David Pinault - Notes From The Fortune-Telling Parrot - Islam and The Struggle For Religious Pluralism in Pakistan-Equinox Publishing (2008)

NOTES FROM THE FORTUNE-TELLING
PARROT
Comparative Islamic Studies
Series Editor: Brannon Wheeler, US Naval Academy
This new book series, like its companion journal of the same title, publishes work that
integrates Islamic studies into the contemporary study of religion, thus providing an
opportunity for expert scholars of Islam to demonstrate the more general significance
of their research both to comparatavists and to specialists working in other areas.
Attention to Islamic materials from outside the central Arabic lands is of special
interest, as are comparisons which stress the diversity of Islam as it interacts with
changing human conditions.
Published in the series:
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Muslims and Christians as Trustees of Creation
David L. Johnston
NOTES FROM THE FORTUNE-TELLING
PARROT
ISLAM AND THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

IN PAKISTAN
DAVID PINAULT
Equinox Publishing Ltd
London Oakville
Published by
UK: Equinox Publishing Ltd., Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies St., London SW11 2JW
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First published 2008
© David Pinault 2008
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For Jody, with love
CONTENTS
Introduction:
Pluralism and Religious Identity in Pakistan ix
1
MY FORTUNE-TELLING PARROT TRIGGERS TROUBLE
IN LAHORE: STREET RITUALS AND THE LEGACY
OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM 1
2
BEING HINDU IN PAKISTAN: LEGACY AND SURVIVAL 11
3
PAKISTANI CHRISTIANS AND THE PROSPECTS
FOR INTER-RELIGIOUS RESISTANCE TO THE BLASPHEMY LAWS 38
4
RITUAL AND COMMUNAL IDENTITY:
SHIA–SUNNI RELATIONS IN PAKISTAN 59
5
SPURTING BLOOD AND ATTEMPTS TO REGULATE RITUAL:
PAKISTANI SHIAS AND IRAN’S BID FOR LEADERSHIP
OF GLOBAL ISLAM 95
6
RAW MEAT SKYWARD: PARIAH-KITE RITUALS IN LAHORE 108
7
JINNS AND SORCERY IN LAHORE:
TEXTUAL SOURCES AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCES 122
8
A COMPARISON OF MUSLIM AND HINDU PERSPECTIVES
ON THE REALM OF THE JINNS 151
1
viii Notes From the Fortune-Telling Parrot
9
LAHORI PULP FICTION:
THE WORLD OF KHOFNAK DIJAST (“FRIGHT DIGEST”) 161
10
THE POLITICS OF JOGGING: WOMEN’S STATUS IN PAKISTAN 195
11
THE GRECO-BUDDHIST PAST: THE PESHAWAR MUSEUM
AND PAKISTAN’S PRE-ISLAMIC HERITAGE 205
12
THE HAZARDS OF BEING A FREE-THINKER:
PRINCE DARA SHIKOH AND THE PROSPECTS
FOR RELIGIOUS PLURALISM IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY
PAKISTAN 210
Bibliography 227
Index 232
1
INTRODUCTION:
PLURALISM AND RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN PAKISTAN
Inspiration to write this book first came when I encountered Liaqat

Husain Bitalvi and his homemade shrine.
A retired jeweler and poetry reciter, Liaqat is originally from
Amritsar. He emigrated from India to Pakistan after Partition in 1947.
Now he lives in a neighborhood of Lahore called Islampura (many
residents still refer to it by its old pre-Partition name, Krishannagar, “the
abode of Krishna”). There, in 1974, as an act of piety, he undertook to
build one of the more unusual Shia worship places I’ve ever seen in
South Asia: what he calls Imambargah-e Qiyamgah-e Shabih-e Zuljenah
(“the Imam-chapel of the lodging of the likeness of Zuljenah”).
On the right as one enters is a zarih (cenotaph) honoring Hazrat Zay-
nab (the Imam Husain’s sister, who was present at the fateful seventh-
century battle of Karbala). Neighborhood women come here Thursday
nights to honor her. On a wall nearby is a display of ‘alams (copies of
the battle-standards carried into combat by the Karbala martyrs; they
feature prominently in Shia rituals). Such things are common in Shia
shrines.
Less common is what one sees on the left as one enters: stalls housing
two stallions. Each horse is big and well-groomed, its mane hennaed a
brilliant auspicious red. “There are five imambargahs in Islampura,”
Liaqat told me proudly when I visited in 2002, “but this is the only one
where Zuljenah horses actually live.”
Zuljenah is the name of the battle-steed ridden at Karbala by Husain,
the prophet Muhammad’s grandson. Folk Islam in localities throughout
India and Pakistan includes veneration of shabih-e Zuljenah (“the icon/
semblance of Zuljenah”), a stallion chosen as a living likeness of
Husain’s horse.
As we admired the animals, children gazed down at us and waved from
an upper-story concrete-block balcony. His brother’s boys and girls,
explained my host. When he constructed this shrine, Liaqat included
several upper floors to house family members in the same complex.
His horses, explained Liaqat, are busiest during Muharram (the annual
season for commemorating Husain’s death), when he organizes neighbor-
hood processions. The horses take turns being caparisoned as Zuljenah
1
x Notes From the Fortune-Telling Parrot
and paraded through the streets. But throughout the year Liaqat also uses
his horses for private “home visits.” Families where an individual is sick,
for instance, will ask Liaqat to bring a horse to their home. Family
members then pray in Zuljenah’s presence for God to grant the patient
health, and they make a cash donation to support Liaqat’s shrine.
This is an example of what I’d call improvised Islam, a form of the
religion that is localized, entrepreneurial, and unsupervised, an Islam that
is attuned to the day-to-day spiritual needs of a given neighborhood. It’s
also an Islam that irritates the clerical hierarchy. Both Sunni and Shia
religious authorities I interviewed expressed disapproval of Zuljenah
rituals, though for varying reasons, as will be explored in this book.
My goal first of all is to document some of Pakistan’s many local and
improvised forms of Islam, whether involving sorcery, self-flagellation,
parrot-oracles, or pariah-kite rituals. Despite the monolithic connotation
of the title “Islamic Republic” in the nation’s official designation,
Pakistan is rich in religious diversity, a legacy of its pre-Partition past,
when Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians coexisted in large numbers with
Muslims under the aegis of British India.
Since the creation of Pakistan as an Islamic homeland in 1947, its citi-
zens have grappled with the question: What does it mean to be Muslim?
The issues that emerge in this book—blasphemy laws, decrees against
specific rituals, Sunni–Shia conflicts, Hudood ordinances pertaining to
women’s status, the persecution of the Ahmadiyyah—can be understood
as attempts to define and circumscribe Islamic identity.
As Islamic societies confront the challenges of modernity—urbaniza-
tion, deracination, the diffusion of global communications, etc.—defin-
ing what it means to be Muslim becomes increasingly urgent. Despite
appearances, confrontation between Islam and the West is not the prime
locus where this is being played out. Instead, definitions of Islamic
identity are being contested in tensions between local forms of worship
(as in my Lahori friend’s horse-shrine) and forms of the faith that are
exclusivist, transnational, and pan-Islamist. For years, preachers and
militants shaped by the ideologies of Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and
Khomeinist Iran have competed for influence in Pakistan. These
ideologues disagree on many things, but the Wahhabis and Khomeinists
are alike in their hegemonist drive to eradicate the unruly diversity of
religious practice in Pakistan and replace it with a standardized and
homogenized Islam that is easier to control.
In writing about Pakistan’s religious diversity I hope to encourage its
survival. This will entail the cultivation of pluralism, a concept described
by scholar Wade Clark Roof as “a recognition and acceptance…of the
1
Introduction xi
legitimacy of religious and spiritual alternatives, which is something

considerably more than a group simply tolerating another.”1
I would take the idea of religious pluralism further. It entails the
notion that spiritual paths alternative to one’s own have value; that these
alternatives have something to teach us, even as they challenge us by
their difference; and that our own religious identity and spiritual life are
deepened by the self-reflection triggered in the encounter with diversity.
Lest what I say sound hopelessly Western and alien to the nation
under discussion, let me cite the example of Dara Shikoh, a figure from
Pakistan’s own Moghul history. Crown prince and son of emperor Shah
Jahan, Dara certainly had his faults; like many autocrats, he was imprac-
tical, impulsive, and at times violently self-indulgent. But he was fasci-
nated by Hinduism and believed ardently that the study of Hindu
scripture enriched his understanding of the Quran. Controversial even
today, Prince Dara insisted he was a true Muslim even as he was targeted
with a fatwa condemning him as an apostate. This book’s last chapter
examines how progressive-minded Pakistanis draw on Dara’s legacy
today in their struggle to create a religiously pluralist society.
Portions of several chapters appeared in preliminary form in various
publications. Part of Chapter 1 was published in Pakistan Studies News
8.1 (Fall 2004), 15-18. Part of Chapter 3 appeared in two issues of the
Jesuit magazine America, 187.4 (August 12, 2002), 18-20, and 194.13
(April 10, 2006), 8-10. Part of Chapter 4 was published in the Journal of
South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 26.3 (Spring 2003), 62-84. And
part of Chapter 11 appeared in Amphora 6.1 (Spring 2007), 12-13, 16. I
thank the publishers for permission to use this material.
I have many individuals to thank for the information and courteous
help they provided in my research: in Lahore, the Most Reverend
Lawrence Saldanha, Diocesan Archbishop; Mr. Khaled Ahmed, consult-
ing editor of the Daily Times; Mr. Nasir Husain Zaydi, of the Anjuman-e
Imamia Lucknavi; Mr. Amarnath Randhawa, general secretary of Lahore’s
Hindu Association; Mr. Iqbal Hussain, proprietor of Cooco’s Café; and
the staff of the Berkeley Urdu Language Program in Pakistan, especially
Mr. Mohammed Razzaq (the Lahore office’s director) and Mr. Qamar
Jalil (a superb Urdu tutor and delightful road companion). In Peshawar,
the following persons provided outstanding assistance: Dr. Ihsan Ali,
Director of Archaeology and Museums for the North-West Frontier
Province; Allama Javad Hadi, director of the ‘Arif al-Husaini Madrasa;
1. Wade Clark Roof, “Pluralism as a Culture: Religion and Civility in Southern

California,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
612 (2007): 84.
1
xii Notes From the Fortune-Telling Parrot
and the faculty of the Department of History at the University of

Peshawar, especially Professor Syed Minhaj-ul-Hassan, Mr. Zahid Ali,
and Mr. Waqar Ali Shah. In Islamabad, Mr. Nadeem Akbar, Center
Director of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, undertook skilful
troubleshooting on my behalf; and Mr. Pervaiz Masih, Member of the
National Assembly, guided me through his nation’s political history. And
in Rawalpindi, I was privileged to make the acquaintance of Mr. Anwar
Kamal Azim Khan, parrot-master of the Ganjmandi Bridge. I thank them
all.
Closer to home, research grants from the American Philosophical
Society, Santa Clara University’s College of Arts and Sciences, and the
Bannan Institute for Jesuit Education and Christian Values at Santa Clara
University facilitated my work in Pakistan. I acknowledge with thanks
their support. Mr. Elwood Mills of SCU’s Media Services provided
invaluable help in formatting the photograph that appears on the cover of
this book. For many years Dr. Wilma Heston of the University of
Pennsylvania has furthered my work; I’m grateful for her encourage-
ment. And I thank Janet Joyce of Equinox Publishing, and Dr. Duncan
Burns, my copy-editor, for their care in guiding the Parrot manuscript
through the stages of production.
My biggest thanks, as always, go to my wife, Dr. Jody Rubin Pinault.
Without her none of this would have been possible.
Santa Clara, California

August 2007
1
1
MY FORTUNE-TELLING PARROT
TRIGGERS TROUBLE IN LAHORE:
STREET RITUALS AND THE LEGACY
OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
Introduction:
How I Learned Not to Laugh Too Fast at Oracles
I’m standing on the footpath outside Data Darbar. This is Lahore’s
biggest Sufi shrine—in fact it’s one of the biggest in Pakistan—and Data
Darbar draws Muslim pilgrims from all over the country. These pil-
grims—like spiritual journeyers in every part of the world—bring with
them hearts full of petitions, worries, questions. So the sidewalk outside
the shrine is a good place for fortune-telling parrots to set up shop.
I push through the crowd, pay my five rupees, crouch by the cage and
get an oracle-card from the parrot. Passers-by want to know what the
oracle has to say to the American. The men serving as my escorts—a
Shia Muhajir, a Sunni Punjabi, and a Pashtun from the NWFP (North-
West Frontier Province)—squat beside me before the parrot cage. Partly
they’re shielding me from the crowd. Mostly they just want to look over
my shoulder as I read.
The contents are ho-hum. I’ve been to Pakistan five times in recent
years, and I’ve had parrots divine my fortune on umpteen occasions. This
one follows the usual pattern. I’ve been facing hardship, I’ve been
unjustly targeted by enemies, but Allah will soon lift my burden and
transform my life for the better. Et cetera. It ends with the usual Urdu-
Arabic formula: Aur kaho in sha’ Allah ta’alla— “And say: If God most
exalted wills it.”
Rafiq is dismissive. He’s the rationalist, the educated guy in my group,
and he doesn’t altogether approve of my interest in folk Islam. He says
the parrot-masters are always savvy enough to offer only the kinds of
pronouncements people want to hear. He’s too polite to say all this is a
waste of time, but I get the idea.
But Rafiq doesn’t manage to discourage Imtiyaz Yusuf. Imtiyaz is my
driver, a Pashtun from Peshawar, and this stuff fascinates him. He was
1
2 Notes From the Fortune-Telling Parrot
supposed to stay with our car—a tiny box-shaped Hyundai—but he

doesn’t want to miss the fun. He pays his money and the parrot plucks
another card from the outspread deck. Imtiyaz smiles as he gets his card.
The smile fades fast. “Through your own ignorance and neglect,” the
card warns, “you’ve spoiled your affairs. Now is the time for work. If
you don’t learn a lesson from your past mistakes, then a new worry will
assail you soon.”
Well. Rafiq is starting to say that’s what Imtiyaz gets for consulting a
parrot, and I’m trying to think of something to say to cheer up my driver.
I know he’ll be fretting all day over the form this new worry will take.
Turns out we don’t have to wait long to find out. A shout from behind
makes us turn around.
The Hyundai is somehow suspended in mid-air, six feet above the
ground. Punitive magic from the parrot? Hard to see clearly, with these
throngs of people pressing in close. I have a moment of mental vertigo—
common enough in Lahore, where I get reminded daily that life knows
no limits in the surprises it can spring—and then I see what’s happened.
A forklift—operated by the city, as a way to penalize illegal parking—
has scooped up our Hyundai. Policemen, pilgrims, onlookers all con-
verge. The show’s too good to miss.
One of the cops says the car will be impounded. My driver will have
to appear in court and answer for his reprehensible carelessness in block-
ing the entrance to a holy shrine. Rafiq and Imtiyaz protest.
To no avail. The forklift, its steel tongues holding our Hyundai
captive, begins to nudge a path through the crowd. “Appear in court,” the
policeman says again, and my guys turn to me with apologies.
“Unless,” says the cop, “you prefer to settle the fine now.” He holds
out a hand.
I ask how much. The cop says 200 rupees. That’s a little over three
dollars.
I pay the three bucks. The forklift lowers our Hyundai and sets it back
on the ground. Imtiyaz looks relieved his predicted new worry came and
went so fast.
As we leave I try for another glimpse of my ominous parrot. But it’s
too busy picking a card for its next client to spare me a look.
“Powerful as an Enchanted Steed”:

Parrot-Oracles in Singapore and India
Since 1989 I’ve done research on Shia self-flagellation rituals and Sunni–
Shia relations in the subcontinent. Interesting work, but—to put it
1
1. My Fortune-Telling Parrot Triggers Trouble in Lahore 3
mildly—emotionally demanding. Wandering the streets for distraction is

a way to unwind. That’s how I met the parrots.
My first encounter with a fortune-telling parrot took place in India.
This was in the city of Hyderabad. I saw an elderly Hindu (his forehead
marked with the paste-stripes of a Vishnu devotee) seated on the side-
walk in a busy commercial district. Beside him was a large shrouded
cage. When I approached, he removed the shroud, revealing a handsome
brilliant-green parrot. On a mat before the cage was arranged a long row
of overlapping envelopes.
The parrot-master explained that for five rupees his bird would select
an envelope the contents of which might offer me wise counsel or a
glimpse of my future. For five rupees this sounded like a good deal, so I
said all right.
By way of sample the man opened several envelopes and showed me
what was inside. Each envelope contained a devotional card picturing
Shiva, Lakshmi, Krishna, or one of the other Hindu gods.
The master took my five rupees and asked me my name. He opened
the cage door, showed his parrot the money, and repeated to it my name.
The bird hopped out and paced three times back and forth over the line of
envelopes. Then it paused and made its choice. With its beak it tugged
free an envelope and fluttered to the shoulder of its master. The man
opened the envelope.
It held two cards. One showed a copy of the Quran, surmounted by
Arabic lettering that proclaimed “the glorious Book.” The second card
depicted a familiar scene from Christian iconography: Christ on the
cross, flanked by the sorrowing figures of Saint John and the Blessed
Virgin Mary.
As a Catholic who happens to be a researcher in the field of Islamic
studies, I found the parrot’s choice of cards to be a good summary of my
religious identity and my professional life. I was impressed.
But it was during a trip to Pakistan that included a stopover in Singa-
pore that I learned more about the world of fortune-telling parrots. This
world is extensive, ranging from the Pakistani Punjab to India and South-
east Asia. From other travelers I’ve also heard of fortune-telling parrots
as far afield as Calcutta and Kuala Lumpur—basically, the realm of Indian
culture and the Indian diaspora. For convenience I use the term ‘parrot’
to describe this creature, but the bird most typically used by fortune-
tellers (to judge by those I’ve seen) is one of the smaller members of the
parrot family, the rose-ringed parakeet (Psittacula krameri).
In Singapore the best place to go for fortune-telling parrots is the
neighborhood known as Little India. I saw several at work on Serangoon
1
Road, in the vicinity of the Sri Veerama Kaliamman Temple. All the
parrot-masters I encountered there were Tamil Hindus, whose families
originated in India’s Tamil Nadu State.
As in Hyderabad, the bird’s technique was to select a fortune from a
row of envelopes. But in Singapore each envelope contained not only a
Hindu-deity devotional card but also a slip of paper bearing a fortune
printed in Tamil on one side and in English on the other.
This bilingualism seemed necessary, given the clientele, which included
local Malays, Chinese, and Indians, as well as tourists from around the
world. In fact, various ‘Visit Singapore’ websites and tour groups in
Singapore promote ‘parrot astrologers’ as one of the advertised attrac-
tions and must-see items in itineraries to the island.
My first parrot-fortune in Singapore read as follows: “The wheel of
fortune turns to the phase of a yogi, abiding only in his prayer. Whatever
will be your wish, it will be granted. Your enemies will vanish and you
will be as powerful as an enchanted steed, because of the merit of the
prayer.”
The next card selected for me announced, “You are currently worrying
about a specific problem. In fact your life in the recent past has been full
of hardships.” It went on, however, to offer the reassurance that these
problems were “mainly due to the unfavorable position of your star” and
that “all your worries will soon become things of the past.” A third card
suggested that I “avoid quarreling and gambling.” “In the long run,” it
promised, I would be “very happy.”
Despite this warning against gambling, Little India’s parrots can also
be induced to help with the selection of “lucky numbers.” The birds pick
a card from specially marked decks to help individuals play their
hunches in Singapore’s lottery or in off-track racecourse betting.
Talismans and Palmistry:

