arrived in Ontario, initially they lived on the outskirts of the GTA with little transportation services, or people with whom they could relate to or speak with. Feeling the deep depression setting into the entire family, they quickly decided to move within the GTA. Life seemed much different after doing so and since then, she and her family have become heavily involved in integrating within the Ismaili community.

She and her siblings used their experience in India as a way to relate to South Asian Ismailis here, enjoying aspects of the culture such as Bollywood and Indian clothing. She notices how being a young person; she faces fewer barriers than her parents who are older. Although for Begum this has meant primarily making friends with Indian and Pakistani Ismailis her age. She has also been very involved at her university in various volunteer capacities, where she notices how being an Afghan woman she has faced less overt racism than her Indian or Pakistani friends. Begum recognizes her white skin privilege and at the same time knows that if she talks about being Afghan, things change quickly and she has to contend with orientalist Islamophobia. In Begum’s process of making sense of all of this, she often goes back to psychology and sociology and wonders the extent to which all of this is part and parcel of our brain’s desire to compartmentalize, and the social necessity to stay within our “in groups.” Begum is in her early 20s.

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Khan

I was having a hard time meeting Afghan men for the study, when one of my friends gave me Khan’s contact information. As soon as I emailed him, he wrote back and immediately engaged with the themes of the research. He told me that he would like to participate, but he wants to warn me that his perspective might be biased and not as positive as others may want to hear. I said to him, “I appreciate your candour.”

Khan and I met at a public venue that was quite noisy but eventually we found a quiet spot.

Literally, from the time we met, Khan began to talk with great insight and intensity. He gave me a

10-minute lecture on the kinds of questions I might want to explore given the study’s focus, which I did appreciate. Khan’s interview was very much through the purview of his most recent experiences of exclusion from specific volunteer situations in the Ismaili community. This one experience opened up an entire history, a multi-layered history of marginalization as an Afghan man. From noticing how he was treated differently than white employees working for an Ismaili employer, or the “angry tone” with which he was spoken to, to feeling mistrusted and devalued – Khan was holding a lot of pain, sorrow and anger. At the same time, he had this way of also feeling the importance of having a community he generally identified with, even though he questions the

“marketing” of the community as “pluralistic.” With a witty sense of humour, he laughed about our great “foreign affairs,” which often does not reflect the more complicated experience of being an

Ismaili. Khan also supports and challenges Canada’s role in Afghanistan. He still has connections there and has returned back home to support his family and imagine new ways forward for

Afghanistan. Khan arrived in Canada five years ago with his family from Afghanistan, via Pakistan, where he spent a little more than 10 years. Khan is deeply reflective on what it means to integrate, or what it means to work together as different people. At the end of the interview Khan shared how he reflected on sharing his experience with me. He explained, “You know on my way when I was

109 coming here, I said to myself, let me focus that I am not single minded. I think I should mention whatever I have experienced. The good and the bad. I hope that you see I’ve been able to express both sides.” Khan is in his early 40s working in the area of technology.

Summary In this chapter I have gone through the various aspects of what constitutes this research as a critical ethnography, and therefore what issues and concerns are raised in the research process.

Insider outsider positionality is complicated as I’m very much in the Ismaili community as a religious adherent, and move in the community through various levels and layers of power. The participants read and interact with me through my layered subjectivities. At the same time as a woman researcher, gender and “ethnicity” play out in the power plays of my encounters with the participants.

The design of this ethnography with its constitutive elements of interviews, participant observation, field observations and textual analysis, provide both the triangulation and the multiplicity of sites through which we can make sense of social relationships and encounters. This of course means that issues of reflexivity and validity are in question in terms of what steps I have taken to involve the participants in reviewing their narratives, and in engaging in the ‘critical’ aspect of ethnography making that attends to the continuous power relationships between researcher and participants in projects invested in social justice, equity and transformative politics. Finally, I ended this chapter with some of the participant’s thoughts on their process, and on their hopes for this research, and participant’s biographical sketches.

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Chapter 4: Theoretical Framework

In order to engage the explorations of this research puzzle as an “encounter,” in this chapter I present the key theoretical concepts that provide the analytic frames that assist me in making sense of Ismaili encounters in three layers – between them and the nation-state; between them and other

Muslims and non-Muslims; and between ethnicized Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis. There are three theoretical concepts that I centre, which also connect to other theoretical tools that are of relevance to engaging the narratives, texts, spaces, and bodily workings in the inter-layered stories this ethnography tells. Encounters, gendered colonial race nation, and exceptionality, act as umbrella theoretical frameworks, interconnected with governmentality, liberalism, intersectionality, and interlocking systems of oppression and spiritual based conceptions of diversity.

Encounters Critical race and poststructural feminists have been asking questions about whether we can attend to all the aspects of oppression, inequity, and exclusion without expanding analytically, how we look, where we look, and what we look at. In order to do this, conceptions such as “encounters” put forth by Sara Ahmed (2000) and “assemblages” by Jasbir Puar (2007), build from the integral work done by feminists of color who made major contributions in how to understand and intervene oppression, particularly of women of color. Theoretical tools such as intersectionality and interlocking systems of oppression have provided key insights into how identities and systems become mobilized and constructed in oppressive relations through power. In this way, Foucault’s

(1977) notion of power has influenced how feminists have thought about systems of regulation, coercion and social relations. I use Foucault’s concept of power because he not only focused on power as an oppressive force, but rather thought about how power produces and is produced as

“enabling and constraining.” (1982). Foucault (1977) argues that:

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We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it

excludes, it represses, it censors, it abstracts, it masks, it conceals. In fact power produces; it

produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. (p. 148)

Scholars who have looked at Muslims and their social relationships amongst each other have argued that such poststructuralist concepts of power are providing another tool through which to understand Muslim identities, and social, religious, and cultural exchanges with one another. At the same time they suggest that Muslims can draw on their own intellectual traditions of conceptualizing social relations. For instance, Hirji (2010) argues that Muslims meeting each other in Muslim societies and community contexts might be thought about as the “internal other,” or the

“proximate other,” when encountering one another. He argues that constituting the other is part and parcel of human history. Using Jonathan Z. Smith’s conception of the “proximate other” (the one who is most similar or closest to the self), and the notion of the “internal other,” Hirji argues that by distinguishing one self from an another, through difference, is really pointing out “a theory of self” between religious people (p. 9). What is obscured using such a framework? Firstly, by accepting another as most “similar or closest to self,” we already assume something as given about the ontology of the self who is a referent for the other, and the other then becomes a reification for the self. The “being” of religious people has a beginning. In this way, the “self” is a diffused figure as is the other in what is similar and close. Further, “religious” figures “similarity and closeness” as ontologically a priori to the encounter conceals what in fact comes to be understood as similar or close to begin with – that this defining work is outside of socio-political-economic forces, even if claimed as originary in religious terms. Similarity and closeness are universalized, and thus, are the self and other. However, Hirji goes on to argue by citing poststructuralist thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault, that these European scholarly traditions are providing another way to think about

112 identity and processes of self-identification as “relational and contextual,” and that power “has the potential to silence or absent the Other” (p. 10). He suggests that such conceptualizations of self- other and power have been used to examine Muslims and Islam, through scholars such as Mohamed

Arkoun (2003) who asked, “how is the legitimacy of power monopolized by a group over all other established groups?” (p. 10). This question and Hirji’s acknowledgement of the instructiveness of examining self-other through identity, however, is still limited, particularly in colonial/settler/postcolonial contexts. Muslims having lived/living through and in coloniality, must contend with the very conception of “self” and Other as having bodily integrity, and that the Other is an effect of power – not purely a process of differentiating as ubiquitous, or for the purpose of identity formation. The particularly raced and gendered productions of the Other, through a standard bearing self, cannot be accessed in such framings. The work of this thesis is to in fact make visible how Muslims and their social relationships are the effects of power that make im/possible claims and experiences of unity, Otherness, inclusion, and identity. In this way, critical race and poststructuralist feminist theoretical frames are uniquely central to do such work.

Returning to intersectionality as a theoretical tool, Kimberle Crenshaw (1991) was the first to coin this theoretical frame as a way to understand Black and women of color experiences of violence through their gender, race, and class identities, challenging what she called a “single axis” analysis. In particular she proposed that the difference, and at times similarities between white women, men of color, and women of color’s experiences of oppression through structural, political and representational violence, could only be considered when race, class, and gender was understood as crossing over each other. The misreading of women of color’s experiences of violence and particular privileges were the result of not taking into account when their race, class, and gender intersected that made visible specific conditions of their lives. These markers of difference also

113 shape perceptions of women of color, what resources are accessible to them, and where solidarity can be had between men and women of color. She gives the example of being at an intersection on a road where an accident occurs and traffic is going in multiple ways, and where the reasons for the accident are itself multiple, pointing out that discrimination itself flows in multiple directions.

Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality has been central to feminist theory in locating women’s experiences through the crossing of their race, gender and class identities, and also in understanding the particularities of social forces of power manifesting through race, class and gender. In this way, the “subject” through identity is central to an intersectional theorization. The emphasis is placed on looking at experiences of marginalized women and men. Identity politics has had a particular importance to Muslims, particularly post 9/11, but perhaps even since the very constitution of the oriental in which Muslims have engaged in reclaiming their identities, and understanding how their identities have been a reason for oppression and marginalization. At the same time, the frameworks of identity politics such as intersectionality, have not attended in any serious way with religion, both as a marker of identity, but also as a governing and governable apparatus. In the context of this ethnography, an example of how intersectionality becomes useful is through examining how race, class, and gender cross in the interactions of Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian Ismailis that show how dominance affects their place in the community.

Attending to the limits of intersectionality and building on it, Sherene Razack (1998) put forth “interlocking systems of oppression” as a theoretical tool. She argued that intersectionality focused on an additive approach to identity and oppression. Instead, interlocking systems of oppression have historical specificity, and produce women in relations that are asymmetrical and hierarchical. In the interlocking approach she argues that each system of oppression is reifying the other, giving meaning to the other. They are interdependent. Unlike intersectionality, Razack (1998) is arguing that subjects are constituted, and that “systems of domination” are produced. An

114 interlocking analysis of conditions of domination has to engage both of these, whilst recognizing how we can be in subordinate positions and at the same time, in positions that subordinate. One can argue that the interlocking approach focuses on how systems and structures of oppression are interconnected, and produce women and men in “shifting positions of power and privilege” (p. 12), whereas intersectionality focuses on why women and men are in oppressive situations.

Intersectionality is not focused on identity as constructed, but rather as something to be reclaimed and understood as a reason for subjugation. Interlocking systems of oppression can attend to how gendered and classed Muslim women and men are constructed, vis a vis particular structural forces, and how these structural forces are created as oppressive. This also leaves open the possibility of attending to our contradictory positionalities to each other, and within societal structures. The theorization of interlocking systems of oppression allows me to attend to how discourses of multiculturalism of the state interact with conceptions of pluralism as mobilized by Ismaili institutions, for instance.

Poststructuralist feminists have raised questions about the centrality of the subject and identity to bring to the fore other ways of thinking about relationality, production, placing and mapping of bodies, systems, discourses and spaces. These newer approaches point to the multiple, insidious, and affective ways in which social relations come to be in contexts of war, terror, surveillance, and the continual and changing formations of racial, gendered and classed dynamics. I therefore use the concept of “encounter” as theorized by Sara Ahmed (2000) as a way to enter into an extrapolation of social relations between two elements or more. In this way she attends to as

Puar (2007) would say, the before and after of the “subject,” as well expanding the geography of what is at stake in relations of power.

The encounter is not just between people, but also between texts and readers, nations and cultures, colonial powers and colonized. Ahmed (2000) situates the “encounter” within the larger

115 context of postcoloniality as inclusive of the ongoing workings of colonialism, and also the discontinuousness of colonialism through the reshaping of it by “local contexts and or other forms of social change” (p. 11). She examines this postcoloniality through local (multiculturalism) and global forces (migration, globalization).

Ahmed (2000) is specifically interested in how the “stranger,” as an outgrowth of the other, comes to be through the meeting with another. In this way, she accepts that the “other” has already been established through colonialism (e.g. the oriental). Challenging scholarship that we are all

“strangers” in some way, she argues that this kind of universality of strangerhood is a way to conceal social relations in which, “some bodies are already recognized as stranger and more dangerous than other bodies” (p. 4). In addition, to make the problem at hand be whether we welcome or celebrate this stranger, does not question the very ontology of the stranger, disallowing a process of analysis of how the stranger comes to be in the first place. This ‘welcoming’ of the stranger reinforces a fetishization of the stranger as a figure. By fetishizing the figure of the stranger, they “cut off figures from the social and material relations which over determine their existence, and the consequent perception that such figures have ‘a life of their own’” (p. 5).

Therefore, Ahmed examines how fetishization makes invisible social relationships. By doing so, she argues that the welcoming or expelling of the stranger “as a figure that has linguistic and bodily integrity” (p. 13) is not made to be the focus of encounters. Further, through such fetishization, we are unable to engage the “political processes whereby some others are designated as stranger than other others” (p. 6). She goes on to say that this will mean that we take into account:

How the stranger is an effect of processes of inclusion and exclusion, or incorporation and

expulsion that constitute the boundaries of bodies and communities, including communities

of living (dwelling and travel), as well as epistemic communities. (p. 6)

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In this way, I argue that Ismaili exceptionality is an effect of varying processes and practices that require the concealing of particular social relationships, in order for power vacant forms of relationality to have grand meaning and to define the borders between bodies.

What is the encounter then? The encounter is a meeting that is face to face, which is not simply about two people. The facing is “mediated; it presupposes other faces, other encounters of facing, other bodies, other spaces, and other times” (Ahmed, 2000, p. 7). The “being” of facing another cannot be a priori to the encounter itself, because it is through the encounter that something is given form. This is why she argues that identity only comes to be through the encounter, and therefore makes the encounter a point of departure for her examinations, rather than identity. She goes on to pose that encounters are about surprise in which knowledge is lacking, and therefore the determination of the outcome of the encounter is unpredictable. But she also says that encounters involve “reading signs on the body and their body as a sign” and in this way, the subject is constituted “in relation to ‘the stranger’ stranger who is recognized as out of ‘place’ in a given place” (Ahmed, 2000, p. 8). The encounter represents the im/possibilities of fixing. Therefore, it is possible that if bodies cannot be read by inhabiting the sign or being the sign, new ways have to be found to “recognize.” This involves further processes of differentiation that highlight the other, from other others. This leads to why encounters “open up past encounters,” (Ahmed, 2000, p. 8) but this does not mean that histories determine these encounters either because history itself is in question.

Within postcoloniality, it is the very engagement with colonialism as a past and as part of a discontinuous present in producing modernity, that we can understand that there is no straight line in the or to the encounter, but as Ahmed (2000) says, “is a series of discontinuous encounters between nations, culture, others and other others” (p. 11).

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Due to the general encounter (past encounters) and the particular encounter (present) in the meeting of two unequal subjects, to be face to face occurs through an “asymmetry of power” (p. 8).

Ahmed (2000) argues therefore that she:

Wants to consider how the particular encounter both informs and is informed by the general:

encounters between embodied subjects always hesitate between the domain of the particular

– that face to face of this encounter – and the general – the framing of the encounter by

broader relationships of power and antagonism…. Differences as markers of power, are not

determined in the ‘space’ of the particular or general, but in the very determination of their

historical relation (a determination that is never final or complete, as it involves strange

encounters.” (pp. 8-9)

Therefore, her overall argument is that differences come through the encounters between

Others, and for one to accept the identification of a stranger as natural means that “broader relationships of power and antagonism” (p. 8) are not considered in the very forming of the stranger.

The purpose of this research project is not to make an argument about the Strangerness of Ismailis or

Muslims in general, rather, Ahmed’s (2000) conceptualizations of the “encounter” allows us to attend to an analysis of relationalities of the state to the Ismailis, the Ismailis to themselves, and other Muslims and racialized communities. Ahmed’s conceptualization of the encounter as a method allows me to consider how the encounter, “involves the production of meaning as a form of sociality. That is, meanings are produced precisely in the intimacy of the ‘more than one…’ by

‘coming together’ at a particular time and place” (p. 15).

In this way, I am examining Ismailis as already constituted Others from past encounters, as

Muslims, as racialized, gendered and ethnicized bodies, and as a collectivity. Yet, their current encounters in this moment rupture their fixed locations or subjectivities as modern Muslims, or

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Muslims of belonging in the Canadian nation-state. Rather, the work they do as Muslims complicates how, why, and the ways in which they have meaning.

Lastly, I want to add that for Sara Ahmed (2000), theorizing the other and other others or strangers and stranger strangers, requires we look at how proximity shapes the boundaries of assimilable stranger versus stranger stranger. This boundary making relies on the conception of two kinds of strangers in the multicultural nation. The stranger is the one that appears different but is the same within (as white subjects), and is “even welcomed, insofar as it enables the nation itself to appear different” (Ahmed, 2000, p. 106). Thus, the Canadian state can continue to present itself as diverse, a mosaic, a tapestry. On the other hand, stranger strangers are necessarily inassimilable and internally different, and thus serve the nation in order to create the limits of multiculturalism, which is required in order to sustain a white colonial neoliberal nation-state apparatus. Proximity is already in existence by the sheer presence of the stranger within the nation, but the stranger moves farther or closer to Others, dominant bodies, and the nation depending on what work they will do for projects of nation-building, diversity, economic progress and social cohesion. Agreeing with Puar and Rai

(2004), I would argue that even the stranger who is welcomed still exists on precarious grounds – for citizenship, inclusion, and belonging are constantly shifting. This idea of moving closer or farther is significant in the encounters explored in this study as this engages how, for instance, proximity evokes temporality between Ismailis, other Muslims, and non-Muslims through the trilogy of the cool, fake and scary Muslim that I speak about in chapter 6.

Finally, in using encounters as the lens and space through which I examine Ismaili meetings in various layers, I also attend to how Islamic epistemologies, and in particular Ismaili Islamic epistemologies of social relationships are also brought into the encounter through the participants, texts, and spaces I examine. I present this here for two reasons. One, because the Ismailis’ mobilization of humanism and pluralism is directly rooted back to what would be conceived as

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Divine law, or originary order of human diversity. Secondly, what does it mean to conceive difference, identity and subjectivity, as constructed through social relations in the material world when it comes up against transcendental and spiritual conceptions of diversity? How do they speak to each other? In what ways are they at odds? How does this Divine sense of social relations meet secular social relations in contexts of empire? I also think that we can bring into conversation the possibilities and limits of all of these frameworks, complicating what is at stake in a research project like the one I undertake here.

In the following brief sketch I present a few key ideas to social relations within Islam in general, and to the Ismailis in particular, as aspects of theoretical paradigms in a spiritual epistemology. I begin with the following Quranic Ayat because it sets the landscape for social relations understood to be the Divine shaping of humanity. It is also the most widely quoted when advocating for respecting diversity and pluralism.

O humankind We [God] have created you male and female, and made you into communities

and tribes, so that you may know one another. Surely the noblest amongst you in the sight of

God is the most Godfearing of you. God is All-knowing and All-Aware. (Qur’an, 49:13)

In this verse from the Quran there are several kinds of ontological differences that are made evident. Firstly, that there are two sexes, men and women. Second, we are already determined to be in communities (in other translations the word here is nations) and tribes. Right from the outset then in an Islamic framework, social identities are set in gendered and collective constructs. From this view we know that the encountering of each other is for the purpose of “knowing” one another.

Therefore, the knowing subject, the one who seeks to know and to be known is central to why this diversity exists to begin with. In this way, the existence of diversity is purposeful and epistemological.

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Within this humanist discourse of Islam, the essential aspect of humans is their unity, made possible through Divine unity. The knowledge of each other to produce such unity is both immanent within human order, and transcendental in knowing the Divine. In the Ismaili tradition this is actualized through particular tools, such as reason. The human subject is ordained with free will, which he or she exercises through reason. Thus, it is through reason that humans manifest a world aligned within particular goals, such as “knowing each other” and “social justice.” Within the

Ismaili practice of Islam, this type of humanism has been couched as an intellectual and ethical tradition of Islam. A key scholar of Ismailism, Azim Nanji (1996), in a paper on the ethical tradition of Islam, says that the Ismaili Imams “emphasized the Imam’s role in promoting the use of the intellect. Shi‘ism, like the early theological and philosophical schools, affirmed the use of rational and intellectual discourse” (p. 207).

For the Ismailis, pulling from this tradition of engaging social diversity as inherent to humans, and engaging it through knowledge as a rational activity, informs current contexts and issues with regard to diversity. In this respect, Amyn Sajoo (1995) suggests that the humanistic tradition and Islam, and that modern projects of pluralism from this tradition necessarily have a “full pluralist agenda,” which he defines as “an extensive tradition of tolerance and engagement… democracy and social justice to the rights of minorities and the equality of women” (p. 587). The appropriate use of reason and intellect to make manifest equal human relations therefore is universal through the Divine, but also reminds us that it functions as an effect of reason. As the Aga Khan has been noted as saying, one of the biggest problems between the West and Islam then is not a clash of civilizations, but a clash of ignorance, pointing out the centrality of knowledge and knowing to changing human relationships. Such epistemological, ontological, and relational ways of conceiving human diversity and engaging it are significant as they play into the logics of pluralism, and the way

121 many of the participants articulate their relationship with others within and against such conceptions.

Gendered, Colonial Race Nation Encounters do not take place in generic or abstracted spaces, but rather are situated in spaces of post/coloniality and imperialism. The nation-state as an apparatus of coloniality is integral. In this way I examine gendered, ethnicized Ismailis, and what it means to be and how they are constituted as modern liberal religious bodies through the specificity of their encounters in the

Canadian nation-state. I position the colonial gendered race nation both as a space for encounters as

I argued in the last chapter, but also as a theoretical concept through which to analyze the nation space and the bodies of Muslims, and the social relationships in which they imbue.

Nation-State, Nation Building and Difference

The “state” and the “nation” Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1992) argue, must be seen as separate entities, particularly if one is invested in understanding how nationalism is a gendered and racial project. The state is considered the structural apparatus of governing, whereas the nation is thought to be the engine of the mythology, on what and who is identified as or with the nation.

David Goldberg (2001) argues that the “racial state” is a modern construct of the nation-state, because the very emergence of it is linked to colonial mechanisms that justified the confiscations of land, enslavement of peoples, and the reimagining of collective unity as “national character” (p.

243). The modern state is premised on “reproduction of national identity, the national population, labor, and security in and through the articulation of race, gender, and class” (p. 235). In this way, the racial state is a convergence between what Goldberg calls, “states of being and states of governance” (p. 236). To see state and the nation therefore as separate, compartmentalizes the inter-relationship between the on-going making and work of state structures to the conceptions of

122 the nation, which together allow for nation building as a modern project of coloniality working in the interstices of difference. As a colonial gendered and racialized project then, the Canadian nation state is predicated on violence that demarcates and constructs. The violence is projected through religious, scientific, and economic rationalism that have particular juridical, political, and epistemological manifestations in the nation state. Distinguishing between people considered the standard of modernity, as natural sovereigns of the nation from those whose subjugation, eradication and regulation are justified, is key to the colonial logic of the gendered racial state (Ahmed, 2000;

Bannerji, 2000; Dhamoon, 2009; Razack, 1998; Thobani, 2007).

This is evident in the formation of the colonial settler Canadian nation-state as a post-colony of Britain, in which the Indigenous, as a racial colonized marker and later subjects of the “third world” were the figured difference against first the British, and later also French Settlers. As a white-settler society then, the characterization of Canada after the British, as Stasiulis and Jhappan

(1995) argue, “meant that those at the helm of colonial, then dominion, states and those shaping civil society drew from British imperial and home grown philosophies about the appropriate character, physical appearance, roles and behaviour of settler women and men” (p. 97). In other words, right from the start of nation building, Canada as a colonial state was a continuous construction through a gendered whiteness as a negation from difference. Canadian multiculturalism as an extension of this history became a rationality and technology for identifying, and defining who and what needs governing, such that the imagined and real contradictions and conflicts of the presence of

Indigenous nations, racialized and ethnicized populations are ordered and contained.

The spatial, embodied and discursive modes of management and constitution of the gendered colonial race state creates multipronged and multi layers of unequal social relationships. The spatiality of unequal relations of power means that, “social space is the result of the contradictions of concrete, perceived space (or material space), and the abstract, conceived space (or mental

123 spaces)” (Teelucksingh, 2006, p. 8). In this way, the continued colonization of Indigenous land can be abstracted from the layers of cultural, physical, psychic, familial, community, and nation deaths it causes on Indigenous Peoples. To examine the relationship between the Canadian state and the

Ismailis, between Ismailis and other Muslims, and within their own ethnicized differences as a spatialized relationality means for example, that we take into account how, where, and for what reasons Muslims are present in the imagined and actual geography of Canada, and what is it that they do in their presence.

As an embodied project, we must attend to how the body, as Foucault (1980) reminds us, is the place upon which regulation occurs through discipline – the body becomes useful. Sara Ahmed

(2000) thinks about the body through what she calls “bodily encounters.” She describes the centrality of the “body” in the following way:

There is no body as such that is given in the world: bodies materialize in a complex set of

temporal and spatial relations to other bodies, including bodies that are recognized as

familiar, familial and friendly, and those that are considered strange. (p. 40)

In elucidating the bodily encounter she says:

Bodily encounters suggests that the marking out of boundary lines between bodies, through

the assumption of a bodily image, involved practices and techniques of differentiation.

That is bodies become differentiated not only from each other, or the other, but also

through differentiation between others, who have a different function…here there is no

generalizable other that serves to establish the illusion of bodily integrity; rather the body

becomes imagined through being related to, and separated from, particular bodily others.

(p. 44)

Further, she argues that the national space itself is a body of sorts:

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The nation becomes imagined and embodied as a space…by being defined as close to

some others (friends), and further away from other others (strangers). The proximity of

strangers within the nation space – that is, the proximity of that which cannot be

assimilated (stranger stranger) into a national body – is a mechanism or the demarcation of

the national body, a way of defining borders within it, rather than just between it and an

imagined and exterior other. (p. 10)

An embodied approach in this research unearths the affective, physical, mental, spiritual, psychic, and visceralness of the encounter, through the body and between bodies. I then also look at how the body is figured, given meaning, and then seen in that form. I also attend to which bodies speak in relation to each other. Following Foucault then, thinking about the relationship between the gendered colonial race state, the Ismailis to other Muslims, and to other racialized communities and the nation-state as discursive, makes visible a “set of practices that systemically form the objects of which they speak. A discourse is something which produces something else (an utterance, a concept, an effect)” (Mills, 2003, p. 17).

Nation building is linked to national mythologies as an “imagined community” (Anderson,

1983) and simultaneously has specific capitalist and political manifestations. Canada therefore, as a liberal democratic multicultural state requires that we consider what liberalism is, both as a rationality for speaking about difference, diversity, multiculturalism and pluralism, and as a logic of capital that is social and economic.

Wendy Brown (2006) identifies key rationalities of liberalism. Firstly, that it is focused on the individual who is naturally occurring emptied of social relations. The “individual subject is imbued with, “self-making, agency, and a relentless responsibility for itself” (p. 17). In addition, liberalism is invested in a rights based approach to creating equality, which also means, “equal standing before the law, eliminates from view many sources of subordination, marginalization, and

125 inequality that organize liberal democratic societies and fashion their subjects” (p. 18). In the

Canadian gendered colonial race nation, as a capitalist economy, the liberal subject is flexible labour and resilient in the market place, able to take advantage of its opportunities unhindered by identity politics (Walkerdine & Bansel, 2010, p. 496).

Within the multicultural imaginary, liberalism also functions as a way to naturalize and neutralize diversity as a cultural category. Bannerji (2000) argues that this occurs within a contradiction. At once there is a project to create unity based on a core identity of British-French, and inclusive of diversity present in the nation-state, while making social and cultural differences power free occurrences while at the same time “reading of all social and cultural forms of differences in terms of descriptive plurality” (p. 548). In this way, liberalism is not simply about the individual, but is inclusive of Othered groupings and the mobilization of diversity as a concept and placeholder. Liberal multiculturalism is predicated on particular assumptions about diversity, inclusion and equity. Different from other approaches, it does not negate diversity and inclusion but rather, makes its project to address these issues from the perspectives of accommodation, recognition, and unity-within diversity (Dhamoon, 2009). Cultural diversity is at the heart of concern for liberal multiculturalism, which is integral to the “social, political and moral order” (Dei,

2005, p. 4) of the Canadian nation-state. Through a liberal framework, issues apparently central to cultural communities focus on recognition, understanding, and efforts towards dialogue. Intolerance and good will among people become the forms of response to their issues. When equality is addressed, it is to primarily have more cultural diversity present at various levels of society.

However, as liberal multiculturalists remind us, it is only those that are not illiberal immigrants, racialized people and Native Peoples, that can be truly given consideration (Kymlicka, 2004). As the journey of this ethnographic study will come to show, liberalism is also mapped onto Ismaili

126 bodies and them as a collectivity, in how they come to mobilize capital, individual rationality, diversity, and specific modes for transforming human relationships.

The Canadian gendered colonial race nation, in the context of examining Muslims, has had a particular manifestation in the mobilization of the Muslim woman as the antithesis of modern subjecthood, and also the “saved” figure from Islam and Muslim men. By attending to the specifics of how social relations are gendered through other forms of subjectivity, points out the particular way the racialized feminine and masculine emerge through the nation and communities – for example, in the mobilization of biology, moral functionality, as symbols of family, nation and community (Yuval-Davis, 1997). In addition, we can take to task normalizing paradigms of gender and sexuality in social relationships. I begin to unravel such paradigms by in fact showing that

Muslim masculinity, for instance, does specific work in this moment of the Canadian nation, and to other masculinities for the production of exceptionality through corporeality.

Edward Said’s (1979) conception of the oriental subject was largely built on Foucault’s

(1982) conceptualization of power, and the subject as an effect of it. Foucault describes the subject in two ways: “subject to someone else by control and dependence; and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to” (p. 781). Said (1979) therefore, argued that the Oriental other is a creation of the epistemologically and ontologically constructed Other, in opposition to the Europe/an or occident/al.

He also argued that the imaginative geography of the Orient, discursive and material, was central in the creation of the subject-other.

Yegenoglu (1998), in her work on the gendered oriental subject, describes the referent for the modern subject as the white European Western man who emerges as the Enlightenment, “I.” The modern subject, as supposedly self-referential, is autonomously universal and sovereign. However, the subject she argues, is necessarily “constructed in a complex discursive strategy” creating its

127 existence through “another term or condition” – the distinction between its self and an “Other” (p.

9), which is gendered and raced. Foucault’s conception of the subject-power nexus was largely derived and directed within the context of Europe, and in this way, he was unable to theorize from the place of the colonial or ethno-class as Sylvia Wynter (2003) talks about. And yet building from his theorization of power and subject production – feminists, critical race and poststructural scholars have been able to analyze the shifting locations, figures, and relevance of the subject vis a vis others.

Meaning that the subject and other are not fixed categories, but liminal and yet locatable in symbolic and material exercises of power that are interlocked in gender, race and class formations. In the relationality of subjects and others, within the context of the Canadian nation-state and gendered racialized Muslims, remembering that multiculturalism is a technology of the gendered race-nation,

Sara Ahmed (2000) argues,

Multiculturalism can involve a double and contradictory process of incorporation and

expulsion: it may seek to differentiate between those strangers whose appearance of

difference can be claimed by the nation, and those stranger strangers who may yet be

expelled, whose difference may be dangerous to the well-being of even the most

heterogeneous of nations. (p. 97)

In Sara Ahmed’s (2000) quote at least two points stand out. One is that there is not a simple binary of the dominant and the other. Delineating or drawing boundaries between those that are strangers, and those who are even stranger, is a strategic technique of how the nation is able to produce immigrants, Indigenous, and racialized peoples in contradictory, and even in antagonistic relations to each other. Although this liminality of these positions is important, it does not mean that there is a generalizable other or subject, but rather these are constructed through prior histories of domination and current manifestation of unequal relations in the encounter. The encounters in this ethnography show that in fact the processes of inclusion and exclusion, for instance, double back

128 onto specific racialized gendered Ismaili Muslim bodies in particular moments where they must be less Other, or stranger than Others. Jasbir Puar (2007) pushes beyond identity and subject production to make the argument for “assemblage” to understand social relations as an “event,” widening the visual and material field of power relations. She says, “foregrounding of assemblages enables attention to ontology in tandem with epistemology, affect in conjunction with representational economies within which bodies interpenetrate, swirl together, and transmit affects and effects to each other” (p. 205). All of which have great relevance to the unfolding of the encounters between bodies, structures and texts. In this way, the significance of what Ismailis

Muslim bodies do, and their working in modernity and coloniality as exceptional, come out of such assemblages. For instance, I look at how the Ismailis animate as fake and scary Muslims through particular ontologies and the way they come to be represented as cool Muslims.

At the heart of the nation-state as a modern governing apparatus is “…the logic of coloniality underneath the rhetoric of modernity, the structure of management and control…” (Mignolo, 2011, p. 2). Walter Mignolo, building on the work of sociologist Anibal Quijano, describes this logic as the colonial matrix (pp. 9-10). Mignolo’s use of the colonial matrix is to uncover “what supports” the “racial and patriarchal foundation of knowledge,” as the “enunciation in which the world order is legitimized” (p. 8). I think it is also useful to consider Mignolo’s presentation of the colonial matrix as a way to engage in what he calls “epistemic disobedience.” This becomes particularly significant as I critique concepts like pluralism, as to see what underlies its definition and mobilization. I also engage with Mignolo’s colonial matrix to remind us that the point of this research is to dislodge the idea that the nation-state and racialized Muslims are in a one-way oppressive relationship, or that

Muslims such as the Ismailis simply reify the state or modernity and their own privilege.

Understanding coloniality through such a matrix makes possible decolonial options as Mignolo argues, to enable a “vision of life and society that requires decolonial subjects, decolonial

129 knowledge, and decolonial institutions” (p. 9). He presents the colonial matrix as a way to engage with the history of coloniality, that is – the darker side of modernity. The four sides of the colonial matrix are: Knowledge & Subjectivity; Racism, Gender & Sexuality; Economy; Authority. The centre of the matrix includes: Theology/Secular Philosophy & Patriarchy.

I attempt to use Mignolo’s (2011) matrix as a way to unthread the Ismailis’ relationship with modernity and coloniality, to their current relationship with the Canadian State and vis a vis other racialized groups. As the case of the Ismailis illustrates, their embrace of modernity and the entanglements with colonial power as a strategy, shows the im/possibility of a totalizing decolonial project. And yet the matrix provides a framework for where we can look to see both the coloniality of modernity and decolonization, through the social relationships in which Ismailis are built and inhere.

Finally, examining the nation-state as a governing apparatus that is colonial, gendered and raced, I turn to Foucault’s (1991) concept of governmentality. When Foucault spoke about governmentality, he was not talking about government as an administration of the State, although acknowledging its role. Rather, he was interested in attending to what he called government rationalities, which he saw as a practice. This means, “a way of thinking about the nature of the practice of government (who can govern; what governing is; what and who is governed)” (Gordon,

1991, p. 3). Foucault (1991) considered that the modern state exists only due to the governmentalization of the state, which is the particular tactics and techniques that “make possible the continual definition and redefinition of what is within the competence of the state and what is not, the public versus private and so on…” (p. 103). Governmentality however, is not contained in the state or simply deployed through it. Rather, it is more generally about the tactics of governing and being governed. In not rooting governmentality only in the state, Foucault argues that, “the powers and rationalities governing individual subjects and the populace as a whole operate through

130 a range of formally nonpolitical knowledge and institutions” (As cited in Brown, 2006, p. 79).

Brown (2006) argues therefore, that Foucault’s conception of governmentality has four attributes:

(1) Harnessing and organizing energies in any body – individual, mass, international – that

might otherwise be anarchic, self-destructive or simply unproductive. And not only energies

but needs, capacities, and desires are harnessed, ordered and managed and directed by

governmentality (p. 81).

(2) As a conduct of conduct, governmentality has multiple points of operation and application,

from individuals, to mass populations, and from particular parts of the body and psyche to

appetites and ethics, work and citizenship practices (p. 81).

(3) Governmentality is also operating through powers, “invisible and unaccountable,” that move

it beyond rules and laws (p. 81).

(4) Through “scientific, religious and popular” discourses, governmentality is both “employed

and infiltrated,” along with discourses more typically thought of as political (p. 81).

For this research puzzle, governmentality can assist in attending to bottom up and top down rationalities that underpin organization, regulation, movement, resistance, application of bodies, groups (Muslims), affects, and nation building. I use governmentality in so far as it offers an opening into thinking about what rationalities organize the Ismaili community and their relationship to the nation-state.

Muslim Exceptionality Lastly, I present exceptionality as a theoretical frame from which I construct the theoretical concept of Muslim exceptionality. I draw from Jasbir Puar’s (2007) work on homonationalism and

US sexual exceptionalism, in so far as she identifies two simultaneous processes of exceptionalism.

She conceptualizes exceptionalism in the following way:

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Exceptionalism paradoxically signals distinction from (to be unlike, dissimilar) as well as

excellence (imminence, superiority), suggesting a departure from yet mastery of linear

teleologies of progress. Exception refers both to particular discourses that repetitively

produce the United States as an exceptional nation-state and Giorgio Agamben’s

theorization of the sanctioned and naturalized disregard of the limits of state juridical and

political power through times of state crisis, a “state of exception” that is used to justify the

extreme measures of the state. (p. 3)

Puar’s (2007) project is to examine the judicial, political and cultural processes that create states of exception within the US, that rely on the making of racialized and sexualized deviants, whilst simultaneously producing some racialized and sexualized subjects as exceptions, bolstering

American exceptionalism. Interrupting the Canadian liberal democratic multicultural paradigm, the work of Arat-Koc (2005) Razack (2008), and Thobani (2007) has examined how states of exception, based on Agamben’s work, are applied to Muslims as a way to quarantine and handle disloyal and presumed dangerous Muslims, through the suspension and diversion of Canadian laws and liberties.

14 Muslim exceptionality however, is not just to make distinctions that eject or manage bodies out of and within norms and laws, or produce a uniqueness of character whether that is of a State or particular ideologies. I focus less on how states of exception as a process of eviction, erasure, and eradication come to be. Rather, I shift the angle that relates to these interventionist projects, bringing to the fore how Muslim exceptionality and exceptional Muslims are constructed through reinvesting in Canadian state exceptionalism, and Muslim reimaginings. This is interdependent with Muslim

14 Although each author uses states of exception to makes arguments about different processes, each takes up Agamben’s (2008) conception of states of exception as being processes that determine the killing of non-sovereign bodies in contemporary nation states. In addition, they reference his work on homo sacer (1998) in which he makes the distinction that one who can be killed, exists outside of political law and religious law, and therefore, rules do not apply to the one who is killed or the one who does the killing.

132 difference as a way to be distinct, excellent, and in processes of reinvention, as an attempt at being the non-oriental Muslim.

Muslim exceptionality occurs by first, establishing Muslims in a co-constructive relationship with the state and second, through becoming agents of distinction and achievement at the conjuncture of secular liberal and Islamic discourses, and antiorientalist intentions both within the

Canadian nation and transnationally. This happens through three pedagogical moves: becoming distinct as different within an existing difference (i.e. difference from other Muslims, or from other racialized or Indigenous Peoples); becoming distinguished through achievement; and performing excellence as an antiorientalizing effect.15 Therefore, exceptionality is about more than the acceptability of an alternative difference. Interrelated is exercising the exceptional – that is, to stretch skin and boundaries in difference and against difference by becoming distinguished, outstanding, and excellent.

I argue that Muslim exceptionality takes on new characteristics and creates other dynamics that rupture analytics, which suggest that to be an exception in the Canadian liberal state means that either you are its nemesis, or its ideal immigrant. This does not take into account the co- constitutive, albeit asymmetrical relationship of Muslims and the State in producing various kinds of exceptionality.

15 I use the notion of pedagogy inspired from Jacqui Alexander’s (2005) notion that, “Pedagogies functions as an archive of empire’s counterpart, of opposition to it, of the knowledge’s and ideologies it summons, and of the ghosts that haunt it” (p. 2) Further, her notion of pedagogy is pointing out the mapping of practices of dominance that are “knitted into the interstices of multiple institutions as well as into everyday life” (p. 4). I evoke the notion of pedagogy as a way to understand exceptionality as practices interconnected with pasts and presents, that call exceptionality into existence, connected to empire, and other intentions and processes for religious and racialized communities.

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On the one hand, Muslim exceptionality operates through nation-state exceptionalism, and simultaneously operates in transnational and transcendental discourses. Nation-state exceptionalism must be considered in light of the interconnected relationship between what is imagined as the

Canadian state, and how Ismailis and the Aga Khan come to have meaning. Canadian exceptionalism is the outgrowth of Canada’s proclaimed uniqueness as officially multicultural, making it different from all other nations. Its history of being the first country in the world to have an official multiculturalism policy boasts this difference. Eva Mackey (1999) has argued that this unique character of Canada was based on claiming the diversity of its inhabitants through the multiculturalism policy. Firstly, as a way to articulate its worldliness and superiority in this respect to other nation-states such as the US, but more importantly, in order to manage, and as Bannerji

(2000) has argued, construct its internal differences through demarcating non-British and French populations through a fixed cultural identity.

The direct and loose use of the concept of exceptionalism within scholarship on Islam and

Muslims, has tried to explain how the character of Islamic societies are exceptions to all societies of the West.16 Exception here works to demarcate Muslim societies outside of “normative” or normal political, economic, and social systems and cultures. The scholarship has also exposed institutional forms of Muslim regulation in the nations of Europe and North America.17 Katharyne Mitchell

(2006) outlines five kinds of exceptions that operate in liberal societies.18 Three of her points have

16 See Mustapha Kamal Pasha (2009).

17 See Sarah Bracke (2011), Maghali Rheault and Dalia Mogahed (2008).

18 (a) Exceptions to neoliberal economics through state interventions; (b) economic imperialism of America despite rhetoric that suggests “international playing fields;” (c) despite official discourse of private public split, the regulation of private spheres; (d) dismantling of civil rights; (e) political exclusion versus foundation of “liberal principal of universalism” (Mitchell, 2006, p. 95).

134 particular relevance to how Muslim exceptionalism is argued in previous scholarship. One, Arab and

Muslim states are blamed as failing because of their lack of ingenuity, economic progress, and as the antithesis of American forms of neoliberal economics and democracy. Second, nation-states police private sphere issues of Muslims. Three, Muslims are excluded out of the principal of universal political inclusion. All of these measures are distinctly articulated as necessary to Muslim populations.

My use of exceptionalism is also different from scholarship that has examined how particular Muslims become exceptions to other Muslims, such as some Arab Muslims in the US. A study conducted by Howell and Jamal (2009) looks at how Arab Detroit has become exceptional to

Arabs across the US. They are exceptions in part because of the unique status of the Arabs in

Detroit. Two interconnected dynamics are at work in this respect. Arab Americans of Detroit live at the intersections of the American dream as integrated, economically productive and politically astute citizens, more so than anywhere else in the US, and also suffer detention and represent the poorest of Arab Americans across the nation. The case of the Ismailis in Canada does have some resonance with some Arab Americans in Detroit in terms of their upward mobility. One such manifestation of this that is similar in both cases is the prominence of the number of Ismaili Muslims elected as political leaders in Canada, as opposed to other Muslims. In Detroit, Arab Muslims make up a distinct number of elected officials compared to other Muslims in other US states. What is different about these two groups however is that Muslim exceptionality is related directly to Ismailis’ religious identity as a group that inhabits ethnic diversity, but is represented publically through a single marker of identification. In the case of Arab Americans, their exceptionalism is related to their Arab identity as Christians and Muslims, along with specific ethnic distinctions (i.e., Lebanese,

Palestinian, Saudi). Islam and Muslimness, through an uncontested and unitary Ismaili identity, is

135 integral to Muslim exceptionality and exceptional Muslims, whilst at the same time differences at the intersection of gender, race, class, and ethnicity are very much at play in their public persona.19

As a note on the outset, it is important to not conflate exceptionalism with arguments about model minorities, even as the model minority construct placed onto specific raced, classed, and gendered bodies is part of the making of exceptionalism. Puar and Rai (2004) argue that the model minority as a marker of particular non-white bodies “is predominantly a reference to economic exceptionalism, upward class mobility, and educational excellence, but it does have specific gendered, racialized and national components of difference” (p. 77). Immigrant and racialized bodies become model minorities as a way to meet new neoliberal market demands by being malleable and assimilative labour. As well, newer race making processes delineate between racialized men and women, privileging those that most closely “behave nationally”20 (Arat-Koc,

2005). In the LaFontaine Baldwin Lecture by the Aga Khan, he begins his speech with such a performance:

Many thanks go to all of you who are attending this lecture – or are watching and listening

from elsewhere. It is a busy autumn night, I know. For one thing, I believe the undefeated

Maple Leafs are playing on television at this very hour!

