Critical Readings: Devotional Reflections in the Pursuit of Quranic Understanding in Contemporary Pakistan Nadia Loan Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Nadia Loan All rights reserved ABSTRACT Critical Readings: Devotional Reflections in the Pursuit of Quranic Understanding in Contemporary Pakistan Nadia loan This dissertation is a study of contemporary forms of Quranic learning among women in urban Pakistan. Over the last two decades, Quran study programs which promise an in-depth and personal knowledge of the text, have become immensely popular among literate women from all backgrounds in urban centers of Pakistan. Placing an emphasis on developing skills for reading and understanding the Quran, such programs of study have adopted an approach to textual engagement that departs significantly from previously dominant modes of recitation and memorization of the Quran in everyday practices of ritual devotion. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted among women participants of Quranic study, this dissertation investigates these sites of learning to highlight the competencies, logics and modes of argumentation that are encouraged and cultivated among women readers of the Quran. It locates the shift from Quranic recitation to reading within a genealogy of the modernist exegetical tradition popularized by Syed Abul Ala Maududi in the mid-twentieth century in South Asia which made the ‘ordinary’ reader its main focus rather than the scholarly world of the Ulama. It foregrounds this as the condition under which a popular hermeneutics of the Quran emerges in contemporary Pakistan and demonstrates how privileging a modality which illuminates the Quran’s ‘true’ meaning steers conceptions about the text and its role in defining ethical action for women readers. This study analyzes how contemporary practices of Quranic hermeneutics by ‘ordinary’ women rely on the ethical cultivation of interpretive agency which is generated simultaneously by notions of the autonomous self and a normative understanding of Quranic injunctions. Through an analysis of women’s experiences of reading, it shows that Quranic study in these sites occurs at the nexus of competing modalities of textual engagement in which women combine religious and secular capacities, skills and sensibilities for reflection on the Quran’s meaning. It highlights the ways in which seemingly contradictory modes of reflection—one which is critical and another which is governed by devotional affect—are productively reconfigured together for discerning the ethical import of Quranic injunctions and their insertion into the idioms governing everyday life. This dissertation argues that such a mode of appreciation produces a unique register for reflecting on the Quran’s pedagogical potential, thus imbuing the desire for ‘reading as understanding’ with the promise of personal and collective social transformation. It also unravels assumptions about the discreteness of the spheres governed by religiosity and secularity in a post-colonial context and enables for a consideration of the ways in which the intersection between the two have been productive of new modalities of womanhood, sociality, and politics. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii List of Figures iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Supplicating Subject: The Exemplary Life of Khairunnissa 57 Chapter 2 Maududi’s Hermeneutics and Popular Reading of the Quran 88 Chapter 3 Subjects of Knowledge: Tafsir and/as the Labor of Understanding 121 Chapter 4 Recitational Readings 175 Chapter 5 ‘Hand’-writing the Quran: The Material Technologies of 217 Quranic Comprehension Conclusion 254 Bibliography 263 i Acknowledgments I am truly grateful for the support that I have received from many people during the research and writing of this dissertation at Columbia University where my intellectual journey began; in Karachi, my home and the ‘field’; and Williamstown, where I finally finished writing. I want to start by thanking my dissertation committee, Brinkley Messick, Lila Abu-Lughod and David Scott whose intellectual rigor, patience and guidance have steered this dissertation through its inception to its completion. Brink’s endless supply of gentle guidance, patience and support has allowed for this project to reach coherence despite the sometimes circuitous path I have taken to get there. Lila provided a unique combination of intellectual direction, engagement and support that is essential to the completion of any project. Her thorough and incisive comments on my work have kept me vigilant to my own blind spots and I can’t thank her enough for that. David’s insightful and penetrating questions through the years have forced me to rethink my assumptions at all stages of my intellectual journey—the importance of his insistence that we turn our analytical gaze on to the questions we ask cannot be sufficiently acknowledged for its contribution to my thinking and training. I am also grateful