On the Varied Skills of Parrot-Masters
The fortune-telling parrots of Pakistan’s Punjab function similarly—up
to a point. In Lahore they can most easily be found in the neighborhood
where Imtiyaz nearly lost his Hyundai—Ravi Road, near the Data Darbar
(vendors and beggars gather here because of the volume of pilgrim traffic
to this Sufi site). They also cluster in the vicinity of Minar-e Pakistan,
opposite the entrance to the shrine of Hazrat Sher Shah Vali, on Circular
Road. I interviewed eight parrot-masters at these sites in the course of a
few days. In the city of Rawalpindi I encountered members of this
profession who had set up their business on the Ganjmandi Bridge, in the
vicinity of Raja Bazaar.
1
Like their counterparts in India and Singapore, the parrot-masters I

met in Pakistan have trained their birds to select a fortune from a row of
envelopes arrayed before prospective clients on the footpath. In Lahore
most such vendors advertise their presence via Urdu-language placards,
each of which typically is illustrated with a brightly painted parrot that
holds in its beak an envelope. One such placard I saw stated, “Islamic
book of oracles/omens (Islami fal-nama). Parrot oracle, five rupees.
Quranic oracle, ten rupees.”
The term fal-nama links the parrot-masters of Lahore with the
centuries-long history of divination in popular Islamic culture. In the
medieval era fal-nama (“book of omens”) referred to a genre of texts that
guided diviners in interpreting dreams, taking auguries from the behavior
of animals, finding the mystical significance of numbers and letters, and
so forth.
One placard-advertisement I saw in Lahore made the claim that this
practice of “Islamic divination” was created by the “holy prophets and
noble companions of the Prophet Muhammad.” Another assured custom-
ers that the oracles on offer were “free of any taint of frivolous matters
(jo fazool baton se pak hayn).” Such advertising hints at a certain anxiety
and defensiveness concerning the religious orthodoxy of divination and
parrot fortune-telling in contemporary Pakistan, a point to which I return
below.
As the placard described above indicates, the more expensive service
available in Lahore involves a Qur’ani fal. This entails an oral consul-
tation, wherein the fortune-teller refers to a “Quranic oracle book” in
guiding the client.
The two texts I saw most in use are Iqbal Ahmad Nuri’s Shama’-e
Shabistan and the Fal-nama-ye Qur’ani of Maulana Arshad Sahib. Very
inexpensive editions of both texts are currently sold in Lahore’s Urdu
Bazaar.
Another text I found in Lahore’s Urdu Bazaar, an anonymous pam-
phlet entitled Qur’at al-Qur’an (“The Quranic Oracle”), offers thirty-two
different “prophetic” oracles, each listed beneath the name of an Islamic
prophet. Preceding these oracles is a chart tabulating the names of these
same thirty-two prophets. The chart arranges these names one beneath
another in a diagram comprising four columns, with eight names in each
column. The fortune-teller, after performing the wudu’ (ritual ablution),
invoking God’s name, and reciting the Fatihah (the Quran’s first chapter)
three times, closes his eyes and taps the chart of names with his index
finger. The prophetic name thus chosen at random indicates which oracle
is to be read out loud to the client. The Qur’at al-Qur’an’s anonymous
1
author assures readers that this form of divination was invented by the
Muslim prophet Daniel.1
If the client opts for the tota-fal, then the oracle is chosen by the parrot
rather than by human agency. As mentioned above, the bird selects a
fortune from a row of envelopes. Each envelope contains a slip of paper
comprising a photocopy of a divinatory pronouncement from one or
another Urdu oracle-book.
Here’s an example of an oracle that a Lahori parrot offered me outside
the Data Darbar shrine: “Your situation is certainly complicated, but God
will make it easy. No harm will come to you from any enemy. But you,
for your part, should not stir up any conflict or quarrel. If you comply
with this and are patient, your heart’s desire will be fulfilled.”
Another oracle I received from a Data Darbar parrot went like this: “O
holder of the oracle, you are afflicted with great grief and sorrow, but
soon your cares will be over. Your poverty will change to wealth, your
problems to joy. Although you consort with pure-hearted people, certain
individuals harbor enmity for you. But they will not be able to harm you.
Your star is about to shine with prosperity.”
And a third Data Darbar parrot offered a card warning me my current
situation in life was “not good.” But the text went on to advise me,
“Endure these days with patience and gratitude and do not neglect your
acts of worship.”
Like the parrot-fortunes I encountered in Singapore, the oracles I’ve
been offered in Lahore follow a certain pattern. They refer in general
terms to the client’s current difficulties but are melioristic in tone: they
offer an optimistic view of the future, coupled with common-sense advice
as to behavior (be patient, don’t pick fights, etc.). A few oracles—like
the one given to my driver outside the Sufi shrine—take a harsh tone; but
these are exceptional. Generally the Pakistani divinatory texts remind
clients to fulfill their religious obligations (“do not neglect your acts of
worship”) while reassuring them of Allah’s ultimate protection. Overall,
the language is formulaic, the tone one of orthodox Islamic piety.
The parrot-masters I encountered in Pakistan came from a variety of
backgrounds. One man I met in Rawalpindi is a middle-aged Pashtun
from the NWFP. He learned his trade, he told me, from his father. A
sixty-year-old I spoke to near Lahore’s Data Darbar lost his first job due
to illness and was advised by friends to take up the oracle-trade because,
so he told me, it would allow him to earn money “without having to
move around too much.” An eighteen-year-old near the Minar-e Pakistan
1. Anonymous, Qur’at al-Qur’an ya’ni fal-nama-ye Qur’an-e majid (Lahore:

Idara-ye Raushna’i, 2001), 31-42.
1
monument in Lahore told me that the parrot-work was his “second job.”
He also worked in an office, he said, and he had learned the oracle craft
from other footpath practitioners.
What all the parrot-masters I met have in common is the ability to
read. This, they agreed, is the most important skill needed for the job, as
many of their clients are illiterate and unable to read the oracles offered
to them.
But this is not the only skill possessed by the parrot fortune-tellers.
Some read palms; others make amulets. Many fortune-tellers offer advice
in choosing one’s “lucky number,” “lucky day,” or a propitious gem-
stone to be set into a ring. One parrot-master I met in Rawalpindi sells
small plasticized holy cards that depict various talismanic motifs: Ayat
al-kursi (the Quranic “throne verse,” famed for its power to avert evil),
Dhul fiqar (Imam Ali’s sword), and Zuljenah (the horse of Imam Husain).
Dhul fiqar and Zuljenah—both associated with Shia devotionalism—are
known as icons of protection and healing. They suggest how parrot
fortune-telling reflects an eclectic South Asian tradition that is willing to
borrow from any source—Muslim, Hindu, astrological, magical—and
make use of it to address the fears and needs of streetside clients.
Pierced Hearts and Scorpions:

What the Parrot Had Available in the Way of Tattoos
There is yet another trade—one widely frowned on in Islam—that some
parrot-masters pursue: tattooing. One fortune-teller—a pleasant young
Lahori resident named Iqbal, who commutes with his caged bird by bus
every day from Islampura to Minar-e Pakistan, where he does his side-
walk oracles—told me many of his customers are men in their teens and
twenties. Some of these customers, he explained, want a tattoo in honor
of their girlfriends—but there’s a potential problem.
“Here in the Punjab,” said Iqbal, “some people will kill each other
over a family’s reputation or a girl’s honor. Young men have to be
careful.” What this means, he added, is that his customers are forced to
be discreet in how they immortalize their love—so they prefer to be
tattooed with the mere initials, rather than the too-revealing full name, of
their sweethearts.
Iqbal said he also tattooed men’s arms with images of various sorts,
and he showed me a placard that illustrated the designs he did: a rose, an
eagle, a scorpion, an arrow-pierced heart, and (my favorite) a whimsi-
cally curlicued centipede.
And the tool he used for this work? A battery-powered gun, lying
about for the moment on a dirty tarpaulin by his parrot’s cage. The
1
tattoo-gun’s needle-tip was sludged thick with oil and grease. The thing
looked capable of giving clients some dread disease faster than you could
say Tetanus.
Tattoo-work contributes to the poor reputation parrot-masters have in
the minds of pious-minded Pakistanis. Conservative Muslims are quick
to link tattooing with the customs of the ancient Jahiliyah—the “time of
ignorance” among the pagan Bedouins of pre-Islamic Arabia. The prac-
tice is associated especially with Bedouin women, who are said to have
spent much time adorning their bodies in various ways.
One Muslim critic I met in Lahore directed me to a website called
Islamweb.net, which offers an online fatwa on the subject of tattooing.
The fatwa cites a pronouncement attributed to Muhammad: “The
Prophet…cursed those ladies who practiced tattooing and those who get
themselves tattooed.” Another Islamic website rationalized the prohibi-
tion by classifying tattoo artistry as a form of harm to the human body,
justifying this stance by quoting another moral ruling by Muhammad:
“The Prophet…forbade mutilation (or maiming) of bodies.”2
On the Orthodoxy of Oracles:

Criticisms of Parrot Fortune-Telling
All the parrot-masters I met insisted on the antiquity of their trade. One
of my Lahori informants claimed that parrot fortune-telling in the Punjab
“dates back to the time of the English, to the Moghuls.” He said that he
himself had been doing this work for over forty years. The Pashtun I met
in Rawalpindi told me that he remembered his father using a parrot for
oracle-giving in the 1940s, in the days before independence and the
partition of the subcontinent.
But I have not been able to find specific textual evidence to document
how far back the use of parrot oracles goes. One of the first books I
checked was a text published in London in 1891 called Beast and Man in
India. Its author, John Lockwood Kipling, worked in Lahore for many
years (his son Rudyard became the celebrated story-teller of British
India). Kipling discusses the public entertainments offered by Delhi’s
“performing parrots” but says nothing of parrots as fortune-tellers.3
2. Mufti Abdulla al-Faqeeh, “Tattoos in Islam,” Fatwa No. 8383, www.

islamweb.net; Osama Abdallah, “Are Tattoos Allowed in Islam?,” www.answering-
christianity.com/tattoos.htm. See also a pronouncement on tattooing by Yousef
al-Qaradawi, cited in www.sakkal.com/Graphics/Calligraphy/Custom_Arabic_
Tattoos.html.
3. John Lockwood Kipling, Beast and Man in India (London: Macmillan & Co.,
1891), 16-22.
1
But I have come across various texts from the Middle East and the
Indian subcontinent in which parrots are characterized as more than mere
entertainers. Medieval story-tellers are fond of describing parrots as
counselors and household spies. An example is the Arabian Nights tale
of “The Jealous Husband and the Parrot.” A suspicious-minded merchant
wants to find out about his wife’s extramarital liaisons. He buys a talking
parrot and commissions it to monitor his wife’s doings while he’s away
on his business trips. Loyal to the husband, the parrot does so, and in fact
it catches the wife bringing a lover into the house while her husband is
gone. But then the wife devises countermeasures to neutralize the bird’s
ability to engage in domestic espionage.4 This tale has a long history.
Thematically it’s linked to Ziya al-Din Nakhshabi’s fourteenth-century
Persian Tuti-Nama (“Parrot Book”), which in turn was derived from the
ancient Sanskrit Shukasaptati (“Seventy Tales of a Parrot”).5
Another example is Rajab ‘Ali Beg’s nineteenth-century Urdu work,
Fasana-ye ‘aja’ib (“Tales of Wondrous Things”), which features a wise
parrot that “knew how to converse with courtesy and good taste.” In this
narrative the parrot gladdens the heart of a young prince named Jan-e
‘Alam with “fascinating tales and marvelous stories.” And when Jan-e
‘Alam preens himself on how handsome he is, the parrot is the only
member of the prince’s court brave enough to speak the truth and reprove
the young man for his vanity. Thereafter the bird acts as Jan-e ‘Alam’s
guide in the prince’s quest to find the realm of the beautiful princess
Anjuman-e Ara.6
Pakistanis with whom I spoke varied in their reactions when they
learned of my parrot-interests. Islamist-revivalist types generally dis-
approved, saying that parrot fortune-telling was justified by neither
scripture nor prophetic sunnah (the exemplary lifestyle of the prophet
Muhammad). Self-styled Deobandis (adherents of the puritan ideology
that spawned the Taliban) told me that Lahori Muslims borrowed this
custom of parrot fortune-mongering from the Hindus. (The linkage with
Hinduism was most certainly not intended as an endorsement.) Parrot-
masters I interviewed in Lahore complained that their business has
dropped off in recent years, due to what they described as criticisms by
preachers and Muslim reformers.
4. Muhsin Mahdi, ed., The Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-layla) from
the Earliest Known Sources (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), vol. 1, 98-99.
5. David Pinault, Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1992), 56 n. 42.
1
6. Rajab ‘Ali Beg, Fasana-ye ‘aja’ib (Lahore: Ferozsons, n.d.), 8-17.
One parrot-man I spoke to pointed to the painted sign he uses as

advertising. He read the text aloud: “Tota-fal. Islami fal-nama” (“Parrot
oracle. Islamic oracle-book”).
“See?” he said. There was defiance in his voice; fear, too, I thought.
“ ‘Islamic,’ it says. I use Quranic verses for my amulets. I cite the Quran
in the advice I give people. I’m a good Muslim.”
When I repeated this argument later to a Lahori mullah, the cleric let
me know he wasn’t impressed. “That kind of talk,” he frowned, “doesn’t
change the fact that all this parrot-business is Hindu.”
Prospects for Survival:

On the Future of the Parrot-Oracle Trade
The fortune-tellers I met in Lahore and Rawalpindi said that their cus-
tomers tend to be one of two sorts. The first are “villagers,” impov-
erished individuals burdened by family and work problems. The second
are individuals who are more educated and more sophisticated. “Such
people,” as one informant told me, “take the fal and consult the parrot
just for fun.”
This leads in turn to the question: how long will the custom of parrot
fortune-telling survive in a region such as Pakistan’s Punjab? One pos-
sible answer is suggested by something I received as a present in Islama-
bad during a recent visit—a calendar published by a Pakistani non-profit
organization called the “Asian Study Group.” Among the calendar’s
photos—which are intended to highlight the historical and cultural
attractions of Pakistan—is a picture from Rawalpindi of a parrot-master
and his fortune-telling parrots.
Who knows? Perhaps in years to come Pakistani entrepreneurs will
follow Singapore’s lead in marketing parrot-oracles for the tourist trade.
1
2
BEING HINDU IN PAKISTAN:
LEGACY AND SURVIVAL
Introduction:
Abandoned Temples and Displaced Statues—
On Discarding a National Heritage
A good rule for sightseers: spot something that intrigues you? Get a close
look now. Don’t put it off till next visit; it might be gone by the time you
come back.
I learned that the hard way in Lahore.
June 1991, and my first visit to Pakistan. Not the best time of year: my
memories of that trip include hostile sun-glare and a mix of dust and
gritty car-exhaust that made breathing raspingly hard.
But I wanted to see Lahore, and the Punjab Tourism Corporation
promised a one-day excursion—“in air-conditioned comfort”—to catch
all the sights. Turned out the tourist van’s a/c didn’t work; but I did man-
age to see what I wanted. Jahangir’s tomb and the Badshahi Mosque;
Lahore Fort with its tilework pictures of angels, swordsmen, and Bactrian
camels; Shalimar Gardens, where families strolled and fountains splashed
and shrieking children jumped into the pools.
The tour included the welcome twilight and coolness of the colonial-
era Lahore Museum, where Rudyard Kipling’s father was once curator. I
wanted to linger over the gallery of Gandhara Buddhas. But my driver-
cum-guide—a young prayer-capped Pashtun from the NWFP—said he
had to show me his favorite display in the museum.
I followed him to another room, anticipating some masterpiece of
Islamic calligraphy or exquisite arabesque in red sandstone.
Wrong. He pointed with enthusiasm to a pair of Spandau machine-guns
that had been captured from the Germans on some European battlefield
in World War One. His comment on this armament made me realize he
must have been thinking of the recent mujahideen campaign in Afghani-
stan. “Now these,” he said glowingly, “would have been useful against
the Soviets.”
1
But something else on display in the same room caught my attention: a

bulky bronze statue of an enthroned Queen Victoria, depicted broodingly
deep in thought over her Empire. Substantial presence; massive lady.
My guide wasn’t so impressed with the piece. He said only that in the
time of the English the statue had been displayed in a marble pavilion in
a park off the Mall in the heart of Lahore. Near where the Summit Minar
is now, he said.
And in fact I passed the Summit Minar on a walk later that same day. I
was out strolling after dinner, glad for the evening breeze that stirred the
stale air. That’s when I noticed the park near the Mall and the marble
pavilion mentioned by my guide. No Massive Lady in residence; but an
indeterminate substitute was there instead, positioned beneath the pavil-
ion’s stone cupola. I stepped closer for a better look.
That’s when I saw something else, something I all but tripped over,
right at my feet. Something large, big as a giant raccoon, moving fast in
the dark and close to the ground. Gave me a shudder; and then I realized
what it was: a ragged legless man, seated on a square of cardboard,
scooting along the sidewalk with quick thrusts of his arms.
With a cheery cry of “Peace be upon you,” he held up his hand. I gave
him five rupees and was rewarded with a smile. He wished me peace
once more before hurrying on his way and leaving me alone beside the
pavilion.
Where the bronze Queen once sat something else now presided: an
oversized Quran, adorned with gold-leaf lettering, housed in a glass case.
The message seemed clear enough. Victorian imperial identity was gone.
In its place was an icon of the region’s new identity: national solidarity
symbolized in the scripture of the Islamic faith. Shared homage to the
Empress of India had been replaced by shared veneration of the Quran.
The implicit proclamation: to be Pakistani is to be Muslim.
One problem. 97% Islamic though it is, Pakistan still numbers among
its citizens several million Christians and Hindus. What about their
national identity?
Which brings me to the most poignant and troubling monument I saw
during that first visit to Lahore in 1991.
Part of the sightseeing package offered by the Punjab Tourism Corpo-
ration was an escorted excursion through Anarkali Bazaar. We did a tour
of the neighborhood and the nearby tomb of Sultan Qutb al-Din Aibak. I
confess I remember nothing of the tomb, but I do recall something I
noticed in the distance as we stood outside: an elegant tapering steeple or
spire of some kind, towering over the buildings to either side of it.
Just an old Hindu mandir (temple), was the driver’s reply when I
asked what that was. In his words, “Not worth seeing”—the ultimate
condemnation from a tour guide.
1
2. Being Hindu in Pakistan 13
The place was abandoned, he said. Its worshippers had left in 1947, at
the time of Partition and the formation of Pakistan. The mandir had been
converted to some other use, he said, or so at least he had heard. In any
case the Hindus were gone.
An abandoned temple; a marker of Pakistan’s religious diversity and
neglected spiritual legacy. I felt an impulse to see it.
Not part of the itinerary, came the reply. Not included in the package.
I should have insisted, should have offered extra baksheesh. But I was
tired and told myself I’d seen enough for one day. I glanced at the steeple
again and gave it a silent salute. Peace be upon you, as the legless beggar
said. I could always see it another time. It wasn’t going anywhere.
Which was a mistake. Years went by before I returned to Lahore and
made the time to seek out the mandir. By then it lay in ruins, demolished
by a population that wanted no reminders of its Hindu past.
Idols Vomit Jewels:

Tasty Burgers, Golden Monkeys,
and the Hindu Legacy in Old Lahore
Some Muslim chroniclers of Lahore start their history with the conquest
of the region in the early eleventh century by the Afghan warlord Mah-
mud of Ghazna. He established Islamic control over Lahore and launched
a number of raiding expeditions deep into India.
A telling anecdote survives concerning one of Mahmud’s wars in
search of plunder. This involved his capture of the Hindu city of Somnat.
After he’d won his victory, Mahmud ordered Somnat’s temple
destroyed. Brahmin priests rushed forward to save the shrine’s chief idol,
offering the sultan gold as ransom if he would spare the statue.
His officers were inclined to accept. But Mahmud prided himself on
his Islamic orthodoxy. He had the idol thrown onto a fire. While the
flames jumped high he declaimed virtuously that the merit-yielding fight
against idolatry weighed more with him than gold. Worldly loot, he
boasted, meant less than the reward in paradise Allah would grant him
after death for his act of pious arson.
Yet as the idol burned it cracked open from the heat, revealing a cache
of jewels that spilled forth at Mahmud’s feet. So now the onlookers
knew: one could fulfill the jihad-obligation of fighting paganism and still
be rewarded here in this life for the effort.1
1. Farid ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds, Afkham Darbandi and Dick
Davis, trans. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984), 160-61.
1
This is the image of the subcontinent’s history some South Asian

Muslims cherish to this day: the clash of Hinduism and Islam, and the
erasure of Hindu monuments. They forget that Muslims and Hindus
often coexisted amicably enough, and that Islam spread throughout much
of India not only via conquest but through the peaceful preaching of Sufi
saints and miracle workers.
Things change; things topple and vanish. But even when suppressed
from view, they’re not entirely gone. In the 1950s, archaeological surveys
unearthed traces of Lahore’s buried pre-Islamic past. Excavations extend-
ing to a depth of fifty feet beneath the rampart-foundations of Lahore
Fort unearthed a wealth of artifacts—a pot depicting cows and peacocks;
figurines of goddesses and a thunderbolt-wielding Indra: traces of
Lahore’s Hindu legacy.2
Yet little of this legacy is readily visible to the casual visitor. Tourists
are most likely to notice the physical remains of more recent dynasties. A
few gurdwaras survive, a reminder that the Sikhs held dominion here in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They were ousted by
the British, who in turn left their mark on the city in the form of “Indo-
Saracenic” architecture—an appealing fantasia-confection of Victorian
and “Moorish”-Islamic building styles.
But the British held Lahore for scarcely a century. Much more per-
vasive is the lingering heritage of Muslim rulers like Jahangir and
Aurangzeb, in the form of gardens, mosques, and palaces.
Much of this heritage, unfortunately, is now obscured by the smog-
blasted ephemera and grime that characterize Lahore as one over-
stretched city among countless others in South Asia. A journal-jotting
from the 1991 visit summed up my impression of Lahore from that initial
trip: “Dust-blown Moghul glory, gummed over with ads for 7-Up.”
Fifteen years and four more trips later, that description of the city’s
appearance largely still holds true for me, except for one emendation.
The 7-Up ads are now layered over with blurbs for cellphone services
and Kentucky Fried Chicken and McMaza Burgers from McDonald’s
(“McMaza” being a clever way, I can’t help but note, for this globalized
chain to insinuate itself down Pakistani throats: maza is an Urdu-Hindi
word that connotes both tastiness and fun).
But it would be wrong to trust what’s visible today as an accurate
index of how vibrant Lahore’s Hindu community was before 1947 and
the tragedy of Partition.
2. Muhammad Wali Ullah Khan, Lahore and Its Important Monuments, 2d ed.
(Karachi: Department of Archaeology and Museums, 1964), iii-iv.
1
One measure of the dynamism of the city’s Hindu presence can be

found in a book from 1892 entitled Lahore: Its History, Architectural
Remains and Antiquities. The author, Syed Muhammad Latif—a district
judge, employed by the government of British India, and a fellow of the
Royal Geographic Society who also happened to be Muslim—provides a
detailed description of no fewer than 31 major Hindu temples in Lahore
that were active in his day.
Note the following sampling of descriptive comments by Muhammad
Latif in his catalogue of Lahori mandirs:
The “Bawa Thakurgir” shrine: “This dome is surmounted by a golden
pinnacle, which gives the temple a picturesque appearance.”
The “Raja Dina Nath” temple:
The walls fronting the street are tastefully decorated with paintings of
Devatas [gods] and Avatars [incarnations or earthly manifestations of the
god Vishnu]… In the western outer hall are placed the big kettle-drums,
trumpets, shells and bells to summon the congregation to worship, at the
appointed hours of service and at other times. In the midst of the court-
yard, on a raised platform of stone, is the mandar [alternate spelling of
mandir], in which is kept a beautiful image of Shiv Ji Maharaj [“the great
king Lord Shiva”]… The floor inside the mandar on which the Shiv Ji
takes his seat on an eminence, is of pure marble. When the time of service
arrives, the musical instruments that are blown and beaten create a
deafening noise, which, however, is indispensable for the service.
The “Bakshi Bhagat Ram” temple: “The mandar contains a large number
of beautifully chiseled stone idols of different sizes, which are wor-
shipped by the votaries.”
The “Thakurdwara of Raja Teja Singh”: “The walls inside are deco-
rated with stone carvings, and in a niche of marble are gracefully placed
the images of Sri Karishna Ji Maharaj and Radhika Ji, dressed in rich
cloths.”
The “Mandar of Hanuman Ji” [Hanuman, a monkey-god known for
his loyalty to the great god Rama, is the object of numerous cults in
contemporary India]: “On the eastern wall is a large image of Hanuman
Ji, colored with red lead.”
The “Thakurdwara of Bankey Behari”: “Tastefully decorated… The
entire building looks like some beautiful ornament, or crystal palace, and
is, architecturally, a success.”
The “Pandit Radha Kishan” temple: “On the top of the tower is placed
a golden image of Hanuman, instead of a pinnacle, which gives it a
picturesque appearance.”3
3. Syed Muhammad Latif, Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and

Antiquities (Lahore: Syed Muhammad Minhaj-ud-Din, 1956), 234-38, 241.
1
Two things in Muhammad Latif’s comments are remarkable—breath-

takingly so, when one considers the status of religious minorities in
Lahore today.
First is how highly visible and audible the city’s Hindu presence used
to be. A golden statue of the monkey-god perched proudly in the open air
atop a tower. Paintings of gods and divine avatars were displayed on the
street for passers-by of any faith to see, instead of being hidden away in
the recesses of a mandir. Conches, drums, and trumpets were so loud as
to be “deafening.” Latif’s account is an implicit attestation of the con-
fidence and vigor of Lahore’s nineteenth-century Hindu population.
The second point worth remarking is how respectful this author is in
his descriptions of non-Muslim places of worship. Rather than designate
Hindu deities by their bare names alone, he is careful to include the titles
that reverent Hindus themselves would use in referring to the gods:
Maharaj (“great king”), Sri and Ji (the latter words are honorific terms
that convey the sense of “sir” or “lord”). No Muslim I met in any of my
trips to Pakistan was so deferential in referring to India’s gods.
Notice, too, the vocabulary employed by Latif in referring to the man-
dirs: “tasteful”; “beautiful”; “graceful”; “a success.” True, his repeated
use of the term “picturesque” and his “crystal palace” comparison (a
reference intended, perhaps, to recall London’s own 1851 “Crystal
Palace” exhibition) give his work a bit of the condescending tone of a
guidebook for British imperial tourists. But his open-mindedness and
tolerance are a far cry from the anger with which I have heard some
Muslims insist on the need to eradicate what they regard as the con-
taminating presence of Hinduism from Pakistani society today.
And if Muhammad Latif occasionally shows exasperation—as in his
acknowledgment that Hindu temple music can be “deafening”—he’s also
quick to excuse and defend the practice: the noise, he explains, is “indis-
pensable for the service.” This was a man who wanted folks to get along.
Unsurprising, perhaps, to learn that Syed Muhammad Latif was a
passionate supporter of British India. He reminded his readers that during
the reign of the Sikhs (a time still within living memory for many readers
in his audience), Raja Ranjit Singh had used Lahore’s greatest mosque,
the Badshahi Masjid, as an ammunition dump and as a place to stable
horses. The British, however, restored the mosque to Muslim custodians.
He also credited British India with restraining tensions among the
principal Muslim denominations, recalling for his readers the kind of
sectarian violence that had once stained its places of worship.
Nowadays, he asserted, Muslims of any and every sectarian loyalty
could peacefully pray in the Badshahi Mosque—in contrast to a notori-
ous spectacle he recalled for his audience from the Moghul era involving
1
this same mosque: “From the high pulpit…had been seen rolling down
the floor the head of a Shiah pontiff that had been cut off by an infuriated
Sunni congregation, for his daring to utter an offensive expression.”4
This Muslim loyalist of the British Indian Empire also offered an
optimistic assessment of interfaith relations in Lahore:
In the same streets of Lahore where bloody feuds were the order of the
day, we see both Muhammadans and Hindus, holding friendly meetings
for the furtherance of national causes. Having forgotten their mutual
broils in common subjection to the British, they vie with each other in
loyalty to the Crown which has given peace to all; and they have been
attached to the British Crown by a conquest over their minds, which is by
far the most durable, as well as the most rational, mode of dominion.5
This last point is worth pondering as Western nations try to win hearts
and minds in Islamic societies in this post 9/11-world we inhabit.
“Like the Crunch of Termites”:

Hindu-Muslim Violence in the Punjab
on the Eve of Independence
“Having forgotten their mutual broils”: well, not entirely. Newspaper
accounts of the period describe the Hindu–Muslim violence that would
sometimes erupt during the annual Muharram season, when Muslims
staged lamentation processions (as they still do in the twenty-first cen-
tury) in the streets of Lahore’s Old City neighborhoods to honor the
martyrdom of the Imam Husain.
In the 1880s Rudyard Kipling, at that time a young news reporter for
Lahore’s Civil and Military Gazette, wrote two articles and a short story
describing the Muharram celebrations. The first of these articles, pub-
lished in October 1885, described a “Hindu–Mussulman fracas…on the
part of the very scum and riff-raff of the City of the Two Creeds” that
flared during Lahore’s Muharram observances. Kipling praised the local
British District Officer for the precision with which he authorized the
police and military to use just enough force to quell the rioters without
triggering further violence.6
The job of covering the Old City’s Muharram processions was an
assignment Kipling loved. This locality stimulated the storyteller in him,
an instinct which colored even the nonfiction pieces he wrote for the
4. Latif, Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and Antiquities, x.

5. Latif, Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and Antiquities, x.
6. Roger L. Green and Alec Mason, eds., The Readers’ Guide to Rudyard
Kipling’s Work (Canterbury: Gibbs & Sons Ltd., 1961), vol. 1, 582-90.
1
Gazette. Consider, for example, the article he published in October 1887

describing the Old City neighborhoods where he wandered at night as he
followed the chanting crowds: “The yard-wide gullies [alleys] into which
the moonlight cannot struggle,” he wrote, “are full of mystery, stories of
life and death and intrigue of which we, the Mall abiding, open-win-
dowed, purdah-less English know nothing… Properly exploited, our
City, from the Taksali to the Delhi Gate, and from the wrestling-ground
to the Badami Bagh would yield a store of novels.”7
The 1887 Muharram season reported on by Kipling passed peacefully
in Lahore, with no outbreak of communal riots. After a long cramped
night of studying “the crush and smother and blaze of the last night of
the Mohurrum,” the twenty-two-year-old Kipling felt ready to return to
the Mall, “the wide boulevard that runs from the European quarter to the
old walled city.”8 In his Gazette article he summed up the night as
follows. “There had been no trouble, the City was quiet and another
Mohurrum had been safely tided over. Beyond the city walls lay civili-
zation in the shape of iced drinks and spacious roads.”9
Kipling wrote both fiction and nonfiction pieces that referred to
Hindu–Muslim violence in Lahore. A theme common to all these
writings is that it was only the presence of the British that ensured some
measure of harmony between members of the “two creeds.” His story
On the City Wall—published in 1888, the year after the Gazette article
described above—portrayed the latent communal tensions among the
Hindu and Muslim residents of Lahore’s Old City:
You must know that the City is divided in fairly equal proportions
between the Hindus and the Musulmans, and where both creeds belong to
the fighting races, a big religious festival gives ample chance for trouble.
When they can—that is to say when the authorities are weak enough to
allow it—the Hindus do their best to arrange some minor feast-day of
their own in time to clash with the period of general mourning for the
martyrs Hasan and Hussain, the heroes of the Mohurrum.10
Worth noting is that the practice of using Hindu festivities to confront

Muslim neighbors has recurred in recent years in India. In the city of
7. Thomas Pinney, ed., Kipling’s India: Uncollected Sketches 1884–88 (New

York: Schocken Books, 1986), 267.
8. Charles Carrington, Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Work (London: Macmillan
& Co., 1955), 36-37.
9. Pinney, Kipling’s India, 268-69.
10. Rudyard Kipling, A Kipling Pageant (New York: Halcyon House, 1942), 52.
For a fuller discussion of this story, see David Pinault, The Shiites: Ritual and
Popular Piety in a Muslim Community (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 69-72.
1
Hyderabad, Hindu nationalist organizations have routed processions in

honor of the gods Ganesha and Kali through Muslim localities so as to
assert communal identity. Hyderabadi Muslims have responded with
religious processions of their own that are timed to coincide with Hindu
holydays. The result: confrontation and violence.11
Kipling documents how British colonial authorities dealt with such
problems:
Gilt and painted paper presentations of their tombs [i.e. of the Muslim
martyrs] are borne with shouting and wailing, music, torches, and yells,
through the principal thoroughfares of the City, which fakements are
called tazias. Their passage is rigorously laid down beforehand by the
Police, and detachments of Police accompany each tazia, lest the Hindus
should throw bricks at it and the peace of the Queen and the heads of Her
loyal subjects should thereby be broken.12
In Kipling’s Lahore, Hindu–Muslim tensions were held in check by a

government that had the will and power to supervise and intervene.
But with the departure of the British in 1947 and a Partition that split
the Punjab between Pakistan and India, that supervisory intervening
power was gone. In newly independent India, Sikh and Hindu mobs
butchered defenseless Muslims. Lahore, which fell within the boundaries
of the freshly created state of Pakistan, held a sizable minority popula-
tion of non-Muslims—all of whom were now endangered. By 1947,
Muslims in the crowded Old City outnumbered Sikhs and Hindus three
to one. Penderel Moon’s Partition memoir Divide and Quit identified
Lahore as one of the Punjab’s worst centers of rioting.13
Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre, who gathered eyewitness
accounts of Partition in their book Freedom at Midnight, describe what
happened: “Almost a hundred thousand Hindus and Sikhs were trapped
inside Old Lahore’s walled city, their water cut, fires raging around them,
mobs of Moslems stalking the alleys outside their mahallas [neighbor-
hoods], waiting to pounce on anyone venturing out.”14
Robert E. Atkins, a British officer from a Gurkha regiment that tried to
protect Lahori minority communities, saw the city tear itself apart.
Collins and LaPierre recorded his impressions:
11. Pinault, The Shiites, 155.

12. Kipling, A Kipling Pageant, 52.
13. Penderel Moon, Divide and Quit: An Eye-Witness Account of the Partition of
India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 81.
14. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight (New York:
Avon Books, 1975), 298.
1
The gutters of Lahore were running red with blood. The beautiful Paris of
the Orient was a vista of desolation and destruction. Whole streets of
Hindu homes were ablaze while Moslem police and troops stood by
watching. At night, the sounds of looters ransacking those homes seemed
to Atkins like the crunch of termites boring into logs.15
Collins and LaPierre conclude their description of Lahore’s 1947 Parti-

tion riots with a detail that reminded me of my own visit to the Summit
Minar and the park that once housed the Massive Lady of bronze:
In late August, as the violence reached a crescendo, anonymous hands
performed before fleeing a gesture that was an epitaph to Lahore’s lost
dream, a silent and bitter commentary on what freedom’s first hours had
meant to so many Punjabis. Someone laid a black wreath of mourning at
the base of the city’s famous statue of Queen Victoria.16
The Prince and the Guru:

A Muslim–Hindu Friendship in Old India
Slaughter; black wreaths; gutters running with blood. But the idealist in
me prefers to linger over a pre-Partition image, a more hopeful image,
from seventeenth-century Lahore: two men, one Muslim, the other Hindu,
seated in friendship, discussing their religious traditions. They do so not
to convert each other or score theological debate-points but to pursue the
shared spiritual interests that help make them—and us—human.
I am thinking of Dara Shikoh and Baba Lal Das, two of the most
intriguing visionaries that ever resided in Moghul-era Lahore. Dara
Shikoh (1615–1659), eldest son of the emperor Shah Jahan, crown prince
and commander of his father’s armies, was widely expected to inherit the
imperial throne. But his real interests lay elsewhere. A Sufi initiate and
philosopher, he sought the company of spiritual questers and wander-
ers—Muslim, Hindu, and Christian alike—who came to Lahore from all
over the world. So strong was Prince Dara’s interest in the non-Muslim
faiths of India that he studied Sanskrit and collaborated with Hindu pun-
dits in translating scriptural texts such as the Upanishads into Persian.
One of Dara Shikoh’s most influential Hindu companions was Baba
Lal Das, a shaven-headed ascetic and a member of the Kabirpanthi
school. The latter comprised followers of a celebrated fifteenth-century
Muslim Sufi known as Kabir. Syncretistic in his tastes, impatient with
the formal doctrines and religiously mandated social hierarchies that
defined and segregated Hinduism and Islam, Kabir strove to combine the
15. Collins and Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, 330.