19 Given that the Ismaili community are comprised of Muslims ethnically identified that are statistically vulnerable to poverty and marginalization in Canada (Afghans, Pakistanis and Iranians) despite educational attainment, it is hard to know whether Ismailis from these ethnic groups do better in those ways then their Muslim co-religionists, as official data is not available. However, the participants in this study had the impression that they do better in Canada because they are Ismaili with access to particular resources and supports, even if there are those that struggle in similar ways to other Muslims. See Moghissi et al. (2009).

20 By this, Arat-Koc means those that use language that is deemed officially Canadian, such as talk about hockey, or try to perform Canadian by affirming national symbols such as the national anthem or multiculturalism.

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Rita Dhamoon (2009) differentiates that Muslim women model minorities are those that are considered better or more “pliable and obedient” to the nation, than Black or Indigenous women who are deemed burdens on the system and sexually deviant (p.136). Dhamoon’s point is relevant in so far as it reflects the relational ways in which model minorities are constructed vis a vis other racialized groups, but she does not take into account the differing racialization processes of Muslims themselves, raising questions about who in fact can be a model Muslim minority.21 Thobani’s

(2007) conception of the model minority in relation to the good Muslim refers to those who “are styled as anti-hijabi’s….they are appropriately grateful for having been allowed to partake in its [the

West’s] civilizational project, and they want to aid in its quest to liberate their co-religionists, especially women around the world” (p. 237). Thobani’s arguments about the good Muslim, as they can be models in relation to other Muslims, depends on the binary between those Muslim women who embrace Islam at the behest of the West, and those that are its most ardent allies. Certainly

Muslim exceptionality encompasses these processes, but it also points to other interconnected iterations of relationality.

In the case of the Ismailis, they have been referenced as “model minorities,” often without naming them as such. For example, in Jonah Steinberg’s (2011) ethnography on Ismailism as an alternative globalization, he argues that global networks of Ismaili populations in different parts of the world “are socialized to the values of modernity, capitalism, rational individualism, and modern discourses of rights and membership” (p. 16). However, where he differs from the conception of the model minority as a class marker or simply an ally of the state, is that these values are a part of the

Ismaili religious acumen. The Ismaili project of community and individual development is rooted in

21 See Jamillah Karim’s (2008) work on African American and South Asian Sunni Muslims in Chicago.

137 becoming citizens that embody the modern subject with all its economic, educational and civic attributes, but along a humanist Islamic ethos. For instance, the notion of educational excellence as a mode for the socialization Steinberg is pointing out is continuously articulated by the current

Imam and the former, his grandfather, as way out of poverty and marginalization, but also as something inherent for which Muslims should strive for. The notion of living in a merit-based society, as articulated by the current Aga Khan, has meant that Ismailis are strongly encouraged to gain the highest of education and give back as citizens of countries to which Ismailis owe their civic and national duty. Thus, the model minority figure is one that is not simply based on Ismailis’ fitting into the modern capitalist paradigm, but rather something particular to their religious worldview, extending them beyond such a construct and moving them into exceptionality.

Summary

In this chapter I have presented the key theoretical frames and concepts through which I make sense of the encounters in this ethnography. Encounters, following Sara Ahmed’s (2000) work on “Strange Encounters” provides the theoretical landscape to make sense of what constitutes an encounter between asymmetrical elements. The gendered colonial race nation provides the key concepts that provide theoretical lenses through which to make sense of the Canadian nation-state contexts in nation building, subjectivity, governmentality and coloniality. Finally, I present exceptionality as a theoretical concept that allows the building of the theoretical notion of Muslim exceptionality.

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Chapter 5: Muslim Exceptionality and Exceptional Muslims: Arrival, Values and Spatial Formations

Madame Adrienne Clarkson…was present at the Foundation Stone Ceremony for this

building – and she thoughtfully predicted then, that this edifice would not be just another

monumental structure, but would, both in its unity and its transparency, represent, as she

put it, “the way in which the world can work when we are all at our best. (Aga Khan,

inaugural speech, Delegation of Ismaili Imamat, 2008)

Walking down Sussex Drive from Rideau Street, I can’t help but sense the “officialness” in the air.

Noticing the architectural and beige earth toned color cohesion of the buildings on Sussex, the sense of symmetry and continuity is amplifying. Passing the many embassies, the old war museum, the

Canadian mint, and coming to the Delegation building of the Ismaili Imamat, I have a feeling of arrival – an arrival not many can claim.22 The crystal white and transparent exterior is inviting, as is the manicured healthy green landscape. Walking around the milky white and glass walled building;

I enter on the opposite side of Sussex. Stepping into the Delegation, right away I am greeted by a young woman sharply dressed in business casual attire. Her presence is warm, serious, and professional. My eyes quickly open to the garden between the welcome area and what looks like the main foyer. The minimalist décor, furniture and clean walls immediately evoke a modern sensibility.

Early for the tour, the welcome host and I chit chat about Ottawa and I ask her “who visits the delegation building?” She tells me that 60 percent of the visitors are non-Ismailis. My questions

22 I say this because as a Muslim, racialized person and Ismaili, entering such a space of representation in Canada is a distinction that is acquired during a time when Muslims struggle to be able to represent themselves in terms they find value in. I have a real feeling of having come to something and into something of socio political power and importance that other racialized immigrant communities in Canada struggle with.

139 continue and I ask her why non-Ismailis visit the building. She says that many who don’t know about the Ismailis initially come to see the architecture because it’s a featured building here on

Sussex. Most non-Ismailis when they walk in, are curious and don’t know much about the Ismaili community, but after the tour they are very pleased with what the building stands for and inhabits.

Enthusiastically the tour guides tells me that they are quite happy learning about the Ismailis.

I query why she thinks the Delegation building was built here, on Sussex? Smiling warmly, she explains that being on Sussex does not have meaning in and of itself – “the building just happens to have been built here, it could have been built anywhere but it is an honour to have such a building amongst so many other prestigious ones.” I get the impression that her professional and diplomatic demeanour is genuine, ironic, and a necessary performance. Looking out the window, on one side of the delegation sits the Saudi Arabian Embassy; on the other side, the Canadian Foreign

Affairs building, and with some steps down across the street the Prime Minister’s house. The optics of the building and its spatial arrangement raises the questions of who can have proximity with whom, and what does the strategic placing of the building say about the Ismailis’ role and position in the Canadian socio-political landscape? Despite the tour guide’s desire not to politicize the presence of the delegation building, the Aga Khan in fact, quite clearly wanted this building in

Canada’s capital and particularly on Confederation Boulevard. As was noted in the online magazine

Canadian Architect, “When the Aga Khan was looking for a site he wanted his building to be on a section of Sussex Drive that is part of Confederation Boulevard, a 7.5-kilometre ceremonial route containing some of Canada's most important institutions” (Chodikoff, 2010).

The delegation of the Ismaili Imamat opened its doors on December 6th, 2008. The purpose of the building, as described in their promotional material, reiterated by the tour guides and on the

AKDN website, says:

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A secular facility, the Delegation offers a centre for building relationships, enabling quiet

diplomacy, disseminating knowledge and information, while reflecting the wide-ranging

humanistic and humanitarian agenda of the AKDN.

The purpose of the building is closely linked to where it is placed, its design, and representation. Given that the building is of the Ismaili Imamat, making it a representative of a

Muslim religious community and not a State, its presence is also unique. No other community outside of a State has such representation on Sussex, raising the level of the delegation’s prestige and extraordinary status. Building on Confederation Boulevard is tightly regulated by the National

Capital Commission that is “accountable to parliament…and reports through the minister of foreign affairs.”23 They decide who are the most suitable clients and buildings to their goals of enhancing and representing national pride and identity.

Built by the architect Fumihiko Maki, the features of the building open access into entanglements of the sacred and secular, even though the building itself is hailed as a secular facility. Walking through the building I am met with geometrical designed jali (curtain) stencilling the view outside from the foyer, clean openness, and quiet ambiance – “traditional” Islamic elements accentuating modernity in the structure. Fumihiko Maki’s attention to every detail and the elements in the building are noteworthy; whether one is gazing up at the glass crystal rock inspired ceiling, or noticing the lines that lead the eyes from the Canadian maple floors to the glass walls, or the charbag garden that welcomes water in its seasonal manifestations, or the Haida “Bear

Mother” sculpture gifted to the Aga Khan by the Ismaili community in Canada.24 These features of the building, as the tour guide explains, provoke reflections on themes such as transparency,

23 http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/about-ncc.

24 Charbag garden is a traditional Muslim landscape design, which has spiritual metaphors.

141 reflections of light, beauty, diversity of shapes and forms, clarity and contrast, multiplicity of meaning, and nature. Although the tour guide speaks of these themes in non-religious terms, they subtly layer contemporary modern and post-modern acuities with Islamic cosmological metaphors in a constructed materiality. Every aspect of the building speaks something about the intentions, hopes and goals of the Ismailis’, the Aga Khan, and the Canadianess of the building. The Aga

Khan has therefore noted that the building is:

A new creative link between the spiritual dimensions of Islam and the cultures of the West.

Even more particularly, it represents another new bridge between the peoples of Islam and

the peoples of Canada.

In 2005 at the Sod Turning ceremony of the Delegation of Ismaili Imamat, Adrienne

Clarkson (2005) made the following comments to the Aga Khan and the guests:

As Governor General, I am proud that what Canada is – what it will be, what it seeks to do

in the world – is so highly respected by the spiritual leader of the Ismaili community. This

building proves the depth of that regard. With your perspective and experience, you have

seen that, among the nations of the world, we have created a unique model for human

society. Our celebrated diversity, our inclusive views of citizenship, and our peaceable

ways of inhabiting our vast territory make us deeply conscious of the larger world. We are

honoured that our capital has been chosen for this significant new opening, as well as for

an exciting shared venture. It is said that chance makes our parents but choice makes our

friends. It is marvellous that we have chosen each other as friends. We will bring different

kinds of knowing to each other, different ways to see and to feel, and from all this

something beautiful and rich will arise. Please be assured that you are welcome here.

Know when you speak, Canada and the world will listen.

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Clarkson’s words are illuminated in mid-October 2010 when Zijad Delic, Executive Director of the Canadian Islamic Congress, was to speak at Canada’s National Defense in Ottawa, while the

Aga Khan, at the annual LaFontaine Baldwin Lecture. Maclean’s magazine reported that, although thought to be a moderate, Delics’s speaking invitation was revoked by the government due to his associations with the Canadian Islamic Congress, a Muslim faith-based organization in Canada whose various positions are considered “extremist” to the Canadian government. On the other hand, the author of the article, John Geddes (2010) wrote, “the Aga Khan’s speech went off without a hitch because of his [emphasis added] achievement to present himself and the Ismailis as constructive non-threatening face of Islam.”

From the placing and opening of the delegation building on Sussex to Clarkson’s notion that

“we choose our friends,” to Geddes’s (2010) argument that unsurprisingly the Aga Khan’s speech went off smoothly – the construction of the Muslim friend is made to be the labour of Muslims’ ability to inhabit a particular kind of Islam and Muslimness. This “face of Islam,” whether in the actual embodiment of the Aga Khan, the delegation building or in specific discourses, is distinct, and its presence within Canada is articulated as instructive and productive. Based on Clarkson’s and

Geddes’s words, the multicultural nation is an arbiter delineating which religious differences can speak, be heard, and take up space, and those differences that the nation cannot have or be. It would be too simple from this vantage point to argue that this exemplifies the ‘good Muslim’/‘bad Muslim’ divide (Maira, 2009; Mamdani, 2004).25 Rather, as I will argue in this chapter, these events and

25 Mamdani’s project is to look at how Muslims become good or bad through political need, investment and coercion; that the good and bad Muslim depends on which side of the political and economic agenda Muslims fall under. Maira builds on his work but shifts her focus to the political responses to the war on terror, through which particular Muslims such as feminists, activists and others become good for instance, by being the “native informant.” She gives the example of Ayan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji, who are good in their willingness to expose Islam. Bad Muslims do not speak about a bad Islam.

143 others underscore the making of Muslim exceptionality and exceptional Muslims of the Ismailis in particular. I put forth that discursive, spatial, and bodily formations, function to create Muslim exceptionality as it emerges between communities and the state, as it is placed on bodies, and remakes geographies.

Muslim exceptionality occurs first, by establishing Muslims in a co-constructive relationship with the State and second, through becoming agents of distinction and achievement, at the conjuncture of secular liberal and Islamic discourses and anti-orientalist intentions, both within the

Canadian nation and transnationally. This happens through three pedagogical moves: becoming distinct as different within an existing difference (i.e., difference from other Muslims, or from other racialized or Indigenous Peoples); becoming distinguished through achievement; and performing excellence as an anti-orientalizing effect.26 Therefore, exceptionality is about more than the acceptability of an alternative difference. Interrelated is exercising the exceptional – that is, to stretch skin and boundaries in difference and against difference, by becoming distinguished, outstanding and excellent.

Creating Exceptionality and Embodying the Exceptional In the last decade there have been public events associated with the Ismailis, in which Prime

Minister Harper and other high profile Canadians, such as Adrienne Clarkson (former Governor

General) and John Ralston Saul, have been involved. These events create intimacy between the

Ismaili community and the Canadian State, and therefore are quite unique, as Muslims in Canada

26 I use the notion of pedagogy inspired from Jacqui Alexander’s (2005) notion that, “Pedagogies function as an archive of empire’s counterpart, of opposition to it, of the knowledges and ideologies it summons, and of the ghosts that haunt it” (p. 2). Further, her notion of pedagogy is pointing out the mapping of practices of dominance that are “knitted into the interstices of multiple institutions as well as into everyday life” (p. 4). I evoke the notion of pedagogy as a way to understand exceptionality as practices interconnected with pasts and presents that call exceptionality into existence, connected to empire and other intentions and processes for religious racialized communities.

144 often find themselves contending with the Canadian governments’ paternalistic discipline, as opposed to collegial partnership. Such leaders have articulated their position with regards to the Aga

Khan and Ismailis, in their discursive and physical place and relevancy in the Canadian socio- cultural-political landscape. Four events in particular have significance to the mapping and production of Muslim exceptionalism: the opening of the Ismaili Delegation building on Sussex

Drive in Ottawa; the Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili Center and Aga Khan Museum in

Toronto; the conferring of Canadian citizenship on the Aga Khan; and the LaFontaine Baldwin

Lecture. These events and what we can learn from them are distinct moments in Canadian history, as perhaps no other racialized group, Indigenous nation or Muslim leader, are coming to have such a visible presence and influence in this way. It is in the kind of relationship that is being built between the Aga Khan, Ismailis and the Canadian state, that this will become clear. The work of Muslim exceptionality then is interdependent on necessary contradictions. There are specific discourses and practices that when brought together – produce Muslim exceptionality and exceptional Muslims. In this way, it is not one event, person, idea or convergence that produces exceptionality, but rather an assemblage in order to become distinct through difference, to be distinguished through achievement, and to perform excellence as an effect of anti-orientalism.

I specifically examine three practices of exceptionality making. First, I look at how narratives of arrival suture the Ismaili community and Canadian exceptionalism, which in turn produces Muslim exceptionality. Second, I take up the work of values as an embodiment where

Islam and Canada converge in rather unique ways. Finally, I return to where we began this chapter with the Delegation building, and show how Muslim exceptionality emerges through particular spatial formations linked to ideas of translucency, nature, and fetishization of difference. A note before we move forward. In this chapter I argue exceptionality in relation to Ismailis as a global and

145 community formation in Canada, vis a vis the Aga Khan and his institutions and projects.

Obscuring racialized, ethnicized, classed and gendered aspects of individual and collectivities of

Ismailis, is part of the making of a community of exceptionality, in order to appear as a cohesive formation. Although as we shall see, even the collective Ismaili subjectivity is gendered, raced, and classed – integral to exceptionality making.

Narrating Arrival But even as we look ahead, it is only right that we look also to the past, including of

course, the story of Canada’s historic welcome to displaced Ismailis in the 1970s and later,

and to their successful integration. Certainly this process, and the contributions Ismailis

have made in so many walks of life, have also reflected the encouragement they received

to rebuild here, their traditional institutions and social structures.27

Jacques Derrida (2005) has argued that unconditional hospitality towards the other by nations is not possible given that, the “gift” of entrance into the nation transforms itself into, “the rights and the duties, the borders, passports and doors, whence the immigration laws, since immigration must, it is said, be controlled” (p. 6). His words are a reminder. The generosity of the nation is not without its limits. However, narratives of the “Other” entering the nation through the generosity of the state, obscures such limits. This is because such narratives reinscribe the nation as first and foremost, benevolent. Arrival stories into Canada install the Canadian nation and communities of others in a deep connectivity that keep alive the multicultural imaginary.

27 http://www.akdn.org/Content/993 (Aga Khan Speech excerpt, at the Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili Centre, Toronto, the Aga Khan Museum and their Park)

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As I noted at the beginning of this chapter, the Aga Khan in October 2010, was the keynote speaker for the LaFontaine Baldwin lecture series held annually. I had the opportunity to attend the lecture and also the follow up event the day after, in which high level civil servants, educators and others, delved into making sense of the Aga Khan’s speech through small and large group discussion.

The lecture series set up through the Institute for Canadian Citizenship established by John

Ralston Saul and Adrienne Clarkson draws high profile individuals to speak on Canadian citizenship, civic participation and democracy. The ICC is a nonprofit whose mandate is to support active citizenship for new Canadian citizens.28 The lecture series is named after Louis Hippolyte

LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin – reformers in 1840s British Canada, who were responsible for bringing English and French into cooperation to contribute to the forming of the Canadian nation.

The lecture series and this particular lecture as John Raulston Saul articulated, reflect historical evidence of a great tradition of cooperation and inclusion of diverse peoples into the fold of the

Canadian nation. In this way, Canadian exceptionalism is integral to the “imagined” nation

(Anderson, 1983), and a dispelled colonial historical narrative. In this respect Eve Haque (2012) states:

This projection both domestically and internationally, of Canada as a multicultural,

bilingual, tolerant, and diverse nation not only severs the link to the mother country but

also grounds the formation of a distinct Canadian identity in opposition to other nation

states. In particular, it distinguishes Canada from the American melting pot to the south,

28 http://www.icc-icc.ca/en/. The institute has three projects through which they accomplish this. Community led citizenship ceremonies; Cultural passes to new Canadian citizens and their family to access cultural activities. The Lafontaine Baldwin lecture series is held annually.

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and allows Canada to portray itself in contrast as a cultural mosaic and a kinder, gentler

nation. (p. 23)

The narrative of an “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983) of the nation however does not stand on its own, but requires companion narratives that merge to present one story that qualifies the ongoing nature of the nation. In other words, the story of the imagined nation as a unique multicultural project is kept alive through the entrance of Others who reify certain story lines of the nation. Arrival narratives, why and how communities of Others enter Canada, concentrate the appeal and longevity of Canadian exceptionalism in its open and well conditioned embrace of the world’s Others. Simultaneously, this arrival makes invisible white settler arrivals on colonial land.

Therefore, inviting the Aga Khan to come speak on Canadian nationhood and its pluralist ethos is continued evidence of what is inherently and uniquely the Canadian way – to include the voices of its diversity, even though the lived experiences of most racialized and Indigenous Peoples do not reflect this. Further, the multi-cultural entrance obscures how “movements of racialized people” through multiculturalism, binds them to a Canada putting them in paradoxical position to that of

Indigenous Peoples (Lawrence, 2010, p. 12; Thobani, 2007).

At the same time, it presents a distinct moment in Canadian history in which a Muslim leader is poised to reflect back to Canada, what makes Canada what it is. Working against the conception that Ismailis are outside the global Muslim community, the Ismailis place Islam on the

Canadian landscape. This is even more crucial because the Aga Khan becomes distinct – situated within a Muslim and Islamic difference that circulates prominently in the national narrative. For example, the Prime Minister (September 6, 2011) speaks of the Aga Khan and Ismailis in stark contrast to his most recent publically stated top worry in Canada – Islamicism. This is his concern,

148 that political Islam is dispersed amongst us, and that we are in a battle to protect our borders and way of life. The Islam of the Ismailis’ is reflected as apolitical.

Both days, the lecture and post event were hosted and facilitated by John Raulston Saul and

Adrienne Clarkson. In the opening remarks by Saul at the follow up event, he commented that never in Canadian history had anyone articulated to Canadians an understanding of Canadian pluralism in the way the Aga Khan had. Now that the Aga Khan is a recipient of honorary Canadian citizenship, he spoke both as a Muslim leader and as he described himself at the lecture, as an honorary

“Canadian.” The atmosphere at the follow up event was buzzing with excitement as everyone keenly went through every line of the Aga Khan’s speech. Observing the event myself, it was almost surreal to watch the dynamics, as it was clear that Saul, Clarkson and the others, were highly invested in the Aga Khan’s words and what it meant for Canada. I sat next to an elderly woman from a very prominent family of the Canadian elite. In no time, she began to recall her first experience of meeting Ismailis soon after their arrival in Canada in the mid 1970s. She told us how impressed she was with the Ismailis because despite having just arrived in Canada, they were helping other immigrants by volunteering their time. Despite coming from such difficult experiences, she exhorted, that they dived right into being Canadians. Echoing this, in a recent article in the Vancouver Sun on East Africans’ arrival in Canada on the 40th anniversary of South

Asians expulsion from Uganda, Tara Carmen (2012) reported a government official explaining:

These were business-oriented people who were used to having servants and drivers, Sethi

recalls. They were generally more interested in office work than jobs involving manual

labour in the resource industry. They were, however, outgoing and enterprising people who

wanted to embrace their new country, wore Western-style clothing for their arrival in

Canada and were eager to get things done quickly, Sethi says. They wanted to learn

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outdoor sports unheard of in Uganda, such as cross-country skiing, and were particularly

enthusiastic about fishing. About half the families that arrived in Prince George migrated

to the Lower Mainland or Okanagan, where they could start businesses more easily, Sethi

recalls. Overall, she says, they set a good example for Canadians that hard work leads to

success.

The picture that we get from Sethi’s words is that the arrival of the Ismailis was tempered by their modern embodiments and their desire to be like “the Canadian.”29 The line drawn from 1841 to the 1970s multiculturalism policy and the Aga Khan’s speech in 2010 is significant, as it shows a departure from the arrival of danger on our shores, and situates the story of Ismailis’ arrival and settlement in Canada within a dynamic of care, humanitarianism, generosity and benevolence. The

Aga Khan begins his LaFonatine Baldwin Lecture with a timeline:

As you may know, my close ties with Canada go back almost four decades, to the time

when many thousands of Asian refugees from Uganda, including many Ismailis, were

welcomed so generously in this society. These ties have continued through the cooperation

of our Aga Khan Development Network with several Canadian institutions, including the

establishment, four years ago, of the Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa. I had the

opportunity last week to chair a highly productive meeting there of the Centre’s Board of

Directors. Earlier this year, we also celebrated here in Toronto the Foundation Ceremony

for the Aga Khan Museum and a new Ismaili Centre. So there are powerful chords of

29 Kim’s (2000, 2008) thesis shares some of the experiences of racism East Africans faced when first coming to Canada. Her participants also talk about their relationship as colonial middle groups and how this allowed them to learn how to navigate racism and exclusions in Canada.

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memory – from four decades ago, four years ago, and even four months ago, that tie me

closely to Canada.

The play on “four” here at once gets the audience’s attention to a coincidence of some kind or of some greater force, perhaps even something of spiritual or transcendental magnitude, moving the importance of the relationship between the Ismailis, himself and Canada, beyond the material.

The four decades of close ties the Aga Khan establishes, originates in the terrible expulsion of

Asians from Uganda by the dictator Idi Amin in 1972. It was through this event that Ismailis from

East Africa were welcomed into Canada, which he describes as an act of generosity. The very arrival of Ismailis made through a deal between Pierre Trudeau and the Aga Khan represents itself an exceptional moment in Canada, as never had such a large group of non-white refugees entered

Canada under such an agreement. In the same article mentioned above, Canadian visa officer

Michael Molloy said that Canada took in mostly Ismailis from Uganda and those that were not nationals of other countries such as Britain.

The Canadian team evacuated 4,420 Ugandan refugees on charter flights between the end

of September and November 1972. A further 1,278 followed on commercial flights after

stopovers to visit family in other countries, according to Citizenship and Immigration

Canada. Canada’s number was second only to Britain, which took in about 30,000 of its

own nationals during that time, Molloy says. India took in about 4,500, the U.S. took 1,200

and various European countries also accepted small numbers of claimants. “We did it the

Canadian way,” Molloy says, adding that as one former refugee explained to him later:

“The British had to take us. You wanted to take us. (Carmen, 2012)

In Molloy’s account, “the Canadian way” is particularly noteworthy. What this moment exemplifies for him is something inherent to Canada. The arrival of Ismaili South Asians from

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Uganda, symbolizes the nation outside of its colonial advent and racist immigration history, or the processes of racialization that were embedded in the point system of immigration at that time. The government did accept those that did not meet the point system criteria exactly due to the extraneous circumstances, but none the less the point system was applied, a reminder of the politics of entrance into the nation. Adrienne Clarkson recounts in this history that the Aga Khan had a key role to play in Canada’s involvement in bringing these group of Ismailis to Canada:

When we first met in the early seventies, Your Highness, you spoke of the plight of your

people in East Africa, where tyranny was looming over them. You negotiated the entry of

thousands of Ismailis into Canada by personally committing yourself to their successful

establishment as immigrants and then as citizens of our country. As Canadians, we are

proud to have opened our doors to a persecuted people. (Clarkson, 2005)

The Aga Khan in his speech at the Foundation Ceremony of the Delegation building had this to say:

Nearly three and half decades ago, Canada opened her shores to dispossessed thousands –

Ismailis and others – who had been expelled from their homeland, Uganda, which was then

in the grip of tyranny. Many from such distressed lands as Afghanistan and Tajikistan,

have also found here a welcome home. With industry, intelligence, education and self-help,

but above all with all the reassurances that a just, pluralist society bestows, they were able

rapidly to rebuild their lives and institutions, and they are discharging their responsibilities

as citizens of this great land and to the less privileged elsewhere. (Aga Khan, 2008)

Thus, the compelling story of persecution, displacement and statelessness of these groups of

Ismailis, and the equally compelling role of Canada in their survival and success provides a narrative thread, which the Aga Khan calls the “power chords of memory” that establishes Canada as home. The experience of persecution works in dichotomy to what is or what will be, the

152 experience for such Muslims after coming to Canada. The arrival narrative places Canada in a sphere of morality and political practice that knows what its job is in the world as a rescuer and purveyor of justice, as opposed to self-interested. This is in contrast to Canada’s own anatomy of violence.

Through recounting history, from the events that led the first Ismailis here, to the subsequent years of marking their presence in Canada through the institutions the Aga Khan has set up, and ultimately through him being gifted citizenship, we are left with the clear picture that Canada as home is a place of; safety, inclusion, growth and success. What is obscured in this narrative is how the hospitality of Canada was not only a benevolent act, but also a political one that cannot erase the conditional nature of being welcomed.30 This conditionality, however, is tempered by the ongoing

“chord” that feeds copulation of the state and communities of others.

Most recently, Harper (2008) also presided over the opening of the Baitun Nur Ahmadiyya mosque, in which the arrival story of the Ahmadiyya into Canada was significant. He situated the community within the Canadian narrative as those “who endured persecution in their homelands have found religious freedom in Canada.” Although it is true that the Ahmadiyya have been evicted out of many Muslim countries, as to be Ahmadiyya has been declared illegal, the role of Canada to give religious freedom retains its significance in its anti-persecution role.

The reasons for being persecuted people in the case of the Ismailis in the 1970s, and later for

Ismailis from Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and those of the Ahmadiyya, are different. However, in all cases to arrive in Canada as persecuted Muslims, makes them unique communities who rise out of such awful situations and come out successful through Canada and their inherent hard work. But

30 This is particularly true as securing the entrance of a group of peoples at one time might be different from the entrance of individuals who might be sanctioned by foreign policy and other restrictions. At the same time, it points out that not all groups can find entrance unless otherwise legitimated through forms of institutional structures or bodies of power.

153 not all Muslims who face persecution can arrive in Canada, or have their arrival celebrated or even wanted. For example, Palestinian Muslims are not accorded the same public honouring, particularly as this government takes a pro-Zionist policy towards the Israeli state. The Canadian government’s most recent decision to sever diplomatic ties with Iran has come under much criticism as it effects

Iranian Canadians in Iran, and those who wish to come to Canada. This raises the question of what kinds of resources, networks and alliances make possible and insulate the arrival of particular communities and their subsequent narratives?31 We know from Clarkson’s words that the Aga Khan, for whom it was economically and socially possible, promised himself as insurance for the Ismailis communities’ success. It was his friendship with Trudeau that made this kind of promise viable.

This was a relationship outside of state-to-state negotiations, but very much embedded within social and religious capital.

This social capital and also economic promise has allowed other agreements. There was an agreement between the Government of Quebec, the Aga Khan and his institutions, to allow the entrance of Afghan Ismailis in the 1990s. More recently, agreements were made between the province of Alberta and the Aga Khan to work in collaboration for poverty alleviation. Such agreements bypass the settler colonial nation, by working through its multicultural framework for relationship building. It is very important to note that the Aga Khan, and particularly South Asian and East African Ismailis, entered Canada in many cases with social, class and race privilege,

31 Ahmed (2000) argues that to have a place in the multicultural nation is made possible by having come from another place. Through “welcoming the stranger as the origin of difference produces the figure of the stranger, as the one who can be taken in.” She goes on to say that this involves differentiation; however, in which some strangers “appearance of difference can be claimed by the nation, and those stranger stranger who may yet be expelled, whose difference may be dangerous to the well being of even the most heterogeneous of nations” (p. 97). Considering the Ismailis, and in particular the East African Ismailis as subjects of colonial modernity, it raises the question of whether they eclipse strangerness in that it is not simply their difference that the nation claims, but what they reiterate to the nation as modern.

154 having had to negotiate their survival through colonial power and dominant structures in the past.

For example, considered “middle men” in East Africa between the black Africans and the colonial powers, they were raised in human hierarchy, even as they faced marginalization and racism as

South Asians both in Uganda and in Canada. Further, the Aga Khan’s position as a Muslim leader is not directly connected to any Muslim country, distancing him from State to State politics or challenges of the “Muslim world.” Instead, having had close ties and history with British colonial powers, and working from and with now more broadly western States, produces legitimacy not available to others. Finally, since the Aga Khan III, there have been very explicit policies and discourses of the Ismailis being the “modern religious,” by adapting particular aspects of Western society. All of these factors change the perspective of the kind of Muslim racialized group entering the Canadian nation. It shifts the arrival story. Simultaneously, the arrival of Afghan Ismailis also becomes represented through benevolence, yet they come as very different Ismailis, even as they are subsumed under the Ismaili collectivity.

Generosity of the state is not only a onetime event in the arrival of “Others.” The narrative thread, as the “chords of memory” and the act of being allowed to build spaces (institutions) and create partnerships, produces a visceral relationship between this Muslim community and Canada and points to the ways they are “stuck together,” to borrow from Ahmed (2000). And this stickyness is often affirmed by Ismailis who arrived in the 1970s, in their national love (regenerating the aura of generosity) articulated for Pierre Trudeau specifically, and the multiculturalism policy in particular, that gave them a place to come to when they had lost their actual homes.

The generosity of the State and the distinctiveness of the Ismailis to other Muslims and racialized groups also become clear in how the Aga Khan himself represents achievement and excellence. For example, the Aga Khan is only one of five and the second religious leader to

155 receive honorary Canadian citizenship.32 He was also bestowed the Companion Order of Canada in

2004. The following was reported about this honour:

The Aga Khan was invested as an honorary Companion, the Order of Canada’s highest

formal civilian tribute, “in recognition of his life of generosity, of thoughtful stewardship,

and of benevolent spiritual direction,” said the Governor General. “He is part of a very tiny

group of international figures to whom our country pays its highest respects…” (Aga Khan

Conferred Companion of the Order of Canada, 2006, June 6)

These kinds of moments of being distinguished are both an affirmation of the promise the

Aga Khan made to the Canadian state in welcoming his people, but also a symbol that arrival leads to an upward trajectory.33 Ismailis' compelling narratives of arrival point out that they have always had a special place in the heart of Canada. It is the continuity of the relationship between Canada as a state, the Ismailis as a community, and the Aga Khan their leader that supports the idea that this group of Muslims are not only unique, but are the progressive non-norm from other Muslims and other racialized communities in Canada. Thus, they are distinct through difference. As Harper noted in his speech at the Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili Centre and Aga Khan Museum in Toronto,

“And the Ismaili Centre here is a symbol of how the Canadian Ismaili community has integrated into Canadian society, a mark of Canadian pluralism at its best.” Going back to LaFontaine

Baldwin, the Ismailis are a symbol of the evolution of a Canada of cooperation, and inclusion as

32 Raoul Wallenburg (1985), Nelson Mandela (1993), Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Daila Lama (2006), Aung Sun Suu Kyi (2012)

33 The importance of the racialized neo-liberal subject is relevant to arrival stories in the production of Muslim exceptionality. Distinction in difference projects through an economized body. Meeting the ideals of labour and productivity in which Othered bodies contribute to the nation as an engine of capital, reiterates why they were allowed to enter in the first place.

156 labourers of national progress – embodiments of exceptionality.34 Arrival narratives do the work of reiterating the exceptionality of the Canadian nation. This occurs through producing Ismaili exceptionality in their embodiments, narrations, and animations as immigrants that prove the nation’s intake of diversity, in that they can confirm what the state recognizes through other difference, and what they hope to project as Muslims in the national narrative.

Working Values for Exceptionality Henderson and McEwan (2005) argue that shared values have a significant role in articulating and reshaping national identities. Such values articulated regionally or nationally by political leaders, garner a sense of belonging in citizens. Values as criteria for belonging are not only the concern of leaders, but also number one on many Canadian minds. In a recent phone survey conducted by Environics Research Group, Canadians believed that all immigrants entering Canada should adopt Canadian values of tolerance and gender equity.35 It is hard not to read these specific concerns about gender equity and tolerance in light of recent public cases of domestic violence against Muslim women, such as the case of Aqsa Parvez and four Afghan women killed by family members in Ottawa, the Burqa ban at citizenship ceremonies, religious accommodation issues in

Toronto schools, and the need to remind Canadian citizens that the state is vigilant in defining the

34 The arrival narrative as discourse at a meta-level of national consciousness requires circulation, as in Foucault’s (1978) sense. The sanctioning of such arrival narratives relies on mechanisms of approval and authority, here being the Canadian state. Discursive sanctioning also occurs through multiculturalism, as an ascribing technology penetrating and giving birth to the body of the “Other,” which also then sketches legitimacy onto such bodies. Foucault’s argument that discourses in fact form objects is salient in how exceptionality then maps onto Ismailis, making them visible as a collective body through arrival narratives in the nation space.

35 http://www.environics.ca. Environics is also conducting an online survey called, “find your values tribe” and place on the Canadian values map.

157 parameters of a gendered liberal tolerance.36 These moments act as national urgencies for regrouping what the “we” of Canada stands for and against, with the very “core” of Canada at stake.

In fact, the National Post on January 31st 2011 reported that the Muslim population in

Canada was going to jump to 6.6% of the population by 2030, setting off alarm bells about whether

Canada is ready to deal with more extremists entering the country. The Post also reported that this was creating debates amongst moderate Muslims, especially because the Canadian education system is ill prepared for young Muslims who don’t adhere to the ideal of pluralism in Canada (Lewis,

2011). In this climate, the discourse and perceived embodiment of particular values is imperative for Muslim exceptionalism.

This kind of concern is also not new. It is Islamic values as embodied by Muslims that have produced the moral and ontological distinction of Muslims from the Western world since 748 A.D.

(Sardar, 1999). Whether reported by scholars of Christendom, the crusaders of the past or modern nations weeding out threat, it is the very belief systems of Muslims that have created the everyday monsters and barbarians of Islam. For example, the notion of “defending Canadian values” whether in mobilizing Canadian troops in Afghanistan, or justifying security measures such as the re- introduction of Bill c-31 by the Harper government, these are key discursive moves that dichotomize the morality of Muslims and legitimate measures to quarantine and eradicate the “Muslim problem” domestically around the world.

The disharmony of values has also been identified by some Muslims themselves quoting that their beliefs and enactments of those beliefs are often different from other Canadians (Zine, 2006),

36 See Wendy Brown (2006) on the role of liberal tolerance, particularly in what it seeks to offer through the disembodied “figure of the individuated subject,” to those who are deemed as cultural through religion.

158 reflecting the challenges that some Muslims face in feeling understood and finding comfort living in

Canada. However, as Canadian values are being defended against Muslim values through military and policing missions, and differences are felt, Canadian values and those of Islam are also bonding in friendship.

In 2008, Prime Minister Harper inaugurated the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat in Ottawa, along with the Aga Khan. Although the delegation building is said to be secular, its nature is rooted in Islam. As the Aga Khan put in his inaugural address, calling it a “Canadian building” – “It affirms our intent to share, within a Western setting, the best of Islamic life and heritage.” Later, I will do a specific analysis of the building itself, but for now what is relevant is to examine how values become mobilized as a mechanism for exceptionality.

In Harper’s address at this event, he spoke of how Ismailis and the Canadian state are

“bonded.” He says:

Your Highness, Canada is a fitting choice for the Delegation. Our country and the Ismaili

Imamat are bonded by our shared values; tolerance, compassion, community service and,

especially, our devotion to pluralism – the essential ingredient for harmony in our modern,

interconnected world. (2008)

In a speech at the groundbreaking ceremony of the Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre,

Harper reiterates this notion of shared values as an “exquisite symmetry” between the values of the

Aga Khan and Canadian values. He also announces that a motion was introduced by the Canadian government to grant honorary citizenship to the Aga Khan, in which it was stated “that the Aga

Khan leader of the worldwide Ismaili Muslim community, is a beacon of humanitarianism and tolerance” – values he calls “Canadian.” In the same speech Harper further states:

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As we saw only this morning, in the shameful attack on two mosques in Pakistan, the fruits

of hatred are always the colour of blood. The Government of Canada condemns in the

strongest terms these vicious murders. And this reminds us again why the work of the

Aga Khan, and our own values of toleration for people of differing religious beliefs, are so

important. (2008)

What is significant here is how values become a way to obscure why violence happens, which allows a universal claim to be made about what differentiates hateful Muslims from tolerant ones. In this way, the moral superiority of the State legitimates its evaluations, its political stance, and those Muslims tolerable. Harper’s words also quickly bring the Aga Khan and Ismailis into the multicultural States’ position on hateful Muslims, regardless of whether in fact they would hold the same position or not. Thus, to become distinct has costs involved. At times it means not being able to explain how even though the values stated might appear in words the same, one’s position may in fact be different.37 At the same time, the Aga Khan often subtly has found ways to make oppositional points, such as in the LaFontaine Baldwin Lecture, where outlining conflicts in Muslim contexts he said that:

In my view, the West continues at times to misread such complexities – including the

immense diversity within the Muslim world. Often, too, the West’s development assistance

programs assume that diversity is primarily an urban phenomenon discounting the vast size

and complexity of rural areas. (2010)

37 Puwar (2004) talks about surveillance as part and parcel of becoming racialized people in spaces of power, which are built through logics and rules of whiteness. She argues that even when racialized people for instance, are in high government positions, they are space invaders, and this regulates how they can move in such spaces and what is required of them to stay. Speech is under the radar so that what racialized bodies speak, does not disturb the culture of those spaces. In the case of the Aga Khan however, I would argue that in fact his body does not act as a space invader, and rather as an enabler for stretching space, that is the nation space, as it continues to operate through white, masculinist, colonial and multicultural logic.

160

Yet to affirm the confluence of values is imperative for partnerships to be made. The Aga

Khan in his speech at the opening of the delegation building expressed that as, “an institution of the

Ismaili Imamat…is a significant recognition of values which our community of faith shares with the people of Canada.” In the signing ceremony for the Centre for Pluralism in October 2006, the Aga

Khan stated:

We have a long history of path breaking cooperation. This successful collaboration,

moreover, is deeply rooted in a remarkable convergence of values - our strong mutual

dedication to the concept and practice of pluralism. (2006)

The Aga Khan statement of sharing values with the people of Canada suggests that such values do not belong to Canada alone. Although Ismailis as members of the nation are a part of the nation, they are also separate from its peoples. Also of note is how the values the Aga Khan espouses are located within a religious framework, and values in Canada at least explicitly speak in a secular language, dependent on the State. What does their convergence mean? Why do values become so important here?

On the one hand, to speak in values means that the Canadian nation and state are inherently characterized as tolerant, compassionate, and committed to pluralism. Tolerance, compassion and commitment to pluralism, identify what makes Canada a righteous nation. There is an assumption in this that what is meant by values is normative and understood by all parties in the same way. For the Ismailis to speak in values locatable in religion, but relatable with a secular nation state gives them moral and national currency, particularly as they reify national values. At the same time it opens up the possibility to rupture the orientalist Islam distant from Western civility. However, the

Canadian nation and the Ismailis do not hold, express, or receive such values in the same way.

What the nation tolerates, is compassionate to and how it commits to pluralism, is an act towards

161 specific bodies. These values are received by particular bodies of the populace and embodied by

“Canadian Canadians”38 as a universal abstraction. Whereas the Ismailis’ harbouring these values means they can be tolerated, be shown compassion towards, and are the bodies of pluralism. In this respect, Ghassan Hage (2012) has argued in the context of Australian multiculturalism that, “the tolerance/intolerance divide mystifies the important divide between holding the power to tolerate and not holding it” (p. 121). We can say further that value convergences between the Canadian multicultural nation and Muslims, also mystify how values are held and what purpose their enactments have.

Therefore, listing “values” shared by Canada and the Ismailis is not significant in and of itself in terms of exceptionality, rather, it’s what the values do that is most important.39 The bond

Harper spoke of functions as a way to point out a link, a close relationship, to cohere, a crossing over. Values represent those states of being that drive the Canadian State and the Ismailis. In this way, values penetrate outwards and inwards through flesh. The deep rootedness of values also act as aspirations that the State and Ismailis share, which direct their work in the world, together and individually. Values then extend the Canadian nation to its goals of reaching humanity through specific domestic and international interventions. The Ismailis enact these values transnationally through their economic, social and education projects, particularly in the global South. The Aga

38 In Eva Mackey’s (1999) study, her white participants make a distinction between themselves as “Canadian Canadians” and those truly invested in Canada, rather than the others of Canada, who are immigrants and racialized people.

39 Brian Massumi writes about “affect as a way of talking about that margin of maneuverability, the ‘where we might be able to go and what we might be able to do’ in every present situation” (Zournazi, http://www.international- festival.org/node/111). We can consider the affective aspect of value as motility. Motility is not just about movement, but what arises from it.

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Khan at the Foundation Ceremony of the Delegation building made the following comments in how

Canada and Ismailis come together in this way:

The concern to improve the human condition underlies the long-standing relationship of

the Ismaili Imamat and the AKDN with Canada’s government and civil society institutions

in many parts of Africa and Asia. (2008)

In these moments, values come out of distinctiveness and into a common space, and common projects, even as each party claims these values as their own. The exquisite symmetry and bond that Harper speaks about thus removes any spaces or gaps that could distance the Ismailis from

Canada, and Canada from the Ismailis. It is not the Ismailis conforming to Canadian values, rather

Ismailis and Canadian values finding each other.

