[...] by the *aspiration to strive as Muslims*?


to effect experimentation <==
•disputation (jadal)
•argument (bahs)
•disputation (monazereh)
•debate + polemic
•building mosques
•

tradition and ethics of debate and disputation


Carl Schmitt --> political theology
*politics discovers its modernity by repressing the theological foundations of its concept and practice*

theology was always about worldly politics <--> religious transcendence }==> run analysis both ways:
•transcendental coming into play (in some instances)
•worldly life coming into play (in some instances) [immanent quality]

--Singh--> self-making & self-perfecting

}--Naveeda--> religious argumentation : expressive of ongoing striving

**one works on oneself by revisiting and reinhabiting theological conundrums (through words and practice)** [same in artists as well?]


perceived eagerness for debate among lay muslims --> (anxiety over) disputation ==>
•indulgence in abstract thinking
•undermine the tenacity of individual faith
•reduce the hold of the daily obligations of ritual worship
•lead to a diminishing attachment to worldly life or stakes in the social


Veena, Cavell > skepticism:
•philosophical efforts at securing one's knowledge of the world unmediated by sense experience (<-- classical)
•human disappointment with our earthly condition of being distinct and separate from others (<-- social)
•efforts to secure unmediated knowledge of others (<-- social)
•

[Veena (giving historicity and ethnigraphic precision)-->] skepticism ==>
•renders other vulnerable to suspicion
•unsettle social relations
•produce the conditions of possibility for suffering and violence


skepticism <--> aspiration

aspiration =/= clear vision of ends

Pakistan:
•idemtifies itself as an ideological state (Islam) [==Naveeda==> (the possibility of) some experimentation within its apparatus : ***articulation and dispersal of ideology is not linear or cumulative*** it flows in directions other than from the top down]
•inherits the colonial administrative structure + imperatives of government (postcolonial state)

(Sina -->) to be ideological about X : driven to ascertain and adjudicate the others relation to X
(certainly as an achievement)

in islamic ideological states (like Pakistan and Iran) you are allowed to experiment on what is it to be a Muslim
(+ skepticism with respect to those who strive)
•skepticism transforms into an *impersonal force* (that can emerge anywhere and strike anyone) [<-- disembodied aspect of skepticism]


discourse of spiritual diagnosis
(takes place through an evaluation of one's physiology)

Deleuze's symptomatology: a creative act bringing about a change in health + affirmation of a way of life
•striving --> good health

Iqbal --> attentiveness to thr physiological as a means to gauge whether one's spirituality is on the right track
•with Bergson --> concern for the futurity of Islam
•with Nietzsche --> concern for the spiritual health
◦Nietzsche: physician of culture, (understood as political act) “striving and self-diagnosis ==> implicates the individual in the world ==> produce charges in the world”


Naveeda's ethnography method of interviewing:
1. locate traces of X in (context:)
◦everyday life
◦public culture
◦
3. see how this tendency crystallizes
◦at particular points
◦within particular persons
◦within particular texts
◦
5. study this crystallization
◦comes to be overlaid
◦expressed through lived experiences
◦be productive of
◾further movements of the tendency
◾countertendencies
◾its dissipation
◦

jinn <--> striving
Naveeda shiwsyin her research a single worshiper's choice of striving: relay upon a jinn for guidance on better ways to be a Muslim

*striving --> put collectivity (for example family) in jeopardy*
*@apass

...................................

(state pronouncements of) correct way to [?how to] *attach to the prophet*

becoming a knowledgeable religious disputant

Naveeda > Iqbal > the weary self that could not be roused to piety by religious zeal strikes a posture as much of resignation to sin by a nonpracticing Muslim as of a certain pride of withholding oneself from conformism.
--> of one goes to prayer in a mosque it is by one's own choice

...to dismiss differences = the political expression of the petit bourgeoisie


Iqbal's disapproval of guidance --variance--> (Sahib) seeking guidance from a jinn for pious pursuits

singularity of Sahib's efforts at improving himself as a Muslim --> (Iqbalian aspiration) posture of the nonconformist

state's fears that the milieu was pervaded by non-Muslim others posting as Muslims --jinn--> [made vivid] *skeptical experience of everyday life as a place of illusion and trance* (go to --> my work on Relaxing Horror Tales for Children and Adults)

bedat بدعت
accretion of customs in the form of innovation


jinn
-what nature of influences jinn introduce into human lives?