1
16. Collins and Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, 344.
best aspects of the two faiths in his teachings. Kabir in turn had been a
disciple of Ramananda, a Hindu mystic who espoused the bhaktimarga
(the “devotional path” focusing on the cultivation of an intimate personal
connection with immediately accessible forms of the Supreme Divinity).17
Dara Shikoh encountered Baba Lal Das in 1653, after a year of active
military service beyond the frontier of the Moghul realm. The emperor
had assigned his son Dara the task of attacking fortresses in the vicinity
of Kandahar (at that time these forts were held by the Safavid dynasty
of Iran). The army Dara led included artillery, war elephants, archers,
horsemen, and infantry armed with matchlock rifles.
The campaign was long and frustrating, the fighting intense. (The
royal Moghul chronicler of the expedition noted that the defenders of the
Afghan forts “rained down quantities of fireballs” on Dara Shikoh and
his troops, of whom “many quaffed the sharbat [drink] of martyrdom.”18)
Dara returned to Lahore from the ten-month Afghanistan campaign ready
for rest and relaxation.
R-and-R for this prince-mystic, however, meant chatting at his ease
with the Hindu Baba Lal. The two met several times over a period of three
weeks at various venues in Lahore, including a hunting park, a palace,
and a garden belonging to a royal courtier. The conversations were in
Urdu; a Hindu scribe who was present translated them into Persian,
preserving them in the form of a manuscript known as the “Mukalama
(Dialogue) of Baba Lal and Dara Shikoh.”19
Readers of this Mukalama will perceive at once that these two men
were familiar with Persian poetry, Sanskrit epics, and the religious
vocabulary of Hinduism and Islam. In the dialogue Dara asks a wide
range of questions—about the transmigration of souls and moksha (release
from the cycle of reincarnation), about Hindu cremation versus Muslim
burial of the dead, about the power of chanting the sacred syllable OM,
and about the significance of the ten avatars of Vishnu.
The questions give us the impression of a freewheeling intellect,
inquisitive, interested in everything. His queries are direct and uninhibi-
ted, as in this request for clarification concerning what for many Muslims
constitutes the most offensive part of Hinduism—its practice of idolatry:
But-parasti dar ‘alam-e Hind chist va-farmudah kist? (“Idol-worship in
the world of India: what is it, and who mandated this practice?”).
17. S. M. Ikram, Muslim Civilization in India (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1964), 126-27.
18. W. E. Begley and Z. A. Desai, eds., The Shah Jahan Nama of ‘Inayat Khan
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 487, 492.
19. Claude Huart and Louis Massignon, “Les Entretiens de Lahore,” Journal
Asiatique 209 (1926): 288.
1
Baba Lal takes the question in stride, providing an answer that draws
on a category of thought he knows will be familiar to Dara in his
capacity as a Sufi—the distinction between apparent/external forms and
internal/hidden significances:
The meaning of this is that it [i.e. idol-worship] was established in order
to fortify spiritually the [human] heart. The person who understands the
inner significance has no need for the external form that corresponds to
this inner sense. But anyone lacking knowledge of the image’s batin [i.e.
its hidden mystical dimension] remains bound to the external form.20
Of all the points discussed in this dialogue, the most interesting is the
one in which Dara asks his Hindu mentor about the challenge of being
simultaneously a yogi-ascetic and a ruler who must exercise worldly sov-
ereignty—a poignant question for a crown prince who is temperamen-
tally and instinctively drawn to contemplative seclusion.21
The conversations of Baba Lal and Dara Shikoh represent what I
would call the interaction of Hinduism and South Asian Islam at their
best: each enriching the other, each offering fresh perspectives on how
spiritual pilgrims may live their lives.
A precious moment in history, soon to be eclipsed. Dara’s philosophi-
cal friendships with non-Muslims, and his attempts to reconcile Muslim
doctrine with Hindu teachings, gave his rivals at the Moghul court an
opening. Ultimately he found himself gazing down the business-end of a
fatwa that targeted him as an apostate and a danger to Islam.
But that’s a story to be continued in a later chapter of this book.
Babri Masjid and Lahore’s 1992 Anti-Hindu Riots.

The Weight of Fallen Temples: Violence, Regret, and Memory
In the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, my research took me to
India, where I focused on ritual practices among Shia communities. It
wasn’t until 2002, eleven years after my first trip to Pakistan, that I
returned to Lahore. Muharram self-flagellation and Shia–Sunni relations
preoccupied me in 2002 and 2003. But in March 2004, on my fourth trip
to Pakistan, I set out to learn what I could about Lahore’s Hindu com-
munity and present-day Pakistani Muslim attitudes to the country’s pre-
Islamic past.
20. Huart and Massignon, “Les Entretiens de Lahore,” 287.

1
21. Huart and Massignon, “Les Entretiens de Lahore,” 298, 320-21.
I decided to begin where I’d left off, with the Hindu temple I’d
glimpsed in the distance during my tour of Lahore back in 1991. I
described its location to my Muslim friends. They told me this must have
been the Jain Mandir, located in a neighborhood called Purani Anarkali,
not far from the campus of Punjab University.
Too late to see it now, my friends warned me. Along with a half-dozen
other temples, it had been destroyed in a wave of anti-Hindu riots that
gripped Lahore in December 1992.
Lahore’s riots amounted to retaliation for what had befallen India’s
Babri Masjid. The latter was a mosque built by the sixteenth-century
emperor Babur, founder of the Moghul dynasty. Hindu agitators claimed
that Ayodhya, the site of the mosque, was the ancient birthplace of the
god Rama. Mobs goaded by Hindu militants demolished the Babri
Masjid, triggering Hindu–Muslim riots that killed hundreds throughout
northern India.
But this connection with the Babri Masjid violence made me all the
more convinced that the story of the Jain Mandir and Lahore’s other
Hindu temples was important and merited piecing together.
I thought I’d begin by interviewing surviving members of the city’s
Hindu population. But this proved none too easy. All my Muslim friends
said yes they were sure some Hindus still resided in Lahore; but no one
knew any personally or knew anyone who did. It took considerable time
before I developed my first contact with Lahori Hindus.
In the meantime, however, I interviewed local Muslims who remem-
bered the Jain Mandir from the days before its destruction. One informant
was Khaled Ahmed, consulting editor of Lahore’s best newspaper, The
Friday Times.
Born in India near the end of the British colonial era, Khaled moved
with his family to Lahore at Partition and grew up in Purani Anarkali,
not far from the temple. He recalled that the shrine had been built in the
1930s and that during his childhood it stood deserted—abandoned by its
worshippers during the riots of 1947. Nevertheless, empty and desolate
though it was at the time, it made an impression on Khaled. “I remember
how beautiful the Jain Mandir was,” he told me, “especially its steeple.”
Sometime in the 1960s, Khaled said, it was turned into an Islamic
school for local orphans—making it all the more ironic that Muslim
demagogues later had it destroyed in 1992.
Khaled Ahmed wasn’t the only person I met who recalled the temple’s
beauty. Another old-time resident of Purani Anarkali, an educated
Muslim in his 60s now resident in Lahore’s Cantonment, said Anarkali’s
skyline was impoverished without the Jain Mandir. He remembered it
1
had a spire shaped “somewhat like an obelisk.” Its façade included ele-
gantly carved flower-petals. He said much of the rubble had never been
cleared away after the temple’s demolition in 1992. If I was lucky, he
said, I might be able to see the toppled spire.
“It won’t be hard to find,” he promised. “Just go to Jain Mandir
Chowk [Chowk is the Urdu word for crossroads or public square.] The
Chowk keeps the name of the mandir, even if the mandir’s been knocked
down.”
He also repeated an allegation I heard from many sources, that the
municipality had colluded in the temple’s destruction. Government offi-
cials in Lahore provided tractors and bulldozers, he said, to help the
rioters tear the building down.
The impression of government collusion is corroborated by the
account of the attack published immediately after the event in The New
York Times. “In Lahore, Muslims used a bulldozer, hammers and hands
to demolish the Jain Mandir temple near Punjab University. The police
did not intervene. Nor did they act when a crowd stormed the Air-India
office.” The article also notes the cries chanted by the mob: “Crush
India!” and “Death to Hinduism!”22
These interviews increased my desire to see what was left of the site.
One afternoon in March 2004, accompanied by my Urdu tutor, Qamar
Jalil, I set out for Jain Mandir Chowk.
A snarl of traffic—not unusual for Anarkali—greeted us when we
reached the site: buses, gravel trucks, horse-drawn tongas, and a tiny
valiant donkey hauling a piled-high cartload of metal scraps.
We got out of our car and looked about. Across the street were weath-
ered apartment buildings with rickety wooden balconies. One rooftop
held a large wire-mesh cage within which birds fluttered from perch to
perch. A boy standing about saw me glance at the roof. “Pigeons. They
belong to my uncle.” He added proudly, “He races them.”
On the near side of the street was what I’d hoped to see: the remains
of the Jain Mandir. My Anarkali informant was right: the steeple had
never been removed. It lay tilted on its side, partially obscured behind a
six-foot-high whitewashed brick wall that separated the street with its
traffic-whirl from the grounds of the old temple.
Even lying in its ruin, the steeple was impressive, rising up at least
five feet above the perimeter wall. Before its destruction it must have
towered up a good thirty feet or more in height. From where I stood in
22. “Pakistanis Attack 30 Hindu Temples,” The New York Times, December 8,
1992.
1
the street, I saw my informant had been correct—the spire did look a bit
like an obelisk.
At first it seemed Qamar and I wouldn’t be able to get a closer look. A
padlocked iron-barred gate blocked the entrance to what must once have
been the temple courtyard.
Nor did we have the site to ourselves. Men lounged on charpoys by
the gate. Parked in front of the perimeter wall was a line of broken-down
auto-rickshaws (one three-wheeler had its back painted with a tropical-
idyll scene: a palm-tree-lined lagoon, sailboats and a rose-pink sky,
beneath the words Khosh amadeed—“Welcome”). Pipes and wrenches
littered the ground. Tires lay stacked atop the wall. The footpath in front
of the temple had been converted to a rickshaw repair yard.
We learned this from the charpoy-men, who told us they were just
taking a break from working on a particularly troublesome motor.
Hospitable, these individuals. One—a smiling young man, bone-thin,
with twitchy long fingers and spindly long legs—got up and asked if
we’d like to go inside and have a better look at the temple.
I pointed to the heavy padlock securing the gate. Did he have a key, I
asked.
He told me no need. He showed me where one bar of the gate’s grill-
work was missing and had been replaced with a thick twist of taut wire.
Crouching, he pulled the wire aside, producing the narrowest of open-
ings. It gave just enough for him to squeeze adroitly through—first his
head, then his shoulders, then the rest of him, as supple as a snake. He
made it look easy.
From inside he held the wire aside and gestured an invitation as if wav-
ing me into his home. “Tashrif laie,” he said politely. “Please come in.”
So I did, stooping and wriggling and contorting myself and banging
my knee and wondering for a moment whether like Peter Rabbit I’d get
stuck in the grill. From behind a workman gave me a helpful push. I was
in. My tutor Qamar managed his entrance with more dignity.
Worth the effort, this squeeze. We admired the mandir’s decorations
from up close. Carved flower petals, just as my informant had said. Plus
scrolled pillars, scalloped niches, and leaf-patterns in stone. We had to
cock our heads sideways to imagine the original effect, since the tumbled
steeple now lay on its side. Saplings grew weedlike in the yard. Heaped
up on the ground was trash of various sorts. Plastic bags and old water
bottles. Crushed cigarette packets (‘Gold Leaf King Size’). A dead crow.
My reaction? A line from my journal-entry for that day conveys it all:
“Great sadness wells up; lost heritage and wasted legacy.”
1
Just as well I didn’t get to linger in that mood. Our host led us around
to the upended base of the fallen tower. The snapped-off base stood eight
feet high and was shrouded in a dirty tarpaulin. From behind it came the
sound of voices.
Our host lifted a corner of the tarpaulin and told us we could go inside.
We ducked beneath the tarp.
Resting on a mat, stretched out at their ease within the hollow of the
spire, were several chatting men—more mechanics, we learned, from the
rickshaw yard. They’d rigged the tarp as an awning and made the interior
of the fallen tower into a makeshift rest-spot and cave-retreat from the
sun.
They invited us to sit and were glad to talk. I asked them about the
December 1992 riots that resulted in the destruction of this temple. At
first they were cautious—uncertain, no doubt, how to respond to a
foreigner about the issue of communal violence. One man volunteered
that as a boy he’d attended school here before the mandir’s demolition.
More hesitation, and a lull in the talk. To provoke a response I showed
them something I’d brought with me: a photocopy of a picture from The
New York Times dated December 8, 1992. It showed a mob of Muslim
protesters crowding around one of Lahore’s Hindu temples as it crashed
to the ground.
The picture did its job. Everyone started talking at once. One man
reminded me of what Hindus had done so unjustly to the Babri Masjid.
Then he interrupted his flow of Punjabi (which Qamar was translating for
me into Urdu) with a pithy two-word phrase in English: “Action,
reaction.” He savored the words, repeating them for effect with evident
satisfaction: “Action, reaction.”
The implied logic was clear: they tear down our mosques; we tear
down their mandirs. I heard this same English phrase several times from
Muslims when I asked them to explain Lahore’s anti-Hindu riots: Action,
reaction. The jingly rhyming quality of the phrase seemed to confer on
these words an incantatory coercive authority of their own, as if no fur-
ther explanation were needed.
It reminded me of another phrase I’ve heard some Pakistanis use to
explain the source of all their nation’s problems: Yahood aur hunood,
yahood aur hunood: “The Jews and the Hindus, the Jews and the
Hindus.” For some individuals, it seems, the rhymed hood–nood pro-
vides all the euphonic evidence one needs of a linked conspiracy of
foreign powers.
1
One of the rickshaw mechanics described the demolition of the Jain

Mandir’s tower in terms that made it clear he saw it as a great accom-
plishment: “To be able to knock down a brick and concrete and stone
temple that was three stories high: that wasn’t easy! It required a lot of
work.”
Months after this interview, back in the States, I found a BBC News
article filed by a Muslim reporter who’d driven by the Jain Mandir the
night of the 1992 riots and been forced to join in on the “work” for which
the rickshaw mechanic voiced such admiration. “I was stopped by a mob
on the road,” wrote the BBC reporter:
There were some 200 men armed with clubs, axes, and hammers. They
were gathered at Jain Mandir, a blackened, weather-beaten Hindu temple
that had not been in use since 1947… My part was to keep the car engine
running and direct the headlights towards the temple so they could see
better. I tried in vain to tell them that whatever they were doing was not
sane, civilized or even Islamic. They just told me to shut up.23
Our own encounter at the ruined Jain Mandir gave me and my tutor
Qamar much to talk about. Careful to offer no comment while we inter-
viewed the mechanics, Qamar made his disappointment with their
mentality plain later. As we continued our interviews with residents of
neighborhoods where two of the temples had been destroyed, we gained
an impression of prevailing attitudes towards the events of December
1992:
In the immediate aftermath of the Babri Masjid violence, most Lahori
Muslims seem to have felt that destroying Lahore’s temples was a good
thing, and a very appropriate retaliation for the loss of the historic
mosque in India. Anger was the prevalent mood in Lahore at the time.
But there were some Muslims—admittedly a small minority—who felt
that such retaliation was completely wrong-headed. They were capable
of distinguishing between Hindu perpetrators in Ayodhya and innocent
Hindus in Pakistan. As Qamar himself said during one of our interviews:
“The Hindus who live here, it wasn’t their fault. Besides, these temples
in Lahore were part of our heritage. Why destroy them?”
But much more common among Lahori Muslims in 1992 was the
attitude: Mosques belong to Muslims. Mandirs belong to Hindus. The
mandirs have nothing to do with Pakistan. They belong to the Hindus,
and the Hindus—regardless of where they happen to live—are part of
India, not Pakistan. We’re not doing Pakistan any harm if we destroy
23. Aamir Ghauri, “Demolishing History in Pakistan,” BBC News World Edition,
December 5, 2002 (news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2546373.stm).
1
these temples. Such talk—revanchist in its ideology—reflected an utter

failure of religious pluralism.
More recently—at least during intervals when relations have improved,
if only sporadically, between Pakistan and India—some Pakistani Mus-
lims have voiced regret for the loss of their pre-Islamic national heritage.
This regret has come out obliquely, it seems to me, in quarrels over
names. An electronic webforum chat-site called Gup Shup (Urdu for
“gossip” or “idle talk”—the site deals with various Pakistani controver-
sies) posted a Lahore Daily Times news article that generated a great deal
of online response. The article (from June 2005) announced that the
city’s District Government had issued a resolution calling for the
“Islamization” of street names that sounded (to judge by the names being
targeted) too British, too Sikh, or too Hindu.
Chat-room responders heaped scorn on the idea. One correspondent
noted previous attempts to do away with the name Krishannagar (“the
town of Krishna,” one of Lahore’s oldest neighborhoods) and replace it
with “Islampura.” These attempts, as the correspondent remarked, “failed
miserably.”
Another chat-room member wrote about the locality Qamar and I
visited:
There was (is) Jain mandir chowk in Lahore, people tried to change the
name to Babri chowk (after babri masjid incident) but still every one
knows it as JAIN mandir and people will give you blank face at babri
chowk. There are Dayal singh college and dayal singh mansion at the
Mall road and so many more. These names are part of [the] rich culture of
Lahore.24
Typical of the online responses was this: “There is no need to change the
hindu names. They are sweet and easy to remember.”
And in fact some Lahori bus conductors, I was told by informants in
Anarkali, tried renaming Jain Mandir Chowk by announcing the stop as
Babri Chowk (thus continuing the mentality of tit-for-tat retaliation and
eradication at the level of nomenclature). But it didn’t catch on: everyone
I talked to in Lahore called the place Jain Mandir Chowk. Old names, as
the chat-room writer wrote, “are sweet and easy to remember.”
A few days after our discovery of the Jain Mandir’s ruined steeple,
Qamar and I set out to locate the site of another temple that had been
destroyed in the 1992 riots. This is the one known as Moti Lal (“the
radiant red pearl”). A picture of this mandir appeared in The New York
24. “All Hindu Street Names of Lahore to be ‘Islamised’,” GupShup Forums,