One cannot extract the values outside of the context in which they come to have meaning.

The act of publically speaking and thus providing witness to the honouring of such values is confirmed through partnerships in specific projects as mentioned above. These partnerships consolidate the bond. The bonds however, are sealed through particular forms of cultural expression, human development projects, and liberal discourses of diversity between the Canadian government and the Ismailis, like the Centre for Pluralism and the Aga Khan Museum. The Aga Khan points out therefore; that what has created this crossing over of values is a “shared commitment to a common ethical framework – and especially to the ideals of pluralism.” He adds, “by this I mean, not only to social pluralism, which embraces diversity of ethnic and religious groups, but also our thinking about government, and pluralism in our approach to other institutions.” The discourse of values is an insurance given its importance in proving national belonging and becoming a transnational projection, so that the enactment of these values institutionally means that both parties are accountable to these values. But I would argue that the insurance does not have the same value for

163 both parties. For the Canadian state, the symmetry in values confirms that some immigrants can be a litmus test for the nation in affirming the modern liberal subject, and sharing in their vision for the world out of a multicultural project, which is why the question of who embodies such values is also significant. For Ismailis collectively, values expand their location and raise them out of somewhere, and into somewhere else.

We are reminded of this, if we go back to the beginning of this chapter and the Geddes

(2010) article in which the Aga Khan and Ismailis are called the non-threatening “face” of Islam.

The face therefore, reveals the way that we can know someone by his or her face. The face and its obsession revealed itself in the recent Burqa ban at citizenship ceremonies, in which Minister of immigration Jason Kenney stated:

It is only a sign of respect for your fellow citizens when you are pledging to them your

commitment to live in a community with them, to show your face and who you are and that

your pledge is heartfelt and authentic…(Bell, 2012)

The face is ascriptive; it is as Kenney (Bell, 2012) tells us, showing the authentic you, and not just any you. The face therefore, is an extension of the body, as an embodiment that inhabits values; in this case those of respect for and loyalty to the nation. The face as skin and surface makes known the very interiority that the nation has on its side. The Muslim male face and masculinity therefore, flesh out what is “inside,” distinguishing between those who contain “our” values and those who don’t. In this respect, the Aga Khan has been characterized not just within Canada but also globally as “a charismatic personality,” or the “quiet peaceful face of Islam.” In the forward to the book, Where Hope Takes Root, Adrienne Clarkson (2008) says,

164

It was not until 2002 that I met His Highness, during one of his visits to Ottawa.

Immediately, I was impressed by this soft-spoken man who had given nearly five decades

of his life to bettering society in very practical ways. (p. 2)

This kind of masculinity is another type of corporeality. This masculinity does not impose or infiltrate the state, nor does it require interruption or discipline in the way that other Muslim men do.40 Values in this kind of masculine corporeality, is humanized, related to, and exemplified by

Harper’s story about the Aga Khan in the opening of his speech at the ground breaking of the Aga

Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre:

Your highness, though we met for the first time only three years ago, I feel like I have

known you a long time. My long time university roommate, Alnoor Lakhani, is an Ismaili

and he kept a picture of you in our room. He told me much about you, but I have to admit

that when I think of that picture and see you today, I still have one question: how it is that

you never age? (2010)

For the Ismailis, such discourses operate against the inherent difference of Islam to Western civilization. Ismailis become therefore distinct in their ability to be bearer of values, as those of

Canada, but also distinct from those Muslims who even if they claimed such values, do not affirm them in ways recognizable by the state. Even more, masculinity through a distinguished corporeality reinforces who can carry and speak such values.41 I would add here that enactments matter. In other

40 To quarantine Muslim masculinity is a power play in keeping Euro white masculinity in superior form. The hetero oriental masculinity does not take up space as much as it exists within an already constituted occidental masculinity. It does not penetrate the normative male and thus recedes from threat. Other Muslim men who are visible in Canadian national imaginary, such as Maher Arar or Omar Khadr, become interceptors of white male power in that they challenge its techniques more directly in the misdeployment of law, war, and political might.

41 As Anthias and Yuval Davis (1992) have pointed out, women’s bodies are inextricably linked to how the nation is imagined and organized, in that women are what the nation has. I argue that Muslim men, as an emasculated masculinity

165 words, linking specific material enactments at the national and transnational level to the values stated moves the work of values into specific forms of ruling, organization, and regulatory trajectories of social relationships and nation-state practices. Yet the Ismailis articulate values that they believe emerge from their religious heritage, as a fundamental way to be in this world. The convergences of values between the State and the Ismailis are therefore not innocent, or of equal worth. These values emerge both as an inscription by the state as to who can embody them, and also a claim of embodiment by racialized groups. Values themselves are interlockingly valuable, economically, socially, politically and religiously.

Exceptionality through Spatial Re-formations – The Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat So far we have looked at how Muslim exceptionality is built through arrival narratives and values. Now I want to return to the Delegation building and map out how exceptionality comes through specific spatial formations. As Razack (2002) tells us, “to question how spaces come to be, and to trace what they produce as well as what produces them, is to unsettle familiar everyday notions” (p. 7). I therefore begin with Confederation Boulevard, where the Delegation building sits.

Confederation represents the seminal moment in the birth of Canada. Confederation and the subsequent creation of the boulevard are mired in violence against Indigenous populations. In this way, the Canadian Confederation in 1867 accounted for and made Indigenous Nations accountable to the newborn Canada, not as citizens, but as perpetual colonial conquests. It was soon after this event that the Indian Act (1876) became, “Eurocanadian governments apartheid system and beauracratized hatred of native peoples” (Thobani, 2007, p. 48). During this time, the expansion of

Canada through increased pressure for treaties with First Nations solidified what would come to be

and the re-articulated masculinity, also form the boundaries of the nation as a patriarchal project of discipline, aversion and consumption, and thus what it has.

166 the assault on the intentions of the Gus-wen-tah (Borrows, 1997). Given this history then, the impregnating vision of Confederation Boulevard as a discovery and ceremonial route in Ottawa (the nation’s capital) – on the lands of the Anishinaabe. Nations – symbolizes not only colonial amnesia but also “colonial nostalgia.” Derreck Gregory (2004) argues that this colonial nostalgia "is a form of commodity fetishism and cannibalism repatriated to the metropolis…for the aggrandizing swagger of colonialism itself, for its privileges and powers” (p. 10). The National Capital

Commission42 website reminds us that the “swagger” of the ceremonial and discovery route in

Ottawa, is epitomized in its ongoing expansion and renewal of nation building activities that keep alive and recharge the nation state, “through symbolic identification with an ‘imagined community’ and ‘collective memory’ through foundation myths and heroic narratives, and the identification with particular places” (Gordon & Osborne, 2004, pp. 620-621).

Confederation Boulevard gives form to and popularizes a national imaginary of greatness, sacrifice, and multicultural utopia, through the museumification of First Nations Peoples as artefacts, techno color mosaikas on Parliament Hill, and the welcoming of multi-cultural representations on Sussex Drive. Sussex Drive is considered the diplomatic hub of Ottawa, where many embassy and inter-state relations happen. The optical illusion of Confederation Boulevard and the buildings that occupy Sussex Drive, blinds the theft, genocide, and one-sided memorialization it is built on. How then do we make sense of the Ismailis becoming spatially, visually, and symbolically present on Sussex Drive through the Delegation building and the Centre for Pluralism?

How is this kind of spatial graphing a mode for Muslim exceptionality?

42 This is a national crown corporation that is in charge of “ensuring that Canada’s capital is a source of national pride and significance.” http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/about-ncc.

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The desire of immigrant populations to take up space/land in Canada, through the construction of religious buildings, community and cultural centres, is not new. Erecting visible markers of group identity and representation has come with much struggle, in particular for Muslim communities in Canada. For example, the building of mosques has often been met with bureaucratic and public resistance. Calling these “land struggles,” Isin and Siemiatycki (2002) examine how in the 1990s, “zoning and planning” difficulties more often than not were met by Muslims wanting to build mosques in Toronto. Even in the case of the Ismailis, the most recent construction of the

Ismaili Centre on Wynford Drive was met with much resistance at the council level.43 Despite these kinds of challenges, the Ismailis have come into a new level of representation and land occupation in

Canada. It is important to note here that to be on Indigenous land raises the question of settler privilege, complicity, and support of the continued colonization of Indigenous Peoples. As

Lawrence (2010) and others have argued, the very formation of the Canadian state’s ruling mechanisms of racialized peoples and the colonization of Indigenous Peoples, are at odds in how they bring them into relationship with the state (Amadahy & Lawrence, 2009; Sehdev, 2011;

Thobani, 2007). This is significant as Indigenous Peoples struggle for sovereignty and land claims and racialized peoples land acquisition are uneven44. The Aga Khan stated in the Foundation

43 One aspect of the resistance was based on debates about whether the Bata Shoe building was a heritage site. Ultimately the Bata family gave the building to the project. The other aspects of debates came from whether the Ismaili Centre and Museum should be built there at all. Anecdotally, it was revealed to me that this project made some non- Muslims uncomfortable.

44 Beenash Jafri (2012) makes the point that we should not conflate being a settler with privilege, which refers to unearned access to resources and positions, which many racialized immigrants do not have. She argues that complicity, which refers to the more complicated ways of living as racialized settlers, might be a more productive way of thinking about responsibilities to anti-colonial projects. On the other hand, Barker (2006) makes the distinction between settlers and colonial settlers. All people living on stolen land are settlers, but they only become colonial in their support of imperialism and colonial violence. Further feminists of color and Indigenous scholars are debating who in fact is a settler, and how racialized immigrants are complacent in the colonial project and responsible for anticolonial struggle. This debate has included questions about what sovereignty and nation means for Indigenous Nations, versus what it means for immigrants. See Lawrence and Dua (2005), and Sharma and Wright (2008). These are important

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Ceremony speech of the Delegation in June 2005, “This event brings us together, the initiation of the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, is a celebration of the Ismaili community’s permanent presence in and commitment to Canada” (2005). 45

Nature and Exceptionality

The Aga Khan asked Maki, the architect, to take his inspiration for the Delegation building through rock crystal. He sees rock crystal as a symbol that reflects back Divine mystery in our world that, in Islam, is to be explored and experienced through the use of the intellect and pursuit of knowledge. He explains in the following:

When I invited Professor Maki, a master of form and light, to design this building, I made

a suggestion to him – one that I hoped would help connect this place symbolically to the

Faith of Islam. The suggestion I made focused on creating a certain mystique, centered

around the beautiful mysteries of rock crystal. (2008)

Nature as metaphor and its actual presence in the Delegation however, also gestures towards projects of naturalizing presence and relationships. Nature is placed within an “indigenous” spiritual epistemology, albeit one that comes from a settler immigrant and racialized population.

Nature in the building is erected out of the secular and affirmed in the transcendental by connecting it to a spiritual quality, whilst then re-emerging again as a secular modality for relationships between

considerations as Muslims, and in particular Ismailis, think through their presence on colonial land and what it means in the activities they conduct with the State and through the land.

45 The landscape of Confederation of Boulevard is sculpted out of a colonial nature so that the land is silenced and imposed on through the nations’ highest structures.

169 the Ismailis, and Canada and its people. In the same Foundation Ceremony speech I mentioned above, the Aga Khan states:

The building will rest on a solid linear granite podium. Above it will be a glass dome

through which light will illuminate, from multiple directions, two symbolic spaces, an

interior atrium and an exterior courtyard landscaped in four quarters, recalling the

traditional Persian-Islamic garden, the chahar-bagh. Nature, through the greenery of trees

and flowers, will be on the site but also in the building, just as we are sometimes able to

see leaves and petals that are captured in rock crystal but still visible through its unique

translucency. The building will be a metaphor for humanism and enlightenment. (2008)

Given the land this building sits on and its objectives of being a space of dialogue, diplomacy and development work, it is not possible to see the mobilization of nature without attending to the discursive powers at play, particularly as they are linked back to modernity’s aspirations.

Much is made about the inspirations for the design of the Delegation building and actual presence of the “natural world” and metaphors of it. Whether it’s the rock crystal inspiration, the use of Canadian maple, the Islamic char bag garden or refractions of light; nature is supposed to tug at and envelop those in the building. The use of metaphors and incorporating aspects of the natural world in Islamic architecture are not new, and in fact, has been one way in which the

Divine is symbolically accessed and meditated on, through the built environment exemplified in buildings such as the Alhambra in Granada Spain. In using nature, the vision of the Aga Khan to bring the spiritual aspects of Islam to the West, cannot be understated. In this way, nature doubles in its meaning. It speaks to how the natural world inhabits qualities related to the inner essence of

Islam, and how the “nature” of Aga Khan and the Ismailis can be best understood. For example, in

170 the following excerpt from the inaugural speech, the Aga Khan lays out why rock crystal is so relevant an inspiration for the overall building design:

Why rock crystal? Because of its translucency, its multiple planes, and the fascination of

its colours – all of which present themselves differently as light moves around them. The

hues of rock crystal are subtle, striking and widely varied – for they can be clear or milky,

white, or rose coloured, or smoky, or golden, or black…It is because of these qualities that

rock crystal seems to be such an appropriate symbol of the profound beauty and the ever-

unfolding mystery of Creation itself – and the Creator. (2008)

The Aga Khan is pointing to the multiplicity of colors, and the varied perceptions, all of which echo diversity and its various forms that sit nicely in a Canadian consciousness. But it is translucency that is particularly striking. He relates translucency to the beauty of Allah’s creation, but also the endless possibility of discovering the “mysteries” as he calls them, of what exists in our universe. However, translucency is also about light that is able to pass without barriers and does so also without creating an image; light that comes through and illuminates, and creates the possibility for seeing. This resonates when the need to see into Islam and Muslims is so great as a contingency to knowing what to expect from a suspect civilization and religion. This is also significant, as Muslims are feared due to their perceived unwillingness to be real Canadians and integrate. Thus, translucency dissipates such a need, as light makes visible what is unknown and

Islam and Muslims can be clearly seen. The Aga Khan and Ismailis become distinctly known in their offering of being translucent, but really even beyond the material – in their very spiritual

171 sense of self – thus, the very nature of them is here in clear view. In this way they become distinct in their difference from other Muslims.46

The reliance on metaphors of nature abstracts Islam through comfortable, natural symbols, and affects the building’s status and actual engagement with Ismailis. Islam itself becomes diffused and distanced from particular human images or institutional forms, which have been important in producing the binaries between Islam and the West. And yet, the Islam of this building is completely associated with particular images and institutions, as this chapter has argued. In one way, this kind of representation of Islam and Muslims becomes a liberal opportunity to introduce non-Muslims to a language and lens of Islam, denigrated by the political unsettling for which Muslims are held responsible for in the world. At the same time, it suspends

Islam into a place of poetics and aesthetics through a seemingly depoliticized discourse, but in a very political project. This distances the Delegation building from an overtly political Islam, and yet continues to work in the frame of quiet politics, or quiet diplomacy, as one of its objectives. It allows a kind of simultaneous cognitive dissonance with Muslims in all their complicated positionality in the world today, and resonance with Canadian nature both in the land of Canada, and what Canada is internally.

The naturalization of the relationship between Ismaili Muslims and Canada is imperative to being a distinct and distinguished Muslim, both because they represent an Islam of diplomacy and because they can speak in a language that embeds them in a kind of progressive and smart, yet artsy, esoteric abstraction – where Canada and this kind of Islam can meet in a cosmos brought

46 This moment can also be thought of as a cultural “giving” in that culture here, “involves the production, circulation, and legitimation of meanings through representations, practices and performances that enter fully into the constitutions of the world” (Gregory 2004, p. 8).

172 down to our everyday world – departed from a discourse of the terribleness of the world. Having said this, I don’t want to suggest that the intention of the building, through its use of nature, is trying to escape the challenges present in the world, as the Delegation building is very much premised on and houses activities aimed at addressing challenges through the convergence of their socio-economic development activities in the global south, their liberal politics, and esoteric Islam.

What is important here however, is that nature, language and aesthetics, have a relationship to existing powers that defines what such things mean and the role they play in our very sense of being in relation to Others in Canada.47 Moreover, Others spatialize nature in its multiple meanings, through which the nation continually regenerates.

For instance, the “Bear Mother” sculpture by artist Bill Reid, based on the Haida mythology of the bear mother, was gifted to the Aga Khan by the Ismaili community on his Golden Jubilee in

2008. In the brochure of the Delegation building, it is listed as a key feature. On the tour there is a special stop to see the sculpture. When I was on the tour, the guide tells us the sculpture represents all ancestors flowing from one mythology or story, to another. This seems very important, particularly as the story of Ismailis and that of Canada flowing one from each other and to one another. When asked for more detail about the bear mother story, the tour guide is not sure about the details. She points out that the story and sculpture is Haida. When asked by the tour group who are

47 The place of nature in colonial, settler vision of Canada has shaped the psyche of Canadiana in one, the scripting and mirroring of racial purity with the untapped marvellous clean, white, natural Canadian north; and two, the Indigenous person as a reflection of nature. At worst – the natural, Indigenous person is indignant and must be eradicated, and at best the Indigenous body requires taming and is appropriated through Indigenous epistemologies of sacredness and nature, to serve white voyeurism and appetites. Bringing Canada into the Delegation building through pointing out the placing, for example, of Canadian maple floors and the Haida sculpture, raises our antennas that Canada is in the building. The discovery and utilization of nature in an Islamic epistemology, articulated by the Aga Khan, and the racialization of Canadian wildness and the white North, are odd bedfellows – but one that stream in the Canadian national multicultural narrative quite comfortably because of what they are able to abstract and normalize.

173 the Haida? She says that they are one of the Indigenous groups in Canada. The questions and answers never raise connections between the mythology of the Haida, their living realities, and what it means to have this sculpture and by extension, one aspect of their understanding about the world present in this building. What does it mean for them to be represented as sculpture in this building?

Although the building is not a museum, the identification of this sculpture as a key feature also raises questions. Is it a key feature because of the high profile artist? Is it a key feature because it makes present Indigenous Peoples? Is it a key feature because they are gesturing to what makes the building Canadian?

The special stop with the sculpture reveals itself as a talking point, and as a tour participant, I get the sense that Ismailis are “in” with everything Canadian. The fact that it was a gift points to some kind of awareness on the part of Ismailis that there are Native people in Canada. This awareness in relation to the story the Delegation building is attempting to convey remains at the level of mythology that continues to artifact Indigenous Peoples in naturalized motifs. But this becomes an important moment in portraying the Ismailis as immigrants, apparently not ignorant to

“Canada’s” people, and committed to Canada. To make present Indigenousness in the building, distinguishes the Ismailis in their acceptance of other spiritual mythologies.48 Simultaneously, they reiterate colonial appropriation of Indigeneity, going back to how exceptionality works in tandem through the ongoing production of other differences.49

48 Consuming white imaginaries of Canada spatializes Muslim immigrants to belonging. The “triangulation” (Razack et al, 2010) in which the nation, immigrants of color and Indigenous Peoples converge, advances some mythologies and recedes others so that the oriental Muslim is ‘whitened’ and the Indigenous person ‘darkened’ in nature.

49 Here, Ahmed’s (2000) argument of fetishization is related as she argues that “cutting off figures from the social and material relations which overdetermine their existence, and the consequent perception that such figures have a ‘life of their own’….in so far as it cuts ‘the stranger’ off from histories of determination” (p. 5). In this case, cutting Indigenous People off from their colonial relations to the nation allows them to be figured as fetishized object.

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As the tour guide briefly and tentatively speaks about the sculpture, it is also revealed to us with great enthusiasm, that the “Quilt of Belonging” made its most recent debut in Canada at the

Delegation building. The guide with great pride says that it was an honour to have the event at the

Delegation building, as the quilt represents all Indigenous Nations of the world, a nice segue from the Haida sculpture. The Quilt was housed in the Delegation building for visitors to come and see, as part of its world travel. At the reception for the “Quilt of Belonging,” Senator Noel Kinsella (2009) opened her remarks by thanking the Delegation building for housing the Quilt and went on to thank the Aga Khan Foundation for “helping Canadians and policy makers further understand complex global issues.” Contrary to the tour guides description of the Quilt representing all the Indigenous

Nations of the world, it has 263 blocks that represent according to Kensella, “Canada’s main First

Nations’ groupings and every nation of the world. They are all a part of Canada’s complex social fabric, represented here in actual fabric.” Canada inhabits the world as the Quilt then gives back

Canada to the world. Speaking about the materials and artistry of the Quilt, she goes on:

These parts and materials form a bold, integrated, and unified artwork to reflect a bold,

integrated, and unified Canada… The Quilt of Belonging is a rare accomplishment, a piece

of collaborative art that has educated Canadians and the world about our society and will

continue to do so for years to come. (2009)

The irony of this event held at the Delegation building is noteworthy. An edifice representing a Muslim population in Canada, on Indigenous land, is hosting them as a Quilt. In noble Canadian fashion, this event is replete with multicultural facility fabricating Indigenous

Peoples. Ismailis as hosts for Canada, of a quilt of belonging as a community that itself is gaining exceptional belonging, exists in contrast to Others within the nation who challenge the very idea of

175 belonging.50 This moment also inhabits and acquires Indigeneity in an Ismaili space that allows the delegation to be a truly Canadian building. These are attempts to link Islam and Canada, Ismailis and “Canadians,” in a relationship that mobilizes the ongoing colonization of Indigenous Peoples, reflecting that to be exceptional Muslims is constantly built through relational contrast spatially and discursively, to who and where particular bodies are in the Canadian socio-political reality.51

As Razack (2002) states, to “denaturalize or unmap spaces, then, we begin by exploring spaces as a social product, uncovering how bodies are produced in spaces and how spaces produce bodies”

(p. 17).

Excellence and Exceptionality

Finally, Muslim exceptionality emerges out of excellence. In this case then, the Delegation building represents a definite achievement, but through forms of excellence for which the building is recognized for. For instance, one very public outcome of the Delegation building is its growing number of awards. The building is being recognized for its architectural excellence, but as it is able to convey the very values, meanings, and links that the Aga Khan envisioned. One of the three awards given to the building includes the 2012 Governor General’s medal for architecture.

The website for the award states the following about the building:

50 Thobani’s (2007) argument about the “categorization of human beings into Canadians, Indians, and immigrants ranks them in terms of their legalistic and sociocultural status,” is relevant because the ranking shows the kinds of space, performance and embodiment that governs Others and Others Others. Further, she argues that this categorization “reflects differences in the quality of the humanity that is said to motivate their actions and forms of behaviour, differences which consequently make them deserving of different claims and entitlements, and which call for different modalities for their management” (p. 6).

51 Mackey (1999) details that Aboriginal Peoples’ “artefacts” and culture become part of the national identity in that they “support the official definitions” of Canada.

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On a prominent site in Ottawa, this secular facility conceived by the Aga Khan as a

sanctuary for peace, diplomacy and global pluralism, powerfully expresses its mission

through an architectural “bridging of dichotomies”: modernity + tradition, light + dark,

indoor + outdoor, west + east. (Architecture Canada, 2012)

With this in mind, the jury made the following comment:

This is a significant addition to Ottawa’s repertoire of diplomatic buildings and puts

Canadian architecture firmly on the world stage. Impressively monumental in scale, the

project combines a powerful civic presence with a remarkable level of sophistication. Its

integration of traditional Islamic motifs such as specially crafted screens and a lush

courtyard garden is choreographed with assurance and sensitivity, bringing the building

wonderfully to life as a delicate and sensual piece of architecture, while the quality of

materials and detailing is outstanding. (Architecture Canada, 2012).

The awards make visible various things. Firstly, that the Ismailis are becoming distinguished in Canada through multiple kinds of achievements. Their recognition is happening in various arenas. Secondly, the maintenance of dichotomies in their recognition is significant. Dichotomies are not interrupted or even under question, rather, dichotomies are kept intact but the Delegation building provides a meeting space. Problematically, the dichotomies of modernity-tradition/East-

West/dark-light, deny the very socio-historical co-constitution of them. This raises the question of what immunity the building makes possible? Within its walls it then allows these dichotomies to mingle. In this way the project is not seen as destructive. These concepts are left fixed in their binary allowing them to exist in the sacred objectives of peace, diplomacy and global pluralism. And by making such objectives sacred, they figure outside of the politics of meaning.

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Second, what is striking about the jury commentary is their characterization of the building as sensual and delicate through its Islamic influences. The orientalizing fetishization of the building’s qualities speaks to how the oriental, in this case the Ismailis and the Aga Khan, achieve excellence, but through criteria that is imbued in orientalist fantasy. What is accessed in their excellence and in the building’s achievement is a Scheherazade that goes West (Mernissi, 2001).

And in this way, maintaining the dichotomies the award articulates becomes necessary. It is a reminder that the reference for distinction and even excellence here, is measured within old fascinations and objectifications of Muslims and Islam, even as it attempts to extend beyond it.52

As a spatial formation, the Delegation building builds Muslim exceptionality first through becoming uniquely visible on a national and international stage, by its existence on Confederation

Boulevard. Second, the Delegation building and its associated signs signify the translucency, appropriation of difference, and achievement through excellence – all of which point out how becoming distinct, distinguished and excellent, rest in spatial and discursive techniques. At the same time, the achievement of the building as a representative of the Ismaili Imamat and Islam becomes an opportunity to push against conceptions of Islam that “cast out” Muslims from civilization. In this vein, in a recent article about agreements made between the Aga Khan, his networks, and the Alberta provincial government, the Aga Khan in his remarks asked the following question; “How do you convince Western societies that Islam is a faith of civilisation, and not just a faith?” (Mowlana Hazar Imam signs, 2012) 53 What is evident however from the explorations of

52 In Fatema Mernissi’s (2001) book, Scheherazade Goes West, she talks about the fantasy of the harem that creates a particular exoticized and sensualized Muslim woman’s identity, through the Western male gaze and forms of cultural production. It is only by going to the West that the Haram woman comes to be a fascination.

53 Ahmed (2000) argues that the spatial construction of the occident through the orient means, “that the space of belonging (the ‘we’ that remains unspoken, or is spoken only through the claiming of right to speak) requires that which is strange to be in order” (p. 99). The Delegation building as a space of difference, within the nation space of difference,

178 this chapter is that such a desire is grounded in necessary contradictions, complacencies, and violence in the authorizing rationalities and arrangements of coloniality.

Summary This chapter has argued that the encounter between Ismailis and the Canadian State produces

Muslim exceptionality, as it is emerges through specific arrival narratives, values and spatial formations. Through examining various narratives, gestures and discourses of arrival, we come to learn that arrival narratives are required to reify the state as multicultural, that rely on certain story lines of communities of Others. These storylines reiterate how the pristine relationship to its community of Others and its own arrival as a settler colonial nation is obscured. These narratives produce “chords of memory” that speak to the way certain communities continue to arrive into the nation through forms of progress, influence, and as citizens of integration.

In the values section of this chapter, we looked at what values ‘do’ between Ismailis and the

Canadian state. Firstly, values are offered by Ismailis to the state, as the state offers values to them.

This offering however is unequal as it means different things to either ‘body.’ Further, the articulation of values becomes a way to bring Ismailis into alignment with national perspectives on other Muslims. Values also operate as a “bond” that is sealed through particular partnerships between the Aga Khan and his networks, and the Canadian state. Values become insurance that they are committed to the same or similar projects. Finally, masculinity and the Muslim corporeality become integral to the “face” of values necessary to define whom in fact can embody such values.

within an orientalized space of difference, inter-layers in ordering logics that operate vertically and horizontally through modern racial constitutions. The strange is always present in the circumference of belonging as it defines what the nation is, but also, who the stranger needs to be and what needs to mingle, in order for the nation and Others to be “bodyscapes” (Ahmed, 2000). Further, the building “leaks” and “borders” between Other and Other Other bodies, and the national space (Ahmed, 2000).

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The last part of this chapter examined how Ismailis become exceptional through the

Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, located on Confederation Boulevard, and the work its presence does. I argue that firstly, Ismailis are able to offer translucency and their very nature to others and the Canadian state. Second, the fetishization of difference, particularly Indigenous difference, becomes imperative to being a Canadian building, but also in becoming Others that can have and house other difference. Finally, I looked at the way that Ismailis become excellent as a way to enter civilization, but in the process are reified in oriental fantasy and the binaries of East, West, modernity, tradition, dark and light. The project of the Delegation building is to house these binaries. It is in the assemblage of arrivals, values and spatial formations that Ismailis become distinguished through difference, distinct in achievement, and excellent in the anti-Orientalist hopes.

To be exceptional Muslims on a national scale require that the body, morality, mobility and settlement are evoked in modern paradigms of inclusion, progress, achievement, closeness and convergence. The following chapter will look at the next layer of encounter between Ismailis, other

Muslims, and non-Muslims in Canada.

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Chapter 6: Cycling Bodies, Temporal Movements: The Work of Becoming Cool, Fake and Scary Muslims

The participants ruminate over my questions: are you distinguished from other Muslims in

Canada? Tell me about your encounters with other Muslims? How would you describe your encounters with non-Muslims in Canada? In response to my questions, the participants’ body language is familiar to me: arms crossed, loud deep breaths, compressed brows, fingers holding chins, lifted eyebrows, long sighs, curled lips, chests filled with honour. Their bodies speak affectively, telling the range of stories that flood their minds. Over the course of my life, I’ve become tuned in to general conversations with Ismailis about their relationship to other Muslims and non-Muslims. Their language is full of hesitation, angst, pride, and a heightened sense of accomplishment, resignation, anxiousness and platitudes about Muslim unity and Ismaili integration in Canada. Their words reflect the messy politics associated with coming out with their experiences. This time is no different. My questions to participants disrupt forgetting the fragility of their relationships with other Muslims – a forgetting that is sometimes necessary for Ismailis as an antidote to the pain of confronting their marginality amongst their co-religionists. At the same time, this fragility indicates the precariousness of how they at times can be Muslim in Canada. Simultaneously, they are mobilized in their way of being Muslim.

When Begum and I began our dialogue about these questions she jumped at the opportunity to give me the lay of the land:

Of course we are distinguished. Even within Muslim community, we get picked on. I know some of my friends that are non-Ismaili Muslims, they say, “I am not sure if you are really Muslim cause, Ismailis are not real Muslims. We’re like being seen in negativity. But outside our Muslim community, they see us as cool people, like one of them. Like religion is important but umm, I respect your religion and I would appreciate the same respect. But within Muslims, like Sunni’s and other Shi’as we’re not really one of them.

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After listening to Begum and the other participants, it became clear to me that their narratives about my questions were starting to reveal a matrix. As such, I began to make sense of participant narratives using a matrix. In this matrix, their experience of being Muslim in Canada was simultaneously related to their experiences with other Muslims and non-Muslims. They were articulating a trilogy of

Muslim embodiments, interdependent, that formed as the cool, fake and scary Muslim.

In a speech delivered by Prime Minister Harper at the Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili

Centre and Aga Khan Museum and Park in Toronto on May 28, 2010, he noted that the Aga Khan’s work in “promoting pluralism, peace and tolerance,” was centrally important “in a world divided by sectarian strife.” In Harper’s worldview “sectarian strife” is responsible for the “violence, oppression and poverty… of millions” (2010). In his alarmist statements, the parting of the world in this way distinguishes some

Muslims as those who are the antithesis of such conflicts. At the same time, his statements establish that millions are the prey and interlocutors of sectarian strife. As a representative of the Canadian nation’s areal secular gaze, what Harper captures about relations between Muslims obscures the possibility of making sense of how Muslims encounter each other through dynamics and optics that are not contained in this way. At the same time, this frame of world conflict obscures how incursions of war and imperialism feed relations between Muslims.

Jasmine Zine (2012) has noted that “beyond sectarian orientations,” Muslims are engaging with and encountering each other across a “mix of libratory possibilities and productive tensions within and against certain oppressive social and political conditions that create the terrain for a distinctly Canadian

Islam” (p. 2). Hamdon (2010) makes visible Zine’s assertions in her study on the politics of solidarity building of Sunni, Ithnashari and Ismaili Muslims, in an Edmonton based outreach organization created as a way to present a common voice after 9/11. The coalition strives to build bridges with non-Muslims, and to educate them on Islam. She shows how Muslims are undulating through their differences in order to

182 learn what it means to come together as one collective in Canada.54 Harper’s (2010) sweeping comments on the other hand, depend on the idea that Muslims are primarily steeped in old ingrained sectarian rivalries importable anywhere in the world – like Canada. His words point to the lack of nuance in making sense of relationships between Muslims that comes through the particularities of their experience within the Canadian state, modernity, and messy histories. The question for me then is not only about how

Muslims deal with or overcome their internal tensions, but also how it is that Muslims come to have meaning for others and make meaning in relation to each other as they encounter one another, here in

Canada.

In this chapter, I argue that what comes out of Muslims of different religious orientations encountering each other within the Canadian state is an economy of Muslim subjectivities produced as a trilogy. This trilogy has less to do with sectarian strife and more to do with how Muslim bodies relationally have value for the possibility of four goals: the modern religious, the ease and comfort of non-

Muslims’ bodies, the emergence of the “Muslim human,” and the demands of the Canadian state for self- regeneration.

Since 9/11 one of the questions that has emerged in public discourse has been why moderate

Muslims are not repudiating and weeding out extremists. The landscape of Muslim relations in Canada has therefore been couched within the dynamic of policing themselves and their fellow Muslims, and sorting out which Muslims are loyal to Canada. In a study done by the conservative McDonald Laurier

Institute, the authors (2011) concluded that Canadians should be relieved and concerned about Muslims in their midst. The relief should come from knowing that Muslims don’t consider Canada to be racist or

Islamophobic in comparison to all other countries in the world. Although the study’s authors note that

54 My past participatory feminist cultural production research with diverse Muslim women unravelled how Muslim women in Canada engage with each other through pedagogical anti-oppressive practices that see their tensions with each other through power relations both within and outside Muslim communities (Bhimani, 2003).

183 there is diversity of opinions amongst Muslims, Canadians should be concerned because 35% of Muslims are in support of groups or governments considered extremist. In addition, there is a lack of foreign policy support for Israel-Canada relations (2011). The effects of discourses that place Muslims in relationships to each other and “Canadians” has resulted in their taxonomy along opinions that are supposed to harbour the full story of how Muslims are in relation to each other and other Canadians as well as how they are differently invested in Canada.

Canada’s multicultural self-reification demands diversity as exemplified at the very inception of the multiculturalism policy that opened Canada’s borders for “races” and “cultures” as neoliberal acquisitions that provided much needed labor, but also helped reify white tolerance. Since then, cultural racialized others for better or worse, as multiculturalism’s body-products. As a multicultural economy, it is the relational production of Muslims through which value emerges. This determines what the function of such bodies might be to meet the needs and demands of Canada’s self- conception as discerning, progressive and compassionately tolerant. Mechanisms of this economy come to the fore by way of cultural dispersals of Muslims as body-products containing orientalist and non orientalist constitutions that do things for the affect and sake of other Muslims, non-Muslims and Canada. Therefore, as a cultural mechanism of this economy, I argue that a trilogy emerges that animates Muslims visually, symbolically and discursively as characters that muddy and clarify Canada’s ongoing acquisition and management of diversity. Simultaneously, this trilogy comes out of social relations formed by transnational histories and transcendental tensions. This gestures that to be multicultural body-products is an effect of processes within the state whilst mobilizing those outside of it.55 It is therefore no longer viable to only intervene in

55 This goes back to Ahmed’s (2000) notion that encounters occur in asymmetrical power relations that are produced in apriori events, moments, histories, which add to but do not determine encounters in the present. I would add here that the encounter between Muslims also speaks to relationalities of transcendence in a Divine realm. And so the trilogy helps us make sense of encounters in the interlacing of past, present and transcendence.

184 the existence and role of the threatening Muslim in order to understand the landscape of Muslim relationality in multicultural Canada.

Why a trilogy? Trilogy refers to three parts, pieces or works that are interconnected, build on each other, and are components of a meta-production. The trilogy put forth in this chapter offers important productions of Muslim subjectivities that reconfigure how Muslims are relevant today to each other, non-

Muslims and within the Canadian state. Here the trilogy points to three subjectivities: cool Muslim, fake

Muslim and scary Muslim. These are thematic subjectivities named by the participants in their narratives and fleshed through their descriptions and understanding of their experiences. I argue that the interconnected emergence of the cool Muslim, fake Muslim and scary Muslim are a corrective to Muslim inhumanity, as a resistance to and difference making against Ismaili marginality and acts of pushing/ being pushed away from other Muslims in Canada. Cool Muslim, fake Muslim and scary Muslim are therefore properties of one another. Scholars such as Sherene Razack (2008) have pointed out modern orientalist allegorical subjects that are particularly relevant in the Canadian race nation to justify the management, detention and eviction of Muslims post 9/11: the dangerous Muslim man, the imperilled

Muslim woman and the white European civilized subject. The trilogy put forth in this chapter also contains seeds of these figures.

What does it Mean to be Cool, Fake and Scary? Coolness is about being in vogue, having social currency, to be acceptable in popular terms to the dominant social milieu. It seems odd then, given the breadth and depth of the orientalist social imaginary, that the words cool and Muslim might appear one after the other. Cool also lowers temperatures, and reduces intensity. In that sense then, the cool Muslim is a respite to a conflated sense of threat and fear of Muslims and Islam today. Further, coolness is about moving through things with ease or in a particular disposition. In asking the participants about how they are encountered in relation to other

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Muslims in Canada, the Ismaili Muslim is distinct, in that they embody an “alternative,” “happy Muslim,”

“pleasantly” and “shockingly” human. My interlocutor Neikbakhat shares in this respect, “If people know about us, then they know we are into humanitarian things and are highly educated and they speak and think of us very highly.” The participants identify that many non-Muslim people in Canada in fact don’t know who Ismailis are, even though there is a public, high-level representation of the community as documented in the previous chapter. For example, Shazia states that in her experience with other non-

Muslim parents and neighbours, “Very few people know who Ismailis are. They don’t have knowledge.

When we tell them we are Muslim, they say, ‘Oh you are Muslim?’ but when you go further and say we are Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, they say, ‘Who are you? We have never heard of you.”56 Therefore, the participants argue that it is in their individual encounters with non-Muslims that they come to learn about

Ismailis, unless people are able to identify them with the Aga Khan, his work and institutions such as the

Aga Khan Foundation Canada. Being the cool Muslim is not simply to conform to Canadian ideals of the good immigrant attaining the ‘good life’; coolness rises as a response. Significantly, however, the cool

Muslim does not have its own integrity, but is meaningful and relevant through the fake Muslim and scary

Muslim. This is illustrated in Khalil’s sentiments:

Honestly, non-Muslims get along with us a lot more. Just because we are more modern. We are more accepting of other cultures. You have some Muslims they do their own thing and don’t go outside in public. Their interaction with the rest of the population is different...and Muslims just feel like we’re not doing things the right way. If cool works to relieve, fake works to mislead, to lack genuineness, to be counterfeit and to pretend. Fakeness is also to make impressions of value that are considered untrue. The participants identify phrases such as “fake Muslims,” “not real Muslims,” “name sake Muslims,” to describe how they

56 In Hirji’s (2010) study, some of her participants note that being “known” as Ismaili is dependent on particular cities in Canada. One participant, Nimrit, notes that Ismailis are very well known in the Burnaby Vancouver area.

186 feel they are seen by other Muslims. Adam shares this, “There’s a very common perception that Ismailis are quote unquote light Muslims. That they don’t do things the way mainstream Muslims do things.”

When I ask Adam who thinks this? He says:

Other Muslims but maybe non-Muslims as well. Many non-Muslims may not know what it means to be a mainstream Muslim or have their own understanding of what this means. It’s been the case where I am asked, “Oh so you don’t go to mosque?” So, I think we are viewed as very different. The participants narrate that rituals, outward performances of faith, and enunciations of self are

integral in demarcating Ismailis, but only as these relate to being liberal and modern. Liberalness and

modernity is symbolized by a religiosity that is not true to the letter of Islam. Adam describes this in

the following way: “I think we have been perceived by many as people who are assimilating quite well

in modern society. While other Muslims see us as individuals who are straying away from what it

means to be a (real) Muslim.” For Adam, not being “mainstream” or “real” demarcate Ismailis in their

difference as fakes as they come to be known as assimilative subjects in locations of modernity. Yet the

fake Muslim and the real Muslim are mirrors back to each other in that it is in the likeness of being

Muslim that they are unalike.57 Therefore, it is not the self and other facing each other, but rather the

self and self that reflect back who they are and aren’t. Muslims who are considered “Other” to another

Muslim are not only the result of colonial subject production. Muslims exist in subject production

processes embedded in other epistemologies of relationality, such as those that talk about Muslims

being of one community.58

57 In Hamdon’s (2010) study the participants in the coalition organization debate about what makes a “real” Muslim, a question that the participants in this study don’t ask but none the less talk about in how they articulate being fake and cool Muslims.

58 See Hirji (2010) for examples of Qur’anic criteria of differentiation of individual and communities.

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Conversely, the scary Muslim is an old imaginary of “monsters” in new garbs.59 To be frightful embodies a recognition that continually reiterates Muslims in their myriad of forms through the ongoing making of the Oriental, but also now with and through Muslims. To be scary as a Muslim figure means to be considered internally far from the white Western European subject, and yet recognizable in the exterior and knowable in the interior. The scary Muslim figure enacts this ontology through bringing death closer or causing death itself – as a form of decay, destruction, darkness and annihilation. The scary Muslim is ultimately the ‘dark Muslim,’ because Muslims as imagined terrorists and malhumans represent not only potential physical death for non-Muslims, but also potential killers of Western cultures, values, civilization (Mamdani, 2005; Zine, 2012) and white supremacy. Muslims being exposures of death spread across landscapes of living humans (non-Muslims, usually, white Europeans and their descendants), means there is no limit to being exposures of death (transnational and transcendental in that they are a threat to non-Muslim Gods as well). Therefore, despite Ismailis’ positions as cool alternatives to other

Muslims, they still contain seeds of this darkness. In this way, the scary Muslim cannot be erased, but rather is ontologically always possible as a slippage pointing out that even their position as “cool”

Muslims is precarious. To be scary however, is not only about death. Scariness is affective in that it creates anxiety and produces unsettling. Therefore, to be scary is possible through subtle and explicit physical, discursive and affective effects.

A global example of the lurking dark Ismaili Muslim came forth via “historical evidence” uncovered by media outlets soon after 9/11. By way of trying to historicize and affectively make sense of the violence of 9/11 as coming from a long and deep-rooted Islamic practice, various forms of media made connections back to the “Assassin legends” of the Nizari Ismailis. The legend that was taken back to

59 Amit Rai’s (2004) article on the Monster Terrorist provides a historical elucidation of how the notion of “monstrosity” has become attached to the Muslim terrorist.

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Europe by Marco Polo (in 1295) was that a fringe group of mysterious Muslims in Iran were led by “a man in the mountain” who told his followers to smoke hashish and go on killing expeditions. These

“assassins” were high on religious fervour, unrelenting and skilled to kill. Over the last many decades, this popular European myth has been academically debunked to show that such a legend was based on misinformation and misinterpretation of language (Karim, 2011). Despite academic work that has presented the gaps and historical inaccuracies of such a legend, very quickly, in an attempt to empiricize

9/11, the figure of the feared Ismaili assassin (the bringer of death) was quickly resurrected by pundits of all stripes, as proof of the pre-modern embodiment of the scary Muslim – a genetic inheritance from the man in the mountain living today amongst us as Muslim citizens, refugees, asylum seekers and foreigners.

This moment also attempted to rationalize anxiety as a logical response to this inherited Muslim lurking amongst us.

The figure of the scary Muslim is in perpetual circulation as all the participants in this study describe. Thus, the precarious sustainability of being the alternative Muslim is embodied in the different kinds of experiences the participants share. For instance, the participants describe the ever- present

Muslim butt of the joke. Although Rehan says he is not offended by it, his co-workers and sometimes boss, will randomly exclaim to him, “you terrorist!” Begum painfully shares that her non-Muslim friends,

“ask me, ‘Are you going to bomb us?’” Khalil says his colleagues call him “the terrorist” as a condition of

“friendly banter” in his work place. Neikbakhat is profiled for having a very Muslim sounding name when applying for jobs in a health care field that deals with explosive substances. She describes this, including her friend, who is also Muslim:

I remember applying for a job and so was one of my friends. She wore the hijab but her name didn’t really sound Islamic and my name was pure Islamic sounding. I wasn’t getting any interviews. She was getting lots of interviews but did not get any jobs because she wore the hijab.