to my external readers, Kamran Asdar Ali and Matthew Hull for their generous and thorough engagement with my work. In particular, I want to thank Matt who went beyond his role of external reader to give me invaluable feedback on my work long after the defense of this study was over. ii Financial support from Columbia University, American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS) and the A.M. Foundation at various stages of this project have made it possible to undertake and complete it. I want to thank Partha Chatterjee and Mahmood Mamdani for their guidance, interest and support of my work during my time at Columbia. Many friends at Columbia provided the community in which this project and writing took shape. In particular I want to thank Antina von Schnitzler, Mireille Abelin, Poornima Paidipaty, Uma Maheshwari Bhrugubanda, Suren Pillay, Nadia Guessous, Yogesh Chandrani, Krista Hepburg, Thushara Hewage, Shahla Talebi, Tahirih Cook and Ozge Serin, Needless to say, this dissertation would not have been possible without the generosity that was extended to me by the women who are the subjects of this study. They were not only willing to share their experiences with me but also opened up their homes for me. Given the suspicion with which many who engage in religious learning are viewed in contemporary Pakistan, I cannot stress how essential this condition of generosity has been to making it possible for me to undertake this project. During my fieldwork in Karachi, my family and friends provided the support and distractions from the, at times, frustrating task of fieldwork. My siblings Shomaila, Saima, Erum, and Khurram have over the years been a fount of support in many ways. In Williamstown many friendships and intellectual exchanges sustained and carried me through the writing of this dissertation. In particular I want to thank Anand Swamy, Jyotika Virdhi, Kenda Mutongi, Alan deGooyer, Denise Buell, William Darrow, Magnus Bernhardsson, Margaret McComish, Anne Reinhardt, Katarzyna (Kashia) iii Pieprzak, Shinko Kagaya, Thomas O’connor, Richard Fox, Judith Fox, Nicole Mellow and Paige Bartels. I will forever be indebted to my mother and late father who encouraged and guided all their children to follow their own paths. My daughter Safa, born at the time I started writing, has been the source of my greatest joy and comfort. With her infectious laughter and good humor, she provides the necessary respite from the isolation of writing. Finally I want to thank Arafaat Valiani who has been a constant companion and interlocutor. He has not only read and commented on each and everything I have ever given him, his unfailing enthusiasm and energy has sustained me through the trials and tribulations of writing. I cannot thank him enough. iv List of Figures Figure 1: Page from a printed Quran used for recitational purposes Figure 2: Outside cover of the Quranic ‘workbook’ Figure 3: Quran workbook, version I Figure 4: Individual section (para) of the Quran workbook Figure 5: Individual section (para) of the Quran with English translation Figure 6: A writer’s notes filling out the workbook v Introduction 2 As I enter the premises of Al-Huda International, which is housed on the top floor of a seven story commercial complex in the south of Karachi, the sound of a lecture on a Quranic verse reverberates through the space heightened by the loudspeakers that acoustically connect the different rooms and hallways. Al Huda, which offers women diploma courses in Quranic study through its Institute of Islamic Education for Women, occupies the entire seventh floor in this commercial section of the city. In contrast to the busy, bustling market downstairs, the topmost floor is ordered and occupied only by women. According to a strictly observed rule, men are not permitted on the premises. In a large classroom off the main reception area, the full-time students that are enrolled at the institute sit neatly in multiple rows in the middle of the main hall, dressed either in all- white shalwar kameez (tunics and pants) or a long black jilbab, a coat-like garment worn over everyday clothes which is the mandated uniform for full-time students; all wear white headscarves. Although it is a weekday morning, a time when most women are busy with work and family obligations, several hundred women are seated and ready to hear Farhat Hashmi, a popular teacher of Quranic study discuss the day’s verses from the Quran. Included in this gathering are women ‘listeners’ who come to listen to the daily lesson. Also dressed modestly, they sit along the back wall of the main classroom. The full-time enrollees, who cluster together in the center of the room facing the teacher, are typically hunched over their note-books, hastily noting down the lecture. Conversely, ‘listeners’ sit still, some with a copy of the Quran in front of them. All attendees follow Hashmi’s lecture as she first recites the Quran in Arabic and moves to its translation and interpretation in Urdu.