June 2, 2005 (www.gupistan.com/gs/showthread.php?t=184302).
1
Times at the time of the riots. The photo captures the moment when the
rioters and arsonists have just completed their work: the tower cracks
apart and begins its sliding crash to the ground.
We’d heard that the Moti Lal Mandir had been housed in a neighbor-
hood called Shalmi (the local nickname for Shah Alam Chowk). We
went from street to street asking for directions—first from a fruit vendor,
then from some tinworkers, then from a roadside construction gang. The
road crew squatted in the street, their heads covered with rags to shield
them from the sun, chipping with mallets and lengths of pipe at a pile of
rocks. One man straightened and pointed his crowbar across the street.
There, he said, was where it used to be.
No trace of Moti Lal survived that I could see. In its place stood a long
arcade of interlinked shops. The specialty of those employed in these
shops: calligraphic engraving on tombstones. Freshly chiseled stones
stood stacked against the walls. The topmost one read, in spidery Urdu
script: “Haji ‘Abd al-Rahim, son of Haji Nur Muhammad.”
But we’d come to the right place. A half-dozen carvers gathered
around us, all eager to have their say, when they found out we were inter-
ested in the old temple. They seemed to agree: destroying the mandir had
been wrong.
One carver—elderly but with a foreman’s self-assurance—invited us
into his workroom. He said he had something to show us. His hands were
chalked with white stone-dust. He wiped them on a cloth and then
carefully lifted down something he kept displayed on a wall of his shop.
It was a framed black-and-white photograph of the Moti Lal Mandir,
purane zamane se, “from the old days,” before its destruction.
Two towers are visible in the photo. The nearer looks huge, perhaps
five stories high. In its design it resembles the Jain Mandir—a tapering
obelisk rising from a massive square base. At the foot of the mandir
huddle small shops with awnings. Above the shops, propped against the
second floor of the temple, and blocking its windows, is a pair of
billboards: Urdu lettering and smiling young women advertising some
product or other. The photo must date from the 1950s.
The carver said he kept this picture to remind himself of better times,
“before everyone hated each other.” This had been a beautiful thing, he
said, pointing to the mandir in the picture; and it had done no one any
harm. It should not have been destroyed. The other workers voiced their
agreement.
Then he brought out a second picture, a color snapshot. This was from
1992, and it displayed a moment I recognized from The New York Times:
the demolition of this same temple. The color photo shows hundreds of
1
onlookers, crowding together on rooftops, in the streets, perilously close

to the shrine’s tower, as it comes crashing down. They seem to be
competing to get the best view of the spectacle.
“The government,” he said, remembering, “did nothing. If even one
policeman—and there were plenty of policemen there—had fired a
warning shot, the whole crowd would have dispersed. If one policeman
had raised a rifle and said ‘Beware,’ everyone would have run away. But
the government had a hand in this.”
In his voice, sadness and anger. He put back the pictures, picked up a
hammer, stooped over a gravestone. He said something about the
unfinished inscription. These letters here would be inked in black. Those
words below would be in red. I pocketed my notebook, thinking the
interview was over.
I was wrong. He put down his hammer and twisted about to face
Qamar and me. “We all worship the same God—Bhagvan, Allah, what-
ever you call Him. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Muslim or Hindu or Sikh
or even if you’re an Angrez” (“an Englishman”—and here he smiled and
patted my knee).
The last thing he said to us was, “We’re all human. So what was the
point of destroying that temple?”
Then he went back to carving his gravestone.
Being Hindu in Twenty-first-Century Pakistan:

Strategies for Survival
In all this searching about for mandirs, I’d yet to meet a Lahori Hindu.
I’d seen my share of crushed and lifeless ruins. Didn’t the city have any
shrines that were alive and actively functioning?
My friend Muhammad Razzaq came up with a lead. Somewhere he’d
heard about a site that had celebrated a Hindu festival within the past few
months. He didn’t know where it was located, but he thought it was
called the Krishna Mandir.
That was enough to get me started. Qamar Jalil and I heard the temple
was located on Ravi Road, in a neighborhood called Bhatti Chowk. But
the building wasn’t easy to find. Most people shrugged and turned away
when we asked. One man referred to it as the Kali Devi Mandir. He
spoke the name with distaste. (We learned later this was the shrine’s
former title—and we also learned why the name had been changed.)
On Ravi Road we hailed a teenager on a bicycle and asked for the
temple. “Destroyed. Gone,” was his reply. Qamar said in that case please
point us to the rubble. The boy said even the rubble was gone. “Carted
away.” He peddled off on his bike.
1
But we persisted and found the place. From the outside there wasn’t
much to see: a small cement-and-stucco building, locked and shuttered.
Little here to identify the place readily as Hindu. Its only distinctive
architectural feature was a diminutive and unadorned pyramid-like struc-
ture rising from the roof. We found a very small sign with the words
“Krishna Mandir,” and a tiny insignia representing the syllable OM.
Another sign in Urdu prohibited parking in front of the mandir.
I thought of Muhammad Latif’s book and his description of Hindu
shrines in nineteenth-century Lahore, with their painted gods exuberantly
visible from the street, and with a golden Hanuman monkey perched
confidently on high for everyone to see. Compared with the Jain Mandir
and the five-story Moti Lal, this Krishna-site seemed a shrunken thing.
No one in the street; no response when we knocked. Not the most
auspicious start.
Other research topics intervened, and I postponed my work on Lahori
Hinduism. But on my next trip to Pakistan, in December 2005, I finally
met a representative of the city’s Hindu population.
The meeting came about through Shia acquaintances of mine in
Lahore’s Inter-Religious Affairs Council, a group that is charged with
facilitating relations among the region’s various faith communities. The
council member with the title of “Vice-President for Hindu Minorities”
is an individual named Amarnath Randhawa (who, as I learned later, is
also general secretary of the Lahore branch of the Pakistan Hindu Dalit
Welfare Society).
I first met Amarnath when I asked my Shia acquaintances in the
council to arrange for a Hindu community leader to escort me to the
Krishna Mandir. We agreed on a rendezvous point on Mall Road. My
Muslim friends Muhammad Razzaq and Reza offered to come along as
well.
The street was crowded, and as we stood outside waiting for Amar-
nath, I wondered if I’d be able to pick him out among the hundreds of
passers-by. Would he wear anything that might identify him as a
Hindu—caste-mark, wrist-amulet or medallion with an image of
Ganesha, paste-stripes on the forehead to show he was a devotee of
Vishnu or Shiva? Given the religious tension that buzzes in Lahore of
recent years, it seemed unlikely.
This I pegged right. A young man dressed in shalwar-qameez (baggy
trousers and tunic) like a thousand other men around him came up and
introduced himself as our guide to the mandir. Trim and studious, with a
discreet black mustache and clothes that were a muted neutral beige,
Amarnath Randhawa was the ideal escort for guiding guests through the
streets without attracting unwanted attention.
1
On our way he talked about the life of religious minorities in Pakistan.

There are some two hundred Hindu families still residing in Lahore
(about two thousand persons, he estimated, out of a total urban popula-
tion of well over five million for all of Lahore). The Hindus are concen-
trated especially in the Anderun Shahr (Lahore’s Old City quarter),
especially the Mochi Darvaza and Bhatti Darvaza localities, as well as in
another neighborhood, Bibi Pak Daman.
I asked about the types of jobs held by Lahori Hindus and was told
most are shopkeepers or run small businesses of their own. He himself
works with his brother, who owns an auto-parts shop.
As we reached Ravi Road, Amarnath said the Krishna Mandir was the
only temple available to Lahore’s Hindus for worship. Because of damage
to the mandir during the Babri Masjid riots in 1992, he explained, the
temple was currently undergoing renovation. To demonstrate its commit-
ment to the welfare of Pakistan’s religious minorities, the government
had recently agreed to contribute 1.2 million rupees to the project.
I asked where Hindus prayed while these renovations were underway.
“Currently we do puja [worship rituals] in our homes, at private altars,”
he said. For social gatherings and bigger events during holydays, they
used a building on Lower Mall Road called Agarwal Ashram.
The ashram has another function as well. It serves as a guest house for
yatris (pilgrims, both Hindu and Sikh) who come from India to visit the
surviving gurdwaras and other sites in Pakistan that are sacred to these
two faiths.
For Hindus, he said, the primary pilgrimage goal in Pakistan is Ketas,
situated in the Margalla Hills, near the Jhelum River. Ancient myths state
that when the god Shiva was separated from his wife Sati, he came to
Ketas, sat there and wept for her. His flood of tears formed Lake Ketas.
Hearing this tale reminded me that this country possessed a sacred
topography far older than Pakistan or the advent of Islam, a topography
that transcended national boundaries.
At the Krishna Mandir, in contrast to my attempt at a visit the year
before, we found a hive of activity. Construction crews were busy on
each floor. Were the workers Hindu?, I asked. No, Muslim. Amarnath
added that the workmen and the Hindu supervisors and architects were
all getting along just fine.
My friends Muhammad and Reza seemed pleased to hear this. During
our visit the two of them went out of their way to raise discussion points
that emphasized what Hinduism and Islam share in common.
1
When our guide said something about the Hindu belief in Brahman,
and how Brahman is everywhere, subsuming all deities and other lesser
beings in one divine Reality, my Muslim colleagues seemed delighted.
“So,” exclaimed Reza, “our two communities share respect for tawhid
[the monotheistic assertion of God’s oneness].” Amarnath said yes that
was so.
Reza had told our guide he was a Shia, so Amarnath added that just as
the “women of Karbala” once wept for Husain, so too Shiva wept for
Sati. “Many points in common,” he said. “Many.” Everyone looked
happy.
But Amarnath understood very well that plenty of Muslims in the
neighborhood might not be so happy at the prospect of the temple’s
reopening, and he explained the precautions the community would
undertake.
First, the temple would have no murtis (statues) or other images of
deities visible from the street, so as not to offend Islamic sensibilities.
Second, raucous celebrations like Holi (a spring festival, where people
splash each other with dyed water and powder) would be held indoors
rather than out on the street. (“Otherwise our Muslim neighbors will
think this is just some troublesome tamasha [spectacle].”)
Third, the temple’s former name—Kali Das (“Servant of Kali”) or
Kali Devi (“the Goddess Kali”)—which dated back to before 1947, had
long since been dropped. “Muslims hear the name Kali and they think of
things they don’t like—black body, red tongue sticking out. Krishna they
don’t mind so much.” (In the chapter on Lahore’s pulp fiction magazines,
we’ll see how these prejudices play out in stories addressed to Pakistani
Muslim reading audiences.)
While Amarnath explained the ways in which Lahore’s Hindus tiptoed
around Islamic sensibilities and took care to make themselves as nearly
invisible as possible, the azan (the Muslim call to prayer) sounded, first
from one mosque nearby, then from a second and a third. Each muezzin,
it seemed, was in a competition to be loudest. The azans were loud-
speakered and amped-up and backed by uninhibited levels of wattage. As
a display of religious domination it was hard to beat.
Before we left, Amarnath showed us what would be the focal point of
worship on each floor of the temple—an ‘ibadat-khana (“house of
worship”), an alcove-shrine the size of a big closet with doors that could
be closed and locked for safety. The murtis would be housed there, he
said. As part of the renovation, the community was arranging to import
statues of Krishna and Mata Rani (“the queen mother-goddess”) from
India.
1
(I’m glad to report that reconstruction at the Krishna Mandir was

finished in time for the spring Holi celebration to be held there in March
2006. Later the same year, in August, the mandir hosted a weeklong
Janamasthamy—a festival in honor of the god Krishna’s birthday.
Lahore’s Daily Times—which, together with its sister publication The
Friday Times, constitutes the country’s most progressive source of
news—reported on both celebrations in detail, commenting on the latter:
“A large number of Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Muslims participated
in the ceremony.”25)
Before we said goodbye, I asked our host what was the most pressing
issue that Lahore’s Hindus wanted the local government to address.
Without hesitation he replied, “Authorization for a shamshan ghat.” The
shamshan ghat is a cremation site, traditionally located on a riverbank,
where Hindus burn their dead and scatter the ashes in the water in
accordance with ancient custom.
Before the creation of Pakistan there were eleven such sites in Lahore.
Now there are none. With Partition and the exodus of Hindus from the
city, newly arrived Muslims from neighboring India claimed the land for
themselves.26
In the current situation, I asked, what sort of funerary options are
available to Lahori Hindus?
Families that can afford it, I was told, arrange for their dead to be
taken to a cremation ground on private property owned by a well-to-do
Hindu. The site is in the Punjab, a two hours’ drive from Lahore. After
cremation the ashes of the deceased are scattered into either the Ravi or
Jhelum rivers.
This option entails some expense, however, and is simply beyond the
means of the city’s poorer lower-caste Hindus. The solution: many such
persons are buried in Lahore’s Christian cemeteries.
Given the circumstances in which Pakistani Hindus live, this is a logi-
cal and pragmatic solution. “Here, Hindus and Christians have good
relations,” explained Amarnath. “Many Hindus attend Christian ser-
vices.” At the same time, he acknowledged, many church-going Hindu
Christians still maintained altars at home for their favorite deities.
25. Shahnawaz Khan, “Drenched in Red,” The Daily Times [Lahore], March 15,
2006; and Shahnawaz Khan, “Weeklong Janamasthamy Comes to an End,” The
Daily Times, August 17, 2006 (www.dailytimes.com.pk).
26. Emmanuel Yousaf Mani, ed., Human Rights Monitor 2006: A Report on the
Religious Minorities in Pakistan (Lahore: National Commission for Justice and
Peace, 2006), 30-31.
1
This view was corroborated in my many conversations with Khaled

Ahmed of The Friday Times. “In our city, most Hindus have assumed
Christian names for protection,” he said. “They go to church but have
murtis in their homes.” He added that church-going Lahori Hindus have
definite preferences with regard to the various Christian denominations
available to them. “They’re drawn to the richness of Catholic ritual,”
according to Khaled. Catholic statues and incense and bells, after all,
have something in common with what one encounters in Hindu shrines.
“Protestantism,” he said, “they tend to find too austere.”
Christian–Hindu relations in Pakistan can be contrasted with the
situation across the border in India. Plenty of Hindus are drawn to
churches there just as they are in Pakistan. The difference is that in India,
Hindu demagogues frequently score political points by fomenting
hostility to Christianity and accusing Christian missionaries of enticing
Hindus away from their ancestral faith.
In Pakistan, on the other hand, many Hindus see membership in
Christian churches as a refuge against Islamic persecution. It’s true, of
course, that Pakistani Christians suffer persecution too; and in Lahore’s
churches I met individuals who complained that to be a Christian in a
Muslim country generally means being at the bottom of the heap. But
based on what I’ve seen, I’d say Pakistani Hindus have it worse. This is
for several reasons.
Hinduism of course is associated with the perennial enemy India.
And—monotheistic assertions about Brahman notwithstanding—Hindus
after all are widely regarded in Islam as kuffar (kafirs, or pagan unbeliev-
ers). Christians at least have some status as ahl al-kitab (“People of the
Book,” or recipients of a scriptural revelation associated with the
Abrahamic tradition), even if Christianity is held to be inferior to Islam.
Moreover, Christian churches maintain an educational system and run
a network of schools that are respected throughout Pakistan. Finally, to
be Christian in Pakistan is to have the sense of belonging to a global
organization that takes an active interest in the welfare of all its adherents
worldwide.
In fact I would go further and say that the most outspoken champion
of Hindus in Pakistan is the Catholic Church. This can be seen in the
courageous work of the National Commission for Justice and Peace,
established in 1985 by the Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
Annually it publishes a book called Human Rights Monitor: A Report
on the Religious Minorities in Pakistan. The Catholic Bishops’ Confer-
ence documents violence and discrimination against not only Christians
but also members of other minority communities, most notably Hindus
and Ahmadis.
1
The Monitor’s reports for 2005 and 2006 itemize numerous human
rights violations. Many involve women: abduction, rape, and acid throw-
ing directed against Hindu and Christian girls and young women;
violence against non-Muslim women and girls working as servants in
Muslim households.27
The 2006 edition of the Monitor devotes considerable attention to
what could be called systematic ideological warfare against Hindus in
Pakistan. State-run schools still use textbooks authored during the regime
of General Zia ul-Haq (1977–1988), under whose leadership various
“Islamization” programs were initiated. Here is the Monitor’s evaluation
of religious bias in Pakistani school texts:
The curriculum of Social Studies in Pakistan as both the product and
propagator of the “Ideology of Pakistan,” derives its legitimacy from a
narrow set of directives… From the government-issued textbooks,
students are taught that Hindus are backwards and superstitious, and if
given a chance would assert their power over the oppressed, especially
the Muslims… In their Social Studies classes, students are taught that
Islam brought peace, equality, and justice to the Subcontinent and only
through Islam could the sinister ways of Hindus be checked. In Pakistani
textbooks “Hindus” rarely appears in a sentence without adjective[s] such
as politically astute, sly, or manipulative.28
Hindus I met in my visit to Lahore’s Krishna Mandir praised President

Pervez Musharraf and the government for allocating money for the
temple’s restoration. They interpreted this as the government’s attempt to
fight back against the pervasive presence of Islamist bigotry among
Muslim preachers, mullahs, and educators.
But it’s an uphill battle. The Monitor documents Hindu complaints of
their children being forced to take “Islamic studies” programs at school.
The report also enumerates instances where individual Hindus are
subjected to forced conversion to Islam. 29
Some of the most alarming examples of anti-Hindu sentiment involve
allegations of insults to Islamic scripture. In the town of Naushera, in the
NWFP, a Muslim mob desecrated a Hindu temple and then set it afire—
along with the nearby homes of Hindu families—after a servant was
accused of burning pages of the Quran in a trash-fire. In another NWFP
village, a Hindu husband and wife, Lal and Krishna Chaman, had to flee
27. Mani, Human Rights Monitor 2006, 84-91. See also Emmanuel Yousaf Mani,
ed., Human Rights Monitor 2005: A Report on the Religious Minorities in Pakistan
(Lahore: National Commission for Justice and Peace, 2005), 53-62.
28. Mani, Human Rights Monitor 2006, 49.
1
29. Mani, Human Rights Monitor 2006, 29, 41-42.
for their lives while “a mob chanting anti-Hindu slogans gathered in

front of Chaman’s house and destroyed it.”
The reason? A Muslim passer-by claimed to have seen a copy of the
Quran lying sacrilegiously in a field adjacent to the house. This was
enough to foment a rumor that this Hindu couple must have maliciously
desecrated Islam’s scripture. The day after their home was burned down,
the couple were arrested by the police and put in jail.30
The legislation used to justify such arrests is Ordinance 295 B-C,
known in Pakistan as the “blasphemy laws.” I examine this legislation in
my discussion of Pakistani Christians—the subject of my next chapter.
1
30. Mani, Human Rights Monitor 2006, 27, 59.
3
PAKISTANI CHRISTIANS
AND THE PROSPECTS
FOR INTER-RELIGIOUS RESISTANCE
TO THE BLASPHEMY LAWS
Golden Light, Shattered Glass:

Attending Church in a Time of Terror
Sunday, March 17, 2002: what would turn out to be a day of sectarian
killings, directed against Christians in one of Pakistan’s biggest cities.
But—ignorant of what was coming—I decided to attend a church service
that morning at Lahore’s Anglican Cathedral of the Resurrection.
I’d gotten my schedule wrong and arrived an hour early. Not a prob-
lem: it was a beautiful day, the sun not yet scorching, the air still cool,
the courtyard quiet. I stood about outside and admired the church. Lancet
windows, twin bell towers, massive Victorian brickwork: a survivor,
solid and reassuring, from the nineteenth century.
For company I had my guide Nasir and my driver Imtiyaz Yusuf.
Bored with gawking, they withdrew to the car and sat and smoked.
Inside the church, deacons readied the altar. Otherwise I had the place
to myself for half an hour. And for someone with a taste for colonial his-
tory, there was plenty to see. Brass plaques, one after another, mounted
on the walls and pillars of the cathedral’s interior, gleamed yellow in the
morning light.
The first plaque I saw bore the likeness of a gold cross and crown and
an inscription that began: “Erected in memory of the officers, NCOs, and
men of the Punjab Rifles who gave their lives for their king and Empire
in the Great War.” Then came a long roster of names. A Lieutenant J.
North, killed in 1916 in German East Africa. A 2nd Lieutenant Barrett,
who died in Mesopotamia. A Captain Giles: Kashmir. Volunteer Pinto:
North-West Frontier Province. And many, many names listed as fallen
in France. A stained-glass window nearby showed a knight in armor
1
3. Inter-Religious Resistance to the Blasphemy Laws 39
together with a text explaining that the artwork was meant to honor one
“James M. McKain, Captain, 34th Sikh Pioneers, killed in action in
France November 1914. Aged 29 years.”
The geography of death reminded me of the vast reach and sweep of
the old British Empire, and of the sacrifices that went into maintaining it.
No American in Pakistan in 2002 could see such a list without thinking
of our soldiers in Afghanistan and the sacrifices made by them in fight-
ing the Taliban and al-Qaeda. (And as I pen these words now, five years
later, I think of our many dead in Iraq.)
My thoughts shifted as I studied another plaque, this one illustrated
with a Masonic compass and ruler, honoring an Englishman who had
died in Lahore in 1901 after serving for years as secretary to the District
Grand Lodge of the Punjab. “This memorial tablet,” concluded the text,
“was erected by his brother Masons.”
Standing there in this Pakistani Anglican cathedral, I was reminded of
the Punjab’s most famous Mason, the Anglo-Indian storyteller Rudyard
Kipling. On a nearby wall hung another reminder of this poet of Empire:
a sculpted wall plaque, also from 1901, depicting a celebrated British
military figure, Sir Samuel Browne. The sculpture was very much in the
style of the artist John Lockwood Kipling (the poet’s father) and perhaps
came from his studio. John Lockwood Kipling, after all, had been princi-
pal of the Mayo School of Art as well as curator of the Lahore Museum,
and both institutions were located just down the Mall from this church.
For me the mood of nostalgia continued as the cathedral filled with
worshippers—mostly Punjabi Christians, to be sure, but also Africans,
Canadians, Australians, and Brits. The prevailing air was one of calm, of
order. The neo-Gothic vaulting overhead, the hymns sung by the choir
from an old Church of England repertoire, the tea served afterward in the
rectory: these things were lulling and made it easy to sentimentalize the
morning as part of some bygone heyday from the imperial Raj.
The next day’s news headlines were a jarring wake-up to present-day
realities. That same Sunday terrorists had attacked the Protestant Interna-
tional Church in Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave. They hurled grenades
inside the church while morning services were going on. The result was
devastating: “Blood flying across the simple hall where worshippers
were listening to the sermon,” according to news accounts, “glass…
blown out of every window, and huge holes…punched in the ceiling.”
The attack left dozens wounded and five dead, among them a Pakistani
as well as an American woman and her high school-aged daughter.1
1. Raymond Bonner, “Two Americans Killed in Attack on Pakistan Church,”

The New York Times, March 18, 2002.
1
The assault wasn’t the first in Pakistan on a Christian place of

worship. On October 28, 2001, three weeks after the United States began
bombing Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan, an attack on a
church in Bahawalpur left 15 Pakistani Christians dead, together with a
Muslim policeman who tried to guard them.
In the weeks after the Islamabad attack, I talked to many Pakistani
Christians—Catholics, Protestants, and Anglicans—in private homes and
at dinners and church socials. Several discerned what they described as a
larger pattern of violence directed not only at Christians, but at other
religious minorities throughout the country. Among these targets of
hatred is the Shia Muslim community. A minority in Pakistan (they com-
prise some 15 percent to 20 percent of the population), Shias are viewed
with suspicion by many of Pakistan’s Sunni majority, who regard Shia
beliefs and rituals as heterodox. Militantly minded fundamentalists among
the Sunnis go further. For example, leading members of an anti-Shia
organization known as the SSP, the Sipah-e Sahaba Party (“Soldiers of
the Prophet’s Companions”), have labeled Shias kafirs—that is, infidels
—and hence legitimate objects of attack by “orthodox” Muslims. The
SSP has been implicated in numerous attacks on Shia places of worship.
Despite the fact that in January 2002 President Musharraf’s govern-
ment announced a ban on the SSP and other militant sectarian groups
within Pakistan, attacks on Shia shrines persist. Eleven worshippers at
prayer died on February 26, 2002, when gunmen fired on a Shia mosque
in Rawalpindi. Twelve more Shias died when a bomb exploded later that
year on April 25 in the women’s section of a Shia prayer hall in the city
of Bukker in the eastern Punjab.
Among the Pakistani Christians and Shias with whom I spoke, there
was a shared perception that violence against minorities has worsened in
response to the presence of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. Initial
American and coalition victories in Afghanistan in 2001–2002 had
forced hundreds of Taliban militants to retreat across the border into the
autonomous Tribal Areas and Pakistan itself (where many of the Taliban
have homes and families). As Hamid Karzai’s Western-backed govern-
ment has continued its struggle to achieve stability for Afghanistan, these
militants have been using Pakistan and the Tribal Areas as staging points
for cross-border attacks on coalition forces.
In the days when they still held power in Kabul, the Taliban, whose
ideology derives from the most conservative and stringent forms of
Sunnism, had imprisoned Christian missionaries and persecuted Afghan
Shias. Now that they are back in Pakistan, as one Christian from Lahore
told me, “The defeated jihadis seem to be picking easy targets” as a way
1
of venting rage—rage at the West in general, at the United States in par-

ticular, and at President Musharraf personally, for siding with America
against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Pakistan’s Christians constitute an especially vulnerable target. In
such a country, which was founded as a homeland for the subcontinent’s
Muslims, where 97 percent of the population is Islamic, to be Christian is
to be susceptible to the charge that one’s patriotism and national loyalty
are somehow deficient. The charge is unfair—Pakistan’s Christians have
contributed to society at large in many ways, most notably in education,
medicine, and health care—but Muslim suspicions linger.
Caste, Dhimmitude, and the Status of Christians

in Pakistan’s Social Hierarchy
Central to any understanding of Christians’ status in contemporary Paki-
stan is the role played by caste. In South Asia the legacy of Hinduism’s
hereditary system of unyielding social stratification has been rancorous
and enduring. Most Muslims and Christians of the subcontinent are
descended from impoverished lower-class Hindus. Embracing Islam or
Christianity was a way of escaping the rigid confinements of Hinduism’s
caste system. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave
or free,” as Saint Paul reminds us, “…for all of you are one in Christ
Jesus.”2 As with Christianity, so, too, with Islam. Muslims are justifiably
proud of their faith’s insistence on the absolute equality of all humans
before God.
But the past has a way of asserting itself, and Hinduism’s caste legacy
has by no means disappeared in today’s Pakistan. Lahori Muslims I
interviewed rated Pakistani ancestral backgrounds as follows: best of all
were Sayyeds (a title conferred on descendants of the prophet Muham-
mad’s family), followed by those that could claim Arab, Persian, or
Turkish bloodlines—what one informant called “the Muslim conquering
races.” Least prestigious was a genealogy rooted in Hindu India.
Explicitly or implicitly, the vocabulary of caste surfaced frequently in
conversations I had with Pakistani Muslims on the subject of Islam in
South Asia. In March 2002, a Lahori researcher named Amir Rana
accompanied me on a visit to Lahore’s National College of Art, where I
interviewed an anthropologist and art historian by the name of Nadeem
Omar. In describing the religious customs of the Muslims of the Punjabi
town of Chiniot, Nadeem referred to these Punjabis as musalli. This is an
Arabic term with the literal meaning of “one who performs the salat”
1
2. Epistle to the Galatians 3.28.
(the Islamically mandated five-times-a-day ritual prayer). But a glance at

my Urdu dictionary yielded these additional meanings: “a sweeper;
convert to Islam.”3
My friend Amir explained that the term musalli is used in Pakistan to
refer to “new Muslims.” He added, “These are tribals, former Hindus and
Christians. They’re poor. But if one of them manages to become rich,
he’s no longer called musalli.”
Amir added further that musallis have a reputation for being
“Wahhabis during Ramadan, Shias during Muharram, Barelvis during an
‘urs.” That is, these “new Muslims” are eclectic in their religious
practices. In the month of Ramadan, they’ll fast along with the puritani-
cally observant; during Muharram, they’ll honor the Imam Husain by
mourning with the Shias; and during the many ‘urs-melas (celebrations
in honor of deceased Sufi masters) held throughout the year, they’ll throng
to the shrines where music and ecstatic dancing honor the wonder-
working Muslim saints. (The term Barelvi is used to characterize those
Sunnis who admit the orthodoxy of Sufi practices.)
Caste-vocabulary is often used to stigmatize Pakistan’s Christians. In
one town in the Punjab (I leave the place unnamed in deference to my
informant’s wishes), I met an elderly gentleman in 2002 who told me he
had become Christian in the early 1960s. When his Muslim neighbors
heard of his conversion, they shunned him. As word spread, shopkeepers
refused him business. Neighborhood boys harassed his daughters by
calling out “sweepers!” whenever the girls ventured onto the street.
The insult is telling. Muslims I asked about this account reacted defen-
sively and said simply that many Christians are poor and therefore take
menial jobs like sweeping floors. But a Christian from Lahore offered a
different perspective. He reminded me that a huge percentage of his
country’s Muslim population is descended from menial-class Hindus.
What easier way to forget one’s own servile origin, he suggested, than to
scorn someone even lower on the social scale? “Being Christian in a
Muslim country like ours,” he said, “generally means being at the bottom
of the heap. In the eyes of some in my country, to be a Christian is to be
a sweeper, that is, low-caste.”
Sweeper. The Hindi-Urdu term is chuhra, defined in old Hindustani
dictionaries as “scavenger” and “the lowest caste of village servants.”4
3. M. Raza ul-Haq Badakhshani, ed., Gem Practical Dictionary: Urdu to English

(Lahore: Azhar Publishers, n.d.), 688.
4. The Student’s Practical Dictionary: Containing Hindustani Words with
English Meanings (Allahabad: Ram Narain Lal, 1940), 242; S. W. Fallon, ed., A
New Hindustani–English Dictionary (Benares: Medical Hall Press, 1879), 552.
1
Despised but indispensable, the chuhras of the colonial-era Punjab did

the jobs that higher castes found repugnant and polluting—disposing of
human excrement, cleaning out trash, removing—and sometimes eat-
ing—animal corpses left on roadsides to rot.5
In her study of Pakistan’s Christians, the scholar Linda Walbridge
notes that it was precisely rural low-caste Hindu chuhras living in
impoverished villages who responded most enthusiastically to the Gospel
preached by foreign missionaries during British domination of the
subcontinent. But with the social dislocations and violence that marked
the end of British India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, many of
these converts took refuge in Christian ghettoes in cities such as Lahore.6
Since 1947 Pakistani Christians have had to deal with recurrent
Muslim suspicions that they aren’t 100% Pakistani. To compensate for
this, Christian leaders—Catholic, Protestant, and Anglican—take advan-
tage of every chance they get to emphasize that, like other Pakistanis,
Christians, too, are good citizens. Thus during my various visits, I occa-
sionally saw public announcements by church organizations proclaiming
their solidarity with the national government in deploring the plight of
the Palestinians and expressing support for the people of Kashmir—both
of which are issues where the country’s Christian minority might hope
for common ground with Muslims.
Walbridge notes that at rallies where Pakistani Christian activists
gather to call for social justice on behalf of the country’s religious
minorities, speakers frequently cite a 1948 speech by Muhammad Ali
Jinnah, the politician revered by Pakistanis as the founder of their
country: “You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to
go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of
Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has
nothing to do with the business of the State.”7
This sounds like a reassuringly secular vision of government. But
another speech by Jinnah offers a different—and less auspicious—
perspective on the prospects for Christians in newly created Pakistan. As
the Pakistani scholar A. S. Ahmed points out in his biography of Jinnah,
Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of British India, suggested in a
speech in Karachi in 1948 what might serve Pakistan as the model of
“a tolerant Muslim ruler”: the reign of the sixteenth-century Moghul
emperor Akbar the Great.
5. Linda S. Walbridge, The Christians of Pakistan (London: Routledge, 2003),

16.
6. Walbridge, The Christians of Pakistan, 15-47.
1
7. Walbridge, The Christians of Pakistan, 43.
One of the most controversial figures in India’s history, Akbar is—

depending on one’s politics—either a hero of interfaith goodwill or an
apostate who coddled infidels. Akbar lifted from Hindus the burden of
paying the jizyah (the Quranically mandated discriminatory tax levied on
non-Muslims); he promulgated sulh-e kull (“universal reconciliation”), a
policy of state-sponsored religious tolerance; and he instituted the Sufi-
influenced din-e ilahi, the “divine religion” that synthesized Islamic
belief and Hindu wisdom.8
Jinnah was not impressed with the British viceroy’s suggestion. In his
public response to Mountbatten, the founder of Pakistan offered a dif-
ferent—and to conservative ears, a resoundingly orthodox—model of
Islamic statecraft for dealing with non-Muslims:
The tolerance and goodwill that great Emperor Akbar showed to all the
non-Muslims is not of recent origin. It dates back thirteen centuries ago
when the Prophet not only by words but by deeds treated the Jews and
Christians, after he had conquered them, with the utmost tolerance and
regard and respect for their faith and beliefs.9
Note that in Jinnah’s reading of Muhammad’s life the Prophet tolerated

Christians and Jews and let them keep their faith—but only “after he had
conquered them.” Jinnah’s speech echoes the sentiment to be found in
Quran 9.29: “Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day,
and who do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden,
and who do not profess the religion of truth, from among the People of
the Book, until they pay the jizyah and have been humiliated and made
servile.”
Dhimmi is the term used in Islamic law to describe this category of
unbeliever—“People of the Book” (usually understood to be Jews and
Christians, though at times the designation has been extended to other
non-Muslims as well)—who acknowledge Islamic rule, pay the jizyah,
and accept their humbled status in Islamic society in exchange for the
privilege of keeping their identity as Jews or Christians.
In other words, Jinnah’s speeches from 1948—so often cited by
today’s human rights activists as a model of religious egalitarianism (at
least by comparison with the rantings of militant Muslim hardliners)—
already prefigure an Islamist mindset that would only harden with time:
religious minorities can be tolerated in Pakistan—as long as they know
their place, as dhimmis.
8. Bamber Gascoigne, A Brief History of the Great Moguls (New York: Carroll
& Graf, 2002), 71.
9. Akbar S. Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for
Saladin (London: Routledge, 1997), 176.
1
The Head Bathed in Light:

Shia–Christian Solidarity in Suffering?
March 24, 2002, exactly one week after the Islamabad church bombing,
was Palm Sunday. That day I returned to Lahore’s Cathedral of the
Resurrection for morning services. Guards were very much in evidence,
patrolling the entrance gate and the high brick walls surrounding the
church grounds. I’d wondered whether fear of more terrorist strikes would
make parishioners stay away. (I confess I myself had hesitated to go.)
But in fact the turnout was good. There were not many foreigners,
true: a few Brits, some Africans. But local Christians there were, several
hundred of them, more numerous even than on the previous Sunday, as if
Lahore’s Christian community wanted to show pride in its identity. The
choir led us in singing “Rock of Ages.” This week the words of the old
hymn, “Let me hide myself in Thee,” seemed neither nostalgic nor
sentimental, but instead charged with pathos and the power of catharsis.
The sermon that morning began by recapitulating a familiar story, how
Christ’s entry into Jerusalem became a path that led to his sufferings on
the cross. The preacher recalled the persecution undergone by the early
followers of Jesus; and this, too, was familiar. But then the sermon
became explicitly topical. The preacher spoke directly of the Bahawalpur
and Islamabad massacres. “We don’t know if such acts will continue,” he
told the congregation, “but we have to remember we are not walking this
path alone.” Christ, too, journeyed along this road, as did his early
followers. And Christ journeys now, he said, with the members of this
parish. “This is what enables us to endure any persecution.”
A moving sermon; but interesting, too, for what it left unsaid. No talk
of retribution, communal self-defense or the need to capture and punish
terrorists. I read into the sermon the implicit message that the protection
of the Christian community must be left to the Pakistani government.
This conforms to the classical Islamic concept of the dhimmi described
above: the non-Muslim minority living under Muslim rule. Dhimmis are
not permitted to use force to defend themselves, but rather are required to
rely on Muslim governors for their protection.
Has any good come out of this recent violence against Pakistan’s
minorities? A Catholic woman from Lahore told me that after the Baha-
walpur church killings in October 2001, Shia Muslim neighbors came to
her house to convey their sympathies. They told her stories sacred to
their own tradition. Fourteen centuries ago, at the Iraqi site of Karbala,
soldiers of the caliph Yazid killed the Imam Husain and beheaded him.
Individual local Christians of the desert did what they could to honor
1
Husain and show reverence for his corpse after his martyrdom. A pious
priest guarded the Imam’s severed head for one night in his chapel and
saw the head bathed in light. “Christians tried to help Imam Husain,” the
Shias told my Lahori informant. “We remember that to this day.”
In the martyrdom of Husain, Shia Islam’s history shares some affini-
ties with Christianity: the voluntary self-sacrifice of a salvific figure, a
narrative of spiritual victory arising from a death that in the eyes of the
world initially seemed to represent only humiliation and defeat. Perhaps
the violence to which Pakistan’s minorities have been subjected will lead
to further exploration of what they share in common.
Loser’s Vengeance: Muslim–Christian Relations

and Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law
Gambling often produces sore losers. In November 2005, in the town of
Sangla Hill in Pakistan’s Punjab province, it served as the trigger for
something worse: religious riots and violence against members of
Pakistan’s minority Christian population.
Yousuf Masih, a forty-year-old Christian, won several thousand
rupees playing cards with a Muslim neighbor. The angry loser retaliated
by filing an allegation with the local police that Masih had set fire to a
copy of the Quran—a punishable offense under Pakistani law. Within
hours rumors that a Christian had insulted the Islamic scripture were
circulating throughout town. Local Muslim clerics used mosque loud-
speakers to call on the faithful to avenge the insult.
The result: the next day, November 12, 2005, a mob of over 2,500
men (some from Sangla Hill, others from nearby Punjabi villages)
attacked buildings belonging to the town’s minority Christian commu-
nity. They torched three churches and vandalized a Catholic convent and
a Christian elementary school. Local Christian families were forced to
flee or go into hiding. Police did nothing to restrain the violence—but
they did arrest the luckless Christian card-player Yousuf Masih.
When I visited Lahore the following month, local Christians showed
me photographs detailing the destruction at Sangla Hill: a marble altar
smashed to rubble, a tabernacle lying dented on the ground, a statue of
the Virgin Mary that rioters had defaced with hammers.
I was also shown a copy of a letter of protest dated November 14,
2005 that had been sent to President Musharraf immediately after the
violence in Sangla Hill. Signed by prominent Pakistani Catholic and
Protestant church leaders, the letter identified a salient factor in the
recurrent violence against the country’s religious minorities in recent
years: Ordinance 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code.
1
Ordinance 295—commonly referred to as the “blasphemy law”—

dates back to the 1980s and the reign of military dictator General Zia ul-
Haq. Zia sought to legitimize his dictatorship by indulging the funda-
mentalist-minded mullahs of Pakistan’s various religious parties. 295
gave them what they wanted.
The law’s roots go back to the colonial era: the British Indian Penal
Code provided two years’ jail time for persons convicted of religious
insults or acts of desecration against any faith whatsoever. Zia’s regime
“updated” this legislation by adding provisions designed specifically to
“safeguard” Islam. Section 295-B of Zia’s law mandates life imprison-
ment for Quran desecration. Section 295-C goes further: it stipulates the
death penalty for anyone who defames or insults the prophet Muhammad.
A progressive-minded legislator from Pakistan’s National Assembly
whom I interviewed in Islamabad listed what he called “three substantive
legal problems” with Ordinance 295. First, no evidence is required in
filing a blasphemy complaint. The word of anyone claiming to be a
witness is enough. Second, the alleged blasphemer is arrested and impris-
oned as soon as the complaint is lodged. Defendants often remain in jail
for months awaiting trial. Third, plaintiffs can make false accusations
with little worry of punishment or any other legal repercussion.
The third factor is especially important in light of recent data assembled
by the National Commission for Justice and Peace (a human rights
advocacy group established in 1985 by Pakistan’s Catholic Bishops
Conference). The Commission demonstrated that in over one hundred
cases where defendants in recent blasphemy trials were found innocent,
the accusers were shown by the court to have been motivated by personal
grudges or hopes of financial gain.10
Despite the manifest injustice associated with Ordinance 295, Presi-
dent Musharraf—who has evinced a commitment to protect his country’s
religious minorities—has been unable to repeal the blasphemy law.
Why? 295 is simply too popular.
Based on interviews with Muslims and Christians in both the Punjab
and the NWFP, I would say this law is widely accepted by many Mus-
lims—especially in rural areas—because it is seen as a useful weapon for
the defense of Islam.
A Muslim professor in Peshawar explained to me that when rumors of
blasphemy or Quran desecration circulate, many mosque preachers warn
their congregations that Islam khatar mayn hay: “Islam is in danger.”
10. Information provided during interviews in Lahore with Archbishop Lawrence