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Other participants are detained at borders and denied movement across the US and Canada because their bodies symbolically expose good citizens to death. It is both through and against these experiences that the cool, scary and fake contours between Muslim bodies and Ismailis bypass being located as simply scary.

Participants respond to their experiences with Muslims and non-Muslims in comparatives, in which they come to experience themselves through the properties of cool, fake and scary. How the participants feel they are thought about and encountered is always in relation to these figures produced through interactions between them, other Muslims and non-Muslims. Therefore, their narratives contain all three figures when describing how they are perceived, engaged with, and faced. In addition, they point out that their experience of publically being Muslim is often, although not always, moving against and through these three figures at different moments and times.

Becoming Fake, Cool and Scary: Simultaneous Secular-Religious Muslim The participants were able to articulate how they embody fakery for other Muslims through a myriad of perceptions. In their encounters with other Muslim friends, colleagues and acquaintances, Ismailis are positioned as choosing some aspects of Islam that serve to make religion convenient – a shadow of true

Islam. When speaking with Khalil about this, he explained:

It’s pretty bad [the encounters]. Probably the Sunni’s for example, the other large sect in Islam, they just feel like we’ve adapted and changed it [Islam] so it’s convenient for us. They say we are not really following the right way of how we are told and how it was revealed. Yeah, they just think we are fake Muslims. I wouldn’t say all of them but I am just saying in my experience like in school. They used to make jokes about it. The right way, being told, and revelation dislocates Khalil. His sense that things are undesirable and also intense often appears through jokes. Jokes, which are at times used to diffuse intensity, instead produce it and diffuse him instead. All of the participants challenged this sentiment, and yet, feel that they are constantly up against checklists of ways that they are not Muslim or Muslim enough. For example,

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Begum, Maryam, Anjum, Khalil and Akbar all lament how their Muslim friends and colleagues inevitably tell them, “ You don’t fast,” “You don’t wear the hijab,” “You eat pork,” “The Aga Khan is a joke,”

“Your prayers are wrong,” and “How could you be Muslim?”! Akbar provides the following example:

They don’t like us. At least what I have heard. In my business I interact with a lot of Sunni Muslims. 99% of the time they say, “Oh you’re Aga Khani? Let’s keep moving!” Someone called for my sister and the person answering said she was on lunch. And they said, “On lunch? Its Ramadhan.” They were so angry. They’re like, “You guys are fake Muslims because you don’t fast. Your values are different.” I don’t know enough to fire back, but this is what they say and their perception is that we are name-sake Muslims right?!60 The utterance of fakeness opens up ruptures and moves bodies. For Akbar, it’s a move toward the need to know. To know more, is to be more, to not be what he is not. As namesake Muslims Ismailis,

“being” is without meaning, even if they speak the same name – I am Muslim. For Akbar, the beginning of this experience sits in “liking” here, not only about a feeling, but also the similarity that is already expunged. Maryam frustratingly shares her friend’s comments, “You Ismailis eat pork right? You don’t fast. You don’t say namaz. All of them have this perspective that we are not Muslims.” Maryam later goes on to explain, “Sometimes I get really emotional and I really want to fight. I do. But that’s not the right way to respond, right?” For Maryam, the right way disallows her to engage and use her anger.61 Akbar explains that not knowing how to speak back to these comments has led him to feel inadequate. Khalil’s sense concurs with Akbar’s, “It’s made us feel like we’re lower, like we’re not as strong Muslims.” These experiences diminish as they disturb the strength of what Muslimness means. In contrast, Ismailis self- determination about aspects of religion, which highlight an outward Muslimness, is what makes Ismailis

60 In Hamdon’s (2010) study, the Sunni participants in a Muslim coalition group acknowledge that Ismailis and other Shi’as have felt marginalized by Sunnis in Canada. In part this marginalization occurs because of conflicting definitions of what it means to be a Muslim.

61 See Audre Lorde (1997) “The uses of anger.”

191 cool according to non-Muslims. For example, Begum shares a conversation she has with a non-Muslim who asks her about whether she wears the hijab and fasts. Begum responds through a rationale:

If I don’t do these things from my heart, if I don’t feel like I want to do this, I should not be forced. Other Muslims I guess are really strict…I feel like non- Muslims being exposed to them, they just prove the Muslim category generalized to all Muslims. The contrast between something coming from the heart instead of strictness drops Begum down to a truthful reasoning, not available to other Muslims with a hard, impenetrable standard. Khalil considers the scary Muslim in relation to living an unadaptive Islam, which he contrasts to Ismaili Islam:

We not only go by the Qur’an but also by the guidance of the Imam, the Aga Khan. I guess other Muslims haven’t changed anything over time. They are just cut throat on lets just read the Qur’an and do this and do what ever the prophet says, whether its of the old times or not. The scary Muslim, therefore, is the one who lacks choice, agency and simply proves a “strict” religiosity – a serious religiosity that determines Ismailis to be fake Muslims. The term cutthroat points to the competition of proving Muslimness that many South Asian Ismailis often talk about, for example as whether they can speak the Qur’an the way other Muslims do. However, cutthroat is also an embodiment of the brutish Muslim who lives in a past, unchanged. As Begum tells us, when the Ismaili comes along in relation to the “proven” Muslim, non-Muslims say to her, “Oh my God we’re taken aback. This is a shock.

You guys are Muslims? This is really Muslim?” To be taken and shocked, is to unsettle non-Muslims in their decidedness about Muslims. This also disrupts temporal inscriptions. It becomes a moment of possibility for Begum. Khalil goes on to provide another example,

Lets say someone is a very outward Muslim. “I am Muslim. I pray like this, I think like this.” The non-Ismailis are a little resistant to that. From what I see, I don’t think they get along with them. Think about it, if you have non Ismaili friends whether they are white or where ever they are from, Canada, America, or Europe, they like to party or they have a certain social life right? So, obviously if other Muslims don’t agree with that, they’re just like, “This is wrong; stay away from this.” Whether they can study together or play sports

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or just hang out, I find that non Ismailis are more accepting to Ismailis then to Sunni’s. Like for me, I had friends that smoked, and I never did anything, and I was told by my parents not to do it, but at the same time I thought, “If I don’t accept this, I’m never gonna get along with anyone.” I don’t have to agree with them or change my views or change my habits. Where as with Sunni’s, they are just like this is wrong stay away from it.62 Self-determination, choice, agency, and change in religion become key ways in which participants felt they were evaluated by Muslims and appraised and valued by non-Muslims. For Khalil and Begum, this was not only about being agents of their religiosity, but also the ability to make choices about who to interact with and how. For Khalil, to be accepted is part and parcel of entering the social world of non-Muslims by being a body of navigation, whereas other Muslims are bodies of rejection – they give and receive. What is also important is how ‘proof’ works as a double gesture in the narratives in that Ismailis feel they have to prove being Muslim to their co-religionists who see them as fakes. At the same time, it’s the predetermined non-Ismaili Muslim, who raises anxiety for non-Muslims. As Ismailis distance themselves from the scary Muslim, they construct a Muslimness that ends up “shocking” non-

Muslims. In these moments, the participants escape being the scary Muslim, whilst reifying against themselves a difference that contains other Muslims as irrational and without agency.

The “cool” Muslim subjectivity to Islam as described by the participants, is in part a product of

Ismaili Islam. In this approach, religiosity is an ongoing pursuit interpreted through the Imam as a rational, moral and spiritual consideration of Ismailis based on the times in which they exist. Simultaneously, however, the cool Muslim easily maps onto the modern subject for whom rational individual choice and agency are paramount. Although this modern subject is secular and assumes “autonomy which gives the subject a universal status,” (Yegeneglu, 1998, p. 5) the participants’ words suggest that the secular and religious collapse into one, thus blurring the ways in which agency, choice, and autonomy are modes of

62 One of Hirji’s (2010) Sikh participants, Nimrit, talks about how she can relate more to Ismailis because of how Ismailis approach social issues versus Sunni Muslims (p. 159).

193 being for religious subjects who are before, but also products of modernity. What makes Ismailis cool in relation to the scary and fake is precisely that they are refracted through how the fake and scary Muslim comes to have value and meaning-- through the modern subject as simultaneously secular and ominously religious.

Suspicion and Forming the Cool, Fake and Scary Muslim The participants also explain that they often find Muslims engaging with them in suspicion, which reinforces this idea of them being fake. Sameer says that there is much baggage attached to being identified as Ismaili amongst other Muslims. He argues:

We have difficulties and it is not a difficulty within us, but within the outsider, in their [other Muslims’] perception. No matter how much good we do, they are still receiving us as a Shi’a, as an Ismaili, as an Aga Khani. Though 99% of our activities are according to Islamic thought and all. Now my identity is swimming sometimes between Ismaili community and Muslim ummah. His assessment of being identified as Shi’a Ismaili and Aga Khani is that there will always be something “off the mark” about being Ismaili for many other Muslims, but in a way that lends them to suspicion, and dismisses the good they do in the world. Sameer treads between collectivities pointing out the spaces of being figured as fake. Shazia shares a story of her interaction with another Pakistani and

Indian Muslim family and the suspicion with which she and her family were dealt with:

I used to live in small town, and in the last couple of years when we were living there, there was an Indian Muslim and two Pakistanis families, and they wore that hijab thing, and you can’t believe how difficult it was for me to interact with them. When their kids came to play at my house, their parents told them, “Don't eat there because we don't do that.” So, even sometimes I think about like uh, when we talk about ummah (laughs), where do we stand? To not have other Muslim children eat at Shazia’s house is penal for her. She becomes the

evocation of sanction, the producer of disease. The anxieties Ismailis produce is visceral, making

194 them scary for other Muslims. Suspicion is also relayed through fantastical ideas about the Aga

Khan, and the Ismailis relationship with him. A participant shares that her friend explained that a leader in a Sunni Muslim congregations in Toronto preached that, “Ismailis do crazy things, such as drink the Aga Khan’s bath water.” Such narratives locate Ismailis in the deranged. The participants feel they have no way of disrupting such stories in some of their encounters because no matter what is happening in reality, they will be defined as being engaged in mysterious activities. It’s part of an ongoing fiction making. Determined as having made religion too easy or having spoiled it all together, they also feel unable to overturn their perceived debauchery. The participants feel that they are up against a deep belief of their fakery. I call this an “Ismaili imaginary.” The Ismaili imaginary represents the historical making of the Ismailis as different, outliers, on the fringes, or as representing ways of being that are religiously and culturally promiscuous and haram (not permissible in Islam). The encounter between Ismailis and other Muslims in this moment and time contain the fossils of old stories, framings, and positionalities. Daftary (1995) describes the “black legends” of the Ismailis in the following way:

Muslim authors from the ninth century had generated their own myths of the Ismailis,

especially regarding the origins and aims of the Ismaili movement….anti Ismaili

polemicists themselves contributed significantly to shaping the hostility of Muslim society

at large towards the Ismailis. By spreading their disparaging accounts widely from

Transoxania to North Africa, aiming to discredit the entire Ismaili movement, the

polemicists gave rise to their own particular ‘black legend’ of Ismailism, which they

portrayed as a sect with dubious founders and secret, graded initiation rites leading to

irreligiosity and nihilism. (p. 5)

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It was the sustenance of Ismailis as wholly different that mobilized movements against them and solidified their inherent religious difference to other Muslims.63

Modern Genderedness and the Scary, Cool and Fake Muslim As shown above, participants narrate that rituals and outward performances of faith are integral in demarcating Ismailis, but only as these relate to being liberal and modern. Adam shares that Ismailis therefore are also seen as “assimilating well in modern society,” something echoed by the other participants, and therefore, “straying away from what it means to be a Muslim.” The Ismaili woman is the ideal stray, and the quintessential sign for liberalness in the way she changes the boundaries of gendered interactions. For example, Maryam’s friend tells her, “I don’t even know if you are really

Muslim; you don’t wear the hijab and you talk to guys.” Maryam does not see a contradiction in being a

Muslimah and having friendly conversations with boys. Likewise, Begum explains:

Recently one of my friends, who is non-Ismaili, said that Ismailis are cool. And he was like, you guys are not forced to wear the hijab, and you can obviously talk to guys if you want. I told him, “What’s the harm in saying hello or exchanging wishes?” I guess other Muslims are really strict about it…they can’t be too friendly with guys. The ease and rationale of Begum’s conversation stands out and renders other Muslims the foe.

Speaking with boys, and not wearing specific Islamic dress go hand in hand when the participants

describe the issues that other Muslims have with Ismailis. As fake Muslims, Ismaili liberalness is

embodied in what women wear or don’t wear. Adam notes, “Muslims always point out how, you know,

Ismaili women dress?!” Akbar adds to this sentiment, and explains that when other Muslims bring up

Ismailis as fakes, they often say, “Your women don’t wear burkha’s. Your women are dressed a certain

way in your Jamat Khana. Come on, they shouldn’t. And they even go to Jamat Khana and your kids

63 Ismailis also have historically had different approaches to Islam that are very much rooted in their interpretation that also puts them at odds with other Muslims. See Asani (2002).

196 too are involved in these things.”64 Ismaili women and men confront “Ismailis’ women’s dress,” and their crossing of particular boundaries of religiosity and religious practice as an abject truth of Ismailis rejection of real Islamic sense of being. But more than that, their comments gesture towards particular working of femininity and gendered sexuality that Ismaili women come to then embody. Zaafra provides more detail in this sense:

Well, amongst, Canadian non-Ismailis, meaning Sunnis Muslims or other Indian cultures, I’ve been told that Ismaili girls are very promiscuous. So, date an Ismaili girl if you want to get somewhere. And, ah, that Ismailis are rich and brown-nosers. Some sort of perspective that Ismailis have assimilated. Interestingly, Kesar resists these conceptions of Ismaili women by talking about their religiously decreed upbringing, which she feels makes them “ok Muslims” to non-Muslims in contrast to other Muslim women:

Like we don’t have veils or burqa’s. Our women are in very high places…We are more open and we talk more. Women are not treated badly. Like Sultan Mohammed Shah’s Farmans. So, I think that’s one of the ways they think our women are very forward. Even the way they dress and all. We don’t wear veils like other Muslims. So that’s how they realize we’re ok Muslims. Here the Aga Khan III’s policies about Ismaili women wearing Western clothing, and the treatment of women contrasts with other Muslim women without such guidance. Kesar goes on:

You know our women go out to work and stuff like that. Lots of women, non-Ismailis, admire our way of living because you know women are not oppressed. Other Muslim communities, the women, they have problems. I perceive they have problems because they stay within themselves. But we have a place of communication like Jamat Khana. We meet people and our community does a lot to make sure that we have interactions with each other. But with other Muslims, I notice they don’t do these things. Their kids grow older,

64 In Strohl’s (2011) PhD ethnographic study on Indian Ismailis in Mumbai, he interviews other Muslims on their perceptions of Ismailis and Ismaili women going to Jamat Khana comes up as one of the aberrations of Ismailis.

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and like especially when girls grow older, they might not be wearing burkha or hijab, but they make their girls wear. And they’re scared they will go outside of their community and get married. We are different. I think they admire us but they will not accept our way of life.65 Kesar believes that Ismaili women become admirable for other Muslims and non-Muslims. Fear

contains other Muslim women, a fear that does not allow them to become like Ismailis. She comments

both in a celebratory tone, suggesting that she is proud not to be thought of as “those” women, and also

suggesting that this perception of being forward is one imposed on Ismaili women by others. In the

non-Muslim version of being forward, it represents a laboratory and progressive term, whereas for

other Muslims they encounter, it is a forwardness that lends itself to illicit interactions between men

and women, and changes the role of women in a particular Islamic paradigm. What is also of

significance is the Ismaili female body embodies lack of honour and respect, which then represents the

community as a whole. The possessive use of the term, “your women” mentioned by Akbar and Adam,

is a reminder of the patriarchal symbolic and material placing of women and their bodies in the

assertions of gendered discourse.

As the participants share, in contrast, the scary Muslim female dress is a performance of illogical religiosity. In addition, however, the landscape of what is possible for other Muslim women is also limited as Kesar explains. In this sense, Ismaili women dressing in western clothing doesn’t impose their Muslimness on non-Muslims. They come to decisions about what to wear as a rational dialogue and explanation. Furthermore, Ismaili women sway between the dual conceptions of being modern. That is,

65 Mohamadaly and Fakirani (2012) argue that the guidance of Aga III through universal values of equality, tolerance and service to humanity, allow Ismaili women to take up roles that enable them to “lead productive and prosperous lives.” Four women in leadership positions are interviewed. This short study offers no real gendered intersectional analysis of women’s experience but rather shows how through values these women find this guidance inspirational and they use it to direct life choices. This study is in contrast to Mohamed’s study (2002) that shows how gendered social and cultural practices delimit such values in the experiences of gender-based discrimination of Ismaili women in the community.

198 they enter into a gendered embodiment of the feminine that is outside the bounds of morality, while at the same time within a modernity that creates forward, educated, worldly Ismaili women, albeit religiously sanctioned. Anjum shares that in her encounters with non-Muslims:

I just like explain to them, there are different types (of Muslims) and this is how I am and this is how I grew up and this is what I wear to Jamat Khana, and they would be like, “Oh that’s cool.” Being cool to non-Muslims is projecting a gendered Muslimness that is veiled in western

clothing and is a performance of a “free woman.” This is a camouflaged religiosity from the scary

Muslim woman, whose body is reviled and rejected because she is seen as Muslim, and who embodies

the antithesis of modernity. Being cool, therefore, makes coherent a female Muslim religiosity as a

rational expression against those Muslim women that disrupt public spaces and the sensibilities of non-

Muslims through irrational appearance and logic. Being cool in this way also means Ismailis must

defend themselves against accusations of being impious as the modern/western modus operandi.

Finally, it also points out that Ismailis must constantly be vigilant against any slippage into being scary.

A gendering rationalization of oneself to non-Muslims and not appearing Muslim is part of this

process.66

Status, Class and Becoming Fake, Cool and Scary Muslims The participants also share that education and class mobility stand in for being thought of as too integrated and assimilated into Canadian culture, which also figures them as fake Muslims.67 Zaafra

66 Puwar (2004) argues that women’s bodies are liabilities in situations of duress to “reiterate differences between masculinity and feminine styles through their bodily management” (p. 149). In doing so, the other differences that shape women are erased. Taking Alexander’s point, making coherent a Muslim woman is needed because her body is under duress.

67 This sentiment is actually in contrast to studies that show that Muslims in general in Canada are of the most highly educated and often surpass their non-Muslim counterparts in educational qualification (Moghissi et al., 2009). By all accounts then, in general, the issue is not that Muslim populations are uneducated, but rather how such status is trumped

199 articulates this, “From Pakistanis in Canada, they see Ismailis as you know, good business people, entrepreneurs, and they see Ismailis as not really part of the Muslim Ummah.” In contrast the participants share, that the figure of the scary Muslim is usually construed as “lacking education,” “traditional,

“inarticulate,” “unable to communicate” in ways that “Canadians can relate to.” In this respect, Zaafra says that Ismailis are, “considered more civilized and we don’t scare people.” She provides the example of the Calgary Mayor Nahid Nenshi to support her point:

Calgary is not considered the most diverse and multicultural and accepting city right? But they voted in a mayor, an Ismaili, by a landslide. You know that an Ismaili is intelligent. He is very integrated and not just culturally, but overall. He’s well spoken. So I am glad that there is a good representative there…we’re more accepted because it doesn’t matter if you are ethical and a decent person, if you have a beard or wear a topi or wear a jabah…you will never get voted in. The very “materiality” (what makes him, and what he is made out of – inside and out) of the

Mayor combines as a whole, and his function is made clear as a Muslim. Absorption is a part of his

“skill.” The notion of integration susses out the rawness of other Muslims in their Islamic dress. What gets

Nahid Nenshi appointed as mayor of Calgary are his capabilities, which appear as if he is naturally endowed with them. Zaafra’s comparison of the cool Ismaili mayor and the scary Muslim points to the differences in the criteria for acceptance. The two-sided figure of the fake and cool Ismaili Muslim for the participants becomes one whose Islam is subtle, hidden, underneath one’s clothing, and speaks in a way that confirms for non-Muslims their own ways of being (and for Muslims, a foreign way of being).

Maryam also provides the example of Mayor Nenshi:

Even there is a mayor in Calgary. I forgot his name but I was reading about him and they were comparing him to Rob Ford. I was reading so much about him and I think it was in a

by other forms of inequity that they face. Also, such status works into Ismaili constructions as fake, cool and scary Muslims, in how they are perceived by non-Muslims and Muslims.

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magazine and they were saying so much about Ismailis too. They are very educated. They are very good people. Even when compared with this other guy Ford, they said good things about him, even though he is an immigrant here but he went to Harvard. Harvard becomes the trump card over Rob Ford (a white mayor). Nenshi’s win is a win for other Ismaili as Maryam rejoices. In relation to Maryam and Zaafra’s comments, Akbar notes that he hears non-Muslims say, “nothing but good things about us.” He gives the example of the building of the

Aga Khan museum of Islamic art on Wynford Drive in Toronto. Non-Muslims express to him, “You guys are cultured people. We actually want to see this museum; we want to be involved in it.” Akbar goes on to say, “They are looking forward to this project…whereas non Ismaili Muslims, aren’t the most happiest.” For Akbar then, the response that he gets from non-Muslims about being cultured validates what makes Ismailis cool and in with “Canadians.” Culture here then marks class as Ismailis become

Muslims who know about and promote high culture as represented by the Museum, which evokes

European values of culture. His feeling that other Muslims are not happy about such an Ismaili activity reminds him of how the actions of Ismailis can put them on the fringes as bearers of unchecked privilege for some Muslims.68 The building of the museum is not simply unique to Ismaili presence in Canada, but is part of a global network of cultural activities that aim to educate non-Muslims on Islam. Performances of civility, educational attainment, and being cultured in ways recognizable and valued by non-Muslims go hand in hand with being considered cool. Simultaneously, however, Ismailis do exist in precariousness as other Muslims, which is expressed by Gulam as he shares his experience specific to the Wynford Drive project:

68 Sumaya Kassamali’s (2010) critique about the construction of the museum provides insight into how some Muslims might perceive such an activity as ill conceived, and as doing little to challenge Islamophobia and violence against Muslims in Canada. She argues that such grandiose activities in Canada are affirmations of Ismailis privileged status, rather than an actual contribution to shifting the position of Islam and Muslims in Canada today.

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When Wynford Drive was in the media and when Hazar Imam came here to inaugurate the articles that were published in the media on the Internet, I did read them and followed some of the comments and they were not good. And those are different opinions that people have about us. Some of them were saying this is another way Muslims are taking over Western society. For Gulam this moment was a reminder that being perceived as liberal, organized and educated does not disavow anxiety that some non-Muslims carry about Muslims in general as scary.

Inner State of Being as the Cool, Fake and Scary Muslim In relation to the idea of being educated and articulate, the participants state that Ismailis are generally more accepting of all people. They say things such as, Ismailis, “interact easily, talk to people, work together and join hands” and participate in all aspects of life in Canada. And thus it is through these dynamics that Ismailis are a bridge between Islam, the scary Muslim figure, the West and Canada. Anjum explains:

Yeah, we help bridge the gap between like Christians or whatever majority and the Muslim majority. Umm, and I find that like, sometimes when I’m talking to non Muslims, when they find out what Ismaili Muslims are like, they are like, “Wow ok, so there is an alternative to the terrorist Muslim that we see” and then I become like the ambassador of Islam. Khan concurs with Anjum’s idea of Ismailis being the bridge, as he argues: “However small we are in numbers, but governments realize that Ismailis are a branch of Islam that are a bridge between other religions and Islam.” As the material that allows passage and the meeting of Muslims and the West,

Ismailis are seen as the possibility for new social relations. More than that, to be a bridge locates the role of Ismaili and places them as integral to close distance. Conversely, other Muslim bodies are the obstacle

(as scary) over which the bridge emerges. Through the figure of the cool Muslim, Ismailis move with the currents of social life. They engage in multiple levels of interaction with non-Muslims. They assume a position to present an alternative, and to be the ambassadors of Islam. Whereas scary Muslims remain

202 scary precisely because they do not poses the openness that Ismailis do. Consequently, it is due to this very openness that the participants feel that Muslims consider them to not be real Muslims. This is because it is assumed that they don’t possess boundaries or Islamic ethics that guide their interactions, and it is through modernity as opposed to Islam that they engage in the world.

The dynamics between the figure of the cool Muslim, scary Muslim and fake Muslim is also rooted in what Muslims do in the world as moral and material labouring agents. In other words, how are

Muslims productive through the tropes of peace, development and caring? Khan speaks to this based on his observations in Canada and personal encounters in Afghanistan:

And one of the unique characteristics we have is that I am looking from the perspective of Ismaili magazine and AKDN, we always talk about development; we talk about how to improve standard of life. We always work together. Versus other Muslims, fundamentalists talk about how to hate non-Muslims. And that Islam is in danger. We never talk about that. Even in Afghanistan when there were food problems Focus brought food to help Ismailis and non-Ismailis. That made a big difference in humanitarian assistance. Ismailis are constructed as agents of societal uplift, which is in stark contrast to other Muslims who are seen as focusing their minds and energy on things that are of no real consequence. Khan’s language of “development” is interrelated with Begum, Anjum, Maryam and other participants’ belief that

Ismaili Islam is a religion of peace. Peace therefore relates to how Ismailis diffuse and address conflicts or tensions through institutional means, as people who are not possessed by emotion and use rational approaches. As Maryam shares: “I think Ismaili has a good name in Canada, right? I mean, it’s kind of well-known, than the Shiite or Sunni, because we’re not violent, you know? We’re peaceful.” The figure of the scary Muslim is the one who does not possess the resources, the will, or know-how to be a productive, peaceful human. As fake Muslims, the participants gesture that sometimes Ismailis are critiqued for prioritizing bureaucratic relations and trying to fit into political and economic systems that some people deem to have caused damage to Islam and other Muslims.

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The participants also share their thoughts on why and how Ismailis are distinguished as cool, particularly in Canada in general. Kadijah shares:

We have a very high regard. I mean we get a lot of publicity over here. I’ll give you an example. When we went to the states and people did not know anything about us. They just group all Muslims as one. Over here they have knowledge about us. There are lots of Ismailis here in different jobs and they probably talk to them. Also, Hazar Imam is doing many things over here. We get a lot of media coverage for that. There was one incident, with that guy Rahim Jaffer and a woman came and told my husband at work that you know “I’m really upset because of that guy. Your community is so great and look what he’s doing to the community?” People do understand that we are different. We are Muslims but educated and in good places. For Kadijah, embodying the cool Muslim is both linked to Ismailis making themselves known in a Canadian context, which makes coolness possible, but also connected back to the work of the Aga

Khan in Canada. Coolness is also held up by non-Muslims who become advocates of Ismaili coolness as

Kadija’s narrative reveals. Khan provides more insight:

Wherever I see people, they have good impression about our programs and activities. I think we have a good foreign ministry. We are marketing ourselves as good. Even though we have some problems with other Muslims, like even in India and Pakistan and Afghanistan, even these Muslims realize we are a caring community. I probe Khan some more about what he means by Ismailis marketing themselves well in

Canada, to which he responds:

Like we have the Ismaili magazine. So this magazine talks about our achievements. It talks about some issues within the Jamat, some disease, how people are coping with these problems. Even in front of the Canadian government, Ismaili has status. The status is not comparable with anything else. Like the Centre for pluralism or Hazar Imam came last year and spoke at the LaFontaine Baldwin lecture, so we have status. Being seen as cool Muslims, known and with status, are the direct outcomes of the Aga Khan’s labour and the institutional mechanisms of the Ismaili community in Canada, both of which have shaped a

204 pathway to be encountered differently according to the participants. Khalil explains that this labor of coming to be known as a different Muslim has deep emotive effects. He shares a story of meeting a

Canadian Christian originally from Kerala India:

So, he was just asking me, “Oh where are you from?” He asked me, “Oh do you speak Hindi?” and I was like I suck at Hindi and then he was like, “What’s your background?” I said, “I’m Indian” and then he guessed, “Are you Aga Khani or something like that?” I was like, “Yeah, how did you know?” And then he’s like, “Oh man, the Aga Khan does so much for this area and this community.” Where one of his friends from in Pakistan. “Oh yeah, he’s building stuff, he’s doing really good things.” Even down in the Wynford Drive area, “Oh my God, this area is going to be booming. I should invest here!” And then I was like, “How do you know all of this stuff?” and he’s like, “I have lots of friends and peers that are Ismaili” and he knows that they are well off and they’re doing well in their career. He goes on, “The Ismaili community is striving. Their expectations for their children is so much higher that anyone else in society.” I said to him. “I am so glad you have that perception. I hope every one has the same perception.” I was so happy with the conversation. This moment for Khalil is affirmative in contrast to so many other moments where he struggles through the tensions of being fake and even at times, scary. Akbar explains that the work of the Aga Khan in Canada has global appeal and thus being the cool Muslim to other non-Muslims travels transnationally:

One of my clients who is Caucasian is from the US, and he knows so much more about development than I do. He was talking to me about the Wynford Drive project, and he’s telling me that we shouldn’t get so excited about it because the Aga Khan is very much detail oriented when it comes to architecture, and he’s going to spend lots of time on the interior. This was a surprise to me and I looked at him and said, “You know all of this?” The perception that I have is that non-Ismailis hold us in high regard because of the relationship and interaction the Imam has here in Canada. What the participants’ narratives reveal is in that coming to be represented through a religious leader and Ismaili religious institutions, produces power, capital and privilege, which allows individual

Ismailis to be known as productive and creative themselves. The voice and embodiment of being the cool

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Ismaili is projected through the Aga Khan, and for many Ismailis, symbolically taken on as their own achievement. And yet their individual narratives show how their lived experiences are complicated through their gender, race and class in relation to their religious subjectivities. Further, in the assessment of the participants, neither the resources, nor the community structures of other Muslims communities in

Canada can compare to the religious, cultural, financial and social capital that makes possible coolness for

Ismailis. In this way, the participants don’t take up how, therefore, the embodiment of the scary Muslim by other Muslims is very much constructed through processes of socio economic politics.69

Zaafra provides a layer of how race becomes significant for some Muslims in her encounters. She shares how white privilege, and the perceived whiteness of the Aga Khan raises questions for other

Muslims about the Aga Khan’s status as a Muslim leader. She shares that, “…people have asked about the race of our spiritual leader. Like why is this guy, or who is this white guy, you know? So, there’s been a kind of curiosity and also judgment.” The optics of the Aga Khan racialized as a white man is connected back to Ismaili status, and also raises the question of why “whiteness” associated with the Aga Khan becomes a point of contention, and also creates delegitimization for other Muslims. In what ways do their questions point out how racialization, interlocking with class, is integral to the construction of fakeness, coolness and scariness?

Affective Responses and States through the Cool, Fake and Scary Muslim The embodiment of the fake, cool and scary Muslim the participants describe is also very much about how Muslims make non-Muslims feel. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, being the cool Muslim is about respite and easing tension. The function of the cool Muslim, therefore, is to create

69 In David Strohl’s (2011) dissertation on Mumbai Ismailis, he argues that Ismailis draw out boundaries between them and other Muslims not as a way to maintain privilege but as a source of protection against further persecution. In addition their otherness becomes the impetus for their concern for others. I argue that both privilege and protection are effects of other aspects of their engagement with Muslims and non-Muslims, rather than it being a matter of them occupying one or the other position.

206 affective responses and states in non-Muslims. In this sense, the figures of the cool Muslim, fake Muslim and scary Muslim are animated for the wellbeing of non-Muslims. Anjum helps us understand this:

When they are comparing, when they are thinking about like fundamentalist Muslims, umm because they are so scared of that whole thing and uncomfortable with it and then finding out that there are Muslims out there, that are more like them, they can interact with. Or they know that you know, that there’s a way to interact peacefully. And it’s like a positive thing for them. And you feel positive too because someone is happy to see you. Anjum’s sense of non-Muslims’ wellbeing and comfort lies in her being able to show that “she is like them,” and that peaceful interaction is something that she is able to produce with non- Muslims.

The benefit of being Muslims that non-Muslims can interact with is reciprocal happiness. Happiness becomes a withdrawal for non-Muslims from facing someone who is not like them, a sunny comfort that reminds them of who they are, rather than whom the Muslim is. And for Ismailis, happiness is a reminder of having arrived somewhere different from most other Muslims. Anjum goes on:

The people who know that we are Muslim may consider us to be really different. They seem kind of relieved and confused at the same time. Relieved because most Ismaili Muslims are liberal enough that they can relate to, and confused because the way Ismailis are doesn’t fit into the ideas that they’ve come to accept about the way Muslims are in general. What is important here is how the Ismaili is in contrast to Muslims in general. This is something that moves through all the participant narratives, even though they highlight, at times, the strict, fundamentalist or the irrational Muslim, these Muslims are generalizable in relation to Ismailis. In other words, the participants don’t mention other Muslims beside themselves as “ambassadors of Islam,” or as providing relief to non-Muslims, or as being the alternative. The implications of this omission is that as

Ismailis attempt to respond to their perceived fakeness, and not be scary, and in their establishment as cool. The participants don’t pay attention to how all Muslims that are not Ismaili are therefore placed in opposition to them, even as they are opposed in their experience with other Muslims. The participants

207 seem to wholeheartedly accept their coolness, but they lack the realization that their own exaltation is dependent on a violence that rips Muslims into fragmented properties, in which they also exist as fragmented. Begum reiterates this point:

Outside our Muslim community, they see us as cool people, like one of them. Like, religion is important, and I respect your religion, and I would appreciate the same respect of our religion. Coolness, therefore, is located on Ismailis as a way of mirroring sameness to non-Muslims and difference to Muslims, which is an effect of being pushed away by other Muslims, and embodying a difference that turns over non-Muslims preoccupations with the figure of the scary Muslims. Sara

Ahmed’s (2000) argument about the Other and the Other Other, rings true in Begum’s sentiment. Ismailis as Others are closer to non-Muslims, and this Other reflects to non-Muslims something of themselves, whereas all other Muslims continue to be Other Other – frighteningly too close in their overly determined proven difference. Neikbakhat rounds off what Anjum and Begum are expressing:

The Ismaili ethic and the Ismaili way of life, I guess is very close, generally, to like how a human being should be at that level, and like your work ethic, and the way you treat people, your family, and friends. Neikbakhat’s words are the cherry on the cool Muslim. Ultimately, what this trilogy reflects is how Ismailis are constructed as more human than other Muslims. A human that is, as the participants show repeatedly, one that reinscribes rationality, modernity, an obvious sense of what peace means, and functions to make themselves knowable to the non-Muslim. In this way, they reflect back what non-

Muslims most generally see as embodiments of humans. But they also become another kind of human as they are evicted out of the Ummah, the Islamic ideal of humanity.

Ethnicized Cool, Fake and Scary Muslim So far, in this chapter, I have focused on what is produced for the participants, as Ismailis, in their encounters with other Muslims and non-Muslims. However, it is important to note that there were various

208 occasions when the participants did talk about the particularly ethnicized encounter with other Muslims in producing the figure of the cool, fake and scary Muslim. For instance, Neikbakhat called me up one day and asked that I meet her for an urgent conversation. When we met, she was very concerned about how non-Ismaili Afghans will read this study, as she often feels that Afghan Ismailis have to defend themselves against other Afghans. She attributes this, in part, to her perception that other Afghans are jealous of

Ismailis’ apparent easy settlement into Canadian society compared to them. The relationship of Afghan

Ismailis to other Muslim Afghans in Canada becomes a concern of Neikbakhat because Afghans are in relationship with one another despite religious differences. To Afghan Ismailis, maintaining a particularly positive narrative about their lives as Ismailis is integral to maintaining Ismailis as cool Muslims against the figure of the fake, as a way to dissuade those Muslims who might see this as a opening to further their position against Ismailis.

On the other hand, some participants complicated the very conception of Ismaili as a whole by looking at the ethnicized nuance within the community, and how this contributes to conceptions of coolness, fakeness and scariness. Zaafra shares that in her experience as a Pakistani Ismaili, Ismailis are often judged as pretentious by others Muslims. Other Muslims see Ismaili pretentiousness as part and parcel of being fake Muslims because they are too focused on material success. Zaafra attributes this pretentiousness to particular ways that class and status are embodied and projected within ethnicized

Ismailis. She explains:

I think the idea about Ismaili pretentiousness really comes from people who have experienced East African Ismailis because you know, the reality is that when you go to young professional events, it’s like there are way more African Ismailis there. I stopped going to these events because I found them pretentious. I felt that everyone was kind of conscious of their material image. For Zaafra, this pretentiousness is embodied through material displays of clothing, cars, and the

kinds of “young professionals” she has had interactions with at community events, who she deems as

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being largely of East African decent. Such performances of class become vehicles through which the

Ismaili comes to primarily be known as contributing to the construction of the fake Muslim. Maryam,

as an Afghan Ismaili, on the other hand, suggests that it is mostly non-Afghan Ismailis, that is South

Asian Khoja’s, who have given an image to other Canadians that Ismailis are very educated and

successful, and thus allowed Ismailis in general to be welcomed into Canada. This is something that

she celebrates and is proud of. Neikbakhat, Zaafra and Maryam’s suggest in their narratives that to

embody coolness and fakeness is also a matter of which Ismailis can take up that position, or are

positioned in different moments.

I want to end this section by sharing an uncommon scene of Ismaili encounters with other

Muslims, but where Ismailis and other Muslims share a common lingo. The figure of the scary, fake and cool Muslim becomes blurred here, and what we see are attempts at being visible as one ambiguous figure

– the Canadian Muslim – an attempt against the workings of the trilogy.

Uncommon Scenes in Common Lingo: Canadian Muslims working Against the Trilogy For the last 28 years, the Ismaili community in Canada has held an annual Milad-un-Nabi event. As a major “outreach” opportunity, Ismailis invite their Muslim co-religionists to come and celebrate the birth and life of Prophet Mohammed together. The theismaili.org, an official community website describes the gatherings from previous years as follows:

In keeping with the principle of brotherhood, Milad celebrations this year reflected a desire

to interact and learn together with members of the wider ummah (Muslim community) as

well as those of other religious traditions. (Learning, interacting, reflecting. Theismaili.org)

This is one of the few social gatherings in Canada in which Ismailis and Muslims of other orientations encounter each other in such large numbers. As an “external” event once a year, the Milad celebrations are significant to the Ismailis, as other Muslims can come to know the community in a setting

210 in which they share a common purpose. The common purpose, through the celebration of the Prophet, then becomes a way of focusing on someone of great pan-Islamic importance. The Aga Khan has been noted as saying:

The Holy Prophet’s life gives us every fundamental guideline that we require to resolve the

problem as successfully as our human minds and intellects can visualise. His example of

integrity, loyalty, honesty, generosity, both of means and of time; his solicitude for the

poor, the weak and the sick; his steadfastness in friendship; his humility in success; his

magnanimity in victory; his simplicity; his wisdom in conceiving new solutions for

problems which could not be solved by traditional methods without affecting the

fundamental concepts of Islam – surely all these are foundations which, correctly

understood and sincerely interpreted, must enable us to conceive what should be a truly

modern and dynamic Islamic society in the years ahead. (Milad-un-Nabi. Theismaili.org)

Each year the event has a theme and a special guest speaker – often a high profile academic speaking on some aspect of Islam and Muslims. Previously held at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto, the event garnered large numbers of participants. Along with the talk for the night, special recitations of

Qur’anic verses and songs dedicated to the Prophet are sung. An art exhibit showcasing local Muslim artists and their visual art is also a part of the festivities. The exhibit presents a space to mingle with others and to have a focal conversation piece. The keynote address, art show, and religious expressions are in line with the ways in which the Ismailis feel they can build bridges with Muslim communities that they usually are not in direct contact with in Canada as a collective.

Over the past few years the event has been held in more intimate settings. This past year, 2012,

Milad attendees met at Scarborough Jamat Khana located in an East End Toronto suburb. Having the event in a Jamat Khana is particularly unique to Toronto as now their Muslim co-religionists are

211 welcomed into an Ismaili religious space, normally not open to non-Ismailis.70 Such a moment allows for a crossing of boundaries.

I learnt about the 2012 Milad through an email invitation to Ismaili young professionals encouraging them to come and to also bring along their non-Ismaili Muslim friends. Walking into

Scarborough Jamat Khanas open, circular, large foyer, I noticed immediately how everyone seemed jovial, smiling and greeting each other in a common celebration. The crowd was much smaller than past years, but nonetheless, there seemed to be a diversity of Muslims present. The art exhibit was also quite small and largely focused on poster size photos of the various Aga Khan projects, like the Aga Museum and

Ismaili Centre being built on Wynford Drive. The program for the day included introductory remarks and a keynote speaker followed by question and answers. The theme was, “Pluralism: Implications of Diverse

Muslim Identities on the Future of Muslim Youth.”

The formal part of the event opened with a recitation of the Qur’anic Ayat by one of the central

Asian members of the Ismaili community. A young Ismaili scholar made introductory remarks. In line with the theme, he started by talking about the ecological personification of “diversity as a fact of life.” He noted that this diversity as reflected in human beings is to be seen, valued, and harnessed, as a goal of pluralism.

Next a leader of the Ismaili council for Ontario continued this line of thought, and stated that diversity, and its acceptance, are crucial in today’s turbulent world, and what better people to exemplify this than Muslims, with their differences, bound together through the Prophet, and the declaration of being

Muslim (Shahada). He passionately said that it is the humanistic values of Islam: “humility, generosity, tolerance, equality, role of intellect, and care for vulnerable” that should be the face of Islam. It is a

70 Jamat Khanas have historically been closed spaces only for Ismailis, in part due to their history of persecution, but also due to differences in religious practice and beliefs as Shi’as and Ismailis.

212 country like Canada, a “hallmark” of pluralism where such values can be enacted. As he spoke, behind me, a Muslim woman wearing a hijab with her husband excitedly shouted out “Yes Canada!”

Zarqa Nawaz, creator of the TV show Little Mosque on the Prairie made the keynote address.

Her presence and character as a Muslim woman, film and TV writer, felt exciting. Some of the actors from the show like Zaib Shaikh were also present, and so, there was a bit of stardom in the air. Although the event theme was about Muslim youth, there were not as many youth as I would have expected. Zarqa’s talk was short as she enthusiastically shared about her journey in creating the show and its importance.

She spoke about the need to change the narrative about Muslims, and reflecting them as people with problems and issues like others, whilst demystifying Islam. The characters and storyline of the show reflected a diversity of approaches, opinions, and perspectives within Islam (although it was mostly from a

Sunni Muslim perspective). She said that, “Nowhere else in the world could such a show be as successful as it was.” She emphasized that this is due to Canada’s diversity and plurality – the multicultural land where the stories of everyday Muslims can be told. She ended by noting that now Little Mosque on the

Prairie is being shown around the world, and a slice of multiculturalism, Canada, and the ordinary

Muslim Canadian are being exported.

The young scholar who made the opening remarks then facilitated a conversation with Zarqa and fielded questions. Some of the questions focused on how Little Mosque on the Prairie was received by Muslims in Canada. Zarqa spoke about the critiques she faced in presenting a young modern Imam, and some of the gender issues and dynamics in the show that challenges what might be considered

Islamically correct. The characters of the show were not meant to be flat or present a black and white

Islam. She even had concerns relayed to her from Muslims outside the country. But, she also talked about the constructiveness of the show in delivering normal Muslims to Canadians.

In the closing remarks made by another Ismaili council leader, the Quranic Ayat of “so that you may know one another” was evoked and we were reminded of the Canadian values of respect, diversity,

213 and equality. The formal part of the Milad gathering ended with two Ismaili youth choirs, one mostly with Khoja South Asian youth, dressed in pants and shirts, and the other, primarily central Asian, dressed in “traditional” clothing. The event then moved into an informal luncheon where attendees, men and women, mingled with one another and took in the exhibit.