•library of religious commentary
•prophetic tales
•magicians’ manuals
•folklore
•ethnography
•
--> characterization of jinn

human ~= jinm --> endowed with passion, rational faculties, responsibility for their actions, etc. they eat, grow, procreate, die

constantly evolving relationship between humans and jinns

from pre-islamic --to--> Islamic
both good & bad ascribed to jinn's constitution --to--> to be much more unequivocally associated with evil

the little mischievous nafs نفس that make up a self --> Muslim interiority (projects?)

...in the belief of jinns:
•complex arrangement of cultural memory
•political strategy
•mental illness
•individual subjectivity
•
--✕--> *Naveeda taking the existence of jinn for granted ==> (her effort) to learn more about the family that adopted them and their efforts at striving*

*taking the existence of X for granted ==to==> learn about the people who adopted X*


“Muslim children - how bring them up?” vol 3
(in Islam) child: bring without aghl عقل + ability to communicate with divine beings, without sin
--> always under the threat of being easily led astray

eight-year-old Maryam
-attuned to ways in which this world and the jinn world were mirrored and intertwined
-would look into the palm of her hand to see what the jinn would have her to see
-relayed the requests of human world to the jinn
-bringing forth advice, instruction, expression of desire (from the jinn)

relationship of ventriloquism (between Maryam and jinn)

there was an accepted contiguity of jinn and human selves & possibility of a plurality of voices in Maryam's mediation --> enjoin her family to attend closely to her words

coterminous
هم مرز، هم زمان
Ahmadi in Pakistan
each Muslim group claimed itself the truest of all <-- the idea that *to accept the X's claim to be Muslim = accept one's own annihilation as Muslim*
--Naveeda--> question the limits of contiguity of different forms of life (when copresence was tolerable? when copresence was made intolerable?)


imitato Muhammadi
emulating X (to experience X) --through--> passionate love and ecstatic identification with the X
(for example the prophet: seeing the prophet on one's mind's eye + imitating him)
•sufist approach: prophet is immanent in the world
•varied affective relations to the prophet:
◦ecstatic love
◦reverential love
◦respect
◦

jinns having a dynamic disruptive presence within the human world

Sunni Deobandi's belief that the prophet is alive in his grave in Medina ~= Shia's notion of the hidden imam


*several (competing) bodies of knowledge*

Naveeda --read--> Sahib taking cues --on--> prophet's example --from--> faceless voiceless jinn --with--> little child surving as its medium


-parental disappointment with sons
-children possible abandonment by their fathers
-wife's estrangement from her dying husband
--> ambiguities that undergrid lived relations

“Maryam rushed to greet him at the door of the house but then she fell back screening. apparently a thirty-feet-tall churail (witch) had followed Sahib from India. Sahib immediately dropped his bags at the doorstep and without pause rushed to the mosque to say his prayers. when he returned home, Maryam assured him that the witch had left him.”

Sahib allowed the entry of jinn into his home without the armature of the average amil (who undergoes considerable pain and deprivation to be able to lay claim upon particular force, and undertake continental exercises of the body and mind to control it)
--risk--> potential disruption of the family
--abdicate--> his position of authority within his family --to--> attend to his daughter's words of guidance

*his turn towards Maryam = turn away from the present* (of his everyday life not having the spiritual richness & *authoritative accounts* [he desired to make himself a better Muslim])

from a pedagogical figure --to--> pupil to his daughter

pursuits of the self ~=> incorporate the unexpected --extent--> abdicating full control of oneself

in bringing a jinn into his life --> it became a version of him joining other versions of himself with whom he was bound

--Iqbal--> striving to one's next self


in the famous tale of Aladdin and the magic lamp, a child found a genie and could be literally pulled out of a humdrum existence to soar the skies
•Maryam shared the jinn's joy in discovering human food
•she got to whisper her secrets into his ears
•make him complicit in her projects
•she got to temporally take leave of her body that was changing beyond her control

(Naveeda asks) was Sulayman (the jinn) about the inability to acknowledge friendship over time?

...................................

Naveeda chapter 5 mulla


graffiti --> awareness of X at the level of gesture and affect

participation in change

(Agamben -->) [*]gesture: inhabiting of potentiality



Naveeda four scenes of aspiration:
1. librarians engaged in argumentation over the nature of the prophet's body after his death --gesture--> argumentation
2. neighborhoods embroiled in fights over mosques in attempting to prescribe the rightful atmosphere for prayer --gesture--> seizure
3. the state drawn into theological disputation and legal experimentation over how over should attach oneself to the prophet --gesture--> legal experimentation
4. a pious man trying to seek guidance on how to be Muslim from an invisible being (jinn) --gesture--> search for guidance
}--affect--> accompanied by intensity of seriousness, sincerity, excitement, disappointment, sense of loss
}--commitment--> friendship, neighborliness, familial ties

large arsenal of off-color jokes about specialist fogures of all religious traditions in the popular culture of the subcontinent...
•horror stories
•psychological profile of mullas
•weekly skewing of mullas
•mulla jokes
•cartoons
•
political commentary <--> criticism
--> mulla was to blame for everything that was perceived to be wrong (in Pakistan) --> *pervasive skepticism* [also in Iran]

skepticism shadows striving (?)