Saldanha, December 12-13, 2005.
1
This sense of endangerment comes from a widespread perception among

numerous Pakistani Muslims: they are a beleaguered minority.
This might sound surprising, given that 97% of Pakistan’s population
is Muslim. But it makes sense if one takes into account the feeling many
Pakistanis have that they are overshadowed and threatened by neighbor-
ing India—a country that is not only much bigger than Pakistan but is
also overwhelmingly non-Muslim and Hindu.
For many Pakistanis, what keeps their country from being swallowed
up, from disappearing, is its Islamic identity, symbolized by reverence for
the Quran and devotion to the prophet Muhammad’s honor. Ordinance
295 is popular because it is seen as safeguarding both these things. Many
fundamentalist-minded Muslims question the loyalty of Pakistani
Christians and other non-Muslim minorities, who are often accused of
serving as agents for the U.S. and other foreign powers.
A Pakistani Christian friend who used to be active in interfaith dia-
logue characterized for me Muslim attitudes toward the country’s
religious minorities: “The whole society is mobilized to be on the look-
out for potential Christian and Hindu conspiracies against Islam.”
Disappointment and frustration embittered his voice. “Such minorities
are thought to be allied with outside powers.”
Outside powers: a favorite culprit in the Pakistani political imagina-
tion. The theme appears in a recent newspaper essay by Hafiz Idrees,
head of the Punjabi branch of Jama’at-e Islami (one of the political
parties belonging to the Islamist MMA coalition currently holding power
in Baluchistan and the NWFP). Idrees disseminates stereotypes of
Hindus as “cunning” and Jews as “clever” and then refers to the hostile
forces said to be encircling Pakistan: a “triangle of evil” consisting of
America, MOSSAD, and RAW (the latter two acronyms designate the
national intelligence agencies of Israel and India).11
The Good Samaritan at the Madrasa:

A Try at Interfaith Dialogue
Given this climate of suspicion, most Pakistani Christians who attempt
interfaith dialogue favor a low-profile approach that is as conciliatory
and non-confrontational as possible. One man who works in this difficult
field is Father Francis Nadeem, a young Catholic priest I interviewed in
December 2005 at Saint Mary’s Church in a Lahori neighborhood called
Gulbarg.
1
11. Mani, ed., Human Rights Monitor 2006, 47-48.
A member of the Islamabad-based National Council for Interfaith

Dialogue (NCIFD), Father Francis said he works with Muslims in three
different venues. The first involves conferences he organizes where
Muslims and Christians meet to define projects on which they can
collaborate (this is reflected in the list of NCIFD “objectives” he handed
me: “To create an atmosphere for the people of good will to work at the
grassroots levels on common issues to advance social harmony”). At
such conferences, he said, he emphasizes what he calls a “dialogue of
life” or insaniyyat (this Arabic-Urdu term—which I heard repeatedly in
talks with progressive-minded Pakistanis—can be translated as “human-
ity” or “universal values” or “basic human decency in one’s dealings
with others”).
The second venue in which he works: madrasas (Islamic religious
schools) where cooperative mullahs allow him to visit their classrooms
and talk with the pupils (typically, Father Francis told me, these are boys
between the ages of 10 and 14). Madrasas in Lahore are more likely to be
open to such visits than in the much more conservative NWFP.
I asked him what a Catholic priest talks about at a Pakistani Muslim
seminary. “Bible stories,” he smiled. “Stories are always good for getting
young people’s attention. But one thing I avoid,” he added, and here his
smile vanished, “is any explicit talk of Christian doctrine.”
What would happen, I asked, if he brought up such things as Christian
doctrine?
“There’d be an argument, and I’d be accused of trying to convert
Muslims, and the maulvis [mullahs] would get angry.” He added quietly,
“And then I could get shot.”
Instead, he said, he offers biblical parables. He outlined his pedagogy:
tell a story; identify its theme; apply it to contemporary life in Lahore.
He offered an example. “So I’ll tell the Good Samaritan story from the
Gospel of Luke.” He then draws the students’ attention to the biblical
verse encapsulating the parable’s theme: Luke 10.29, where the lawyer
interrogating Jesus asks, “And who is my neighbor?” Then, said Father
Francis, he offers an answer for the benefit of the madrasa students: “My
neighbor is not only the person living next door to me, but anyone in
need, regardless of their religion. This is what Jesus showed by the story
of the Samaritan helping a stranger.” The fact that Jesus is revered in the
Quran as a healer and prophet helps make such stories more acceptable
to Muslim audiences.
The third setting in which priests like Father Francis interact with
Muslims is social events. In his office he showed me a photo taken
during a local Ramadan iftar (the communal meal at which Muslims
1
break their day-long fast). The picture shows him with a mullah and the
mullah’s eight-year-old son. As the Muslim cleric looks on, the priest
and the boy both dip bread into a bowl of yoghurt. “Muslim and
Christian,” said Father Francis proudly, “eating from the same plate.”
For him, this was clearly a good moment and a good memory.
True, some of his Christian colleagues are cynical about all this. “He’s
always meeting with the same small circle of like-minded Muslims,”
complained one skeptic. “They’re always cutting cake together. It makes
a good impression on the foreigners, on visitors.” But I couldn’t help
admiring Father Francis’s gentle idealism.
But it’s an idealism tempered by a somber awareness of the limits to
such dialogue. As I left his office the priest reiterated that whatever the
interfaith venue—conferences, or madrasas, or Ramadan socials—he
always avoids theological discussions of any kind. “We’re always afraid
of 295-C,” he said, referring to the blasphemy law and the risk of saying
something someone could choose to construe as an insult to the prophet
Muhammad.
Christ Crucified Everywhere:

The Murder of Javed Anjum
and the “Crime of Being Non-Muslim”
Despite the ongoing threat posed by such legislation, in recent years
Pakistan’s Christian community has begun to speak out, collectively and
publicly, and with an increasing sense of urgency, against sectarian dis-
crimination. On December 20, 2005, Christians throughout the country
observed a nationwide day of prayer and fasting to condemn the violence
at Sangla Hill and the persecution of minorities in the name of religion.
Additional nonviolent protests continued throughout 2006 for the pur-
pose of drawing attention to the injustice of Pakistan’s blasphemy law.
Pakistani advocacy groups such as the Catholic National Commission
for Justice and Peace have argued that such legislation violates the spirit
of Pakistan’s own Constitution. The 2006 edition of the commission’s
annually published Human Rights Monitor quotes Article 20 of the
Constitution of Pakistan: “Every citizen shall have the right to profess,
practice and propagate his religion.”12 The Monitor documents numerous
recent examples of how Pakistani Christians and other non-Muslims
have been subjected to violence in retaliation for refusing to convert to
Islam.
1
One brutal instance from among many: the case of Javed Anjum. On
May 2, 2004, this 18-year-old set out on foot to visit family members in
a nearby Punjabi village. Along the way he paused to drink water from a
tap outside the Jamia Hassan madrasa in the district of Toba Tek Singh.
Confronted by some of the seminary students and accused of being non-
Muslim, he refused to deny his faith and instead confirmed that yes in
fact he was Christian.
Things turned ugly fast. With the assistance of one of the madrasa’s
teachers, the students detained Javed by force and accused him of trying
to steal the school’s water pumps and faucets. They kept him locked up
for five days, beating him with iron pipes and trying to force him to
become Muslim.
The young Christian refused, insisting on adhering to his faith. After
five days of torture, the madrasa students dumped him at a police station,
calling him a thief. A week later he died of his injuries.
The Monitor’s report includes a photo of Javed Anjum from his stu-
dent days: a handsome young man who looks right into the camera,
poised, proud, and self-aware. The Monitor provides another photo as
well, showing a rally by Christian protesters in Lahore denouncing his
religiously motivated murder. One protester carries a placard shaped
like a black tombstone. The tombstone reads: “Javed Anjum. Age: 18.
Profession: Student. Crime: Ghair Muslim Hona (Being Non-Muslim).”13
Crime: being non-Muslim. This ironic and bitter comment highlights a
recurrent motif in Pakistani Islamist politics: an inability to tolerate
religious diversity, and the use of violence to maintain ideological con-
formity and communal identity—motifs that underlie attempts at forced
conversion to Islam (as in the tragedy of Javed Anjum) as well as
legislation such as the blasphemy law.
How do Pakistani Christians find a way to live with such threats of
persecution? The question was on the mind of Marie-Ange Siebrecht, an
official with the Catholic charity group Kirche In Not (“The Church in
Need”). She reports from a recent trip to Pakistan: “On my journey I
asked one poor Christian how he could endure it all. He told me, ‘When I
look at Christ on the cross, then my sufferings seem small to me.’”14
One need spend only a short time in Pakistan to see Christ crucified
everywhere.
13. Mani, Human Rights Monitor 2005, 22-23.

14. “Archbishop Demands Protection for Pakistani Christians,” EWT News, May
22, 2007 (www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory_print.asp?number=79000).
1
The Logos Confronts Talibanization:

Benedict’s Regensburg Speech and Freedom
of Conscience in an Islamic Context
Relevant to these issues is Pope Benedict XVI’s controversial Regens-
burg speech of September 12, 2006. So fixated did some become on
whether he did or did not insult Islam that they lost sight of the pope’s
larger message. The use of violence and coercion in the name of religion
contradicts divine nature and God’s plan for humankind. “The decisive
statement in this argument against violent conversion,” argues Benedict,
“is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.”15
Benedict contrasts religious violence with Logos (“the Word”—a
Greek term familiar in Christian theology as a way of describing Jesus
as the second member of the Trinity). The Logos that characterizes
Divinity, he asserts, should also inspire human interactions. “Logos,” the
pope explains, “means both reason and word—a reason which is creative
and capable of self-communication.”16
Thus with God’s nature as a model, according to Benedict, we should
share our beliefs via reasoned debate, discussion, and dialogue—a notion
espoused by yet another controversial figure loathed by many Muslims
today: Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The ability to subject religious ideas to the test of
reason, for Hirsi Ali, is essential to civilized life in the ideologically
diverse landscape of our twenty-first century. “Religion is related to a
body of ideas,” she argues, “and people have the right to debate and
criticize other people’s ideas.”17
Hirsi Ali is reviled by Islamists as an apostate; but the concept of
freedom of conscience that she advocates is likewise supported by
intellectually daring Muslims who are closer to the Islamic mainstream.
The Tunisian scholar Mohamed Talbi states, “[R]eligious liberty is not
an act of charity or a tolerant concession… It is a fundamental right for
everyone.” He correlates his own duty as a Muslim who is commanded
by Allah to undertake da’wah (the “call” or “summons,” that is, the obli-
gation to engage in missionary efforts to convert others to Islam) with
the rights of non-Muslims in how they react to Muslim evangelizing:
15. Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason, and the University,” speech delivered at
the University of Regensburg, September 12, 2006 (www.vatican.va/holy_father/
benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september).
16. Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason, and the University.”
17. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for
Women and Islam (New York: Free Press, 2006), 174.
1
“My right, and my duty also, is to bear witness, by fair means, of my

own faith, and to convey God’s call. Ultimately it is up to each person to
respond or not to respond to this call.”18
Unfortunately current political trends in many parts of Pakistan
amount to a repudiation of Talbi’s enlightened viewpoint. In the spring
of 2007, journalists reported on the ever-increasing Talibanization of
Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Islamist mullahs are using
madrasas as bases for indoctrinating young men with a violently intoler-
ant form of the faith. These “students”—armed with rifles and rocket-
propelled grenades and a confrontational vision of Islam—roam unchal-
lenged from town to town, imposing a pitiless version of Quranic law on
ordinary people throughout the province.19
Such a pattern has already established itself in Waziristan and other
parts of the Tribal Areas on the Afghan–Pakistan border. What is
alarming observers about this latest trend, however, is that such militants
operate with impunity in the NWFP, a region that—unlike the Tribal
Areas—is supposedly under the direct and undisputed control of Paki-
stan’s central government.
As might be expected, this Talibanization trend has worsened
interfaith relations in the province. In May 2007 CNN and other news
agencies reported on threats directed by “pro-Taliban militants” against
the Christian minority community in the North-West Frontier Province
town of Charsadda. “All Christians are informed,” ran the text of a warn-
ing delivered to a local Christian politician, “either become Muslims
within ten days and shut down churches, or leave Charsadda. Or else you
will be executed.” The group delivering these threats identified itself as
Anjuman-e Taliban Dhamaka Khez (“the Taliban Bomb-Setting Asso-
ciation”). Local government officials downplayed the threat, claiming the
province’s Christians “are safe and well protected.” The bishop of
Islamabad, however, held interviews to highlight the crisis: “I appeal to
the world to help us in this dangerous struggle against fundamentalism.”
In June 2007 similar threats were made against Christians in the Punjabi
village of Shantinagar: “[C]onvert to Islam or face dire consequences.”
Shantinagar had already experienced sectarian violence: in February
1997, after allegations that a local Christian had desecrated a copy of the
18. Mohamed Talbi, “Religious Liberty,” in Charles Kurzman, ed., Liberal

Islam: A Sourcebook (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 167-68.
19. David Montero, “Pakistan Losing Territory to Radicals,” Christian Science
Monitor, May 29, 2007; Munir Ahmad, “Convert or Die? Pakistani Christians Seek
Help,” Associated Press, May 18, 2007 (http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/
convert-or-die-pakistani-christians-seek/20070517).
1
Quran, mobs of angry Muslims set fire to homes and churches, driving
out 20,000 Christians and rendering them homeless.20
Another sign of creeping Talibanization is newly proposed legislation
introduced in May 2007 by the Islamist MMA coalition. Called the
“Apostasy Act,” this proposed bill would mandate life imprisonment for
women and the death penalty for men who abandon Islam. Apologists
for the bill note that the law would give apostates the chance to repent:
“Section 5 stipulates that the ‘offender’ must be granted 3 to 30 days to
recant the conversion and return to Islam.” Nevertheless, the bill imposes
a two-year jail sentence even on penitent apostates. Moreover, under this
law apostates would forfeit their property and custody of their children to
Muslim relatives. The mind boggles at the ways in which such a bill
could be abused by opportunists of all kinds.21
Opportunistic abuse also features in some of the most recent cases
involving the blasphemy law. In May 2007 an 84-year-old Lahori Chris-
tian was jailed after being accused of burning pages of the Quran. But
defense lawyers pointed out that those who filed the blasphemy charge
were colluding with Muslim businessmen who had unsuccessfully tried
to pressure the elderly Christian into selling them his land at below-
market prices. Another case arose in April 2007 when an 11-year-old
Punjabi Christian boy was charged with blasphemy after he got into a
fistfight with a Muslim boy. The Muslim child had been wearing an
amulet containing a Quranic inscription; the amulet is said to have been
damaged in the fight. Hence the blasphemy charge, which has led to
Muslim retaliatory violence against Christians throughout Punjab’s Toba
Tek Singh district—the same region where 18-year-old Javed Anjum had
been beaten to death with iron pipes three years earlier by a thuggish
madrasa teacher and his pupils.22
20. “Pakistani Christians Live in Fear,” CNN, May 16, 2007 (http://edition.cnn.
com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/05/16/pakistan.christians.ap/index.html); “Bishop
Requests Prayers for Threatened Pakistani Christians,” Catholic Online, May 23,
2007 (www.catholic.org); “Christians Threatened: Convert to Islam or Die,” Asia
News, May 11, 2007 (www.asianews.it); Asher John, “Shantinagar Christians Get-
ting Threatening Letters,” Daily Times [Lahore], June 23, 2007 (www.dailytimes.
com.pk).
21. Qaiser Felix, “New Apostasy Bill to Impose Death on Anyone Who Leaves
Islam,” Asia News, May 9, 2007 (www.asianews.it).
22. Qaiser Felix, “84-Year-Old Christian Accused of Blasphemy to Force Him to
Sell Land,” Asia News, May 10, 2007 (www.asianews.it); Ecumenical News Inter-
national, “Blasphemy Charges Heighten Easter Tensions for Pakistani Christians,”
Ekklesia (World Council of Churches), April 6, 2007 (www.ekklesia.co.uk).
1
Given the threats these days directed against anyone who falls foul of
Pakistan’s blasphemy law, it’s understandable that most of the individu-
als I interviewed on this subject preferred to remain anonymous. One
exception is Lawrence John Saldanha, the Catholic archbishop of Lahore.
Currently the president of Pakistan’s Catholic Bishops Conference,
Archbishop Saldanha is spearheading a movement for the repeal of
Sections B and C of Ordinance 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code (recall
that these are the sections governing Quran-desecration and dishonoring
the prophet Muhammad).
I first met the archbishop in December 2005 at his office in Lahore’s
Catholic Cathedral. A peaceful setting for discussing grim topics: as we
talked, birds flitted among the pillars of a stone portico and called from
the trees in the Cathedral courtyard against the last light of a winter sky.
Cloistered tranquility, evanescent and precious.
I was impressed with Archbishop Saldanha at once—for his bluntness,
his honesty, his energetic way in conversation of driving straight at
topics that make others dive for cover. The man is fearless—a word with
meaning in Pakistan, where life tests people’s courage every day.
I started the interview by asking him about his background. Of
Portuguese descent, his family is from south India, where his father once
worked in the Telegraph Department of the British Indian railway sys-
tem. In 1942 the family was transferred to Lahore, which is how the
future priest became a resident of Pakistan.
I learned many things from our talk. How so many Pakistani Muslims
hold local Christians responsible for everything America does. How
Muslim converts to Christianity frequently have to flee Pakistan because
of persecution by their families and neighbors. How zealots who murder
non-Muslims are garlanded and hailed as heroes by mullahs in their
home villages.
But one issue topped the archbishop’s take-action list. When I asked
what he thought were the prospects for productive Christian–Muslim
dialogue in Pakistan, he said at once that the most useful form of inter-
faith dialogue would be for Christians and Muslims to collaborate on
working to repeal 295 B and C. Overturning 295, he said, should be a top
priority—for Christians, for Muslims, for everyone who wishes Pakistan
well.
He is fighting for the repeal, he told me, because this harmful ordi-
nance—which is worded so as to encourage slander against anyone
designated an “enemy of Islam”—has provided a legal rationale for
inciting religious violence and the persecution of minorities. 295 rewards
religious hatred.
1
I returned to California and wrote an essay on 295 and the harm it