This event presents other optics of Muslims encountering each other, rather than the ones narrated by the participants so far. Through this Milad event, the relations are very much premised on presenting the “ordinary – everyday” Muslim in Canada as a multicultural and religious celebration. What is important about this event is how the articulation of the everyday Muslim is accomplished through a particular narrative of Canada. In other words, being ordinary is possible because of Canada and its values. A common voice also becomes really important to this narrative, where Muslims evoke nationalist discourses as a way to settle their presence in the country. They, therefore, do not unsettle Canada as a multicultural and pluralist haven, thus avoiding the tensions and violence that many Muslims experience in the country.

This moment also reveals how state regeneration as diverse, multicultural and an incubator of ordinariness, require that Muslims owe their capacities to be everyday, ethical, productive citizens to

Canada itself. Displays of Muslim gratitude are also very important so as to debunk the Muslim that imposes on Canada – through requests that stretch Canada and its people out of their comfort. Being ordinary means that you don’t have “special needs” that require accommodation or that challenge power structures.

The grateful Muslim affirms the best of Canada that makes the very best of Islam possible, as one of the leaders of the Ismaili council so aptly points out in the above description. In this way, Canada allows ordinary Muslims and Islam to become an outcome of this “bestness.” Engaging the tensions and productiveness of becoming the cool, fake and scary Muslim are not given space in this kind of event. The dialogue advocated for by the speakers as a reinscription of humanist ideals between Muslims, between

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Muslims and non-Muslims, and between Muslims and Canada displaces the possibility of truly “facing” each other as differently constituted and positioned Canadian Muslims.

On the one hand, this impulse for the collective positive Muslim can be understandable particularly for marginalized groups within the Ummah, such as the Ismailis, where there is a deep desire for positive kinds of interaction with other Muslims. Further, such moments bring Muslims across their religious orientations to build a common voice. As well, such engagements show that Muslims interactions are not rooted in the presumed violence, as that which Harper had mentioned.

Finally, celebratory and friendly speech in such a gathering of Muslims seemingly disables surveillance of them as possible threatening Muslims. But as Sharon Todd (2009) has argued, “Humanity itself…must be read in relation to the very violence and antagonism that inheres in specifically human interaction” (p.9). Todd’s position and the participants’ experiences are reminders that discursive violence underscores the very making of Muslims as built in different frames from each other in Canada. What is lost in not uncovering or understanding what shapes our relationships as Muslims in Canada in these moments? Even in attempts of Muslims coming together as a celebration of their shared values and commitments, such as in their sense of belonging to Canada and pride in being Canadian Muslims, the scary, cool and fake Muslim lives on.

Final thoughts In the last part of this chapter, I want to further ruminate on the participant experiences, what is at work, and what is at stake in the Trilogy of the Fake, Cool and Scary Muslim. Rejection has an important role to play in the interactions that the participants describe. Rejection is productive. This might seem like an odd thing to say at first, but as the narratives of the participants show, rejection is a reoccurring process in that there is always a possibility that this will occur in their encounters with other Muslims. The participants’ rejection in their daily lives is often the subtext of their interactions with their Muslim

215 friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. It is important to note that this rejection does not, at least in these participant experiences, come from requests for inclusion or belonging to the Ummah or even claims of sameness to other Muslims. In fact, in most of the participant experiences it is simply through conversations with other Muslim on Muslim events, or in their attempt to speak about things related to being Muslim in a general way. Rejection comes to be a function of the conditions that make cool, fake and scary Muslims. Their common rejection propels an affective moment for Ismailis’ own difference. In other words, the rejection confirms their difference as a quality to be valued, and a soundness of mind.

Coolness as a property of scary and fake is a mode of defensiveness that puts them in a position to take on oppositional ways of being Muslim.

Through this, however, other Muslims as “scary” become unreasonable and untenable to their own disposition as cool, peaceful, caring, happy Muslims. The problem with this kind of validity is that it is a disservice to seeing the variation in Ismailis encounters with other Muslims. Instead these encounters reify difference, which uplifts some Muslims out of the unreasonable and leaves others in it. The rejection starts to become the dominant script of their encounter. It is also difference making as a reaction to marginality of Muslims with non-Muslims. Coolness is a response to a pushing away from other Muslims as a mode of survival and a possibility to recreate the Muslim for others.

At the same time, coolness as a property of scary and fake is a mode of resistance. The participant descriptions of being on the defensive, and having to constantly be diminished as Muslims, then puts them in a position to push back against their erasure as Muslims. In many ways resistance is a reactive validation that, “I am Muslim too.” Resistance also acts as a trampoline away from the tenuousness of being Muslim for Ismailis through the eyes of non-Muslims. What the participants share about how

Muslims encounter them becomes a discursive way of resisting their constant decentering out of Islam, and being pushed away from other Muslims. Therefore, as figures of resistance, Ismailis claim their erasure as moments of revitalization as disenfranchised Muslims. At the same time, they also resist against

216 the pre-modern Muslim, the one whose location and body is unsettling and scary, by embracing their welcome. Being marked out by non-Muslims, as distinct from other Muslims, works to blur their orientalizing and fitting into the scary Muslim figure. The act of performing the modern Muslim is a mode to create distance between themselves from forms of marginalization, which they feel they have control over avoiding.

Finally, what is also important is how the Ismaili Muslim human is constituted as naturally cool to their ontology. For example, as Anjum, Begum and Khan share, Ismailis are inclined towards certain inner ways of being such as respect, openness, peace, and dialogue. This naturalness is one that is reflected to non-Muslims, as the good, moral, productive human, in that Ismailis try hard to show non-

Muslims that they are just like them. What is interesting is how none of the participants interrupt this idea of Ismailis natural disposition to these ways of being human in relation to other Muslims, who seem, just as naturally, to inhabit the antithesis of these qualities. Secondly, non-Muslims themselves are ontologized as the referents for all these good qualities. These inner states automatically and naturally belong to non-

Muslims in the workings of the trilogy. This is reiterated in the participant desire to be “like them,” as an ultimate symbol of “how humans should be.” It is also clear that the onus is on Ismailis to constantly shift minds, hearts, and perceptions of non-Muslims who embody the ideal humanity. This is taken as an act of responsibility in the way the participants emphasize their role in explaining, clarifying, and building a new

Muslim for non-Muslims. Non-Muslims come out as recipients of a newer and clearer outlook on

Muslims through Ismaili self- discourse, whilst retaining the scary Muslim as the other Muslim.

Summary In the beginning of this chapter, I argued that the cool, fake and scary Muslim is the outcome of encounters that Ismailis have with other Muslims and with non-Muslims in Canada. Inclusive in these encounters are prior histories of constructing Muslims in orientalist constitutions, whilst also being shaped

217 by specific apriori histories of Ismaili relationality with other Muslims. The participants share that through meeting other Muslim colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and neighbours, they come to primarily take on the position of fake Muslims, while, on the other hand, they come to be known as cool in their meeting with non-Muslims. Furthermore, through their narratives about these experiences, the scary

Muslim animates, in relation to them as fakes and cool, a constitution at times embodied by them, but most often by other Muslims.

All of the pieces of this chapter suggest that the Trilogy of the fake, scary and cool Muslim in the encounters of the Ismailis with Muslims and non-Muslims plays out as a resistance, a distancing and reinvigoration of Ismailis. These three parts of the trilogy suggest that Muslims’ subjectivities, position and place in modernity, liberal Canada, and amongst each other, is layered through assemblages of movements. In the next chapter, we will enter Ismailis ethnobody encounters between ethnicized Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis in the Ismaili community.

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Chapter 7: Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismaili Ethnobody Encounters within the Ismaili Community in Toronto

Aga Khan III, Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah, 48th Imam of the Ismailis wrote many letters and speeches. In some he expressed concern for racial strife in colonial contexts. In an interview with the Tanganyika Standard on August 2nd, 1945 discussing the future of Tanganyika and race relations, he argued that Africans alone were the foundation of their country. European settlers and

Asians must be in a cooperative relationship with them in order to develop the country. Further, he believed that social relations between the races required knowing each other and racial understanding, and that this was best achieved through sports and other social activities (Aziz,

1997).71

As a Muslim leader during the last years of World War II, Aga Khan III was pointing out the way to build relationships between Black Africans, White Settlers, and Asians. His vision was grounded in two notions: cooperation and knowing. On the one hand, this vision reads as a colonial compromise for coexistence between groups in unequal power relations. On the other, however, it speaks to the humanist Islamic ideals of achieving inclusivity through knowing the other and learning how to coexist. In this scenario, the hope lies in the notion that racial strife can be undone through specific kinds of social and collaborative efforts. Thus the encounter between Whites,

Blacks and Asians entails initial assumptions about how these bodies relate to each other and what

71 This was particularly poignant as Ismailis lived in many parts of East Africa and the Aga Khan was heavily involved in securing and providing for the social, economic, political and educational welfare. Keeping peace between the colonizers, Ismailis as settlers, and the black African Indigenous populations would have been integral to the well being of the Ismailis. Such letters are also poignant as they point out some of the approaches that Ismaili Imams have had to colonial encounters and how relationships are managed between different groups and bodies.

219 the encounter demands, so that all can take up space on African land. What belies such a vision, however, is more precisely what Fanon (1967) describes about the colonial encounter:

I move slowly in the world, accustomed now to seek no longer for upheaval. I progress

crawling. And already I am being dissected under white eyes, the only real eyes. I am

fixed. Having adjusted microtomes, they objectively cut away slices of my reality. I am

laid bare. I feel, I see in those white faces that is not a new man who has come in, but a

new kind of man, a new genus. Why, it’s a Negro! (p. 116)

The Black man, the White colonizer, and the Asian do not live on equal standing, and it is neither cooperation nor knowledge that can respond to the violence that Fanon is painfully describing. Racialized people cannot be decolonized without coming to terms with how the racialized body is produced in the very moment of the colonial encounter. As an articulation of the colonial process of race making, the production of the black body is predicated on the existence of the white body. And yet, does this racial schema address how the encounter between other racialized groups occurs, particularly in Muslim religious community contexts within the Canadian colonial settler state? Along with white supremacy and coloniality that shape encounters of Muslims such as the Ismailis, what else emerges from their encounters when other social, cultural and religious practices are also at play? To attend to the multiple practices that emerge from the meeting of Ismailis, I posit the concept of the ‘ethnobody.’ The ethnobody is built through antagonism and unequal power relations between bodies, along with other affective and effective arrangements for embodied relationality. The ethnobody is also a carrier of competing logics and mechanisms, which simultaneously conceal and reveal social relationships.

As I have already noted, Sara Ahmed (2000) argues that the encounters in multicultural, colonial, and imperialist contexts are not about the production of bodies as such, but about what is produced between bodies. In part, she is arguing this because the subject and the other come to be

220 that through what happens between them. This chapter will engage in the exploration of how

Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian Ismailis encounter each other in the community and what is created through their meeting. In chapter 5 I argued that exceptionality is constructed through the encounters between the Ismailis and the Canadian State. In chapter 6 I argued that a trilogy of figures is formed through the encounters between Ismailis, other Muslims, and non-Muslims in

Canada. In this chapter I will argue that ethnobody social relations emerge between Afghan,

Pakistani, and Indian Ismailis through four social and cultural practices which I designate as follows: Orienting, Figuring, Proxi-mating, and Aiding. Orienting looks at how the ethnobody precipitates from being oriented in space to and with particular gendered, raced, and classed religious bodies. Figuring shows how ethnobodies are formed through the practice of figuring.

Proxi-mating shows how and why ethnobodies do or do not penetrate for transformative possibilities. Aiding situates ethnobodies in spheres of morality, materially enacted. All four practices together show the significance of what is produced in the meetings between religious bodies, disrupting what seems evident, and making visible what is obscured in social relationships.

Orienting Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis Ordering is one aspect of how the ethnobody takes shape in the context of Ismaili relationality. Ordering is not simply a way of listing a hierarchy, but it is a technique that orients bodies in different configurations in particular kinds of encounters. Moreover, orienting is more than hierarchy as it shows how bodies move and are directed toward and with each other. To be an ethnobody means that you are oriented in space as an effect of power through social practices. This section offers a mapping out of how Ismailis, according to the participants’ experiences, are oriented

221 in the governmentality of the Ismaili community in Toronto.72 This sets the stage for the many points of connections the participants make about their own positionality, their relationships with each other, and to themes such as: being architects of the Ismaili community in Canada, being “not that kind of immigrant,” historicizing ethnicized group relations to the Ismaili Imamat, and what it is to be Khoja. Although I chose not to interview East African Ismailis, as explained earlier, East

Africans are central to the narratives of the participants in this chapter over all.73

Vertically Orienting Indian, Afghan and Pakistani Ismailis

The African jamat came here first, and then you have the Indian and Pakistani, and now you have the central Asian. Obviously the African jamat got to define a lot of what being Ismaili looks like in Canada. And then the negotiations happened when Indian and Pakistani Ismaili jamat came here, and then now, more negotiations are happening as the Central Asian jamat is entering (Adam, 2011). I begin with Adam’s narrative. He is a Pakistani Ismaili in his early 30s. He provides a migratory explanation of how the community has come to take form. Adam points out that being

Ismaili in Canada is based on a history of arrival and settlement. The idea that East Africans came to define what “being Ismaili looks like” in Canada is significant to how other participants uncover why the East Africans become so central to their encounter with each other, and their own positionality within the community. Adam goes on to say that even though East Africans were defining what Ismaili looks like in Canada, it is too complicated to really know whether dominance

72 Foucault’s (1991) concept of governmentality allows for us to consider how religious communities operate through rationalities and practices that organize and harness bodies, and in which techniques of power are deployed. I also use governmentality to think about how bodies are directed with each other and to each other within the context of faith communities already operating through particular logics of diversity.

73 Sara Ahmed (2006) uses the concept of orientation to specifically understand how bodies are oriented towards and against objects, but as this orientation tells us about the queer life. Further, she considers how orient-alism, is an orienting project. She takes a phenomenological approach.

222 occurs within the community. His belief that “negotiations” are occurring between these groups blurs ordering for Adam. In contrast, the words of Khalil, an Indian Ismaili in his mid 20s, expresses that dominance is marked on bodies discursively within the community. His best friends, a network of East Africans Ismailis, remind him of this:

Well some of my friends actually make jokes. I hear them all the time. They say like, “Just to let you know like, out of all the Ismailis East African, are the like tier 1 and then you'll get like umm,” I mean, just cause they’re trying to be nice, they'll give India the second one. Then Pakistani third one and then Afghanis are obviously the bottom of the bottom. Although Khalil situates these comments as “jokes,” his other narratives reveal that in fact these are not simply jokes, but his ongoing and “common” experience with his friends. When his friends say to him, “Just to let you know,” ordering becomes a form of information, of knowledge.

Their “joke” inscribes the ordering logic that produces him as an ethnobody in second place, yet still better off than Pakistanis and Afghans. Akbar’s experience as an Indian Ismaili muddles this easy hierarchy expressed in Khalil’s narrative. Talking about his experience of arriving from the US in the early part of the decade and “settling” in Toronto within the Ismaili community, he observes that:

The first batch here were Africans and slowly when Indians started to come in, and then Pakistanis, the East African’s they always saw us as the outs. They never saw India or Pakistan. They just saw us as one. I guess that was their mentality. That’s how it was, them against us. In this configuration, Pakistanis and Indians are directed together, as different from East

Africans. Seeing Indians and Pakistanis as on the “outs” spatializes Akbar in an “in and out” placing. The positioning of East Africans versus Indians and Pakistanis as “them against us” suggests that there was a dividing line and a need to demarcate between Ismailis. In relation to

Akbar’s comments, Anjum shares her mother’s experience of settlement in a small town in Ontario in the 1980s:

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For my parents, I think moving to a Jamat Khana where there was like maybe 20 years of one culture there, like the East African Ismailis who developed and established routines and structures for so long. I remember when she would talk about East African people; there was a little bit of like, hurt or umm, negativity towards them. I think it’s because she felt that they were looking down on her. They would comment to her like, “Oh you Indian people, you do this differently or you do that.” She took it as an insult, like, you know, they think that we're lower than them. I don't understand like, the history, if like, maybe, you know, they're higher class or whatever, but I definitely got the sense that they thought that they were better than us, or she was like, less then. Anjum wonders whether “class” was driving her mother’s inability to negotiate her place within the community. Anjum reveals later on in our discussions that she harbours psychic injury from experiencing the Indian as less than the East African in the community. It was reinforced by her own experiences of feeling like being Indian was “bad” in relation to East African Ismailis her age. Both Akbar and Anjum are speaking about their initial contact experiences with East Africans.

This is in contrast to how they speak about the present, which is much more optimistic and elucidates a shift in their own positionality as more “integrated,” even though some of the contemporary experiences they share continue to show how they and others are demarcated as different. Anjum’s and Akbar’s comments in relation to Khalil’s, point to both the inheritance of being oriented as ethnobodies to East Africans, and the continuation of an ordering even amongst young Ismailis today.

Orienting a Middle

Anjum complicates this narrative in her experience with Afghan Ismailis, who to her have become the “new outsider.” She therefore describes Indians, and to some extent Pakistanis, as middle groups:

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Two weeks ago, it was Kushiali, and I went back for the like, dandia, and two of the three performances were from the Afghani kids. I don't even know who these people are. The Afghani people were all sitting in this corner, and they were so enthusiastic, and all the Indian and East African people were sitting looking at them. The Afghani people are like clapping and cheering on the performers. Everyone else is just sitting there like in a comma. These people are like entertaining us. They are amazing, and I am thinking to myself, “What is wrong with us? Why are we like this?” We've always been like this! We just sit there, and we are not affected by them, and they are so amazing, like they have so much spirit and whatever. Is it because we think we're better than them? Or we just don't care? Or we just don't even think about them because we have so much stuff to worry about? I don't know! But now when I look at it, I think, “Wow there is something wrong with us.” It’s unfair the way that we're treating them. So, when I look at it, the way that we treat them or the way that you know the majority treats the minority, it’s unfair. I feel like the way that I was treated, or the way that my parents were treated, was unfair, and you feel a little bit of hurt, and maybe some resentment. But then, you do the same thing when you're like in the middle group. I've done it, and I've had it done to me. So, I kind of understand both sides. On one side, you feel like when you're part of the majority. At the same time, you don't want to be bothered (with Afghans), and you just don't have the energy, and they’re kind of weird, and you still have a lot of fitting in to do. Then on the other hand, you feel kind of like, insecure, rejected by the majority, you know? Just like confused! The power of Anjum’s narratives lies in her observation and consciousness of what was happening in this event. The gaze of Indians and East Africans toward Afghans is uncaring, subordinating, and even apathetic. The gaze itself orients. Her question of “Why are we like this?” is evocative. What underlies the way she experiences this moment is hurt because she is able to recognize the familiar in what is happening and her own role in the dynamics. The event is a reproduction of her experiences of exclusion, being ignored, gazed at as odd, and different. The connection she makes to her and her family’s life experience to that of now participating in the violent gaze and body language against Afghans is compelling in terms of how she is then able to

225 describe herself as the middle group – those who have faced prejudice and an inclusion/exclusion in the community become those who now treat the new minoritized in the same way. Anjum points out that being in both positions leaves her with a sense of insecurity. One the hand, her insecurity makes her want to fit in with the East Africans, and on the other hand, her insecurity projects violence on to new Others. She suggests that perhaps the double act of being the dominant and not being the dominant is full of anxiety, pain, longing, and hope for another way of encountering each other. In this configuration, she is oriented in multiple directions.

Through her narrative, Garima suggests (as do others like Khalil, Rehan, Akbar, Khan,

Rabia, Gulam, and Shazia) that the manifestation of dominance through East Africans is not only psychically, but it is also spatially organized and materially enacted in the context of the community.

Garima an Indian Ismaili, even though she has been in Canada for roughly five years, shares her observations:

East Africans are more dominating over here, and we just have to follow because we have to live here. The other day I was just looking in Jamat Khana, and there were only East Africans sitting. Even in the volunteers, all the upper-level positions, captains, vice- captains, it was all East Africans.74 For her, East African dominance comes first simply through their very presence, but then also it is shown in how they come to take positions of influence and power in the community volunteer system. But Sameer, an Afghan Ismaili, like others such as Khan and Khalil, go farther to suggest that this “dominance” as other participants deem it, has a history and a deeper relationship connected back to the Imam. Sameer argues that even if Indians, Pakistanis and Afghans feel discriminated against or treated wrongly, they need to understand the context:

74 In Shamsah Mohamed’s (2002) master thesis, her female East African participants, relating their own experience of gender exclusion, talk about how they feel other groups, such as Pakistanis and Indians, feel left out of key positions in Jamat Khana.

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Maybe some of us, Indian, Pakistani, Afghanis, we think that ok, this is not the right position for me, this is not the right action I am receiving. It in fact, may be right, but this is my understanding, my perception of how I am perceiving this from other. The African Jamat, because they have biggest, the bigger experience with working in Jamat. Majority of them are very close to the Imam of the time, I mean to the institution, Eglamo and all that. Sameer suggests that the “perception” of mistreatment of Afghans, Pakistanis, and Indians should be tempered by a historical understanding of Ismailis. Sameer’s analysis points out that different ethno-Ismailis, and their historical relationship with the Imamat and the Imam, plays into how they see being oriented in the community and to each other here in Canada. Therefore, to have power or influence is directly related back to being closer to or working with the Ismaili Institutions.

This is an important point relating back to the contemporary history of building a global Ismaili community in which Ismailis from an East African background have been directly involved as leaders.75

Orienting to “Not that kind of Immigrant”

What still requires fleshing out, however, is how East African ethnobodies come to take the place of dominance to direct differentiation with other ethnobodies in the community within multicultural Canada. My question suggests that dominance within the community is also an effect of other experiences. I describe this process as “not that kind of immigrant.” Not being “that kind of immigrant” functions as a response to being a racialized immigrant in Canada through the process of white supremacy. The response of ethnobodies to “not being that kind of immigrant” happens as an event that marks out ethnobodies in relation to each other, vis-a-vis white bodies, as those deemed

75 See Steinberg (2011) for more on the global construction of Ismaili community and the place and role of different ethnic Ismaili groups.

227 as non-immigrants. For example, many of the Indian, Pakistani, and Afghan participants talk about how East Africans check out of, resist, and sell out of being “brown” and coming from an Indian heritage.76 Rehan as an Indian Ismaili goes back in time to remember his experience of racism as an

Indian:

When I was younger, nobody wanted to be considered an Indian. I remember being called racial slurs when I was a kid. You know, the Ismaili East Africans would be the first ones to say, “No, no, no I'm African.” They would make sure to put on a ball cap that said Africa on it, make sure that they brought it up more to people so they were accepted easier. They were more easily accepted in society, whereas, Indians, like, it was not that accepted. Rehan is describing how difference between others and other-others is marked.77 The

“checking out” by East Africans he describes is complicated by the fact that many East African

Ismailis have lived out of India for many generations and perhaps can’t even identify with being

Indian in the way someone who directly connects their roots to India would.78 But, it is their escaping everything associated to being Indian or having Indian roots that is used as a technique to

76 It is not that East African Ismailis have not faced or face their own inequity outside the community, or even within through class, race or gender differences. In fact, the class differences between Ismailis from different parts of East Africa in which some are considered more rural or less educated than others, suggests that they themselves are not a homogenous group. Yet, in the context of the community setting in relation to Afghans, Indians and Pakistanis, the nuance of East Africans themselves is less significant in producing dominance and ethno-ordering overall in relationship to the particular narratives of non-East Africans.

77 Ahmed (2000) argues that others may be accepted into multicultural nations as the “difference” they want because this allows the nation to be deemed as tolerant, and different. But other others are those whose difference is outside of what is acceptable.

78 In Mathews (2000) masters thesis, some of the East African participants identify as East African first and then Indian depending on the context, but mostly because many of them have had no contact with India. This is corroborated by the scholar Hirji (2010) in speaking about her position as an East African Ismaili who has largely felt that India and those things Indian are foreign to her because she has had no relationship with India. Mathews (2000) East African Ismaili participants actually explore what it means to be Indian and her participants such as Faori, although born in Barundi, says that she is very much Indian, in the food she eats, to the clothes she wears, to her very blood. This is in contrast to Rehan’s sense. Other participants in the Mathew (2000) study talk about whether they say they are Indian or East African is dependent on the circumstances in which they find themselves, gesturing towards what Rehan might be pointing out.

228 be saved from particular forms of violence as a racialized group that is at stake in these moments.

Rehan is taking issues with the selling out of the real Indian, as the immigrant, who becomes the target of violence. This is something that Rehan brings up a lot in terms of his experience with East

African Ismailis. What seems to be important for him is what he calls a “denial” by many East

Africans of their Indian roots, of where their language, of food, and many aspects of the culture come from. He is also pointing out that the East African body then moves towards the white body, as well as away from other racialized bodies while he continues to be distanced. This is something that other participants also notice. Zaafra shares her experience of East African friends and their distancing themselves from Indians,

…and she's like very offended that I thought she is of Indian background even though she herself is of Indian background. She is not black. She is of Indian descent. She'll call people who are from India or Pakistan FOB, fresh off the boat. And she herself is a new immigrant to Canada. She doesn't think she really has much of an accent. She'll look down at people who are new immigrants, and they are probably less new then her, but because they are from India, or they have a stronger Indian accent, she turns her nose down to them, or she'll just really be snobby. Simply calling an East African an Indian is offensive in Zaafra’s experience. Being Indian or deemed Indian has deep affective ramifications. According to some of the participants’ experiences, it produces anxiety and a reactive response in East Africans. The participants’ gesture that when orientation works to racially assign the Indian body, anxiety is produced in East Africans in being directed as such bodies. The rest of Zaafra’s narrative also clarifies that being an immigrant has nothing to do with how long one has been in the country, but “being” establishes who is produced as an immigrant, in this case the real immigrant, who is not the East African. Pakistanis are oriented as immigrants. Shazia observes an experience with her East African friends who refer to the Pakistani in derogatory ways:

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Like uh, as I said not all the people are like that but uh, some people, like Africans will call Pakistanis, Paki. Ah, Pakla Cheh. They don’t like Pakistani people. Even though I am Pakistani (laughs). I think its lack of communication or lack of knowledge or narrow mindedness. Even though Shazia is herself a Pakistani, her East African friends do not hesitate to point out the “Pakla.” But she as a Pakistani is not a “Pakla” in part because her friends don’t really think she is Pakistani and assume that she will not really be offended. She speaks languages such as

Gujarati and Kuchi, which are not often associated as coming from Pakistan. Her linguistic capital allows her to temporarily escape orientation as Pakla. Begum recalls her experiences of being with friends at school where her white friends made fun of Indians. She notes that her East African acquaintances pointed out that they are not Indian. Immediately she noticed how they were treated differently by her white friends. Begum is noticing something very important in relation to what

Rehan, Zaafra, and others have shared. It is not simply that racism is directed at all racialized brown bodies in the same way, but the very act of saying I am not Indian apparently works to shift something in the minds of white bodies, and as many participants talk about, even within the community. This “interpellation” may point to links between being named and geographic imaginaries that direct race and racism.79 Khalil tries to understand why it is that East Africans don’t see themselves as immigrants in the way that Indians, Pakistanis and even Afghans come to be:

They like always talk about their past experience, about what their family had, and they were millionaires, and they left it to come here to give us a future. As well, many East

79 Althusser’s (2008) conception of interpellation refers to how the act of hailing or calling out brings into being the subject. Interpellation is ideological subject formation. Through being hailed one is misrecognized and thus is produced as a subject. He provides the example of the police officer who says, “Hey you,” by the individual acknowledging this call. They become a subject, ideologically defined. The interlocutors in this study are calling themselves out, in that although it is an intersubjective process, it is not where the one is hailed at, like the “Hey you,” and becomes subject, but rather, they become subjects through self hailing, thus, being recognized momentarily as not the other.

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Africans did school somewhere else and they came here and transferred it, and they are doing well. Khalil explains further in another part of the interview:

They already didn't have much respect in East Africa for the people that worked for them right? They’re all “karias,” all black people. It’s just easier to pick on people when you feel like you’re superior to everything. I know I keep bad mouthing them, but like they are my friends, and I just hear about it all the time. So, it’s the honest truth, and it’s my experience.80 The connection between the experiences of many East Africans having privilege of education, wealth, and status and their treatment of black Africans is significant to the intersections of race and class. Khalil is also noting that the nostalgia of a privileged past as South Asian East

Africans plays into why he thinks even his young friends born and raised in Canada, embrace their parents’ memories of the good life and their success.

Orienting a Past and Culturalization

Through Khalil’s words, ordering, and thus to be oriented as Indians, Pakistanis, and

Afghans, becomes linked to the place of the black African in relation to them. Khalil later attributes the race and class relations of Ismailis to cultural differences and “how you are raised.” This idea that “culture” plays a pivotal role in establishing whom the other is, and is not, is an analysis that the

80 In Mohamed’s (2002) master thesis, participant Marakash explains that race differences were operating between East African and others in East Africa, but within the community, race inequity was transformed into classism. She provides the example of poor Kenyans in relation to other east African Ismailis. In Mathews (2000) master thesis, her east African participants share that when they were in East African, they wanted to be in relationship with expatriates more than black Africans because they wanted to “identify with wealthier classes.” Many opted for British schools and elite education (p. 81). In Mathews (2007) PhD thesis, her participant Faroza talks about feeling bad for the way they treated black Africans in East Africa. Sirhan says that she does not feel she can complain about discrimination in Canada because of how they treated black Africans while in East Africa (p. 64). Living in Canada has made some of these participants reflect on the power relationship between Black Africans and themselves, particularly as some of the privilege they enjoyed in East Africa was irrelevant in Canada, as they were placed in another hierarchy within the Canadian state.

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Afghan participants engage in, in order to make sense of their own experience of marginalization and inequity with other Ismailis. For example, Neikbakhat, along with Gulam and Khan who share her sentiments, explains in the following,

I’ve thought about this a lot. In the Indian culture, there were a lot of classifications of different classes and castes. In these classifications, some belong to different caste, or high level, or middle class, or lower class. So that's how they interact between each other and they see, perceive. Even among the East Africans, they see a group of people, and they will look down to them. I think they apply that to other people because they perceive us as coming from a third world country, and then they almost see that, ok well, maybe you're a class lower than us. Neikbakhat goes back to the caste system to understand why people are looked down upon and also to being identified as from the third world. In this sense, there are two things operating for her. She associates systems of classification back to India, which East Africans have inherited, and to defining themselves as not from the “third world,” which she feels automatically signifies her as lower class. Later Neikbakhat says that she has just come to accept that this is how others will interact with her, “That is just how Khojas are.” Culture makes visible ontological orientations.

Although most of the Afghan participants did not speak about the “classification” between Afghans,

Gulam provided interesting insight in this respect, suggesting another layer of orienting to be considered,

It’s just that even back home in Afghanistan, because of the social structure, if anything happens, it is your clan that will be there for you. Be it moment of happiness or death in the family. It’s a tribal society. When I was not here (in Canada), I heard from other members of the Afghan jamat that there were fewer Afghans here of different clans, backgrounds. In Iranians too, they were all like socializing together, get together on the weekends. But as the jamat grew and got bigger, they turned into these smaller groups. Everybody went with their closest clan members or something like that. Iranians went with Iranians, Afghans of Bamiyan with Bamiyan, Afghans of Bagalan with Baglan.

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In this narrative, Gulam brings to the fore that there are a priori demarcations between

Afghan and other non-Khoja bodies that orient Ismailis in their experiences of settlement in the community and in Canada.

Becoming Oriented as Khoja

Even though above we see how Pakistanis, Indians, and Afghans are oriented in particular configurations in relation to East Africans, it is also important to note that Indians, Pakistanis, and

East Africans are also at times seen as one group. This is through the term “Khoja” which has a history and usage referring to all South Asian Ismailis who share the Indo-Pakistani Ismaili religious traditions and history. The Khoja, in the context of ethnobody encounters, is an effect of bodies being closer or distant from particular religious traditions and sharing specific cultural resources.

When I asked the Afghan participants to talk about their experiences with Indian, Pakistani, and East

African Ismailis, all of them except Neikbakhat shared that in general they are not able to make a distinction between Khojas. As Begum said, “We see only two groups, Afghans and Khojas.”81

Maryam explains that once in her interactions with a Khoja who distinguished herself as East

African, she wanted to say, “You guys eat the same food: you dress the same way. What do you mean?” In this instance, being Khoja is about performing cultural markers of sameness. Both

Begum and Maryam identify that through my inquiry, they realized they don’t make a distinction between Indians, Pakistanis, and East Africans. Yet when I asked them about their social networks within the Ismaili community, both Maryam and Begum talked about their closest friends coming from Pakistan and India. They shared that either they did not converse with East Africans or did not feel close to them. So, then, what is the function of “Khoja” to Afghans? Gulam and Sameer talk

81 In Murji’s (2006) study, she also identifies two groups in Canada within the Ismaili community: Khojas and Central Asians.

233 about Khojas as referring to those people that share the South Asian religious traditions that are distinct from Afghans. Adam, as a Pakistani Ismaili, however points out that it was the difference in

“being Ismaili” in Pakistan to being Ismaili in Canada largely influenced by East Africans that made him feel like they did not belong to the same tradition. The Afghan participants also point out that to be Khoja means having brown skin associated with Pakistanis, Indians, and East Africans, which

Begum explains sometimes means that they become derogatorily referred to as “Pakis” by some

Afghans she knows. Sameer provides another layer of explanation,

The South Asian and African jamat, the Khoja jamat, they have the history of the religious practices. All the time there is the understanding that these are the parameters we are working within. Everything is institutionalized. The notion is clear, the perception is clear. For me, for example, or somebody like me, coming from my background of past culture and no institutional relationship, no direct relationship with these communities, maybe it is difficult in time to fit yourself within the system, within the framework, of the people and community activities which you didn’t have in the past. For Sameer, Khojas, even in their diversity, have had a relationship to the Imam, to the institutions, and to a South Asian religious tradition in the ways Afghans have not. In this way, here in Canada, Sameer, as an Afghan, is pointing out that “fitting into the system” broadly shaped by the

South Asian Ismaili religious heritage is challenging. Therefore, Khoja does not simply refer to specific bodies and their cultural similarities, but he also speaks to the capital and privilege of belonging to a way of being Ismaili and even looking Ismaili from which Afghan’s find themselves outside. Khan, however, attributes not knowing or seeing the differences between East Africans,

Indians, and Pakistanis and calling them Khojas as an effect of a condition, which he describes here,

You know, the last time I told you that for me, I cannot distinguish between Pakistani, East African, and the natural Indians. And then I thought about it. I’ve been here for about five years, if I don’t know that much, that means there is a gap, yeah? Because if you know, people have different ties together and you have discussions on all those things, these

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topics would come up. Even if you meet a stranger, you would know a few very basic things, which can be, where the person is from, generally where the person works, and how many children they have, and something like that. We don’t have that much of a real tie to each other. We’re going to the same Jamat Khana, you go on your own way, I go on my own way. So I don’t think that much integration as a community. I know, individually, there are people who have some selective friends, based on their education, based on their business, or somehow they got introduced and they established a connection. But in general, I think that there is a gap. The gap, as Khan describes it, is really about the lack of engagement between Afghans

Pakistanis, Indians, and East Africans. Where there is some the interaction between Afghans and other ethicized groups, it does not allow him to know about Pakistani and Indian Ismailis. For Khan, referring to “Khojas” makes apparent the encounters between ethnicized groups in the community in which distance is sustained. If orienting makes visible how ethnobodies are directed to and with each other, then figuring shows how the ethnobody is seeable as fleshed in gendered, raced, and classed forms.

Figuring Ethnobodies How is the Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian Ismaili figured in gendered, raced, and classed ways that produces them as ethnobodies? Figuring, as a discursive practice of forming ethnobodies, means that the way that Afghans, Pakistanis, and Indians are fleshed comes through already existing colonial and orientalist conceptions of these groups, whilst simultaneously, the specificity of the

Ismaili community faith context produce figures that are particular to their encounters. The trope in figuring functions as a way of turning language, to shift social relationships, and to give flesh and meaning to the ethnobody through encounters. Inherited violence, body-mind splitting, disciplinary civility, and upward mobility are themes that underscore how heteronormative Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian men and women are figured. To enter the figuring of Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian men

235 and women means uncovering what kind of humans and subjects they are in the community and multicultural Canada at large.82

Figuring Afghan Men

When I asked Khalil, an Indian Ismaili, about his relationship to Afghans, he said that he

“doesn’t really hang out with any Afghan Ismailis.” The couple of guys that he says he was friends with weren’t, “like they were from the motherland.” In other words, they weren’t really Afghan because they were not born in Afghanistan. After some minutes of thinking about my question,

Khalil goes back in time to his teen years to talk about his initial interactions with other Afghan male youth,

When I was young, that’s when there was a huge shipment of them that came in. Pretty much I didn't really have a problem with it, but it was just a little tough, getting them to be a little open because they went through so much back home that when they came here, they just continued whether they were rebellious or whatever. They weren't listening to parents in Jamat Khana or doing certain things. I tried to stay away from that. I don't want these guys beating me up. They were pretty wild. They didn't have much respect for anyone. Also, they didn't mind getting into altercations because they didn't care. They had nothing to lose. Khalil makes it a point to preface his stories with “he does not have problems with anyone,” but then goes on to talk about many of the “problems” he encounters with Afghans. Khalil’s descriptions and explanations hinge on understanding, ontologizing, and being disrupted by Afghan men’s presence. The idea of “a shipment” in Khalil’s narrative figures Afghan men as processable

82 Foucault (1972) in The Archaeology of Knowledge, speaks of the invention of man through the change in the “arrangement of knowledge.” The figure then is built through scientific knowledge since the 18th century. I share this as a way to suggest that figuring as a process of making bodies known, is one way of inventing the body as ethnicized but as Ahmed (2000) says, it is from within knowledge that figures (she is specifically talking about the stranger) appear, not in its absence.

236 cargo. Khalil’s processing of Afghan men is to understand who they are as wild, rebellious, violent, and a continuation of who they were in Afghanistan. Not having respect points to his understanding of Afghan men as the irrational and animalistic man, who has nothing that is important or relevant to him. This is a striking and visceral first impression. Khalil goes on to describe his experience with

Afghans playing basketball as a teenager. He talks about the competitiveness between the boys and describes himself as, “athletic and a really good player” and that he “wasn’t purposely trying to be better” than them. It was his being better that caused Afghan boys to “talk shit” and get into fights with him. Khalil goes on to share how he understands what was going on,

At first, it turned me off, and I was like, I don't like these guys because they have no respect. But when you think about it, again you have to give them a chance. Everyone is like that, especially if you've been through a lot. At first, I was a little alarmed. Who are these people? They all came and they’re just taking over. Everyone is helping them, which is great. But like at least they need to appreciate that we're helping them or whoever else is helping them. After a while, you get use to it and that’s just how they are. Khalil’s notion that we should “give them a chance” because “everyone is like that,” in one way is a move to flatten and deflate his alarm of Afghan men. It is also a move to show his attempts at “understanding” Afghan men. But being “alarmed’ by Afghan men is jarring, loud, invasive, and the potential of danger in Afghan men’s presence. Therefore, Afghan men are the signs for the potential and actual violence, danger, and enactment of masculinity different from his. His idea that

“everyone is helping them” and “why don’t they appreciate it,” points to the need to contain or enable particular forms of masculinity. His comment that they are, “coming here and taking over” raises the question about what Afghan men takeover? Who regulates male performativity and the male body? What happens when male ethnobodies collide? From Khalil’s narrative, it is not simply bodies that are colliding, but it is the rational male and the irrational male colliding. Distinguishing

Afghan men as body and Khoja men as mind is imperative and requires a level of disciplining

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Afghan men towards what he deems civil male performativity. Khalil’s question of “why are they allowed to do this?” reinforces the need to contain, curtail and reshape Afghan men.

Akbar is more optimistic about Afghan men, but what he describes gestures also towards body-mind splitting between Afghan and Khoja men. He says, “I have worked with Afghanis in volunteering, and it’s been a good number of years. There was this really hard working guy, and he was lifting more carpets then I could even think of with two people. So [they are] really hard, hard workers.” Afghan men as strong, masculine, and hard working in this is case, is code for being able to do manual labour in the way that he can’t. Along with these tropes that give shape to a particular kind of Afghan man, both Khalil and Akbar believe that, at the end of the day, the issue is that

Afghan men need to learn to be open, open to a new ways of being men. Adam shares a conversation he has with his mother about Afghan boys,

“These Afghani kids, they’re very strong and they really eat a lot, and they have the strength that a typical Khoja kid would not have.” And I was like, “So, where did you get that from?” And she was like, “No, no, I see them, they’re very strong. They run around, they have lots of energy.” I wonder where she picked that up from? Physical strength inhabited in the Afghan male body becomes contrasted to the Khoja man right from a young age. Afghan men come to be known through their bodies as hyper masculinized.

In some ways, the adjectives used to describe them, “violent,” “strong,” “energetic,” “wild” are reminiscent of the rural mountain man. Khalil, Adam, Rehan, and Akbar, also talk about how they see that Afghan men have “lots of kids.” This is a comment that Maryam as a young Afghan woman has heard many times and finds upsetting. She asks, “What do Khoja’s mean when they say that?”

Her question is related to the social function associated with Afghan men by Khojas, as bodily, primitive, and visceral. In what ways then does the Afghan man take form as the hyper masculinized mountain man in the seeing of other ethnobodies? Part of what allows this forming or tracing of the Afghan male body as mountain man is the discursive power of “calling out,” hailing,

238 or pointing out the Afghan man in the participants experiences: “Hey you, Afghan,” or “these

Afghans” or “you Afghans,” or “you’re Afghan…”83

Afghan men are aware of the effects of being figured in this way in their experiences with other Ismailis. Khan, Sameer, and Gulam emotively describe being mistrusted, bypassed, tamed, and contained in their daily interactions with other community members or in volunteering with Khoja

Ismailis. For instance, Khan shares a traumatic experience of working in the Ismaili institutions. He was appointed to a high position and was suppose to be in charge of a portfolio, but he was not given access to resources or sensitive information he would need to perform the task for which he was brought. He says, “I felt because I am an Afghan, I am not as much trustworthy as an East

African Khoja is.” Gulam and Sameer share in this kind of experience. For Khan, not only does he feels unacknowledged, but he also feels that even when he advocates for himself, it does not change the response of his Khoja colleagues. Thus, as an Afghan, he is embodied as untrustworthy. Sameer reiterates this experience in the context of his work, again in a position within Institutions in the community,

You have to trust me. Trust is the very important thing. When you are assigning me, giving me duty, you have to trust me. I may have mistakes, but when I perform it, and when you see that these are positive point, and these are negative point, now go ahead and say, “Well done, nice, but these are points that have to be changed, to be improved.” If you are leaving me by my own, no communicating, after that and if you are not listening to me, and you are listening to others, that is the distraction of the communication between two of us.

83 Interpellation here offers a theoretical understanding of what might be happening. Unlike Althussers conception of interpellation where interpellation acts as a universal subject-producing act, Ahmed (2000) argues that in fact, it is through recognizing an other that a subject comes to be. She says that the “subject is not, then, simply differentiated from its other, but comes into being by learning how to differentiate between others” (p. 24). To hail or call out differentiates between others and gives form to the ethnobody ethnicized figure.

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How do these experiences relate to the work of figuring the Afghan man? Certainly, there is an assumed clarity about Afghan men by Khojas, but this is in contrast to how Afghan men in fact might/do take up space or want to be present in the community. The contrast for Khan, Sameer, and even Gulam is that they want to be known as men of the mind, capable, responsible, intelligent, valued and acknowledged. It seems, however, that it is more common that when Afghan men perform within the hyper masculinized male, that reiterates the mountain man trope, that is, strong, violent, and energetic, they are called out, hailed, and acknowledged, as shown by Akbar, Adam, and Khalil’s examples. But when Afghan men themselves challenge being figured in these ways, they are bypassed, silenced, mistrusted, and devalued. It is as if the Afghan man can never overcome the body-mind splitting imposed on him. Thus Khojas desire of disciplining Afghan men towards civility does not operate to make the Afghan man more like what Khojas want them to be, but rather, it operates as an expectation that Afghan men are made to fail.