the other of the striving muslim in Pakistan:
•shadowi Shia
•deceiving Ahmadi
•bad-tempered mulla بدمزاج


mulla:
•Iqbal --> ossification of the institution of ulama
•Pakistani state --> ossification of commentary upon Islamic texts

...everyday assertion that one's religiousity is superior to others


mulla = full-fledged maleficent persona


skepticism of daily existence
1. ...(they become skeptical) about his rationality and grounds for his beliefs
2. ...(at some point) anything could be said or believed about him
3. ...(he felt like) everyone around him had turned to animals
4. ...(he presumed) everyday life was one of illusion and appearances [go to --> kelile demne این همه سودا است، مجاز]
}--> actualize the potential for *skepticism that existed in the social fabric*
=/= chance encounter
=/= pervasive condition


figure of the mulla [~= collective fear + revulsion] --traverse--> the fragmented public culture of the city


[*]ulama: guardian, transmitter, interpreter of shari'a
+ specific claims of knowledge upon:
1. تفسیر tafsir (commentary upon the Quran)
2. فقه figh (jurisprudence)
3. حدیث hadis (sayings of the prophet)
4. کلام kalam (speculative theology)
+ (in Pakistan) personnel in mosque:
1. امام imam
2. خطیب khatib (Frida sermon)
3. قاری ghari
4. موذن muezzin

mulla --derogatory--> one who is overzealous in upholding the letter of the shari'a
(+ additional connotation:)
•ignorant master [go to --> mulla nasruddin: religious master who gets by in life through hypocrisy and cunning + outsmarting those of noble birth and high cultivation]
•gabza agent (seizure of property)
•sodomizer (one who rapes men)
•a naive fool out of step with his time
•


colonial politics in south Asia --> British colonial administration in India see ulama as outdated, deliberately obscurantist, jahel ==> negative stereotype ----> post-colonial period

mullaism:
•Pakistani state --> fossilized state of knowledge on Islam
•Iqbal --> mullaism =/= freedom of ijtihad


(Talal Asad -->) Islamic diskursive tradition is grounded in *argument that anticipates resistance* in the form of doubt, indifference, or lack of understanding ==> it employs the force of reason to bring forth the *willing performance of a practice*
}==produce==> domain of orthodoxy (+ relations of power)


(for Naveeda) anxiety or skepticism ~= sign of aspiration for striving


labbaik: i am here (to follow your orders)

theatrical unteality

...animus lies in the world
[later he] identitues this animus with thr workings of iblis (satan)
...this is a city of whispers [waswasen], a city of mad possession [shar], a city of deviation [ilhad], a city of anxiety [tazadzud], a city of dispersion [intishar]

the ability to smell oneself --> to experience oneself as other


how public culture can ability skepticism as a pervasive condition


mulla jokes --> horror stories = fear + revulsion

(Freudian) eruptive quality of jokes --> joke erupts into everyday life as of from elsewhere

political cartoon: maximum effect through a minimum of details

(mulla) jokes, horror stories, political cartoons --Naveeda--> *exiling the foreignness within*


stories of:
1. mosque in an upscale shopping center
2. sexually predictory mulla
}--> (speaks of:)
1. the perception that there were places in Pakistan where vise was allowed to grow unchecked
2. the menace the ulama introduced into everyday life
}==> (the effect of:)
•keeping public attention upon possible sites and agents of corruption
•putting the everyday life into question (as to whether it was what it appeared to be)


political cartoons --imply-->
•Pakistanis are caught in someone else's game
•growing unfamiliarity of Pakistan


(charges of)
sinfulness
sexual voraciousness
cunning
gluttony
political ambition
worthlessness
corruption
self-destruction
--> continuous efforts to set the mulla outside of oneself (=/= everyday familiarity with the ulama)

***negative stories and cartoons --express--> various degrees of skeptical orientation to the world***
jokes --(descriptive density)--> full expression to skepticism
--{also in Iran}--> making (mulla) grotesquely other ==> inconcevable to imagine any points of relatedness (to mulla)



•scatological jokes
•reworking of official rhetoric for ludic effect
•exaggerated performance of power
}--Mbembe--> “relations[...]