Figuring Afghan Women

In contrast to Afghan men, Khalil describes his initial reactions to Afghan women in the following way, “The girls were ok. I guess they were more, they didn't want to really go and be open and be social with everyone else. Maybe they were afraid. I don't know.” Here, Afghan women don’t take up space in the way Afghan men do. Their fear is in contrast to Afghan men’s fearlessness. Not being open or social speaks to the way that Afghan women hold back and occupy demureness, docility, and silence where as Afghan men “take over” space. Akbar talks about his

Afghan female colleague in another volunteer capacity, where he describes her ability to articulate herself and in learning to be open with Khojas. Like for Khalil, Akbar is also pointing to the difference between how he experiences the Afghan man in very visceral and bodily terms and the women in ways that speak to her capacity to relate, a stereotypical feminine expectation. Garima, as

240 an Indian woman, makes visible how Afghan women are figured in her encounter with them,

My partner in a specific yearlong project was an Afghani couple. We use to get along well, very well. As well, I remember when I was volunteering to work with this other Afghan woman on her educational needs. I use to visit her. She was a very sweet lady, and very nice, and very welcoming. I would say same thing about my project partner too. What I have noticed with them is that they don’t want to work. They don’t want to work at all. Like for example, this woman with four kids, I use to just encourage her to just, uh, get involved in studies. She tried but by the end of the day, result was nothing. Every month, in our project, with my partner, I use to have tensions in completing tasks. My partner did nothing. It didn’t bother me because she was so sweet. Where as with my partner’s husband, he worked a lot. The women, they don’t want to work. Garima merges the two stories and women as if they are one in the same. The lazy, unmotivated Afghan woman is contrasted to the hard working Afghan man. Garima accepts how these women are because they are so nice. But their niceness only works to reinforce Garima’s construction of Afghan women as not wanting to do anything. The integration of the stories into one also suggests that individual life journeys and personal contexts do not come into Garima’s assessment of Afghan women. This contrasts to how Garima positions the Indian woman as models of hard work and making it in the world (I take this up in more detail later). Afghan women are quite conscious of how they are figured in their interactions with Khojas. Begum’s experience at religious class when she was younger is revealing,

Even the Saturday school that we went to, I felt that mentally, too, they think, “Afghans, whatever!” They correct your English. Yeah, we have an accent, but so does everybody else. Or just mentally like when I was saying something, like answering a question, it would be some other student, budding in and not letting me finish. I guess they felt like, she doesn't know what she is talking about. She's just another Afghan girl. She doesn't make any sense. Begum identifies that being an Afghan girl is attached to assumptions, “having an accent, being mentally less then, not knowing what she is talking about.” The Afghan woman is figured

241 through being overridden and dismissed. Not letting Begum speak reproduces silence that is necessary to keep alive conceptions of docility, demureness, and fear etc. Neikbakhat reiterates

Begum’s sentiments but through experiences in which she feels undermined,

You know sometimes your colleague in a volunteer group they would ask you very humiliating questions. You know things like that make you think that, so, either you're very stupid to ask me this question or you think very less of me. For Neikbakhat, being asked humiliating questions represents the callousness with which she is seen as an Afghan woman. She feels that the Khoja man, in this particular situation, can subordinate her through the act of asking something that she experiences as violence. Neikbakhat says that in her perception there is no way that a non-Afghan Ismaili woman would be spoken to in such ways.84 Later Neikbakhat cites many examples of how even Khoja women have tried to exert their power over her, “Well, the first thing is that there is no acknowledgement of you. I think there is no respect for what you have to say. I think these are very common things that are happening.”

Figuring the Afghan woman through her erasure has a personal, psychic, and mental injury.

Neikbakhat shares the affective effects as, “hurt, frustrated, resigned, and even depressed at times.”

Begum shares her interaction with a Khoja man,

I am not sure if he was East African, Indian, or Pakistani, but he was a Khoja, so, he was like, “So what are you doing?” And I'm like, “I'm in university.” And he's like, “So what are you doing, nursing?” Just because I am Afghan I've been asked many times, are you doing nursing? I guess a lot of Afghan girls do nursing. I am not sure. At my school, nobody does nursing. And I was like, “No I'm doing psychology and biochemistry.” So, he said, “Oh, so you're going to be a psychologist.” I said, “I don't know, let’s see, I have to do my masters.” So, he said, “I know a lot of Afghans who do nursing. So, I thought you're going to be a nurse too.” I know three Afghan girls who are in medical school. Why

84 The participants in Mohamed’s (2002) study show that as Khoja East African women, they too face acts of being spoken to in ways that can be undermining, particularly in volunteering or leadership positions.

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nursing? Why do you see us in nursing or personal support worker? I guess even here, you can see that they just categorized us. Oh, she can't be more than a nurse. They think your IQ is not too smart I guess. It’s hurtful. What is interesting about this narrative is that even after Begum states what she is academically pursuing, the Khoja man says, “I thought you were going to be a nurse.” Her stating otherwise does not shift the conversation and Begum comes out feeling that she is being put into a specific gendered position, with the assumption that she is not that intelligent. This conversation is not simply a misunderstanding for her, but it is a moment that figures her. The hurt she feels by his presumptions point out the deep injury involved in being figured as an Afghan woman.

Figuring Pakistani Men and Women

To be figured as Pakistani works differently in the encounter between Ismailis to that of the gendered Afghan experience we explored so far. For instance, the tropes associated with Pakistani men do cross over with Afghan men, but they are not focused on the same things. Adam explains some of the assumptions he faced with East African Ismailis when he first came to Canada from

Pakistan, 14 years ago:

They created a tremendous divide between me and them. There were moments of “you are different” because you come from this place and your practices are different. You're male therefore, you do things a certain way, right, the Pakistani way - subtext, you are more dominant. You treat your women badly. Those kinds of stereotypes were present even within our community. Male dominance and treating women badly are central to the kinds of doing that Pakistani men enact. It is a patriarchy that differentiates between Pakistani and East African men. The figuring of Pakistani men through such tropes is so pervasive that Khalil explains, “When I was young, people thought I was Pakistani because I was so into my culture. When I made it clear I am not, I actually got more people, like, talking to me.” Being into his culture gestures towards being

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“traditional,” something associated with Pakistanis. The discursive power of uttering, “I am

Pakistani” or “I am not Pakistani” has an effect in that it changes how Khalil is read and responded to, again pointing to the work of interpellation. Adam goes on to describe his more recent experiences. He suggests there has been a change in how tropes of Pakistani men are uttered. Now it is humour that becomes the vehicle, as oppose to the explicitly “dividing” discourses of the past,

With that label [Pakistani] is associated a whole bunch of things right? But this is happening at a very humorous level. You know humour is also very telling. It tells you a lot about assumptions about what's the hidden. They make jokes like, you’re misogynist person, or you know, you don't cook at home for example because you're Pakistani, or something like that. Adam tries to make sense of the jokes he hears,

And then they’re like, “Oh, I'm just joking right?” Yeah, that’s fine and who knows their intention? Maybe it was a joke or maybe there's an assumption in there that they themselves believe. I don't know. There is this image out there, for sure. Umm, sometimes it’s interesting to see how people react when I tell them that 80% of the time in my house, my dad cooks and that’s a reality in my house! Right, like and the reaction is like “Ooohhh,” it’s like “Ohhhhh really?” The assumptions are there, but they are definitely more dormant. Pakistani men are figured as domestically hyper-masculinized and misogynistic who hold power over women. This is an interesting contrast to Afghan men who are not hypermasculinized in this way. Tropes of Pakistani men are directed towards women and domestic life, where as

Afghans are troped more broadly. Although this distinction is operational within the Ismaili community, outside of the community, orientalist tropes about Pakistani and Afghan men often overlap or are the same. Interestingly, when Adam provides an example of being a male outside the

Pakistani domestic male figure, he is responded to with surprise and with unreliability, gestured by the “Ooooh really?” Adam believes that the ways in which the Pakistani male is figured is not as

244 explicit as it was even ten years ago. Thus he tries to unpack why such tropes now come out through jokes,

I would say these kinds of discourses are occurring in social gatherings where the mood is kind of chill, kind of light, it’s a humorous kind of tone, and it is, again, presumed, that if I say something, “I’m just joking, I’m not saying something derogatory.” And again, it could be received as a joke, or it may not. So I think these kinds of presumptions usually come to the surface when the mood is kind of, you know, relaxed. His explanation is contrasted to Afghan male tropes, which seem to operate far more explicitly and dispersed. But Adam’s pin-pointing of how and where such figuring of Pakistani men manifests does not concur with the Indian participants who have Pakistani family connections, and who argue that such figuring is occurring in all kinds of interactions and spaces. Rehan talks about the “common feeling” that people have about Pakistani men, although he makes a distinction between “pure Pakistanis and first-generation Pakistani Canadians,”

I think the biggest thing with Pakistanis is the fact of how they’re brought up and the culture in Pakistan. Men are very dominating, and they feel like they have to make all the decisions, and they feel they’re responsible for everything outside, and the woman is responsible for everything in the house. There’s a clear separation of roles, and as a result, you get a lot of misunderstanding from other people perceiving them badly. Rehan makes the argument that the division of gender roles between Pakistani men and women causes a misunderstanding that Pakistani men dominate women. Figuring Pakistani men therefore, exists in relation to Pakistani women. In effect, they are dependent on each other. In the case of Afghan men and women, they are more diametrically opposed, but the tropes of Pakistani men require that Pakistani women are a particular kind of woman. However, the figuring of

Pakistani women, in the participant experiences, does not occur so clearly. For example, Adam,

Khalil, Zaafra, and Garima state Pakistani women are “like that” or are a “certain way.” What does

245 it mean to be “like that” or a “certain way?” Pakistani women may not need explicit discursive tropes because it is through the male trope that they come to be figured.

Khalil shares how his East African and Indian friends, when noticing a Pakistani girl, will say, “It’s just like they’re talking and they’re like, ‘Oh, she’s Paki, yeah, cancel her.’ They actually do that.” “Cancel” functions as a way to essentially erase the Pakistani woman because it has already been determined what she is about. Adam also provides an example of Pakistani women being “like that,” and as a Pakistani man, when he tries to disrupt this, he is caught in the way that the tropes come to be mobilized by another East African,

He was saying how Pakistani women were a certain way. But, I just couldn’t defend because those examples were true in their particular contexts. But he used those particular examples to make a generalization that, well, “all Pakistani women must be like that.” And then I just couldn’t counter that, right? So it was an interesting situation to be in. Pakistani women just being “like that” can only come to have meaning if it is attached a priori to the statement. Adam is caught by the way specific examples become representations for all

Pakistani women, although we are still unclear about what those are. Rabia provides some examples of what Pakistani women “being like that” might mean, which also relates to how Zaafra, as a

Pakistani woman herself, comes to describe Pakistani women:

I see that in the Pakistani Ismailis with the women especially, because I don’t really look at the male segment of the community too much. But I see them sitting together, and it’s nice, but I don’t see them mingling a lot, which I don’t know, it’s just convenient, or is it more? The Pakistani woman is figured as both active and inactive here. Sitting together is a wilful act, but the lack of mingling renders them inactive, reiterating the trope of the asocial or passive

Muslim woman. Zaafra adds to Rabia’s comments:

I think Pakistani women are still more at home, so they’re still kind of insular with their cultural, you know, views, and how they raise their kids and things like that. Like I find

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that there are some Pakistanis that think they are better than Mexicans. They need to find someone that they’re above because I feel like that there is that little bit of an inferiority complex that developed when they first came here, like in relation to the African Ismailis. I think there was a lot of looking down that they felt from the Africans, right? Like they felt their thought about like, “The Pakistanis are like that.” “Like that” has specific meaning. Rabia and Zaafra, reveal that Pakistani women are thought of as insular, home bound, closed within their culture. A culture which Adam, Khalil, and Rehan remind us is thought of to be inherently male-dominated. But Zaafra contextualizes why Pakistani women might be constituted through such frames very specifically amongst Ismailis. The Pakistani woman figure as “like that” is a response to feeling inferior to East African Ismailis. Begum shares an example of how being a Pakistani woman elicits what she calls a “racist response” from other

Afghans her age but then retorts that perhaps it’s a two way street.

Some of my friends will be like, “She's a Paki. Oh she's whatever. Oh, she eats dal.” So, I think that is racist comment right there. I feel like maybe Khojas do that with us Afghans too. Oh, she's an Afghan whatever. Begum suggests that Afghans direct specific kinds of verbal discrimination towards

Pakistanis and Khojas in general through specific symbols that racialize them. Begum quickly attempts to equalize the discrimination. Zaafra relates the complexity of how race, gender, and class coalesce in particular moments that figure Pakistani women differently,

And my family member, she is married to an African and her husband turns his nose down to us, to Pakistanis. But he is married to a Pakistani? I think it’s because of his impression that Pakistani are more conservative and their women are more submissive and tolerant. And from what I know, she's very tolerant. The point being that she immersed herself in social service working with Afghans. But she was just looking down at them. She is very well off, and she's so privileged, and yet you know, she would give them left over’s and treated them badly. Here the Pakistani woman takes shape vis-a-vis her supposed submissiveness assumed by an

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East African man, and through her privilege over Afghan’s. The act of hailing or calling out is also important here, “She’s Paki” “Oh, you’re Pak” also function as a way of forming or tracing the bodies of Pakistani women in tropes that determine not only her ontology, but her very relationality to Pakistani men and other ethnobodies. Zaafra explains she feels undermined through the effects of these tropes. However, she also shares the barriers to being figured as a modern Pakistani woman that defies the more prevailing “traditional” tropes in the context of the community,

I feel like, this is a sense from many situations, like, I am, I would be scrutinized. Especially volunteering in certain boards and not being offered opportunities for leadership. I'm a pretty decent person who is ethical, who has good values, who respects people. People make assumptions that I must be, you know, uh, promiscuous, or too out going, too friendly to people, because you know, what you see is what you get. “What you see is what you get” relays both the agency with which she can assert herself outside of orientalist tropes and also the already determinedness of how people read who Zaafra is, as a Pakistani woman who does not walk the traditional Pakistani woman line. Zaafra’s experiences point out that she is conceived in a dual figure that challenges the oriental Pakistani woman binary of the whore or the submissive dominated woman.

Garima’s extrapolation of Pakistanis, in general, provides some insight into why Pakistani’s men and women are figured in the ways we have explored. In this respect, Garima does make a distinction between Ismaili and other Muslim Pakistanis. However, what the comments of all the participants above suggest is that what Garima is arguing also plays into how the Pakistani Ismaili male is figured as the “dominant misogynist” and the Pakistani woman “homebound and insular,”

Because Pakistan is basically a Muslim country, right? And being a Muslim, according to what I feel, other than Ismailis, are the ones who believe in wearing those kinds of clothes, though they are very smart, intelligent, they believe in studying a lot. But they want their girls to just, you know, finish their basic education and get married and settle down. And there’s a lot of poverty.

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To be figured as a Pakistani man and woman is linked back to an imagined Pakistan rooted in an oriental patriarchal Islam.

Figuring Indian Men and Women

Indians in the participant narratives are not figured in the explicitly gendered ways that

Afghans and Pakistanis are. Although Indians are constructed as the “village” Indian, they are also the model minority, a productive, progressive, worldly subject. The village Indian takes shape both as the Indian of the past and the Indian of the present, where status and class privilege are not clearly identifiable on Indian bodies. Anjum says for example, that when people ask, “Oh yeah you’re from

India? You understand. You know what that means.” Or jokes, “Yeah, you’re from India. Your parents are immigrants. The immigrants trying to fit in.” Growing up in small town Ontario, Anjum points out that being figured as an immigrant she felt invisible and discriminated against, which she associates with being produced as a particular kind of “Indian,”

With my experience growing up, sometimes it feels just as bad to be considered invisible as it did to be overtly discriminated against. When I was living back home, I was in grade 6 or 7, I remember Apu from “The Simpsons.” That was the identity of the Indian. That was frustrating because people would be like, “Oh, that’s who you are,” and I’m like, “No.” It was embarrassing to be associated with that. To be associated to a “package,” like that is frustrating, but sometimes it’s frustrating to be invisible too. Apu is the essentialized Indian that comes to be accepted as the Indian, something that

Anjum is “embarrassed and frustrated by.” To be “packaged” is to be figured with everything Apu represents. He is, on the one hand, the entrepreneuring Indian, and on the other hand, fixed in a static backward tradition with “regular Indian problems” of arranged marriages, Indian accents and controlling parents, whose character is somewhat submissive and clueless. Although Anjum’s narrative comes from the past, she provides examples of more contemporary ways Indians are

249 figured through mobilizing similar tropes through South Asian comedians such as Russel Peters.85

Russel Peters comes up with the other participants too as someone who makes being an immigrant or racialized person acceptable because he is able to make them laugh at themselves. Anjum explains that this kind of reclaimation of the Indian figure is “unsettling” rather than liberating for her:

Like, there’s this one part of the Russell Peters’s skit where he’s talking about his dad beating him. I come from a family where my parents were highly educated and they didn’t believe in that. They were really against that stuff. I didn’t go through that. Um, then people in Jamat Khana are joking around, you know, like how they got hit by their parents like with a rolling pin or whatever, and everyone is agreeing. But someone else might be really uncomfortable with that whole idea, and you would feel really out of it because you’re like, “um... I was taught that that was abusive.” My parents would never think to do that, why is that even funny? For Anjum, humour becomes a way of normalizing things associated with Indians, which she finds uncomfortable and inappropriate. Anjum believes that it’s these ways of figuring Indians that resulted in her being thought of as inferior by other Ismailis and with other non- Ismailis. Anjum says that she doesn’t feel inferior anymore because she became distant from an Indian identity, and instead, she became thought of as white washed by other Ismailis. This became a survival strategy for her. Now those within and outside the community ask her why she is not a multicultural Indian woman- the one who cooks Indian food, watches Bollywood movies, and wears Indian clothes. Her perceived defiance of being Indian as “white-washed” produces a disturbance in others around her because she should at least be the “fun kind of Indian” as she puts it. Not taking up the Indian

85 See Faiza Hirji’s (2009) article on Russel Peters in which she argues that Peters’s humour provides both outlets to discuss discrimination and racism, whilst also becoming a tool to reinforce stereotypes. Why his humour is so popular speaks to the many ways in which people of color might see themselves reflected in a society in which they are often made to be absent.

250 woman of “now,” disturbs others desires for her. What is at stake for her by not being figured as the

“fun Indian woman?” Rehan suggests that this “fun Indian” is problemless. “I’m talking about

Ismaili Indian, right? We’re all jolly and great, and we don’t have any problems with anyone.” The figure of this kind of Indian characterizes model subjects, intelligent, hard working, cosmopolitans, different from Afghans and Pakistanis. Garima tells this story in the following way,

India and China are the next two big countries who are going to take over after the US, right? So we can imagine how intelligent and how smart Indians are. Overall, Indians are portrayed as more intelligent, though the population is too much. But they are looked at as intelligent. They come with a lot of resources, a lot of knowledge, and they’re very well educated, you know? We are like street-smart, you know? We know how to get our things done. We may find a lot of difficulties, some of us may do it, some of us might not do it, but overall, an Indian is very smart. The smart, savvy Indian is able to navigate the world and knows how to get things done.

Even though some won’t live up to being the kind of Indian Garima presents, overall the hardworking and smart Indian is able to take on the world differently than other ethnobodies and make it from “rags to riches” as Rehan tells us,

As we grow, you know, I don't want to say from the rags to riches, but coming from one bedroom to where we are now, people perceive you differently. You get a nice car; they see you different. Oh my God, you have property; you have money? Even myself, someone looks at me and says I own a condo, and they think I'm rich, and so I think that perception no matter what, people are attracted to. Rehan shares that as a successful Indian Ismaili, often people want to learn from him on how to be successful. The Ismaili Indian figured as upwardly mobile, becomes coveted by others according to Rehan,

I think the moment they see someone that’s in their late 20s, that has a decent job, that is doing good for themselves, and is pretty independent. I think people look at that as something they would want. It’s great! There are days that I'm the standard.

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This is significantly different from Afghans and Pakistanis who do not occupy the place of a standard to be emulated. In fact, Indians as ethnobodies inhabit a more convoluted place than

Afghans and Pakistanis because they can be figured as both Apu and also as the modern ethnobody, one whose productiveness and achievements elevate him into perceived neutral existence where anyone can make it through hard work. Afghans and Pakistanis have a harder time sustaining such a privileged construction, even though Zaafra and Rehan state that Pakistanis, who seem more westernized, have also become part of the model minority dream. But what is different is that the

Indian can come to be the standard, whereas the Pakistani is always up against the threat of being a

Pakistani Muslim. However, what participants like Khalil state is that it’s only some Indians in

Canada who have the potential to be figured as the standard Rehan talks about,

If you’re going to get an Indian that’s like a doctor, then I guess you have less things to bash them about because they’re doing something with their lives. I think the level of respect is kind of decided by what you’re doing. Although Garima points out that Indians have something inherently “smart” about them,

Khalil inadvertently outlines that it’s only the Indian who can be the professional, productive subject that is figured in this way. For many of the participants, being this kind of Indian is connected to

India as an emerging country. Sameer says,

You know, actually, Indians are… I think that India is more peaceful, they have much more better contact with other countries, they’re thinking about their own benefit and all that, and they don’t ignore the national benefit of other countries. But also, they’re very supportive to Afghanistan, they can be very supportive to Pakistan also. Indians are inherently a part of the projection of India, as peaceful, collaborating, committed to benefiting themselves and others, and supportive. They are not threatening in any of the ways in which Garima describes Pakistanis connected to Islam. The distinction between India and Indians and Afghans and Pakistanis comes down to freedom for Shazia. Even though she has never been to

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India she takes the words of others as a distinguishing truth,

I feel that like in Pakistan or Afghanistan, girls and boys can’t sit together, can’t go to school together. You are not free to do everything, and if somebody tries to do it, they have very hard time for that. But in India, I have never been there, but as I see the people and talking about their country, they have freedom. Freedom demarcates how Indians, Pakistanis, and Afghans are different. Rehan goes as far as saying that,

I think everyone finally has accepted the fact that Indians are well accomplished. They’ve really done well for themselves, and I think society as a whole really secretly wants to be Indian because they’re into the whole Bollywood scene, and the food, and the culture. So, I think that’s, sort of, the perception of Indians, I don’t think it’s negative anymore. Rehan points to the multicultural neoliberal dream coming alive, that is, the food, song, and samosa Indian plus the capitalist model minority. In this respect, Zaafra shares that this Indian model minority figure is unstable amongst Ismailis and distanced from the Indian Ismailis. This is because the East African Ismaili is marked as such a figure,

My dad told me that someone made the comment about Indians in Jamat Khana. My dad was really offended and turned around and said that, “The Imam asked people to go to Africa; you know the parents didn't send the good son who was going to school and doing well. The good one they kept in India, so don't assume, don't assume you were the better crowd that went there.” My dad was so offended. You know a lot of times my dad held his tongue. Figuring gendered Afghan, Pakistani and Indian bodies is a practice of forming, tracing and giving meaning to bodies through the encounters between them. If figuring is a forming practice, then proxi-mating makes visible how bodies are in proximity through the possibility and acts of gendered cultural, social, spiritual, and physical penetration.

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Proxi-mating What is proxi-mating? Anjum (Afghan), Zaafra (Pakistani), Maryam (Afghan), Khalil

(Indian), Begum (Afghan), and Sameer (Afghan) raise dating and marriage – intimate relationship – as revealing what proximity does through symbolic and material intimacy. The heteronormative proxi-mating unearths layers of coming closer, moving away, being like, and metamorphosing into particular bodies. This is possible through the actual and potential dating, marriage, and imagined non-platonic forms of intimate exchange and bodily consumption. The participants reveal the intersectionality and affectiveness of gender, racialization, purchasing class, and the modern woman syndrome that circulate between and in the encounter of Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian Ismailis for proxi-mating.

I begin with Anjum who brought up the issue of relationships as an effective example to describe ethno-racial differences within the community. She wonders to what extent her reflections are relevant to social experiences between Pakistanis, Indians, and Afghans. Anjum shares,

There is like a huge, umm, thing where people would rather be with someone from East Africa or India. Then like, I don't know if anyone would actually admit to it, but most people that I've talked to, when you say that like “Oh, that person is from Pakistan” or you know, “That guys from Pak,” they’re like “Oh god! What!?” (laughs). Because we're always looking at them like their backward, so I think also if someone were to say I'm dating an Afghani guy they look at you like you're crazy. Like, “what?” There must be some kind of standard or status there. We can go to Khane with them, but we can't get that close to them, you know. Even if they’re on the same level as us, and we're all suppose to be equal, we're all Mowla Bapa's children, but our parents would be really upset if we were to get involved with one of them or our friends would think we are crazy, or look down on us. Sometimes, yeah, you do run into cultural differences. I've done it too. Like someone says oh, this person's from Pakistan and you're like, “Oh no,” (laughs) and you think of like the worst things. All the news stories, you're like, “You're dating that?” It’s not so much in friendships and just normal interactions but more like with relationships, cause I guess

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that’s like a next level of interaction. You're actually owning that person’s culture. Where as you're not really investing too much in it as friends. Distinguishing between “normal interactions” and dating or marrying someone in Anjum’s narrative presents the proximity line. Firstly, the spatiality of proxi-mating is relevant. The sacred space of Jamat Khana, where spiritual equality manifests in material equality, is disturbed by the spaciality of cultural difference in that it creates another terrain of relationality. Therefore, proxi- mating cannot be read purely through orientalist or colonial difference. Proxi-mating shifts between realms. Traversing Indian, East African, Afghan, and Pakistani women and men is a pivoting towards and away. Anjum is not simply describing the body as a surface physicality. The to and fro, closer and distance, is affective. “Oh God,” is a projection of fear, shock, surprise, dismay.

“You’re crazy” borders the insane from the sane. The absurdity of it all is revealed. To date an

Afghan or Pakistani man is a purchase through “owning their culture.” Economy of bodies emerges from coming closer and keeping distance. The reactions of others that Anjum describes is costly, and a profit, in the loss and gain. To understand this, in the contexts of Anjum’s own life experience, being an Indian young woman is relevant as she shares the racism she experiences growing up in

Ontario and the class difference she faced between her and East Africans in the community.

Therefore, to “own” is to now be in possession of. But here it does not create a control over, but rather it is a burden, unwise, a liability. Maintaining distance is central to Anjum as the cost for her is too high to lose her relative accrued privilege within the community and outside of it.

Rehan shares how such distancing occurs in the context of a specific encounter he has with an older East African Ismaili colleague at work. The conversation begins with them discussing his dating life and the kinds of girls he should meet,

So there is this lady, she's an Ismali East African executive at my work. I talk to her all the time. We were talking about arranged marriages and all different types of stuff and topics. We talked about how young girls and young guys come to Khane to meet each other, and

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that’s not the easiest place to kind of meet someone. Then, I was making a comment about how Pakistanis, Indians, and East Africans came to Canada, and she just went off saying “Pakistani men are all narrow minded, ignorant.” Like, she said very clear, clear words. That “Pakistani men are all pigs. They demean women and all that kind of stuff.” I am sitting here, and obviously, I do have a connection to Pakistan. I have a lot of my dad's family in Pakistan. And to listen to this? I think this was pretty bad. But what do you do? And I was just about to tell her that my dad lived in Pakistan. I held back. Wow, she just tore up Pakistani people. You've been here for 40 years, and you still think like that? Seriously?! It was ignorant. The distancing of East Africans from Pakistanis and I would add, Afghans is important to the maintenance of distancing as a practice of quarantining. This is a practice in an imagined pan- masculinity, in the securitization against the malmasculinity. There is a discursive and bodily antagonism displayed in ferocity as Rehan describes. At the risk of being profiled as this malmasculinity and then quarantined, Rehan must save himself by stating he is Indian with Pakistani connections. The violence that his colleague inflicts on him is made invisible by his attempt to be nonreactive to her. More importantly, however, he must appear unaffected and keep his family history to Pakistan a secret, to protect them and him. His silence his colleague’s rant at once approves her reflections on dating and marrying a Pakistani man while becoming a strategy for escaping violence. Rehan’s silence is also a distancing from Pakistanis to maintain a privileged masculinity through closeting Rehan’s actual closeness to Pakistan and Pakistanis. He is fractured and fragmented through this. As Anjum reminds us, what is at stake in getting close, is about

“owning” and becoming like certain ethnobodies. Rehan’s response to this story is essential as it shows how ethnobodies absorb imagined proxi-mating. On the one hand, he says, “I didn’t take it personally” and on the other he says how he felt badly that his colleague would say such a thing.

Zaafra, as a Pakistani woman, confirms that in her experience, East African girls ensure distance between them and Pakistani men,

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A lot of African girls won’t date Pakistani guys because they have all these stereotypes that they almost ridiculously hold on to. Oh, Pakistani guys are abusive, or controlling, or hyper-traditional, or hyper ‘Mama’s Boys’, type of thing, you know? I think that they almost hold on way too tight to that. I think that a lot has changed. Like, Pakistani Ismailis here, a lot of them have really quickly integrated into the western society, or even the ones that are in Pakistan, like having just recently been there, they don’t look like the way that they used to back in the day anymore. For Zaafra, the pivot of Pakistani men to reflect a western man should change how East

African women view Pakistani men. “Holding on” sustains difference and partitions bodies.

Paradoxically, holding on also keeps close the imagined malmasculinity. Although Zaafra “calls out” East African women, she herself admits that she too, as a Pakistani woman having spent most of her life here in the west, has stayed away from dating Pakistani men and sometimes has given in to the dangerous Pakistani man trope. Zaafra swings between distancing from the dangerous

Pakistani man and coming closer to a new modern Pakistani male.

Some of the Afghan women participants, however, had a different take on Pakistanis. For example, Neikbakhat talked about the closeness between Afghans and Pakistanis reflected in the fact that we see more marriages between Afghans and Pakistanis. She attributes this in part to

Afghans having lived in Pakistan. While Sameer also concurs with this point, he attributes this to the shared (even though sometimes turbulent) history of Afghans and Pakistanis, being from Muslim countries and neighbours. Sameer reflects on marriage as an “evolution” of the community towards more integration. But as Maryam, Begum, Anjum, and Zaafra share, there is more at work here.

Peeling their narratives, the more hidden and explicit work of proxi-mating comes to the fore.

Maryam shares her reflections on Khojas and white women and men in proxi-mating. At first, she gives a general comment. “It is more attractive for me to be with someone different, to marry someone different because you’re always with Afghans, so why not be with others?” Then

257 her narrative becomes more specific. “Oh your children will be very attractive and they’re going to be smarter.” She argues that it’s natural to think this way in our society. For the Ismaili community, such a prospect is “convenient” given the different groups. Maryam continues,

“Your kids are going to be smarter.” That’s what my cousins says. He goes, “I don’t want to marry from our own Afghan, I want to marry some white girl because I just want it to change. I want them to be mixed, they’re going to be smart, they’re going to look nicer. The mixed look is better!” Coming closer to “difference” is not simply a fad of embracing benign diversity. Maryam is pointing out that there is intelligence and beauty to be gained. But it is not just anyone else that she is speaking about. Here, a penetration with whiteness (the non-difference) produces smartness and beauty. Later on she gets even more specific to suggest that although there is some anxiety about marrying white girls in her family, the anxiety is specific to those that occupy potential white skin privilege or temporary whiteness, as she describes her cousin’s white girl friend as “Mexican.”

Other racialized bodies, like Mexicans, who might be temporarily white (meaning they are read as white in very specific situations, or in relation to other racialized groups), are not the acceptable whiteness for the family, even though this kind of lesser whiteness is acceptable to her male cousin.

Maryam’s narrative speaks to the importance of carnal knowledge for the production of intelligence and beauty. Metamorphoses into whiteness via status and class become the real desires and gains for

Maryam. Such a transformation is not only for her or her cousins, but truly, it is there to secure race and class privilege supposedly for generations to come. Thus proximating becomes a eugenics of sorts that moves Afghans out of being Afghan to white. Whiteness is not only a desire, it is literally a transformative potential. However, some of her family members would prefer a Khoja girl because,

I know this other guy he had a girlfriend, like she was Khoja, right, and now he’s going to university. So people think that because she was going to university, so that’s kind of like

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the driving force for him to go to university, you know what I mean? Even my mom’s cousin was saying that, “You know, I wish my son finds a Khoja girlfriend.” So, if he has a Khoja girlfriend, he’s going to come to Khane often, you know, he’s going to be regular, but now he doesn’t go, he’s not interested, really. And then, he’s also going to be really smart. He’s going to go to university because of that girl. Because people, they think that Khoja people are smarter, because they’re all successful, right? What is interesting about Maryam’s discursive shifts is that we learn that Afghans are not white or don’t have white skin privilege like white bodies, or status, and class like Khojas (and temporary whiteness). Khojas do dual work here. One, is to reinforce Afghans in the spiritual realm through bringing them to Jamat Khana. Second, the Khoja woman helps the Afghan man gain intellectual capital by influencing him towards higher education. Khojas’ spirituality, smartness, and success are passed on to Afghans through a sort of modeling as opposed to penetration. Here beauty is not the gain.

In contrast, Anjum and Zaafra describe that white skin privilege and beauty associated with the ideal Asian woman, through white standards of beauty, have made Afghan women coveted over

Khoja women who are seen as the less desirable, dark woman. Anjum explains,

Maybe physically, like some girls, umm, if there from certain regions (like Afghans), they have really different beautiful features and then you have privilege because you're physically beautiful. Like when I look nice, people are nicer, guys are nicer. In general people with darker skin are seen differently than people with lighter skin. In what ways do Khoja women position Afghan women as privileged particularly in relation to ‘getting the guy’ amongst Ismailis? Related to Maryam’s reflections above, Zaafra goes into a detailed extrapolation of the desire for proxi-mating between Afghans and Khojas,

Afghans are considered the most beautiful. There is no doubt. It’s like a vertical beauty thing, right? Like, the prettiest is the fairest. African women, they’re kind of jealous of that, because their men are probably finding the Afghan women more beautiful. Afghan women seem to be really aware of that too. I guess, to me, there is a lot of emphasis on,

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um, attraction, you know, how you carry yourself in Afghans. So they’re considered, like, overall aesthetically pleasing. But Khoja women tend to look down at the Afghan men. There are not a lot of Afghan men that are hooking up with them, or Khoja women hooking up with Afghan men. But Afghan women, you know, from what conversations I’ve had, they’re seeking something on the status level. What they consider as better status, or someone that’s going to be a little less traditional. It’s sort of like a barter – “I’m beautiful, so that means that I can move up the ‘food chain.’” Like I’ve heard Khoja women turn their noses down at Afghan men. I’ve never heard a Khoja guy say, “I wouldn’t hook up with an Afghan.” But, you know, the ones that are on the elite end of the Afghan community, they look down at non-Afghan guys. They are not considered beautiful. I think however that the Afghan women that are sort of already on the periphery because of a family situation, or that that might not be as eligible or as marriageable, they tend to go outside the Afghan community. Zaafra makes an important distinction that concurs with Anjum’s initial sentiments that

Khoja women would not want to be with an Afghan man. As Zaafra puts it, “they turn their noses down” to Afghan men. But Khoja men tend to want Afghan women, as some Afghan women want

Khoja men. Zaafra is pointing out that closing the distance between Afghan women and Khoja men is an “exchange up.” For Afghan women, there is status to be gained, which Maryam has also described. Like Maryam, who highlights the gain of beauty and status through proxi-mating with white bodies and south Asian Khojas, Zaafra’s narrative suggests that Afghan women elites would not consider being with a Khoja man because he is not considered beautiful. So, in this sense, what is the exchange about? Class, it seems, trumps race when it means that privilege can be gained, but in the case where status is already present, the Khoja man is racialized as less attractive. And if whiteness is attached to Afghan bodies, as Zaafra and Anjum have stated, then it would make sense that Afghan women with class privilege would see the loss in being with a non Afghan. The gendered ethno-body is an effect of proxi-mating through the intersections of class and racialization.

This is also true in comments made by Maryam elsewhere, where she describes her Ismaili Afghan

260 friends being snobby towards Khoja guys by mocking them in trying to get their attention or asking them out. Zaafra goes on to talk about her experience of dating an Afghan man, which is interesting in light of the fact that she says that most Khoja women would not date them. Zaafra herself is a well-established Pakistani woman with a career and status,

I was thinking that at one point, I probably wouldn’t have dated this Afghan guy because, well, he didn’t have any education. In the Khoja community, that guy would be, like, way lower on the food chain. But because that guy was Afghan, like, I was already in the higher position of power, which worked out. Being the woman, with an Afghan guy, you want to be the position of more power, you know, like more education, more financial security and all that stuff, because it automatically buys you a little bit more equity in the relationship. He’s not going to be ordering me around because he knows that I’m not in a position to be accepting that, right? So it really worked out, because maybe in the same situation a Khoja guy would be controlling my situation. It is the very things that make Afghan men dangerous (controlling, traditional, etc.) that

Zaafra flips over in the attempt to tame the Afghan man through her positionality as an educated, financially secure, Khoja, Pakistani woman. In this way, being with an Afghan man is about being able to exert power and control as a way to win “equity,” something she acknowledges would not be as possible with Khoja men presumably of the similar financial and educational status as her. What

Zaafra seems to unintentionally point to is that the Khoja woman does not simply become less or more desirable because of her lack of beauty in relation to Afghan women, as well as, that the

“modern woman syndrome” is also accompanied within this dynamic. Femininity or “womanness” performed by Afghan and Khoja women, produces different effects. Maryam describes this performance of Afghan and Khoja women and how Khoja men might perceive them,

Oh yeah, they know that we are not supposed to talk to boys a lot or date them. Even if some of them like you, they can’t really ask you out. They just look at you from far away (laughs). So, yeah, first they [Khoja men] really always want to respect you. That’s how they want to get you. It’s not that they don’t respect the other [Khoja] girls. They know

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that they are open, you know. They are open-minded. They don’t mind. But with us, they know that it’s so different. We don’t really talk to their boys. So, they approach you very cautiously. They give you sign. If they say hi, they want to see how you react. Maryam is pointing out that the perceived “openness” of Khoja versus Afghan women makes Khoja men behave differently. Respect becomes a form of foreplay in her narrative. In this sense, Khoja women’s openness does not require respect in the ways that Afghan women elicit through their being read as more modest. Thus, the attraction for Khoja men is not simply about ideal beauty, but it’s also about soft femininity – graceful, quite, and inaccessible, which Maryam and her friends are very conscious of. Khoja women, modern and open, present a harder and less mysterious femininity. Khalil shares how such a femininity becomes undesirable when finding a mate for his family, particularly as the East African woman is positioned as the dangerous modern woman,

Some East African families, their kids just get too much freedom. I guess my family’s more like, on the conservative side. Not that I have to stay home; I do whatever the Hell I want, but, like, the girls themselves, because they go out so much, and they know so many guys, and that sort of thing. Maybe in their head they have this sort of thing where, “Oh, you know, they are probably sleeping around, or they do that sort of thing.” Whether the girls go out or not, they assume that they have more freedom, that they’re modern. Proxi-mating portrays the to and fro between bodies as a symbolic and physical exchange.

Moreover, the cultural, spiritual, and economic penetration of bodies is a potential and actual morphic practice in ethnobody encounters. If proxi-mating reveals distance, closeness, and the merging of bodies, then aiding situates bodies in moral spheres, materially enacted.

Aiding The word help is a call, an outward motion. Help in the Ismaili community is a spiritual evocation. The ethic of generosity – that is giving of one’s time and means - is at the heart of how the Ismaili community not only sustains itself, but also how it articulates the “work” each Ismaili is

262 to do in the world. It follows then that this service, called seva, through volunteering and working in the Ismaili institutions, with and for the community, is a mode through which such ethics are enacted. Helping those “less fortunate” is an ethic that is enacted in the day-to-day lived interaction between Ismailis. Help also operates on a macro scale, institutionally, locally, and globally. As the

Aga Khan has been noted as saying, “Don’t ask only what you can do for yourself, but also what you can do for others.”86 The participants articulate this doing within the notion of “help,” and

“helping,” and “being helped.” The following section takes up what help comes to mean, and what begins to unravel is the relationship between help as ethics and the actual work of aid. Aid and aiding is the signifier for how relationality is imbued in a simultaneous dual power; a power of embodying a spiritual ethical framework central to being Ismaili and aid as power and material construction of unequal social relationships. The purpose of this section is to share how aiding situates ethnobodies through an ethical manoeuvring in a material morality.

Aiding as Development

Neikbakhat emailed me to ask if I wanted to attend a “partnership walk external event.”

Partnership walk is an annual event held across Canada to raise money for a development theme, usually related to poverty alleviation, gender issues, health, and education. The walk is to support the work of the Aga Khan Foundation and its development efforts in the South. A movie screening was held as an external event, meaning that it was for an audience outside of the community. The movie shown was about Afghanistan and the work of the Aga Khan Foundation. Neikbakhat and I walked into the lounge, where the event was held, with the organizers still scrambling to get the evening started. I immediately noticed that all the organizers were “brown,” meaning Khoja. When

86 He has said this line in many of his religious sermans to the Ismailis.

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Neikbakhat and I sat down, waiting for the show to begin, I commented, “We’re on brown time.”

Neikbakhat quickly refuted, “But we are not all brown here.” She reminded me of the privilege I spoke with as a “Khoja” Ismaili, and at the same time, the space I took up in relation to her at the event. I also noted how we are racialized differently in this moment. As we sat waiting for the movie to begin, I noticed how most of the organizers were men and dressed in suits. “Young Ismaili professionals,” as the community likes to refer to them. I shared my observation with Neikbakhat.

We mused that so many Khoja men are “suits.” Neikbakhat quickly launched into an analysis. She said, “It’s a way of distinguishing them from the rest of us in their education level, their work, and showing off.” The suits in the room were more than clothing, but they were signs of class and a performance of difference.

After some time, the film begins. A little girl dressed in an earthy garment sits in front of a fire-blazing pit. She’s looking into it intensely, taking us with her. Immediately the narrator disrupts the gaze and says, “Sira is different because she can read and write.” The movie is called, “Change in the Making – Journey in Afghanistan.” The promotional documentary presents different examples of how the Aga Khan Foundation has made a difference in the lives of the Afghans from

Badakshan through bringing democratic development to the people, in modernizing their communities, and as a way for nation building. Afghans learn various managerial skills such as how to have a meeting, auditing, keeping a budget, and setting up a women’s bank, which gives financial autonomy to women. Later, in question period, we learn that the “help” provided by AKF to

Afghans is like no other kind of development work because the AKF is objective and has the

Afghans in its heart (through the goals of democratization and modernization). When asked whether the network makes mistakes in this work, Richard Finney, the white film director says, “They don’t make mistakes, and if they do, they are quickly corrected.” The question period is closed by a young Ismaili Khoja man talking about his experience of volunteering at a school in Afghanistan.

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“The kids’ eyes lit up as I brought them books,” he says. It brings tears to his eyes just thinking about it.

After the film and the talk, I turn to Neikbakhat to learn what she thought. Calmly,

Neikbakhat says, “The representation of Afghans is very limited and in some cases, wrong.” As she continues to share her reflections, her body language shifts. She rebukes the notion that there were never traditional community processes in place for auditing, for example, or that women had no education prior to AKF entering the scene. “We are seen as uneducated, oppressed. Our own knowledge does not matter,” she says passionately. I ask her if she feels that these kinds of representations figure into how Afghans are perceived by other Ismailis here in Canada? Her voice, clear and precise, “Yes!” She goes on to ask, “And why a white director? Does he validate this story about Afghans?” At this point, Neikbakhat is fuming. In the narrative above, the Khoja (here meaning Indian, Pakistanis, and East Africans) young professionals play a particular role in being the ones who reflect back to Afghans in Canada an Afghan and an Afghanistan close to them and yet far away.

Contradictions of Help through Aiding

Help has come to have specific meanings through East African Ismailis in Canada because help for Afghans, Pakistani, and Indian participants was first experienced in their meeting with East

Africans.87 In many ways, they set the tone for what help means and looks like. For example, Adam sees East Africans helping Afghans in specific ways,

87 Khan spoke about how his first exposure to Canadian East African Ismailis was in Afghanistan through different kinds of development work they were involved in. His first impressions of Canadian Ismailis was that they were very helpful and invested in “doing good” for others.

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For example, a family took in a child from Afghanistan because his parents weren’t able to come from Afghanistan, and when they did come, the child was given a proper education and was really well taken care of. These kinds of examples show that East African community, and in general, the Khoja community in our local community is trying really hard to ensure that the new Jamat who has come here is accommodated, right? Related to this, Khalil makes a more general statement about East Africans,

There’s like half these Africans that are like really out there to help them and help them like adapt to our society, which, if you’ve ever seen them in Khane, they’re either, like, helping them, they’re teaching them... if there’s like a reading buddy program, so they’re helping them with that. Or, you know, like, taking them to grocery shop - there are a lot of people that do that. Although Indian and Pakistani participants talk about helping Afghans in general, they make note of the specific ways in which East Africans are at the forefront of helping. This is significant in how Afghan participants come to talk about their experience of help through both really acknowledging, appreciating, and honouring the work the East Africans have done, while at the same time, pointing out the contradictions. Interestingly, Shazia, Adam, and Zaafra are the only non-Afghan participants who talk about their experience of being helped by East Africans in reference to supporting them in their integration in the community or socialization into their

“modern” life. Shazia acknowledges that this has been the reason for her positive experience of settlement in Canada. “For my personal view, my personal experience, Africans are always helpful.” At another point, Shazia mentions that in contrast, Indians and Pakistanis are not helpful.

She concludes that this may be because they are concerned with their own life or maybe it’s about the “nature” of people. Zaafra on the other hand teases out the process of being “mentored” by an

Ismaili East African boss she had who thought he was helping her,

I remember one time he [my boss] ordered a Swiss Chalet, and he was eating the chicken with a fork and knife. I wasn't very savvy with my utensils, and I remember him making some comment around being civilized or like African Kenyans were British ruled. He sort

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of rationalized his civility and utensil use. I remember feeling bad about it because I wasn't really comfortable using a fork and knife to eat chicken. I was fine eating it with my hands. I felt like he was embarrassed of me. Who is “helped,” and how, and if they are “helped,” produces asymmetrical relations that manoeuvre in ethics. Rehan points out that Khojas in general – that is Pakistanis, Indians, and East

Africans – feel responsible for socializing Afghans into Canada:

I still think that all Pakistanis, Indians, and Africans do feel like they need to help Afghanis and feel like, you know, they’re new in town, and we need to get them boot-strapped in what they need to do today to be successful. Rehan reminds us that the impulse to help (an ethical manoeuvring) is a socialization, a way of sinking “them” into here and shaping a successful Afghan. A common thread between how all the

Afghan participants describe help is in its contradictions. On one hand, as Gulam acknowledges,

“Whatever background you may think of, their cultural background, their educational background, rich, poor, they [the Khojas] have really come forward and helped.” And at the same time he talks about the overwhelming feeling amongst Afghans, explaining that they have not been helped, or when they have, “They have been abused” or wrongly accommodated. He explains in detail why some Afghans come to have “not so good feelings” towards Khojas:

It is a matter of when first Afghans came to this country, umm, I know that for a fact, majority of them were first hired by Ismailis and big majority. And unfortunately or fortunately, quite a large number of those employers misused or abused their labor. And, umm, they did not provide them or compensated them, as they should have. On top of that, I have seen that in general, and please do not take this in a negative way, I have noticed that many times because the Afghans were new to the country, they were promised many things and called to many meeting, to ask what problems they have, notes were taken too, but nothing significant happened to help them. Help also historicizes the experiences of Afghans with Khojas in layered ways. Khan describes these kinds of experiences working with Khojas through gestures. Placing his hand close

267 to the ground and then up in the air, he explains that Afghans are made to feel low, whereas non-

Afghans are treated like they are up here. There is an elasticity to how help is experienced, mobilized, and functions. Help operates as a tension. On the one hand, participants describe how being helped in the community has been integral to their arrival and settlement in Canada, to feeling part of the community and Canada. On the other hand, help creates distance, inequity, and bad feelings. It mobilizes Islamic ethics as a way of reinforcing privilege and power and the proper place of some over others in the community. Help ethno-borders as an ethical manoeuvring between

Afghans, Pakistanis, Indians, and East Africans.

Aiding In-equity

When I asked Begum about her experiences of being an Afghan with East African or Khoja

Ismailis, she used the term “nice.” Begum consistently affirms her experiences with Khojas. After lauding the khojas in general, she enthusiastically recalled some of her early Khoja encounters, and connected these to the present:

In this Jamat Khana too, cause right now I am thinking, going back and its like, when there was like, umm, a movie night or something, celebrations and there were pizzas and stuff, and they would come up and pay for us. And we didn't really want that. You know what, we can pay, but they never gave us the chance. They always looked down, “Oh they are new, so they are really poor.” But somehow we kind of, I personally, I don't know about my parents, but I felt really like, taken aback, like don't do that. If we ask, that’s really sweet of you, but no thank you. But they would still go and pay. And I don't know I felt really, like, somehow we're dependent on them, even though we were not. That’s how I had the feeling. I guess they thought that we were fairly new and umm, we're poor and they should pay for us, and we're just, like, not in the same level as them financially, I guess. Maybe we weren't; I don't know. But uh, I guess that was their way of helping, right? But we didn't really ask for any help. We didn't even look like in any way, that we would need

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their help, I guess. But I guess they wanted to be the parent, and just parent and nurture us. I don't know. But I didn't want to be the child. What stands out in Begum’s narrative is that help exists a priori to the encounter between

Afghans and Khojas. In other words, it is not relevant whether Begum wants to be helped or not, it is already decided that she needs to be helped. This relates, on the one hand, to something that

Gulam, Khan, Neikbakhat, and Rabia talk about, that decisions are made for Afghans. They are not thought of as agents. In this case, however, money becomes the form of help and status that reinscribes positionality amongst ethnobodies. Status itself functions as a giving, and as a conferring. By paying for Afghans, they are raised in and erased of status, irrespective of whether

Afghans in fact already are financially able. The infantilzation of Begum and her family point to the way help is not neutral or simply benevolent, but help re-establishes the roles and hierarchy of ethnobodies. Neikbakhat elaborates on this point to suggest that this is not simply a problem between individuals, but help is institutionalized infantilization:

If there's a project for Afghans, and instead of going to the people and talk about what they need, and do a survey, and evaluation, they will simply make a decision on their behalf. Who does that? So, obviously, when you have a higher status and you think, they can't think for themselves. They can tell you what to do, so they are making decisions for you. Maryam’s narrative goes even further to talk about how “help” and differentiating between ethnobodies comes into relationship:

If you want to be like a brother and sister, we should help each other. You know what I mean? That’s where it starts. You should leave your selfishness, don’t say, “Oh, she doesn’t know anything, I don’t want to go near her. I’m going to be ashamed. I don’t want to be her friend. She can’t speak English, and I’m going to be embarrassed in front of other people because of her,” you know? Khoja people say that they want to help Afghan people, right? Some Afghan people say that they see no help, there’s no help. So, I know that they have classes, evening, to teach children, helping with their homework, and I think that’s the best thing, because I didn’t go there, and my friends who went there, they said it

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did help them. It’s very good, when someone helps you, when the teachings here, the lessons here and in Afghanistan. They’re so different, right? So, I think we should just help each other, not be ignorant, or be like, I want to be the leader. I want them to be low, so I always help them. I know I’m better than them, you know? I think it all starts from helping each other, right? Maryam is making a distinction between real help and aid in her comments. She is able to acknowledge when help has been of benefit, such as in the homework groups. At the same time, she notes that help is good, as long as it’s not accompanied by “ignorance,” which she describes as something that does not reinscribe difference and that produces an oppressive power differential. At another point, Maryam provides the example of her brother being helped by a Khoja woman who finds him a factory job and tells him that he can also study to become a doctor again, like he was in

Afghanistan. Maryam’s tone and voice projects frustration as she tells the story due to the lack of understanding on the part of the Khoja woman, and her inability to understand the multiple realities of Maryam’s brother. Thus, the help she was offering had an expectation of what the Afghan should be able to do and accomplish, an expectation of the Khoja. Maryam’s narrative ends with an important point, as she is suggesting that help should occur reciprocally, which she believes shifts out of constraining power relations. In this respect, Zaafra shares her experience with Afghan

Ismailis:

I've been in a position of more power because I was the helper, and when you are the receiver it’s different. You know, I helped out certain people in difficult times. It wasn't much. You know, it was just what you would do for anybody, and if you really consider someone your brother or your sister, it does not matter that they are not actually your blood brother or not. If they are in need, and you get an opportunity to serve, at least that’s what we are supposed to believe in right? I remember thinking, I don't want it to be unequal, and I would socialize with them. And I remember thinking about western ethics around working with people that you're helping, and that you're not to be socializing with them, you don't take gifts, you don't give gifts, and there’s that power. I don’t think that it’s

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correct. I don't think that’s very good. I think it creates even more of a power dynamics. If you don't give opportunity for other people to serve you back, it never makes them equal to you. You're always the one that’s helper. So, I became friends with certain people, and I remember being in a tough time, and it was some Afghan people that I had helped out, that I asked for help. I was really apprehensive. Should I ask, should I not? They saw me as a friend helping them. And they saw me as someone, like a sister, so they helped me, and through them I have learnt that helping should go both ways. Help as an ethical manoeuvring within the Ismaili community is wrapped up with various kinds of contradictory expectations, activities, and hopes that speak to how spiritual ethics and material power relations produce aiding processes.

Summary In this chapter, we have examined how four social and cultural practices: orienting, figuring, proxi-mating, and aiding, form ethnobody relationality within the Ismaili community from the encounters between Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian Ismailis. All four encounters do not present static or fixed forms of relationality, but they show how social relationships shift, coalesce, disrupt and transgress in the moments through which the encounters occur. The ethnobody scripts, animates, performs and locates through fluctuating ontologies and the fruition of gendered Muslim bodies.

This happens in the unsettled nexus of material and transcendental powers as the ethnobody appears through tenacious colonial templates in modernity’s coherence.

In orienting, we examined the Ismaili community governmentality - that is, how Ismailis are oriented in particular hierarchies and configurations. These kinds of orienting shifts as Indian,

Pakistani, and Afghan Ismailis settle into the community already structured through mostly East

African Ismailis. They gain privilege through specific forms of integration. They are ordered based on racializing processes, and they are brought together through prior histories of the Ismaili community institutional structure.

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Figuring uncovered how Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian Ismailis are fleshed and formed in particular gendered, racialized, and classed tropes that relate back to orientalist, colonial characterizations, as well as through particular Ismailis religious dynamics. Afghan men and women were figured in oppositional ways. The Afghan man came to be known as the hypermasculinized, bodily, mountain man, aggressive, violent, and physically strong, in contrast to

Pakistani, Indian, and East African men who were figured as men of the “mind.” Such figuring had deep costs for the participants, as they spoke about the pain of being mistrusted in the community.

Pakistani men were figured as the women dominating, misogynist men. In this way, the trope of the

Patriarchal Muslim man, controlling his woman, was central to the Pakistani man’s figuring.

Becoming western was one way out of such figuring, but as the Participants spoke about, it was hard to interrupt such figuring. The Afghan women were figured as docile, demure, and silent, while at the same time, inhabiting the goal of being relateable and open. Even when Afghan women were not performing their genderedness in this way, when speaking up, challenging, or making themselves visible, they were silenced or bypassed as a way to contain them back in the figure of the

“nice” Afghan woman. The Pakistani woman was figured as “like that” a code for being traditional, insular, and inferior to other women of color, and to East African women in particular.

The Pakistani woman was also formed through Pakistan men, figured as dominant. In addition, the

Pakistani woman came to be within the dual figure of the modern and traditional woman. Finally,

Indian men and women were figured primarily through the Apu figure, the village Indian, but also the modern, model minority, upwardly mobile, innovative, and the standard for others. In all three cases, coming from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India played a role in why the participants thought that Afghans, Pakistanis, and Indian Ismailis could be understood in their figured forms.

Proximating looked at how proximity becomes a liability, a penetration, a transformation, and a hope to be like or unlike Afghan, Pakistani, East African, and Indian Ismailis. Mating, as a

272 form of intimacy, and crossing into someone else, physically, culturally, spiritually, racially, and intellectually is a racialized, gendered, and class endeavour, with participants very aware of what gains and costs are involved to proxi-mate with particular Ismailis and white bodies.

Finally, aiding made visible how the concept of help, as an ethical manoeuvring in the community, comes through a spiritual imperative to give back to the community, but also how it is used as a form of power that subordinates some Ismailis through civilizing them, creating class differences, and social and cultural privilege for some over others.

Now that we have gone through three layers of encounters of the Ismailis in the Canadian context, the next chapter will discuss how these relate to the concept of pluralism. The concept of pluralism is becoming increasingly important to how the Ismailis are distinguished and differentiated through the Canadian state, related to its own projects of diversity management, and in how the Ismailis see their role in the world as agents of an ethic of “respect for diversity and fairness of treatment” as a response to the meeting of diverse peoples within the Ismaili community in

Canada, and globally. The next chapter takes up how the last three chapters, exceptionality, trilogy, and ethnobody intervene the concept of pluralism. Further, the chapter looks at the relevancy of the concept to the Ismailis and to the Canadian state. Finally the chapter will provide and inconclusive conclusion to this thesis.

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Chapter 8: Intervening Modernities Paradigms: Pluralism, its Logics and Ismaili Exceptionality

Having travelled in the encounters of the last three chapters, I will now turn the focus of this final chapter to pluralism – a concept that has become central to Ismailis over the last decade, and to their relationship to the Canadian nation-state. I make the goal of this chapter to critically intervene and unsettle the concept of pluralism, and engage the analysis and illustrations of the last three chapters to do this. Further, as the concluding chapter of this thesis, I return to the making of Ismaili

Muslim exceptionality in the gendered colonial race Canadian nation-state as a modern colonial project. In the first section of the chapter, I lay out the relevance of the concept of pluralism to the

Ismailis and the Canadian nation. In the second section, I enter into a detailed critique of the conceptualization of pluralism as put forth by the Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa. In the last section of this chapter, I bring all aspects of this thesis together through a concluding commentary on what is at stake through modern coloniality, and the paradoxical production, relevance and instrumentalization of Ismailis as gendered, raced, and classed religious subjects in Canada. I end this discussion in the spirit of providing questions and signposts for how Muslim religious communities such as the Ismailis might move forward in engaging their paradoxical social relationships and positionalities, and offer some suggestions on where this work points us to in the broader landscape of Muslim politics in Canada.

Enter Pluralism For at least a decade, the Aga Khan has been referring to Canada as a pluralist society. In various public articulations he has stated, “Canada is today the most successful pluralist society on the face of the globe…that is something unique to Canada. It is an amazing global asset” (As cited in Stackhouse, 2010). There are many events that confirm his belief in Canada’s pluralism, however,

274 two perhaps have the greatest notoriety. The first is the opening of the Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa, an institution of policy, learning, and development dedicated to the study and building of pluralist societies around the globe. In affirming the idea of pluralism advocated by the Aga Khan, the Canadian government contributed $30 million dollars to the Centre, and has a voice in it through a funding agreement made with the Aga Khan. Symbolically relevant, the Centre will be housed in the Old War Museum on Sussex Drive, steps away from the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat. The mission, goals and objectives of the Centre are as follows:

Dedicated to the creation of successful societies, the Centre is founded on the premise that

tolerance, openness and understanding towards the cultures, social structures, values and

faiths of other peoples are essential to the very survival of an interdependent world.

Pluralism is no longer simply an asset or a prerequisite for progress and development. It is

vital to our existence...The Global Centre for Pluralism is to advance global understanding

of pluralism as an ethic of respect that values diversity as a public good and enables every

person – irrespective of ethno-cultural differences – to realize his or her full potential as a

citizen. Through applied research and education, dialogue and exchange, the Centre will

work with partners worldwide to generate, collate and share knowledge and know-how

about the structures, mechanisms and relationships that can build and sustain pluralist

societies. (Global Centre for Pluralism Mission)

So taken is the current Canadian government with the idea of a pluralist Canada as a global model that it too is considering shifting the Canadian ideology and policy from a multicultural nation to a pluralist one. Jason Kenney, Minister of Immigration, Citizenship and Multiculturalism, has been noted as saying:

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When people think of multiculturalism in Canada these days, they tend to conjure up images

of food, folklore and festivals….or song, sari, and samosas…we need a term that has deeper

meaning: that talks about the deeply different world views or belief system that people have,

and I have thought pluralism perhaps speaks more to that. (Delacourt, 2009)

The second event was the La Fontaine Baldwin Lecture, through the Canadian Institute for

Citizenship that I introduced in chapter 5. At the Lecture, the Aga Khan provided a detailed extrapolation of what pluralism is, and how it can be enhanced and valued. He situated his advocacy of pluralism in his experience of working in the “developing world” over the last many decades, along with the Ismaili experience in Canada. Moreover, in these events and in other speeches, the

Aga Khan has made pluralism an ethic of Islam and lived reality inherent to the Ismaili community experience as minorities in Islam, and minorities in all parts of the world in which they live. In this respect, when I asked the participants about why pluralism is being advocated for by the Aga Khan and the Ismaili community their insights reflected the dual, interdependent, spiritual and pragmatic need for it. Khalil believes that the Aga Khan has really, “brought it up and pioneered this way of thinking.” Maryam links pluralism to education and racism as she states:

The Aga Khan wants us to be educated because I think education is very powerful because wherever you are, even in Canada, people don’t like you because you are not white right, because there will always be racism. So if you are educated people are going to value you. All people can be educated not just white people. We’ll be more accepting of each other. Gulam first says that we need pluralism because “it’s the reality of the world.” And then he provides a more specific reason to the Ismailis:

You know, until the 1980s, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Serbia – I don’t think we were exposed to Jamats from these and other parts of the world. Hazar Imam started talking about diversity, I think, back to the mid 90s, and he was making this Farman in London or

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East Africa, telling us that we would be exposed to Jamats from Tajikistan, Central Asia, Afghanistan. All these traditions are coming together. Anjum goes on to say that when hearing about pluralism from the Aga Khan:

It stresses me out because some of the Farmans sound really urgent. You’re like “oh my God, what’s the deal? Why is this (pluralism) more urgent now than three years ago? It does affect my everyday thinking. I do have it in the back of my mind that, “yeah, if you want to live in this world, you do have to find a way to coexist with these people, because one day you’re going to be like, dealing with them in the workplace, and then what are you going to do? I know this is important but it’s more like, how do we deal with this? Where do we go to get help to deal with this? Sometimes I find (pluralism) is not very helpful but it does serve as a reminder and overall guidance. The significance of pluralism seemed amplified for some participants because of its importance to Ismailis as minorities amongst other Muslims and in the world. Adam explains:

Because throughout our history we have been victims as people who were marginalized right?! We are the victims of the lack of pluralism, so you know we should embrace it because we are a minority community within the Ummah and also if the rest of the world does not embrace pluralism, then it’s not good for us. What then, is pluralism? Does it speak to what the participants and the Centre for Pluralism gesture to? How does it relate to the production of Muslim exceptionality? In the last three chapters,

I have argued that different layers of encounters between the Aga Khan, the Ismailis as a community and the Canadian State, between Ismailis and other Muslims and non-Muslims, and amongst ethnicized Ismaili Muslims – organize, figure, align, bring into proximity, distance, and converge discourses, spaces, and bodies from each other and to each other in their encounters. Each of those chapters raised how through these encounters, an assemblage of paradoxical embodied social relationships emerge.

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Distinguishing Pluralism In a paper called “Defining Pluralism: Pluralism Paper No. 1,” dated January 2012, the

Global Centre for Pluralism has begun to flesh out definitions, contexts, and conceptual issues of pluralism. In a high level extrapolation the paper lays out the key ideas and global and country specific factors that call for and enable pluralism. The paper aims to show what pluralism is at multiple levels, conceptually and in practice. The pluralism paper begins with the question, “What is pluralism?” When I asked the participants this question, their response was varied. Adam laughing out loud said:

Yeah, it’s a very cliché term, you know, particularly in our community because of the guidance we’ve been receiving from the Aga Khan. People have different notions of what it means and it just gets thrown around a lot. It’s a hard word for me to pronounce, “pluralism.” People interchange it with “diversity. Initially, when the participants and I spoke about pluralism they were quite tentative about their own ideas of it. Some of the initial responses went something like this:

Maryam: Pluralism is like uh, different religions right? Respecting every religion? I don’t

know.

Kesar: Pluralism brings your thoughts you know, your way of life into multicultural society?

I’m not sure.

Gulam: Pluralism and multiculturalism, (laughs), uh, I am not a scholar!

Begum: I would describe pluralism as seeing the differences and like accepting and learning

from it?

Anjum: What is the definition of pluralism?

Akbar: I hear about pluralism and I am embarrassed to ask somebody about what this is. I

have no clue. What is it?!

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With a bit of probing and by the second interview, the participants began to shape their understanding of pluralism. Given the importance of pluralism to the Ismailis, as articulated by the

Aga Khan and particularly through the Canadian context, we talked about whether it is different from multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism is different from pluralism both conceptually and empirically for the participants. Multiculturalism has a specific history in their lives. Akbar describes it as an

“entrance.” Overall, the participants articulate that multiculturalism speaks to more than the mere presence of diverse people in Canada.88 They relay that multiculturalism is doing specific things in their lives that have contradictory effects. For example, Akbar says:

Multiculturalism is the best in the world. We have any number of cultures, regardless of Muslim or whatever, working together for a common goal. Everybody here, most everybody is trying to get to a better Canada. And I think it’s working. Even during the recession we weren’t so bad. Akbar is very optimistic that multiculturalism is about working together for an economically viable country.89 In contrast to Akbar, Anjum says she spent most of her life wondering what multiculturalism is because for her it meant, “acting Canadian – white,” in order to fit into the small town she grew up in, in Ontario. Zaafra says:

Multiculturalism is an ideal. Equity, accessibility, diversity, it’s all bullshit. Like, I work in the government and I remember one time they had a bunch of pictures of people of different cultures and it was just appropriation. You know when you take something out of

88 For Akbar and the rest of the participants, this entrance is a foundational experience of being in Canada. Some of them describe it as a process of becoming, where some bodies become visible as multicultural, while others are only visible as multicultural in some regions and places in Canada. For others, multiculturalism is affective in that it is good and comforting. Whereas for some, multiculturalism is a mask and reason for inequity in Canada.

89 See Arat-Koc (2010) for a discussion on neoliberal uses of multicultural bodies and whiteness.

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the culture but there is nothing of that culture that represents the government...I have faced a lot of barriers. Most of the participants were clear that multiculturalism is different from pluralism. They had a range of thoughts: pluralism builds on multiculturalism; pluralism is a departure from multiculturalism; pluralism is completely different from multiculturalism. Gulam describes the difference between the two concepts in the following:

And pluralism, I think is the idea that there are more than one way of approaching things. I think it’s more, not only your cultural background but so many other things, different cultures, religious backgrounds, political views, regional, racial, everything. That’s a more general I think, universal, I think pluralism is more universal than multiculturalism. The participants articulate pluralism in verbs: accepting, learning from, engaging, embracing, knowing and understanding, relating to diverse groups of people, perspectives and approaches, in the various realms of life. Adam builds on these ideas of pluralism and provides this example:

When I entered my Master’s program, everybody knew who I was. Everybody knew I was an Ismaili Muslim. At least I was a Muslim. It was a multicultural space. And everybody acknowledged it and nobody was like, oh, you're Muslim get out. Right?! It was like ok, so we welcome you. You exist! But pluralism actually happened was when during my regular conversation with my supervisor who was not an Ismaili, where I would regularly try to articulate myself as an Ismaili to him. He had the openness to kind of not judge me, to give me the space to articulate who I am. And through that articulation I became even more curious about who I was. As opposed to, I'm just going to tell you who I am and that’s it, walk away. And he himself then would articulate who he was and he told me that through these conversations, I am finding out more about myself. So, I think that's pluralism - where you begin to like, you know, you have these spaces where you can somehow engage in difference and receive the opportunity to articulate yourself and grow in that. Pluralism points to something else for Adam. He attributes it to the kind of interaction he

280 has with his professor. He notes that there is something new that is possible for him and his professor, an outcome where they know themselves in another way, and come to understand from each other. Unlike Adam, when the other participants shared their experiences of multiculturalism they described situations, events and encounters outside the community. And when pluralism came up they spoke about it as being within the community, at least conceptually. When I asked the participants about where they’ve heard about pluralism, all of them said “the Aga Khan.” Many of the participants rephrase things said by the Aga Khan to try to grasp what pluralism is, and yet they lament that people really do not understand the concept in the community. However, because the

Aga Khan is talking about it, the word is special. Rabia puts it this way:

Well now that the Imam is talking about pluralism, this means it’s something serious. It gives me the jitters, the way he talks about it. I think multiculturalism is great but pluralism is way beyond that. It’s not just cultures, it our minds, we need to be together. I think the Imam wants our Jamat to start to understand pluralism and then expand it to the rest of the world. We are so proud of him for working on pluralism. He is doing it. He is setting an example for us. Talking about it wasn’t enough so that’s why he set up the Centre for Pluralism. Some of the participants argue that pluralism is universal, in that there have always been different people having to interact with one another. At the same time, pluralism for all of them has origins in Islam. Sameer relates the importance of pluralism back to the Qur’anic verse, “You we’re created from a single soul of different communities to know each other.” Sameer goes on to say,

“we’re all from the same source but we are also unique because God is unique.” He goes on to tell the story about the Sheikh who put sticks together, then asked his pupil to break them but he could not. Sameer says, “If you are pluralistically together, you can't be broken.”

Pluralism for the participants – what it means and what it aims to do – is linked back to the

Imam and his articulation of it, and to a broader Islamic ethos. At the same time many of the

281 participants showed scepticism and disconnect from the concept as offering a real way forward in dealing with inequity, even as it symbolically seemed to affirm something about their diversity as

Ismailis.

Defining Pluralism in the Pluralism Paper Going back to the pluralism paper from the Global Centre for Pluralism, the writers define pluralism as an ethic, a set of practices, outcomes and set of intentions. In this way pluralism is more than one thing. It is an outward enactment, result, and inner state of being. The authors of the paper set up pluralism as an ethic of respect, which values human diversity. They state:

Irrespective of cultural differences, peoples around the world – male and female – share a

common humanity. Pluralism rejects division as a necessary outcome of diversity, seeking

instead to identify the qualities and experiences that unite rather than divide us as people

and to forge a shared stake in the public good. Respect for diversity transcends tolerance

and embrace difference as an engine of commonwealth. (p. 1)

The space for pluralism is the nation-state. In this respect they argue that:

The state, as Canada’s history shows, can function as an important engine of pluralism,

providing the institutional scaffolding on which all else rests. But equally the state can

spark or exacerbate group tensions, especially where state institutions play a fundamental

role in the allocation of resources. (p. 2)

The very conception of the state, and pluralism as its foundation and what allows it to

function, is placed outside of the Canadian nation as a gendered, race, settler formation. What

this also means is that by extension, the very positionality of Ismailis is placed outside of the

coloniality of the nation. Such a framing later allows the pluralism paper to argue that

Indigenous populations and their “conditions,” are a “persistent source of concern and debate”

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for reaching full equity in Canada, as opposed to Indigenous Peoples being subjects of continued

colonization. Further, relationality between immigrants, Indigenous Peoples and bodies of color,

are mediated through the state. In this way, communities like the Ismailis, particularly in

becoming part of shaping the discourse of pluralism, bypass direct relationships with Indigenous

nations. Given the centrality of Canada as an exemplar of pluralism, the relationship between

pluralism and multiculturalism is also important to what the paper argues. They say:

In contrast to multiculturalism – which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a policy

response to immigrant diversity in places such as Australia, Canada and parts of Western

Europe – pluralism emphasizes individual choices as well as collective compromise and

mutual obligation as routes to peace, stability and human development. (p. 2)

At first they present multiculturalism and pluralism as two separate concepts and approaches.

The use of the term “contrast” establishes that multiculturalism and pluralism are in fact different from one another. The distancing of the two concepts allows for pluralism to have other origins, and to be more than multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is articulated as “recognition of group identity” and a “protection of individual rights.” The setup therefore of the contrast between the two concepts lies in multiculturalism’s focus on what is done to people, in that cultural others are recognized in their group identity and given protection for their individual rights. Pluralism rather, focuses on the doing of people in that they choose compromise and are mutually obligated.

Later in the paper pluralism and multiculturalism converge, as Canada is the exemplar of both concepts in its 40 years of managing and enabling diversity. Canada’s model of “successful pluralism” comes out of a particular history unique to Canada and its “set of choices.” Both managing and enabling diversity become benchmarks for success. Multiculturalism is positioned out of this history as a “pantheon of measures” designed to respond to the changing demographics

283 and demands of multiple groups, such as the Quebecois, First Nations, and “Canadians of non-

British and non-French origin as well as from women for equitable recognition as nation builders”

(p. 2). Multiculturalism therefore, is read as one of many choices that could have been made or were made by Canada, to determine what the best course was in dealing with diversity. The notion of choosing what to do with diversity makes it a rational call and at the same time, situated in a depoliticized politics. As Bannerji (2000) reminds us, diversity as a liberal political tool:

Escapes from its denotative function and dictionary meaning and emerges value-free, power

neutral indicator of difference and multiplicity. But this very character and claim of

neutrality allows it to become the governing concept of a complex discourse of social power

with its own and related web of concepts. (p. 547)

Despite the contrast the pluralism paper sets up at the beginning, the “ethic of pluralism” is then embedded within multiculturalism. The paper says:

Today, the ethic of pluralism – as represented in the country’s multiculturalism policies and

its associated practices - has taken deep root in the country’s collective imagination. Respect

for diversity and the institutions and mechanisms that support recognition of difference have

become sources of pride and national identity. (p. 4)

They identify key factors that made multicultural Canada a pluralist example: time, design, compromise, and inclusion. In these factors, colonialism, violence, gender, and race have no constitutive work in its making.

Embodied, Spatial and Discursive Interventions of Pluralism In chapter 5, I argued that through the encounter between Ismailis as a community, the Aga

Khan and the Canadian State, Muslim exceptionality is produced. Exceptionality refers to being

284 distinct through difference, distinguished through achievement, and becoming excellent as an anti- orientalizing strategy. The Canadian nation-state and the Ismailis are very much in an asymmetrical, co-constitutive relationship in the making of Muslim exceptionality. Through their encounter, the Canadian multicultural nation-state is reified as generous, benevolent, tolerant, and as allowing the platonic convergence of an Islam and Muslims with it. Unlike the way in which the pluralism paper speaks about diversity already ontologized and apriori to social relations, chapter 5 shows that “difference” is not simply a variation of attitudes, people, or perspectives of cultural, linguistic and religious diversity that the state harbours.90 Rather, difference comes to be through particular forms of racialization, gendering, orientalizing, and classing bodies relationally through the State. Difference shapes and subjectivizes people in power relationships. Ismailis are made exceptional and embody exceptionality through arrival narratives, values and spatial formations, which suggests that Ismailis come to have meaning vis a vis the State through specific political processes.

For example, through arrival narratives we know that the relationship between the State and communities of Others is integral to establishing the distinction of the State itself and particular

Muslims. In order to discursively produce the State as a saviour, publicly stated narratives about how Others arrive into the country and the subsequent sanitized story of their success, are naturalized and distanced from the struggle of being a racialized Muslim body in Canada. The story of individual capability to succeed, group know-how to integrate, and the state’s skill to make

90 Bannerji (2000) has intervened the power neutrality and descriptive function of diversity, which has allowed bodies to become palatable and recognizable in the Canadian nation-state. Diversity is key to multicultural discourse and as Bannerji argues, so to is the concept of pluralism. Thus, even as the pluralism paper attempts to make pluralism more than diversity, relying on conceptions of diversity as they do means that its coercive uses and conceptualizations underlying the logics of pluralism must be attended to. Further, Ahmed (2012) argues that now diversity also has commercial value, as it is part of a diversity and equality industrial complex. In this way, I place pluralism within a larger landscape of diversity and multicultural work that institutions of all stripes are taking up with great fervour.

285 possible the success of Others, must be free of all counter narratives, narratives of dislocation, disruption and inequity, which are part and parcel of the Canadian experience. Such fragmented arrival stories can secure a place for Others in service of the national imaginary that needs to claim some difference if it is to keep the name of a tolerant nation. To be thought of as the Muslims “we wanted” expels the fear of barbarian Islam in the midst of Canadians, while also allowing only some

Muslims to take up positions of privilege. To be Muslims the nation wanted produces a debt that is affective and embodied, as it builds esteem and creates an importance generalized to all Ismailis.

The hyper focus on Ismailis integration without any “problems” arranges them as non-divisive citizens, a position they also perform. “Unity” and commonness as goal of pluralism then become easily mobilized in such arrivals. More importantly the very act of arrival as a discursive formation is left out of pluralisms purview, therefor arrival narratives are outside of the kinds of “expression” diversity can convey because pluralisms does not take into account transnational journeys of migration, border crossing and entrance into nation states. This is significant as the pluralism paper argues that:

Pluralist societies foster the equal participation of all citizens in the political, economic,

and socio-cultural life of the nation – enabling individuals as well as groups to express

their cultural, linguistic and religious identities within a framework of shared citizenship.

Through these means, the ethic and practices of pluralism can foster more equitable and

peaceful human development. (p. 2)

The participants show that simply expressing oneself as an act of participation in society does not in and of itself create equity. What is said, who says it and how, matters. Further, what work speech acts do is also of central importance. For instance, going back to chapter 5, values become a discursive marker for friendship and convergence between the Canadian State and the

Ismailis, but only as the values stated, such as tolerance, pluralism, etc., assume the same definition

286 and rely on a narrative of commonness. However, not all Muslims can claim those values, particularly if it means that the State is contradicted, or the enactment of those values are in ways not affirmed by the State. Further, values operate in reversals. Reversing the focus of values from an outer expression to an inner state is a requirement for evaluating what is expressed by Muslim bodies. Expression through cultural, linguistic, and religious identities is hardly a guarantee of inclusion.

Common Humanity Right from the outset the pluralism paper refers to cultural diversity and a normative recognition that there are males and females that are part of what they call “a common humanity” (p.

1). What the participants show through their own experiences in their production as fake, cool, and scary Muslims is that being part of a common humanity is precarious. To be scary, cool or fake, is to be located closer to or farther away from non-Ismaili Muslims and non-Muslims. In this way, the

“diversity” of Muslims cannot be neutralized, universalized and depoliticized, by situating them within a “common humanity.” This notion that we share something called “common humanity” is threaded throughout their definition of pluralism in the paper. The idea of a “common humanity” is at best an idealization, as there is no question in the paper of the very problematic of how humanity has been or is conceptualized, or what is common and to whom. In fact, the participants in chapter 6 identify as being unlike other Muslims – Ismailis as proponents and examples of peace, modernity and rationality, which makes them more like non-Muslims, the real measures for humanity. Thus, to be common within humanity means that you speak specific discourses and come to be seen as

“integrated” in ways in which Islam is not publically visible or discernible in what you speak or enact. Anjum, Begam, and Kesar relay this as they talk about how, as Muslim women, they opt for rational discussions with non-Muslims to explain how they choose what to wear, whom to interact

287 with, and how to be Muslim women, making them seem more like “everyone else.” At the same time, the participants show that to take up the position of the cool Muslim is a response to the fear of being seen as scary, a position they, like other Muslims, can find themselves in very easily. These examples show that it is against the lesser human and non-human that we understand who and what constitutes the human.

The statement of fact in the pluralism paper, that we share a common humanity, becomes a starting point from which all that pluralism does in the world emerges. This cuts out the tensions, contradictions, or violence that embodies humanity itself, notable in the participants’ experiences of being oriented in hierarchies within the Ismaili community itself as ethnicized bodies. Sharon Todd

(2009) argues that, “the idea of humanity itself must include human limits as well as human possibilities and needs to be read in relation to the very violence and antagonism that inheres in specifically human interaction” (p. 9). Khalil shared his experience of being ordered in second place as an Indian Ismaili, within a hierarchy that places East Africans 1st, Pakistanis 3rd and Afghans 4th.

We learn later on that orienting functions through processes of racialization in which Ismailis of color, such as East Africans, do not carry the “imaginaries” associated with being from Pakistan and

Afghanistan, both “Muslim” countries inhabiting orientalist renditions of Islam. Racialization processes are left outside of the purview of pluralism, and rather, racism is simply evoked as an emergent phenomenon for immigrants struggling to integrate into the economy of Canada. There is no real discussion about how race operates to organize bodies in the Canadian economic landscape, and thus how some of the participants spoke about the effects of Islamophobia in their attempts at getting jobs.

At the same time, orienting happens through Ismailis of East Africa, considered to have had the most “institutional” relationship with the Imam, making them seem closer to him and thus

“legitimately” in a place of power within the community; a power of spiritual significance. Thus,

288 benign diversity as a placeholder for pluralism, disavows a priori social relations, or what Ahmed

(2000) describes as “histories of determination” that reinscribe the very violence of naming diversity within the encounters of racialized religious bodies.

Unity Pluralism’s goal according to the paper is unity:

Pluralism rejects division as a necessary outcome of diversity, seeking instead to identify

the qualities and experiences that unite rather then divide us as people and to forge a shared

stake in the public good. (p. 1)

In particular, seeking qualities and experiences that unite underscores the importance of delineating what and who can be in the fold of pluralism. In other words, unity pushes out and away the difference that emerges from within experiences of violence, oppression and inequity. Pluralism does not exist in discord, antagonism, distance and multiplicity that do not produce unity. In this way, the participants describe that “unity” is impossible as a totalizing experience of their relations to one another. The participants show how unitary Ismaili identity works as a corrective to being pushed away from other Muslims, as fake co-religionists for instance. “Unity” is an effect of exclusion and at the same time, the very notion of unity amongst ethnicized Ismaili is challenged by the very ways in which they proxi-mate for example. Through proxi-mating we learnt that Afghan

Ismailis attempted to “become like” white people or East Africans Ismailis as a way to gain economic and racial privilege and spiritual mobility. At the same time, to not enter into an intimate relationship with an Afghan or Pakistani Ismaili, like for Anjum, an Indian woman, meant claiming emotional safety from the costs of owning the culture of Others.

Pluralism’s investment in unity and producing commonness of experience is further challenged in how difference at the intersections of gender, race, class and religion, is necessary to

289 the continual production of the multicultural state in its use for Others. To mobilize “commonness” as a universal of relationality is to deny its very exclusive construction. Exceptionality points out that gaining symmetry, partnership, representation, voice and belonging on a national scale happens through discourses and socio-political-cultural enactments centred in particular political projects.

These are made possible through social and economic capital, along with discursive alignments and bodily remappings to the nation. For instance, the spatial representation of the Delegation building on Confederation Boulevard raises the question of when unity, in this case being with the Canadian state, disallows the very seeing of dislocation, marginalization and disassociation. In other words, the optics and locating work of unity between the Ismailis and the Aga Khan with Canada, make invisible and unsayable the contradictions and necessity of becoming exceptional Muslims to other

Indigenous and racialized bodies.

The Individual, Compromise, Obligation The pluralism paper also argues that pluralism “emphasizes individual choices as well as collective compromise and mutual obligation as routes to peace, stability and human development”

(p. 2). The liberal language of individual choice, collective compromise and mutual obligation, give a window into what pluralism requires for individuals and groups generically. As Wendy Brown

(2006) tells us, the work of the individual as a liberal construct relies on “self making, agency and a relentless responsibility for itself” (p. 17). The group is also a natural construct in the pluralism paper. They do name “ethnic groups,” but this reference is concentrated to pointing out those groups who are imbued in tension or conflict. They accept the idea of “ethnic group” in the classical sense of a bounded group identity, and competing claims that go hand in hand between such groups.

This is in contrast to how ethnobody takes up “ethnicity” as an effect of ethnicization, as in how one comes to be Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismaili. Their ethnicization is an effect of specific social

290 practices such as orienting, figuring, proxi-mating and aiding. The individual and group refer to a general categorization in the paper, for whom pluralism has meaning. Contrastingly, exceptionality points out that relations between state and groups are not generic, nor are they based on a priori

“diversity” which is simply expressed. Rather, there are particular practices that mark bodies and create groups as subjects. As Caroline Knowles (2010) states:

Subjectivity is more fundamental than identity: it concerns the models in which

personhood is cast – what it means to be a person, the general frame on which badges of

identity are posted. This is partly existential and partly social: part corporeal and part

consciousness. (p. 12)

Exceptionality shows how being distinct and distinguished is a process of relational subject production and the forming of subjectivities. For example, alternative corporealities of masculinity in speaking and embodying values are imperative as the Canadian state and the Ismailis converge on values. The Aga Khan and Harper represent congealing masculinities as opposed to discording.

This is why the relationship between State and group cannot be encapsulated or understood within the framework of citizenship, and by extension, rights and obligations, because these notions do not speak to how communities are characterized, have meaning to and are legitimated by the State as a constituting relational process, as in the case of the Ismailis in relation to other Muslims and even other racialized communities.

In the pluralism paper, all people are either an individual or a group, already locating humans in particular paradigms of categorization. As individuals and groups, people are expected to choose something, compromise, and have mutual obligations. The flattening of the individual and group out of the powers of capital, patriarchy, colonialism and race-making, aggregates what the “we” of pluralism is supposed to do. The Ismaili Muslim, as a cool, fake and scary Muslim, are effects of particular kinds of encounters informed by prior histories between Muslims and contemporary

291 modern orientalizing, and anti-orientalizing social relations. The absence of the embodied subject and a conceptualization of social relations as effects of power within pluralism denies the possibility of understanding what produces social relationships between collectivities, and what binds them to begin with. This is particularly important in relation to Canada’s construction of cultural groups, as an identification and categorization of non-white bodies. In coming to be located and identified as cool, fake and scary Muslims, the participants show that being figured and embodied as all three is only significant because of their meeting with others in Canada. Unlike the individual of pluralism who lacks bodily integrity, the trilogy of the fake, cool and scary Muslim shows that figuring processes are subject producing and arrange Muslims accordingly. Further, the trilogy disrupts the very notion of group and individual, pointing out instead bodily and relational configurations of being human.

Chapter 7 specifically argued that the encounters of Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis complicate the arguments of chapters 5 and 6, in which the Ismailis overall as a religious community and religiously identified individuals, are exceptional and modern religious subjects. The encounters between Afghans, Pakistanis and Indian Ismailis with each other and vis a vis East

Africans Ismailis in Canada suggest that, in fact, there are shifting productions of bodies, positions of power, privilege, marginality, exclusion and inclusion within the community. As I argued, four practices create the ethnobody as an embodiment of specific racialized, gendered and classed social relations, and pre-colonial transcendental relations amongst ethnicized Ismailis. These four practices are orienting, figuring, proxi-mating and aiding. Each practice shows that prior histories and discourses – colonial and oriental – greatly play into the ways in which Afghan, Pakistani and

Indian Ismailis are oriented, figured, proximated and aided. In addition, new forms of imperialism that construct the imagined geographies of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, also shape the construction of the Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismaili. In other words, the exceptionality of

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Ismailis within the Canadian State and the trilogy of the Ismaili subject, obscure the social relations within the Ismaili community and at the same time show how the very conception of Ismailis as bodies, ethnicized groups, and a racialized Muslim community are produced as effects along a spectrum of enabling and constraining power relations. The concept of ethnobody suggests that the production of bodies and their ensuing relationships are an assemblage that reveals the material, physical, spiritual, mental, affective, and violent embodied effects of encounters. The very act of

East Africans, Afghans, Pakistanis and Indians meeting, assembles spatialized bodies through orienting, closeness and distance, tropes, ethical manoeuvrings and configurations of social relationships that rely on whiteness, capital, and post/coloniality, in addition to Ismaili religious history and practices, such as the ethics of volunteerism and brother and sisterhood. This is why the ethnobody as a simultaneously ethnicized, race, gendered, classed and spiritual embodiment, is unique to figures built through post/coloniality, neoliberalism, gender and Ismaili Islam. Pluralism bypasses the politics of embodiment emerging from the intermingling of the social, material, representational and transcendental.

In addition, the participants show that “individual choice, collective compromise and mutual obligation” (p. 2) in the context of ethnicized relations amongst Ismailis, is only possible if power relations at the intersections of spiritual and material ethics are made absent. In the aiding section of the ethnobody chapter we examined how the notion of helping is central to the Ismaili ethical framework, and that Ismailis are expected to enact this helping to each other and to humanity as a whole. However, what we see is that “mutuality” and “individual choice” through actions to help fellow Afghan Ismailis produces effects of aid, whereby inequitable and oppressive dynamics undermine, dismiss or inferiorize them in relation to “Khoja” Ismailis. The idea of “compromise” to create a coherent Ismaili community in Canada obscures how some Ismailis are in fact relationally positioned as helpers, and others as receivers, reinforcing a power imbalance. Some Afghan Ismailis

293 like Maryam have stated that they have had to fight for their rights or engage in acts of resistance verbally, which other Afghans like Neikbakhat and Khan feel they still are doing within the Ismaili community. Further, participants such as Zaafra and Rehan share that help also becomes a mission to civilize or “boot strap” Ismailis into the grammar of colonial legacies and Canadian society.

Practices, Outcomes, Intentions The paper also defines pluralism as a set of practices, outcomes and intentions. Pluralism is something that we do, something that is created, and something that resides within the person, or is the subtext of institutions. Focusing on how pluralist societies are created they say:

They are products of decision and public investment characterized by good governance,

strong civic institutions and sound public policy choices that promote respect for diversity,

whereby diversity itself becomes a public good and citizens are enabled to realize their

rights as well as obligations. (p. 2)

There are certain things that pluralism is contingent upon. Firstly, it is contingent upon the notion of good governance, which focuses on institutional responses to diversity. Secondly, citizenship is also imperative, as through it individuals are able to enact their rights and obligations.

In this way, diversity becomes an economic moral output, and in its choice and promotion, it is what institutions have and what they project. Such a mobilization of diversity then absents the centrality of whiteness in constituting its alterior – the bodies of diversity. Later the paper discusses the challenges of citizenship:

Citizens are often excluded from the national project on the basis of ethnic and/or religious

difference, as well as other factors, among them gender, class, and language. For pluralism

to take root, nationality and citizenship must be uncoupled. At the same time, traditional

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conceptions of citizenship, which posit a limited range of rights, must be expanded towards

egalitarianism in order to counter social hierarchies. (p. 11)

In the paper there is an acknowledgement that citizenship can be precarious. At the same time, they mobilize citizenship as an essential aspect of pluralism. This establishes the centrality of the nation-state as a modern project. Pluralism becomes a mechanism of modernity’s logics, and modes of composing bodies obscured out of the very colonial formation and technologies of the nation-state. As shown in the last three chapters, “citizenship” does not fully encapsulate nor speak to how social relations come to be created, organized, and useful in the interconnections of the multicultural colonial geographies of Canada and the Ismaili community. Although Ismailis as a citizenry are immigrants that the Canadian state claims to want, the participant experiences as

Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis suggest that their experiences in the Canadian context is based on racialized and gendered forms of inclusion and exclusion that also intersect with neoliberal ideas about being a “productive’ immigrant. For example, in Rehan’s experience of being an Indian

Ismaili he talks about the racism he faced when considered a “fob” or a “village Indian,” but through economic and cultural capital he is now seen differently. In addition, with India and Bollywood becoming “cool” associations with Indianness, he feels that for the large part the same kind of racism is not enacted upon him. The voyeurism and consumption of the Other to feed white fantasy and appetites is part and parcel of economic and capitalist enterprise. This taking in expands who can be useful for capital and the desire to be more as a global body.91 At the same time, Garima reminds us that being an Indian woman coming from a working class background keeps her in a place of marginality in relation to other Ismailis with educational and economic privilege. What is constructed as “participation” in the community and in the Canadian society as a whole, is

91 See bell hooks (1992) discussion of “eating the other” for further elaboration of white desire.

295 something very much determined at the intersections of race, gender and class. The paper goes on:

Pluralist societies foster the equal participation of all citizens in the political, economic,

and socio-cultural life of the nation – enabling individuals as well as groups to express

their cultural, linguistic and religious identities within a framework of shared citizenship.

Through these means, the ethic and practices of pluralism can foster more equitable and

peaceful human development. (p. 2)

The goal of equal participation as citizens resides in being able to express individually or as a group, three key identities – cultural, linguistic and religious. The participants share that

“expressing” their cultural, linguistic and religious identities does not produce equal participation, but in fact produce inequity. In the figuring section of the ethnobody chapter, the experiences of

Afghan men in particular show that performances of masculinity not authorized by Khoja Ismaili men creates tension, and requires discipline and quarantining. This is best described contrastingly by Khalil, Akbar and Adam, who talk about the very visceral, aggressive, laboring Afghan man in relation to the rational Khoja man. Khan, Gulam and Sameer, as Afghan men, talk about how this kind of body-mind splitting leads to their mistrust and lack of confidence from Khoja Ismailis in their abilities as men of the mind. Whether one can or cannot participate through expressing oneself is shaped through orientalist and modern gendered tropes that cannot be challenged simply by presenting another way of being.

Equal participation through pluralism is therefore constricted. The very notion of participation is about expressing these identities of equal value, which itself is quite vague a goal.

Who determines what can be communicated? What counts as expression? Which aspects of one’s identities in those three categories are relevant? The issue of participation then becomes one of communication. It’s about what people are able to say or share, as opposed to participation for the purpose of shifting power, dominance and inequity, which as the participants show is far more

296 integral to them in creating a different community space. Further, there is no attention to how participation works as a modality to assemble bodies through particular logics of gendered racialization. There is a line drawn that participation in the form of expression will lead to some kind of equity of outcome, as the paper says, later. Equity is not the premise the paper start from but rather, where they hope to be. Finally, cultural, linguistic and religious identity work within the frame of multiculturalism in terms of what is recognized as identity. Recognition is central for diversity and its forms to be known. This is in line with how the Canadian state reifies diversity through its own gaze, and particularly important to pluralism as an engine of the Canadian state.

The three categories of identity are essentially presented and naturalized, even though later the paper states that identities change and grow, which seems like a cooptation of multiple identities discourse, an outgrowth of feminist theories of intersectionality. What the paper denies in this framing is how subjectivities of ethnicized Ismailis, or the trilogy of the fake, cool, and scary

Muslim, are on-goingly constructed. Constructions shift as conditions, which enable encounters, also change. Rather than identities changing because people choose to add new markers of identity, the participants’ experiences with other Muslims, non-Muslims and other Ismailis, show how it is through the encounter between particular bodies through specific moments that subjectivities emerge, and processes of identification come into existence.

The pluralism paper then moves again to unpack what underscores a pluralistic ethic.

Fairness and respect are the “cornerstones” of this ethic. In addition, fairness and respect are mechanisms. They are mechanisms for “balance between the sometimes competing claims of group rights and human rights and the obligations and choices implied” (p. 2). In the workings of the trilogy for example, the participants talk about gaining the ‘respect’ of non-Muslims by articulating themselves in ways that affirm non-Muslims. For example, Anjum talks about how through explaining Ismaili Islam to non-Muslims, they come to respect her and her type of Islam because

297 what they come to see is someone who is not all that different from them. This is something that

Begum says, that unlike other Muslims, non-Muslims know respect will be accorded to them by

Ismailis, as Ismailis will also receive respect from them. Respect then works as a form of distinction more than an ethic, and it becomes a mode for coming closer to non-Muslims.

What exactly is respected and what are the parameters for fairness? Neither fairness, nor respect, can address how socio-economic and cultural practices shape experiences of violence, inequity, exclusion and oppression. Nor does fairness or respect speak to the interlocking, contradictory and/or simultaneous experiences of violence, oppression and inequity across race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality and ability. In the paper, fairness and respect as internal states are offered to others, and these political processes are made invisible. In this way, we know that such “ethics” are inhabited by Ismailis in relation to other Muslims, according to the participants – naturally, and thus ontologized. Again the participants noted that they embody these ethics unlike other Muslims, and in this way, like non-Muslims they are the referents for these ethics. They paper goes on to say:

Respecting difference depends on a capacity and willingness to acknowledge, negotiate

and accommodate alternative points of view. Equitable outcomes often require

asymmetrical treatment. In this sense, the intentions and practices of pluralism are

intertwined with the cosmopolitan ideal that seeks to build bridges of shared aspiration and

common purpose where only conflict and chasms were thought to exist. (p. 2)

Going back to the original premise that pluralism is about respecting diversity the paper states, however, in order to do this, capacity and willingness must be present. These are the clinchers – giving us a window into what later will become a foundational relationship between pluralism and “ruling discourses.” The use of the terms ‘capacity’ and ‘willingness’ point to some kind of ability or innate potential, which raises the question of what comes to qualify as capacity and

298 willingness? Who gets defined as capable and willing and how? Conceptions of human will and capacity already exist within the colonial modernity of the Canadian nation-state. Civilizational bodies – European, white and male – authorize such inner states. The concept of pluralism naturalizes the modern liberal subject and ontologizes “being,” obscuring the very raced and gendered grounding of will and capacity. In chapter 5 we come to see that the Ismailis’ and the

Aga’s Khan’s encounter with the Canadian State, and the spatial formation of the Delegation building, is represented as ‘capacity and willingness’ of the Ismailis to offer translucency to

Canadians and the world. But the very construction of the Delegation building is part and parcel of the colonial making of Confederation Boulevard, with its multicultural representations.

Translucency, in this way, becomes a way to curb the threat of suspect Islam and Muslims, and translucency operates to make some people of color known and visible in their very essence.

“Capacity and willingness” do not come out of good intentions. Rather, Ismaili exceptionality is constructed in and through an anti-orientalist hope that as a “delegation” they will be known as different from other difference, while also be invested within a politics or political techniques that determine them as real “global actors” in their social, economic, educational and cultural work.

Capacity and willingness in the pluralism paper are certainly encompassed by those who embody what is common to humanity, and not those outside of such commonness. Given the use of economic terms so far, capacity also may refer to what is possible through productive bodies of diversity. Ismailis are productive in their economic value as citizens, which in the arrival narratives I argued is something that the Aga Khan had promised to Canada. As Harper said, Ismaili are an

“example” of integration and “Canadian pluralism,” making them symbols and embodiments of

Canada itself. “Will and capacity” as mobilized by the paper relate to Wendy Brown’s (2006) argument about the relevance of the liberal individuated subject in multicultural societies, who is premised on “will” as independence of thought, choice and rationality, in contrast to the less

299 individuated self marked on bodies of color. As Goldberg (1993) argues, “that self-commanding reason, autonomous and egalitarian, but also legislative and rule making defines in large part modernity’s conception of the self” (p. 18).

The pluralism paper then says that “Acknowledging, negotiating and accommodating alternative points of view” (p. 2) is the goal of this capacity and willingness. The word ‘alternative’ points out that other views are additionally recognized, engaged with in talk, and made adjustments for with the dominant or normative perspective. In this way, chapter 5 shows that it’s not just

“alternative points of view” that are at stake. Rather, for Ismailis, mapping Ismaili Islam on to and with Canada is the goal. One way in which this is happening is through the Aga Khan’s emphasis on the values of Islam informing his work and that of the community. In the values section I argued that Canadian values and Islamic values converge so that the Ismailis and Canada can partner in projects like the Centre for Pluralism. For the Ismailis, such convergences allow them to become

“civilizational.” To be a civilizational Muslim however, is to enter as an already constituted racial body that gains entrance into civilization by being outside of it. Thus, the Ismailis also distance themselves from those who argue about a “clash of civilizations,” or the ejection of Muslims out of civilization. Values are moral mechanisms that allow Canada and the Ismailis to be friends, but as long as they claim the same role for these values and are racially neutralized, and embraced in their difference. In this way they challenge dominance and normativity, while at the same time aligning themselves with it and becoming reified through it. Goldberg (1993) situates the work of morality in modernity’s constitution of racial subjects in the following way:

In this sense, formal moral notions of any kind are perniciously fictive in respect to racial

and racializing discourse (whatever their redeeming value in authorizing or constraining

some kinds of expression and disciplining subjects). The fictive character has to do with the

nature of the moral concepts themselves, and with their role in fixing social subjectivity.

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They serve to naturalize the concept of race, to render it basic to modernity’s common sense.

(p. 38)

Finally, pluralism is linked to cosmopolitanism in the paper, which they define as seeking

“to build bridges of shared aspiration and common purpose.” The participants share in chapter 6 how they are a “bridge” between Islam and the West, and between Muslims and non-Muslims because they embody the modern, rational, integrated civility. To be a bridge means that the very materials that construct you as a bridge, to some extent conform to the engineering techniques and materials recognized as sound, legitimate, acceptable, and knowable by the dominant rationalities of what it means to be a bridge. Going back to the Ismaili Islams’ focus on rational and intellectual knowing as a way to understand the “diversity” of humans, to be a bridge is a dialogical and cognitive endeavour. To be a bridge however, does not ask the question of what unequal relations produce the materials of the bridge, or how such a bridge becomes a mode for at once resisting being the Other, whilst also reifying other Others. Going back to the paper’s conception of

“common humanity,” we know that this shared aspiration and common purpose is defined by and located in a common humanity. This makes invisible and erases the necessary work of the uncommon human in multicultural colonial spaces of Canada in relationally marking bodies. In chapter 5 I noted that the Aga Khan himself called the work of the Delegation building one of

“enlightenment” and “civilization.” Situating pluralism within cosmopolitanism places it within an already existing project of human unity based on the enlightenment Kantian conception of human flourishing and oneness, referenced through European history and the white male subject.

Cosmopolitanism and pluralism double back in the threads of logic grounded within colonial modernity. Hence, pluralism is inevitably subject to the critiques of cosmopolitanism, as it is in its own conceptualization as a germ of cosmopolitanism. At the same time, this raises the question of whether the pluralism paper, following the Aga Khan’s own description of pluralism as a

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“cosmopolitan ethic” in the La Fontaine Baldwin Lecture, can gesture towards a Muslim cosmopolitanism, different from Kant’s enlightenment “ghost?” (Bhimani & Gaztambide-

Fernandez, 2013).

In spite of all of the critical limitations, contradictions, and serious problems with the concept of pluralism I outline, for some of the participants, its articulation by the Aga Khan has offered something different, has moved them into a new way of thinking, and at times even acting on the variations of human beings and human experience. This shows that the very mobilization of pluralism through their spiritual leader influences their own sense of pluralism, even as some of the participants are hesitant to really embrace it. Zaafra champions this sense passionately, owing her learning to be “pluralist” to the Aga Khan. She provides an example of her work place where she often struggles with racist management, co-workers and clients. Pluralism has offered her a strategic way of dealing with her work environment,

Ever since I've been introduced to pluralism…I find, you know, the word pluralism resonating with me and realizing its strength in my work and not trying to homogenize the group. It’s helped me accept the heterogeneity of our working styles, of our racial differences, our backgrounds and not trying to make my colleagues see things my way. I realize that, the fact that I’m this way and the fact that they're that way, sort of gives our client an inclusive perspective. I think pluralism doesn't just narrow things down to just language, or race, or your way of behaving. I think it means more. It means even the fact that you might be a hyper-person, versus a person who is really chilled. You know, the fact that you’re really strict versus someone that is permissive, you know, and that’s a sign that there is balance. The fact of pluralism in our working scene is a strength, it has helped me and I feel like I've been instrumental in getting people to see the fact we are different and it’s a strength. The discourse of pluralism for Zaafra and some other participants provides another way of seeing things, and becomes a discursive tool to navigate certain unequal terrains in their lives. Even as Zaafra is able to recognize more variation amongst other people, this moment does not ask the

302 question of what work such variation is doing, and how social relationships are built in the very moment of encountering one another in such contexts. A more recent public example of the mobilization of pluralism by Ismailis was at the Toronto Pride Parade in 2012. For a long time,

Queer Muslims in Toronto have formed groups in order to create spaces where their Muslim and

Queer identities are not at odds. In particular over the last few years, LGBQT Ismailis are creating a safe space to build community with other Queer Ismailis. Their goals have been articulated as:

IQ, more formally organized in 2008, is a support group for anyone who identifies with the

Ismaili faith/community religiously, culturally, ideologically, and/or politically and

also identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/transgender, queer or questioning.

The goals of this group have been to create visibility, advocate for LGBT inclusion

and acceptance within the greater Ismaili and queer communities, and most importantly

to provide a ‘safe space’ for Ismaili queers, regardless of their comfort with being “out” in

the general public. (“Ismaili group march, ” n.d.)

At this particular Pride event, an Ismaili Queer group of 25 walked the parade with

t-shirts and placards that said, “Ismaili Queers. Advocates for Pluralism.” For the Ismailis then,

to speak and advocate pluralism has personal relevance. It is a matter of survival and usurping

marginality and victimhood. It is a way of legitimizing their own existence, whilst hoping to

extend this same effort for others who also experience the margins, exemplified in their work to

make this a global effort through the Centre for Pluralism. It provides for some a new language,

and perhaps even a framework to make themselves visible and known as Muslims in their

intersectional identities. And yet, as we see from this discussion, pluralism does not speak to nor

is able to in fact disrupt or transform marginality, oppression and inequity, or help us understand,

agency, resistance, and the assemblages of what is made possible through the encounters of

Ismailis to the Canadian State, Ismailis to other Muslims and non-Muslims, and between

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ethnicized Ismailis. The embrace of pluralism flattens human relations, obscuring the powers

that make them. In the attempts of pluralism to stretch the relevance and meaning of diversity

through Ismaili Muslims as its proponents, it appears at first glance to present new ways of

imagining themselves and being in humanity, and yet pluralism inheres in the violences and

contradictions of being modern religious subjects in the Canadian settler state.

The Stakes of Modern Coloniality and Ismaili Muslim Exceptionality For the Ismailis to be constructed as exceptional Muslims and to embody Muslim exceptionality in Canada is an affair of paradoxes, discontinuities and tensions. To be the exceptional Muslim means doing specific work in this moment in time. Becoming a collectivity – advocates and labourers of nationhood, diversity and pluralism, signals for one, the relationship between old and new ways of making gendered racialized bodies useful in this current moment of

Canadian nation building, as a continued project of modern coloniality. The Ismailis inclusion and

“permanent presence” in Canada, as the Aga Khan put it, is established within already existing

“somatic norms.” Through the working of colonial modernity, Mignolo (2011) argues that:

Inclusion is a one-way street and not a reciprocal right. In a world governed by the

colonial matrix of power, he who includes and she who is welcomed to be included stand in

codified power relations. The locus of enunciation from which inclusion is established is

always a locus holding the control of knowledge and the power of decision across gender

and racial lines, across political orientations and economic regulations. (p. xv)

At the same time, their religious orientation plays a specific role in making them useful, particularly as modernity is mapped onto them as a Muslim religious collectivity, and as gendered, raced and classed bodies. In addition, their mapping onto Canada as Muslims who locate themselves within Islam and as Canadian, stretches the discursive and spatial terrain in which

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Muslims are positioned in Canada – not simply as loyal citizens or Muslims the nation wants, but also as those who are integral to newer forms of demarcations between bodies.

Some Ismaili bodies and Ismailis as a collectivity (both as an imagined cohesive community and as a global transnation), like some other immigrants in Canada, have entered into what were considered the exclusive domains of Canada’s dominant bodies and rationalities. Ismailis as a collectivity and unmarked bodies do not require management as initially envisioned by the multiculturalism policy because of their economic success, levels of education, and to some extent, gained mobility to enter into spaces of influence (Puwar, 2004; Thobani, 2007). What this means is that Ismailis as a collectivity are more face to face with bodies of dominance in spaces defined through male, white, European and civilizational paradigms, than ever before (whether this is happening through their presence on Confederation Boulevard or in their partnerships with the

Canadian government).

More over, since 9/11 the re-emergence of civilizational difference that marks Muslims in temporal ontological constitutions as Others, not only recuperate the idea of a white European nation, but in doing so must claim some Muslim Others to continue to be seen as diametrically different from intolerant, backward, closed, insular cultures and societies. This nation-space, as a

“clash of civilization,” is muddied by Muslims like the Ismailis. As a collectivity, they do not sound like, look like, or even behave like the caricatures of the Orientalist Muslims. Yet they contain the seeds of the oriental, and are racialized and gendered as ethnicized Afghan, Pakistani and Indian religious bodies in the mechanisms that constitute and manage immigrants in the colonial state. In one way, the Canadian nation must contend with such emergent Muslim bodies, who come closer to the nation and to whiteness than other Muslims. By the same token, Muslims who display the paradoxes that immigrant bodies of color come to embody or inhere cannot be ignored. Therefore, we have reached a heightened sense of and need for differentiating between “Others” and “Other

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Others,” which itself points to the continued workings of colonial modernity in more developed grammars and techniques. The mechanisms of multiculturalism lack the nuance to manage Muslims who reflect aspects of modernity and use its authorizing voice. Hence, the Ismailis in fact, symbolically and materially, come to embody the boundaries between Others and within the nation but also in what governmentalities – religious and secular, can define the continued parameters of being Muslim religious bodies in Canada. This is very important to nation building in the current moment. As a nation-state Canada is involved in Empire’s projects in which containing, disciplining, and subverting monstrous Islam and Muslims is at the forefront of Canada’s might. As it does this work, Canada must continue to be seen as a multicultural and now pluralist nation-state that is able to differentiate between Muslims obscuring the logics and technologies of violence that affect Muslims in particular gendered and racialized ways, and mark them as different to begin with.

Therefore, there are instabilities and functions of Ismaili Muslim religious bodies as modern formations to their own survival and community building in contexts of the gendered colonial race nation of Canada. Ismailis show the necessary contradictions in their encounters, and the social relationships through which they come to have meaning.

Given that Ismailis continue to be located in the schemas of modernity’s paradigms as

Others, and some times as Other Others, their project of addressing the West’s “misunderstandings” about Islam also point out their recognition that they too are subject to modernity's violence’s, albeit in ways that are interpreted in liberal frameworks. As Muslims, and through the work of the Aga

Khan, who locates himself from within Islam, the Ismailis do not ignore the tensions Muslims find themselves in. Rather, the lens’ through which they see these tensions in Canada and analyze them have a limited range. Speaking about people of color, Thobani (2007) argues,

State-sponsored multiculturalism compels them to negotiate and comprehend their identities

on very narrow grounds, discouraging and possibly foreclosing the possibility of alliances

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that might allow a systemic challenge to white dominance, patriarchy, and global corporate

capitalism. (p. 175)

Ismailis’ strong affirmation of and affiliation with multiculturalism, along with a priori conceptions of what it means to be Muslims of modernity (who promote diversity and aim to model it), are privileged as ways out of the quagmire of Muslim realities in this moment. In this way, it is necessary that Ismailis exercise liberal anti-orientalist acts, by becoming civilizational and addressing the “clash of ignorance.” The implications of taking such an approach lie in what such

Muslims do and end up doing that reiterates or challenges oppressive relations to the extent that they do not destabalize dominant powers. Rather they make perceptible shifts within the borders of normatized social relationships, suggesting that Muslims can be diversely “free” and active

“citizens” in states like Canada.

Consequently, Ismaili Muslims in their exceptionality, reiterate the “logics that generates, reproduces, modifies and maintains interconnected hierarchies” of colonial modernity (Mignolo,

2011, p. 17). Their very modes of response are grounded in emphasis of disembodied religious subjects, rational, and in a common humanity. In this way, to be the exceptional Muslim is a ruse deeply entangled in “enduring modernist paradigms (civilizing teleologies, Orientalisms, xenophobia, militarization, border anxieties)” (Puar, 2007, p. 204). As a ruse, it gives the impression that Muslims have a way to be and should be civilizational, modern, cosmopolitan, pluralist in order to be fully human. As such, the belief in such conceptions of human relationality, preclude other imaginings and possibilities for social relationships. As a ruse, it therefore utilizes the very epistemological, ontological, bodily and spacial violences of modern paradigms, to which

Ismaili Muslims are mobilized and mobilize through.

Related to these discussions then are the violence’s of modern coloniality and the tensions of being modern religious subjects, which I believe are present in the three layers of encounters we

307 have moved through, and that inhere in the logics of pluralism. I am considering here the mode of modernity, as what is arranged in its name, what functions, and how it happens in the encounters we have examined. We might see the social practices of relationally building gendered and raced bodies, and situating Muslims in the Canadian colonial terrain, in the binary of order and chaos.

Williams (2009) argues (following Bauman) that in fact “order and chaos are twin features of modernity,” saying that it is against “this chaotic negativity that the positive of order construes itself” (pp. 142-143). In other words, modernity constitutes that which it claims, and that which it must define itself against. The coloniality of modernity as Mignolo (2011) reminds us, is not just about the temporality between present and past, even as particular temporalities become significant in setting Muslim bodies in relation to others. Jacqui Alexander (2005) explains:

tradition and modernity have been used to designate specific temporalities, but they are

themselves practices that are constituted through social relations that are interested in their

purchase, and thus in that process move them into ideological proximity to, or distance from,

one another…how have they been made to matter. (p. 193)

In situating Ismailis in Canada through manifestations of tradition, modern, and postmodern,

Karim H. Karim (2011) argues that tradition is “embedded in dominant national groups,” whereas the multiculturalism of Canada is thought to be a modern phenomenon, and the postmodernity represents “novel and hybrid ideas” (pp. 278-279). He goes on to say:

But a constant discursive competition between tradition, modernity and postmodernity does

not put to rest the debate on how to be Canadian. Canada’s lack of monolithic and fixed

national identity opens up areas in which minority groups can contribute to the common

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conversation. Like others, Ismailis find their own explorations of tradition, modernity and

postmodernity overlapping with the country’s larger discussion. (p. 279)

Further, he says that Canadian Ismailis are still rooted in tradition through their commitment to and practice of their religious heritage, and their grounding in Islamic values. In addition, they

“embrace modernity,” engage “with conditions of modern world” (p. 287), and don’t see modernity and faith at odds. As this ethnography has shown, it is not simply that Ismailis engage in the modern world, but they are constituted through modern paradigms. The encounters in this thesis show how the “darker side of modernity” (Mignolo, 2011) is very much part and parcel of how Ismailis come to take positions of exceptionality. What the participant’s narratives bring out are the operations of colonial modernity, through its gendered, racializing, and humanizing project. Ismailis emerge as

“exceptional” – that is, distinct through difference, distinguished through achievement, and excellent as an anti-orientalist hope through their encounters, so they can animate both homogenously and in their paradoxes in Canada.

The modern in the Ismaili community discourse, has largely been focused on benefit, progress, and attunement with the present conditions of their lives, as is the discourse of inclusion proffered by the Canadian state towards them. Modernity is something to be in. Coloniality is absented out of modernity, and this is necessary both to the Ismailis as a collectivity in order to work in the parameters of power as partially unmarked Muslims bodies, and to the Canadian nation.

However, with closer scrutiny, as this ethnography has made visible, some Ismailis are also aware of their religious, ethnicized and gendered difference. They are conscious of their experience of difference and reflect on its effects, both within the Ismaili community and in the larger socio- political geography of Canada. If the coloniality of modernity is not seriously considered in how one is constructed as the modern welcomed Muslims of belonging in Canada, then we can not in

309 fact make sense of our experiences as racialized, gendered and classed bodies. Further, however, we become complicit in and blind to, continued and newer forms of gendered racializing projects.

Furthermore, where and with whom we build relationships, and how this is done as a Muslim collectivity in Canada, is further brought into question. The “darker side of coloniality” cannot be simply evoked as one aspect of modernity (Sajoo, 2008; Cooper, 2005), or as something that we stand outside of. It must be taken to task with grave seriousness. This is necessary to understand the shifting ways in which we are in the powers of social relationship making with other racialized and

Indigenous Peoples, and to other Muslims. We have to fundamentally work through the functions of coloniality in this current moment of being Muslims in Canada. As the participants show in varying degrees – the affective, material, and psychic workings of processes that differentiate, place and bring them into proximity to each other, and to other Muslims and non-Muslims, affect them personally, socially, materially and religiously.

I would add to this that often the Ismaili official discourse of “humanist Islam” must be considered in light of the “humanism” of enlightenment, particularly as humanism is evoked by the

Ismailis, and in the discourses of Canadian nation building. The humanism of Islam and European enlightenment cannot simply be distinguished as religious and secular, but requires serious fleshing out, as when the Ismailis evoke humanism or a humanist Islam, it continues, I argue, to be wrapped up in the human of enlightenment and modern coloniality.

The epistemic, social, bodily, psychic, and material disentangling I have put forth as underlying logics to the explorations of this study, are integral to revealing and rebuilding social relationships. I believe what is required are more vital fussy community politics that push against normative rationalities. Such politics would disrupt the centering of modernity, the modern, cosmopolitanism, diversity, and humanism as logics that shape social relationships. In doing so, one

310 can enter into a material and “epistemic disobedience” to make better sense of social relationships, and what it means to hold the simultaneity of privilege, complicity, marginality, and Otherness as

Ismailis Muslims in the Canadian colonial settler state. Further, it may open up the possibilities of what it would mean to enter into decolonial social relationships, and transgressing the coloniality of modernity.

Muslims in Canada and worldwide find themselves in a unique situation. They are embedded in the racial, gender and neoliberal politics and frameworks of the Canadian state long established before 9/11 and at the same time are at the centre of a global antagonism. In a world framed through terror and war, Muslims in Canada are in the race for legitimacy and acceptance, displacing other frameworks through which Muslims can be seen as actors in the world on their own terms. What might other frameworks look like if Muslims such as the Ismailis shift the centrality of their relationship with state actors to building relationships with Indigenous and other racialized, and minoritized communities? And what might such social relationship building look like if rooted across Muslim spiritual and Indigenous spiritual frameworks that undo the relationality of coloniality. This cannot be done however without understanding the very politics of working from spiritual frameworks and its relationship to the material workings of coloniality.

This ethnography can only provide a partial and particular story about the Ismailis, although one that has been largely unexplored up to this point, and therefore has more yet to say. This work not only seeks to extend how we can make sense of the Ismailis in particular, but also how we come to understand the workings of Muslims in Canada, that further complicate the relational terrain of

Muslim politics. The emergent story I present opens up more questions and other explorations.

What are subversive forms of resistance in Muslim communities such as the Ismailis, to projects of dominance in Canada? How can social justice, activist and critical scholarship seriously engage with

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Muslims who work in the world through the frameworks of Islam in the West and who are situated in the contradictions of being Muslims interlocked in systems of power? Is it possible to work in a humanist paradigm that is not imbued in modernity’s violence? Perhaps a starting exploration to this question would consider opening our senses to being paradoxical bodies. What flows from that?

How and where are we directed in and through paradox, rather then from the notion of “human?”

How can working from the paradox of being Muslims in todays world lead us to rupturing what creates the paradox to begin with, in order to come into something else relationally with others.

This thesis hopes to make an interdisciplinary contribution across education, gender and women’s studies, sociology and ethnic studies. It has particular theoretical and pedagogical insight to offer in terms of the affective economies through which Muslims move in the world and are constructed in relational paradigms. This ethnography therefor does not by pass Islam as an informing way for life. Nor does it negate Muslims as bodies of temporality and spirituality. The study also posses the question for these disciplines on how we can tune our theoretical, methodological and analytical tools to seriously consider the interlocking workings of religious and secular frameworks through which Muslim communities such as the Ismailis come to be in the world.

Getting beneath the surface of things, throughout this thesis I have argued in different ways that what in fact comes out of Ismaili encounters in Canada are contradictory and simultaneous effects. The interlocutors of this ethnographic journey show that they are in a continual process of body formation, positioning, placing, moving together, apart, distancing, coming closer, transgressing, resisting and converging. Their meetings are multilayered, multidimensional, and multiple. The convergences of the Ismailis, Islam and the Canadian state, the making of relational

Muslim figures, ethnobody encounters, along with mobilization of pluralism, together become a

312 power matrix. Through their interlocking workings, race, class, gender and religion, operationalize in an arrangement that makes visible the relevance of Muslims in the interconnections of nation and community building, and the paradox of being modern, liberal, religious subjects in the Canadian state’s colonial geographies.

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Appendix 1: Email Invitation > Dear Community, > > I hope this email finds you well. This is an information email and > invitation to ask if you might be interested in participating in my > research study examining the concept of pluralism and social > relations between different groups of Ismailis in Toronto Canada. If > you are interested in learning about this project, the > attached letter can provide you with more detail and how to go about > participating. > > If you could also pass this on to other Ismailis in Toronto, I would > appreciate it. > > > Please let me know if you would like to participate in the next week or so. > > I look forward to hearing from you. > > Sincerely, > > > Salima Bhimani > PhD Candidate > Ontario Institute for Studies in Education > Curriculum, Teaching and Learning > University of Toronto >

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Appendix 2: Invitation Letter

PLURALISM, ISMAILIS and SOCIAL RELATIONS

DISSERTATION RESEARCH PROJECT

Salima Bhimani, Principal Investigator

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Thank you for taking the time to read about my project. This research study will focus on examining issues related to pluralism in Canada and the experiences and relationships between Afghan, Indian, and Pakistani Ismailis in Toronto. The proposed research will contribute to a doctoral thesis fulfilling the requirements for a PhD in the field of curriculum, teaching and learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

If you decide to participate, involvement in this research will occur over the course of five months, in which you will be involved in two-in-depth interviews. The interviews will explore your thoughts about pluralism and your experiences and understandings of the relationships between different groups of Ismailis. The first interview will take place starting in July 2011 and the final interview in September. The interviews will be around sixty and no longer than ninety minutes. Between the interviews, I will be conducting observations at social events within the Ismaili community. If you are comfortable, I may accompany you to participate in social events in order get your perspectives on the dynamics between Ismailis.

For this study, I am interested in exploring a cross section of diverse experiences and perspectives, given the focus on pluralism. Therefore participants in this study can be between the ages of 18-60, female or male, and identify as Afghan, Pakistani, or Indian Ismaili who have varied educational and work backgrounds.

Should you agree to participate in this research, you will be free to withdraw. Once the interview data has been collected and transcribed, it will be sent back to you for you to provide any clarifications. You will be able to withdraw from the research up to that point. This means that your name would be deleted from the data and you would not be quoted in the project. Your wish to withdraw can be communicated to me in person, on the phone or by email. Once I have received your transcripts with any clarifications you may have, your interviews and participation will be a part of this project.

Throughout this research project I will make sure that all data collected and your participation will remain confidential. I will use pseudonyms and/or other codes to maintain your confidentiality

315 throughout the project. I will keep the data collected securely at the University of Toronto Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The data will be kept until the project comes to a close.

Thank you in advance of your cooperation and interest in this project. Please do not hesitate to call or email me with any questions or concerns or to set up a time to further discuss this project and your potential participation at (416) 797-4655 or [email protected]. Dr. Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, my research supervisor can also be contacted at (416)978-0194 or [email protected].

The University of Toronto Ethics department can also be contacted if you have questions about your rights as a research participant at [email protected] or 416-946-3273

Sincerely,

______

Salima Bhimani

PhD Candidate, Curriculum, Teaching and Learning

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto

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Appendix 2b Informed Consent Letter

Informed Consent Letter

Dear potential participant:

Thank you for your interest in the research I am conducting on examining issues related to pluralism and the experiences and relationships of and between Afghan, Indian and Pakistani Ismailis in Toronto. If you agree, you will become a research participant and will meet with me for an interview two times over the course of the next three months. This letter will give you further information about the project and will present a consent form for your signature.

The proposed research will contribute to a doctoral thesis fulfilling requirement for a doctorate in field of curriculum, teaching and learning in education. Dr. Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, is supervising my research.

Your involvement in this research will occur over the course of three months, during which you will participate in two-in-depth interviews. The interviews will explore your thoughts about pluralism and your experiences and understandings of the relationships between different groups of Ismailis. The first interview will take place at the beginning and the final interview towards the end of the three months. The interviews will be around sixty and no longer than ninety minutes. Between the interviews, I will be conducting observations at social events within the Ismaili community. During this time I may accompany you to participate in social events in order get your perspective on the dynamics between Ismailis.

For this study, I am interested in exploring a cross section of diverse experiences and perspectives, given the focus on pluralism. Therefore participants in this study can be between the ages of 18-60, male and female and identify as Afghan, Pakistani and/or Indian Ismaili, who have varied educational and work backgrounds.

Should you agree to participate in this research, you will be free to withdraw. Once the interview data has been collected and transcribed, it will be sent back to you for you to provide any clarifications. You will be able to withdraw from the research at that point. This means that your name would be deleted from the data and you would not be quoted in the project. Your wish to withdraw can be communicated to me in person, on the phone or by email. Once I have received your transcripts with any clarifications you may have, your interviews and participation will be a part of this project.

Throughout this research project I will make sure that all data collected will remain confidential. I will use pseudonyms and/or other codes to maintain your confidentiality throughout the project. I will keep the data collected securely at the University of Toronto Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The data will be kept until the project comes to a close.

317

Thank you in advance for your cooperation and interest in this project. Please do not hesitate to call or email me with any questions or concerns (416) 797-4655 or [email protected]. Dr. Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández can also be contacted at (416)978-0194 or [email protected].

Sincerely,

______

Salima Bhimani, Doctoral Candidate, Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto

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CONSENT FORM FOR PARTICIPATION IN:

RESEARCH STUDY

I have discussed with ______the research procedures described in the project description explicitly and have asked whether any questions remain and have answered these questions to the best of my ability. Participation in this study is voluntary and may be terminated at the prescribed times noted in the letter of consent.

______

Date Investigators Signature

The nature and purpose of this research have been satisfactorily explained to me and I agree to become a participant in the study as described in the project description. I understand that the investigator will gladly answer any questions that arise during the course of the research.

______

Date Participant’s Signature Print Name

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Appendix 3: Interview Protocol Hello. Thanks for agreeing to participate in my study. I appreciate your time. There will be two interviews, each sixty and no more than ninety minutes. We can end the conversation at any point in the interview. Before we start I want to make sure that you agree to have the interview tape- recorded. This will help me to return to our conversation later and make sure that I capture your stories completely. It will also allow me to listen to you closely. You can ask me to stop the recording at any point. Our conversation is confidential, and if I quote you in my work, I will not use your name or any details that may identify who you are. Is this okay with you?

Interview One

Personal experiences of social relations in Ismaili community:

I’d like to learn about your about your experiences as an ______Ismaili within the Ismaili community in Toronto?

Question: What are your personal experiences with Ismailis of other ethnicities, such as, East Africans? Afghans? Indians? and Pakistani? within the community? What are some specific experiences you can share?

Prompts:

What do you notice about how East African, Afghan, Indian and Pakistani Ismailis interact with you?

You have shared ______experience, can you provide some more detail with regards to ______?

What feelings arise from the interactions you describe?

Can you provide specific examples of your experiences at social events, within Jamat Khana and at social gatherings?

Who do you tend to hang out with in Jk?

Who do you notice attends social events?

Who do you notice is absent at events?

How do you believe that you are perceived as an Afghan, Indian, Pakistani, woman/man to other men, women in the community?

You have shared being perceived in ______way, are there stories that you can share that exemplify this?

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What are some examples of how your gender and ethnicity was a part of your interaction with another Ismaili? Is there a specific experience you can describe?

Who would you consider to be a part of your social network?

Theme One: Pluralism, Multiculturalism, Ismailis and Canada:

Question: How have you heard non-Ismailis in Canada talk about Canadian Ismailis?

Prompts:

Is there anything that stands out for you about being a Canadian Ismaili? A ______Canadian Ismaili?

How do you think Ismailis are perceived in Canada?

Do you believe that your identity as an Ismaili distinguishes you from other Muslims in Canada? If so in what ways? If not, why not?

Can you provide specific examples or experiences that would illustrate your view?

Question: What is multiculturalism?

Prompts:

What is your view of multiculturalism in Canada?

Are multiculturalism and pluralism the same?

Does pluralism and multiculturalism mean something specific in Canada?

How does your understanding relate to official definitions of pluralism and multiculturalism?

Can you share specific experiences in people daily lives that would illustrate what Multiculturalism is? What pluralism is?

INTERVIEW TWO

Theme: Pluralism and the Ismaili Community

Ismaili social relations:

Question: How would you describe the relationship between Afghan, Pakistani, Indian and East African Ismailis?

Prompts:

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You describe the relationship like ______, can you provide some examples of what you have seen?

How do you hear Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis speaking about each other?

When you talk about hearing ______, are there specific incidents or interactions where this kind of talk is most prevalent?

Can you think of an experience where Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis were involved in working on something together, at an event, within Jamat Khana or in a social gathering?

What feelings do you think that Afghan, Pakistanis and Indian Ismailis have towards each other?

You talk about______feeling, where do you think those feelings came from? Can you talk about this through a specific example.

Are there changes needed within the Ismailis in terms of how Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Ismailis experience being a part of the community generally?

Question: How is pluralism talked about in the Ismaili Community?

Prompts:

Can you describe a time when you heard people talking about pluralism? Who talks about pluralism?

Why is it talked about?

How is it talked about?

How is the concept of pluralism reflected in the community?

Is there a significance of the concept of pluralism to the Ismailis?

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Appendix 4 Themes and Codes

Code-Filter: All ______

HU: Thesis_project2_Jan2612 File: [C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\HU\Thesis_project2_Jan2612.hpr6] Edited by: Super Date/Time: 2013-07-21 14:02:09 ______

*Agency *Classed *Differences *Ethnicity *Inequity *Ismailis *Muslims *Part of *Participation *Perceptions About Afghans About Indians About Pakistanis Aga Khan Agents As Afghan As Indian As Pakistani Assimilating/Integrating Barriers access Belonging Canada Canadian Changes class Comfort(un) Communication Country Specific Cultural Capital Diff culture Diff open to Disconnected Discrimination Dominance East Africans Encounter Feelings Gender General Ismailis Generational Differences Getting Along Helping relationships Hierarchy History Ismaili Definition Khojas Liberal Multiculturalism Mus Distinctions between

323

Mus Relations Between negotiating Not taking it to heart Othered Par At Jk Par At social events Par External Par in programming Par Volunteering Perceptions Ismailis Perceptions non Ismailis Pluralism Positionality Proximity Race Resistance Seeing the other self reflexivity Social Network Status Tensions Understanding welcoming Western Youth

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Appendix 5: Sample Memo

MEMO: Experiencing Multi (7 Quotations) (Super, 2012-02-18 19:58:37) P 3: Akil int 1.doc: (103:103) P 7: Garima int 1.doc: (64:64) P 8: Gulam int 1.doc: (125:125) P10: Khan int 1.doc: (69:69) P17: Niekbakhat int 1.doc: (168:168), (170:170), (178:178) No codes No memos Type: Memo

For Akil - Multi as experience - he shares at work is described through referring to the ethnic and race backgrounds of the different people he works with. They learn about each other dialogically (talking, asking questions), jokes. Jokes are important to keeping it light and connecting. Jokes is a sign of acceptance of who you are and the other. Hanging out, eating each others foods. Differences are good in the multicultural world. Sameness is boring. What does better stand in for here? The taking away of blandness...

To add here, Garima, talks about racism and white supremacy in the work place as an experience of Multi even though she defines multi as being about belonging.. the experience itself is about inequity, racisms and dominance.

Gulam notes the experience of multi in relation to events...ethnic events in city of Toronto...or diverse religious events. Its the opportunity to have events. And yet he acknowledges that even though this is so, Canadian dominant culture is western…this dominance is everywhere, where as the ethnic, racial, religious differences are present within confines of events.

So, working together in peace and having people of different countries together. Learning about how each other lives. But then he contrasts this kind of knowledge building experience with the racism and white supremacy of exclusion. He gives the example of tennis clubs. So, even in employment he talks about the barriers he might face but then goes on to state that you won't get stopped on the street. Hate is not face to face for him. He contrasts this to Afghanistan where violence was part in parcel of experience for being different. Its an improvement being here..

Niekbakhat, the experience of multi changes on whether you are born here or not. You have an advantage being born here. Language as being a privilege you have over those that move here and don't have the language

Multi in Niekbakat's experience is in the workplace for example. Having all kinds of people of different backgrounds together.

325

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