causes. Once the piece had been published, I mailed copies of the essay
to the archbishop’s office. Then I went back to the professorial round of
teaching courses and grading papers and explaining to querulous
undergrads why their tests merited only a C-plus instead of a B-minus.
But in June 2006 I received an unexpected call. Archbishop Saldanha
was briefly in the States, in San Francisco in fact, meeting with Catholic
officials on humanitarian issues. He had a car and a driver and a few
hours free at his disposal, and he wanted to know: how far from San
Francisco was my university?
In fact, not that far; and we had a pleasant reunion on the campus of
Santa Clara University. One thing in particular he wanted to share with
me: a copy of the text of the “Charter of Demands” presented in April
2006 to the government of Pakistan in Islamabad by leaders of the All
Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA). The latter is an umbrella organi-
zation representing the various social justice groups and non-Muslim
communities from throughout Pakistan.
The Charter of Demands is comprehensive in the abuses it identifies—
not only Ordinance 295 B-C, but also forced conversions to Islam and
the fearsome Hudood ordinances dating from General Zia’s time that
have made life a torment for so many Pakistani women.
Worth quoting in full is article 16 in the APMA’s Charter of Demands:
All the [proposed] laws and enactments should be made in conformity
with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights dated 10th December
1948 and as envisaged under the Declaration on Rights of Persons
Belonging to Religious Minorities adopted [by the] General Assembly of
UNO [United Nations Organization] through resolution no.47/135 on 10th
December 1992. These Declarations are legally and morally binding on
the Government of Pakistan.
I’m glad to report that Pakistan’s APMA is not the first to apply criteria
established by the United Nations to Islamic societies. The Sudanese
legal scholar and social-justice activist ‘Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im
compares the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights with the codes of
social conduct stipulated in shari’ah (Quranically derived legislation).
His conclusions challenge every Muslim-majority society that is
accustomed to regarding shari’ah as the ultimate source for structuring
the legal framework of modern social life.
An-Na’im makes the following claim (a claim that accords well, I
would argue, with the Logos-model of religion and reason presented by
Pope Benedict). Wherever Islamic law conflicts with basic freedoms—
whether in issues involving religious identity, gender discrimination, or
1
enslavement—traditional interpretations of shari’ah must yield to

recognized principles of universal human rights: that is, the concept that
individuals are entitled to a fundamental dignity not because of their
religious affiliation but because they are human beings.23
When it comes to religious minorities in Islamic countries, both An-
Na’im and Pakistan’s APMA are in effect arguing for the same thing: a
shift from dhimmitude to pluralism. Such a shift would mean renouncing
the repressive and contempt-flavored “tolerance” extended by Muslim
societies such as Pakistan towards their religious minorities. This would
be replaced by a mentality that regards divergent worldviews as potential
sources of wisdom and religious diversity as worthwhile in itself rather
than as something to be feared.
Pakistan is not there yet and may never choose to go there. But think-
ers like An-Na’im and advocates like Archbishop Saldanha and groups
like the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance have shown the way.
A Concluding Note. Dragging Traitors Through the Streets:

How the Blasphemy Law Affects Muslims
Worth emphasizing is that Christians are not the only ones who have
suffered because of Pakistan’s blasphemy law. The Catholic Bishops
Conference has pointed out that 54% of the individuals imprisoned under
Ordinance 295 are Muslims. They were denounced as apostates by
fellow Muslims—whether out of religious zealotry or sheer opportun-
ism—on charges of questioning the Quran or showing insufficient rever-
ence for the prophet Muhammad’s legacy. (The other prisoners are
Christians, Hindus, and Ahmadis.)24
After being charged under 295 B-C and publicly identified as having
“insulted the faith,” at least 20 persons in recent years have been
snatched from the authorities by angry mobs and dragged through the
streets and beaten to death. Of these 20 identified victims of extrajudicial
killings, 6 were Christian—and 14 Muslim. Those labeled “traitors” to
Islam are regarded with far more hatred, and as far worse, than mere
non-Muslims.25
23. ‘Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, “Shari’a and Basic Human Rights Concerns,”
in Kurzman, ed., Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook, 222-38.
25. Information provided during interview in Lahore with Archbishop Lawrence
Saldanha, December 13, 2005. See also the statistics cited in a leaflet entitled “The
Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan,” which was published by the National Commission for
Justice and Peace and circulated in Lahore in 2005.
1
The fact that Muslims have used Ordinance 295 to indict fellow
Muslims points up the larger harm inflicted on Pakistan as a whole by
this legislation. A Lahore-based Muslim intellectual told me, “295 makes
it impossible to think out loud about Islam freely. We’re at risk of
paralysis, both as a nation and as a religious tradition.”
For the good of all its citizens, it’s time for Pakistan to repeal its
blasphemy law.
1
4
RITUAL AND COMMUNAL IDENTITY:
SHIA–SUNNI RELATIONS IN PAKISTAN
To start with, two anecdotes—one from a lecture in the North-West

Frontier Province, the other from a visit to a Muslim saint’s shrine in
Islamabad—to illustrate the themes at play in this chapter.
Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong:

Bad Moments on the Interfaith Dialogue Circuit
Peshawar, December 2002. I’d been invited to give a lecture at the
University of Peshawar’s “Shaykh Zayed Islamic Studies Center” (an
institute funded by sources in the United Arab Emirates). Professor Qibla
Ayaz, the Zayed Center’s chairman, told me the center’s purpose is
tabligh: the evangelical dissemination of Islam. In Pakistan tabligh refers
especially to missionary efforts by conservative Sunnis to reform the
faith of fellow Muslims—particularly those Muslims deemed deficient in
their orthodoxy or insufficiently rigorous in their ritual life. Before my
lecture the chairman introduced me to the Zayed Center’s professors, and
a number of them displayed a forthright anti-Shia bias.
Problematic, this, given my lecture topic: Shia–Sunni relations and the
prospects for sectarian reconciliation in Pakistan. Aware of the (to put it
mildly) climate of religious conservatism in the NWFP, I came prepared
for some mental recalcitrance when I hit campus.
My first warning that the topic might be a hard sell came when Doctor
Ayaz took me aside ten minutes before my talk to say no students would
be allowed in to hear me speak. “The subject is too sensitive.” He was
apologetic. The campus mood of anti-Americanism made my presence
provocative.
Would I have anyone at all, then, in the lecture hall?
Not to worry, he said: I would address the faculty of the Zayed Center.
And all fifteen professors filed in and found seats.
1
Oh well: educate the educators, and let them spread the message. I
began by briefly reviewing things all of them must have known: caliphal
history, the imamate, the pernicious effects of medieval sectarian
polemics. I came quickly to my theme: the opportunity for Muslims to
learn from the mistakes made by Christians during the violent history of
the Church. For centuries Catholics and Protestants refused to recognize
each other as Christians and instead killed each other in the name of God,
convinced as they were that religious truth must be limited to one sect
alone. Only in recent years has ecumenism taken hold. Protestants and
Catholics, I said, have gradually come to acknowledge that each denomi-
nation has something important to say. Protestantism, with its emphasis
on the need for individual believers to encounter God directly in
Scripture, and Catholicism, with its emphasis on God’s physical and
sacramental presence in the world, together offer complementary aspects
of the same message. The two complete each other.
I’ve offered variations on this talk at interfaith venues aplenty over the
years, so I’ve had practice in gauging my audience. Fifteen blank faces.
Eyes empty and non-committal. A hard sell. My host Doctor Ayaz gave
me a nod I took for encouragement. I plunged on.
So, too, I said, with Islam. Shiism and Sunnism differ, but as the old
Arabic saying insists, Al-Ikhtilaf rahmah min Allah: Disagreement in
viewpoint is a blessing and mercy from God. Rather than judge each
other, rather than engage in takfir (declaring a fellow believer to be a
kafir or infidel), Shias and Sunnis could choose instead to acknowledge
each other as Muslims. Pluralism, I said, means not merely tolerating the
existence of diversity, but welcoming divergent worldviews as a stimulus
to one’s own spiritual growth. I rounded off my talk with a quote from
the Quran (5.48): “If Allah had wanted, He could have made you a single
community. But he did not… Therefore compete with each other in good
works. Unto God is your return, all of you. Thereupon He will enlighten
you as to those things concerning which you once differed.”
There. No one had stormed out. Not too bad a job, I thought. Were
there any questions?
Just one. A Zayed Center professor stood up, turbaned, bearded,
unsmiling. For a non-Muslim, he said by way of praise, I seemed to
know a good bit about Islam. So he would like my opinion on simply one
thing: which is the truer form of Islam—Sunnism or Shiism? “In other
words,” he asked, “which of the two is right, and which is wrong?”
So much for my try at sectarian reconciliation. A Roadrunner cartoon
image flashed at me: Wile E. Coyote hits a brick wall.
1
4. Ritual and Communal Identity 61
Cave, Tree, Monkey-Thief: At the Saint’s Shrine

Anecdote number 2:
Islamabad, March 2004. A tense and unpleasant moment at a book-
shop downtown. I wanted to see if the latest Newsweek was available but
I had trouble getting the clerk’s attention. He and a knot of other young
men were staring at a TV blaring the latest update from CNN.
The clerk spotted me and jabbed his hand at the screen. Look, he told
me, look. His voice shook with anger.
CNN was broadcasting the funeral of slain Hamas chief Shaykh
Ahmad Yasin. The screen showed crowds of Palestinians thronging the
streets of Gaza in grief—a grief that radiated out into this Islamabad
bookstore.
“Killed by Israel,” said the clerk. He and his friends turned from CNN
to me. “Killed by America.”
Time for a quick smiling exit. I could make do without Newsweek.
One of the men followed me out into the street as my driver Imtiyaz
started our car. “Killed by the Jews,” said the man as we pulled away.
“Killed by America.”
I met a better welcome at my next stop, a saint’s shrine called Bari
Imam at the northeast edge of the city. The site is consecrated to a
seventeenth-century miracle-worker, Syed Abdul Latif Shah. Pilgrims
come here from all over Pakistan to ask the saint for favors.
Boys sold rose petals—flowers of paradise—at five rupees a packet.
Visitors sprinkled the petals over the saint’s grave. Inside the shrine,
near the grave, grew a big banyan tree, its upmost limbs piercing the
mosque’s roof. Strips of cloth, torn from worshippers’ clothing, fluttered
from the sacred tree’s branches. A friendly man standing beside me—he
told me he’d driven here with his father from Lahore, a five-hour trip—
said pilgrims fix the cloth to the tree to leave a token of their visit so the
saint wouldn’t forget them or their requests. I nodded. I’d seen the same
practice at Hindu temples in India. The Bari Imam custodians also offered
for sale a more enduring forget-me-not: padlocks that one could murmur
over in prayer and then lock to an upright metal grate between the tree
and the grave.
Plenty of business went on while I was there. Vendors sold glass
bangles. Numerologists and “astro-palmists” offered to tell my fortune.
An old man displayed posters showing the names of the twelve Imams
and the words Ya ‘Ali Madad—“O Ali, help me”—inscribed on the palm
of a hand. Iconography dear to Shias.
1
“Lots of Shias come here,” explained Imtiyaz. Also Sunnis and Sufis,
I learned: an easy mingling of Muslims of all kinds.
My driver asked if I wanted to do what all the other pilgrims do and
visit the chillah ghar (“retreat-house”)—the cave where the saint Abdul
Latif used to meditate and pray.
I hesitated, feeling conspicuous—no other foreigners were to be
seen—and remembering the unpleasantness at the bookshop. But the
mood here was relaxed and I said sure.
I’m glad I did. It was a pleasant hour’s hike to the cave, uphill over
stony uneven ground, with hot sunlight, a strong cooling breeze, and the
highrise blocks of Islamabad below us in the distance. A steady stream of
pilgrims, preceding us and following, made their way to the cave. Every-
one I spoke to—and many people were eager to chat—was friendly.
With the exception of the monkeys.
Imtiyaz was ahead of me on the trail, his head turned, warning me
about the thievish wildlife—creatures that might jump from the pathside
bushes and snatch my sunglasses or camera—when a three-foot-tall
monkey blocked our path and grabbed a fistful of my friend’s shirttail. It
did nothing else, just stood there and looked up at Imtiyaz and gripped
his tunic hard. My driver did his best to look stern and growled the Urdu
for Scram—Chelo—but the thief wouldn’t budge.
Imtiyaz sighed and reached into his pocket and pulled out a waxed-
cardboard box of fruit juice he’d been saving for himself.
Acceptable baksheesh: the monkey snatched the box and let Imtiyaz
go and bounded aside. It bit into the box and tipped back its head and
chugged the juice down.
At the hill’s summit I watched pilgrims crowd into the saint’s cave and
thought: This is the old Islam, a faith of rock and soil, rooted in the local
landscape, a comfortable blend of ancient Hindu and Muslim practices.
But some can’t live with this kind of Islam. A year after my visit, in
May 2005, a suicide bomber walked up to the mosque and detonated
himself inside the Bari Imam shrine. 19 persons dead, nearly 70
wounded. News analysts noted that the attack was timed to coincide with
“an annual festival at the shrine that brings together Shiite and Sunni
followers of Islam.” Shia survivors of the blast wailed, “This is the work
of the enemy of Husain.”1 But it might be more precise to say: This was
the work of those who want to polarize denominations and break apart
the religious commingling that once characterized Pakistan’s traditional
forms of Islam.
1. Somini Sengupta and Salman Masood, “Blast Kills 19 at Pakistani Shrine

During Muslim Festival,” The New York Times, May 28, 2005.
1
Historical Background:
Shia Theology and the Death of the Imam Husain
Before discussing the status of sectarian politics in present-day Pakistan,
it’s worth summarizing the events of fourteen centuries ago that inspired
the Shia denomination of Islam.
Shiism arose from a political dispute concerning leadership of the
ummah (the “community of believers”) after the prophet Muhammad’s
death (AD 632). Most Muslims accepted the notion that the caliph (the
Prophet’s successor as leader of the ummah) would be elected via a
process of consultation and voting among a council of Muslim elders.
Such Muslims were later identified by the name Sunni (i.e. those who
follow the sunnah or “exemplary custom and lifestyle” of Muhammad).
Sunni Muslims today constitute 85% of the world’s Islamic population.
A minority of Muslims, however, supported the candidacy of Ali ibn Abi
Talib, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law (Ali married Muhammad’s
daughter Fatima). This minority became known as Shi’at Ali, “the parti-
sans of Ali,” or simply the Shia.2
Ali ruled briefly as caliph but only after three other men from among
the Sahaba (the Prophet’s “Companions,” who supported Muhammad in
the dangerous early days of Islam) had been selected successively to rule.
A number of the Sahaba had contested Ali’s right to the caliphate. After
his death in 661 Ali’s supporters transferred their loyalty to his sons, first
Hasan, and then, after Hasan’s death, to the younger son Husain. Shias
developed a theory of hereditary leadership based on family kinship
linked to the prophet Muhammad, restricting the role of ruler to a line of
Imams or spiritual leaders descended from Ali (revered as the first Imam)
and Fatima.
Most Shias today throughout the world adhere to the Ithna-‘Ashari
(“Twelver”) form of Shiism. Twelver Shiism is the officially recognized
state-sponsored faith of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As the name
implies, Twelver Shias acknowledge a succession of twelve Imams,
beginning with Ali and ending with Muhammad al-Muntazar (the
“awaited” or hidden Imam, who Twelvers say went into occultation in
the ninth century and will return one day as the Mahdi—“the one rightly
guided by God”—to purify the world and usher in Judgment Day). Shias
believe these twelve Imams share with the prophet Muhammad and his
daughter Fatima the quality of being ma’sum (sinless, infallible, and
2. For further information on early Islamic history and the rise of Shia Islam, see
David Pinault, The Shiites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 4-26.
1
divinely protected against error). In Pakistan as throughout most of the

Islamic world, Muslims use the term Shia to designate the Twelver form
of Shiism. Other, numerically smaller, Shia denominations survive today
—such as the Alawites (also called Nusairis) of Syria, and the Ismailis
(also called Agha Khanis), who live in Pakistan’s Northern Areas and in
diaspora communities throughout the world—but for reasons having to
do with politics and charges of doctrinal heterodoxy, many Muslims
refuse to consider Alawites or Ismailis as Muslims at all. In this discus-
sion I use the term Shia to refer to the dominant Twelver denomination.
Shiism evolved from a political orientation to a religious worldview in
the aftermath of the battle of Karbala (AD 680). The events of Karbala
are recounted annually during Shia rituals throughout the month of
Muharram and can be summarized as follows. A tyrant named Yazid ibn
Mu’awiya became caliph and tried to coerce an oath of allegiance from
Ali’s surviving son Husain. Rather than acknowledge an unjust ruler as
caliph, Husain rode forth from Arabia with a small group of family
members and warriors across the desert to Iraq, where he planned to lead
Shia rebels in the city of Kufa in a revolt against Yazid.
Husain never reached Kufa. At a site in the Iraqi desert named Karbala
(today the most important Shia pilgrimage shrine in the world), Yazid’s
soldiers intercepted and surrounded Husain’s force. The enemy besieged
Husain’s camp for several days, inflicting torments of thirst on the
Imam’s family. They hoped to make Husain surrender and acknowledge
Yazid’s reign. Husain chose death instead. His battlefield martyrdom
occurred on Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram (the focal point of Shia
lamentation rituals annually, and a national holiday in Pakistan and
India).
Although a defeat for Shia political hopes, the battle of Karbala is
understood today as a spiritual victory. Shia theologians of the pre-
modern era argued that Husain’s battlefield death involved voluntary
self-sacrifice, an act of martyrdom in exchange for which God granted
Husain powers of intercession in paradise on behalf of sinful believers.
Access to Husain’s intercession is earned through annual rituals of
commemoration during Muharram. In Pakistan (as in other Muslim
regions where there are substantial Shia populations) Muharram rituals
traditionally include some or all of the following components: (1) the
majlis or lamentation gathering at shrines where preachers describe in
detail the sufferings of the Karbala martyrs so as to elicit weeping and
other signs of grief from the congregation; (2) public street processions,
in which mourners cluster around a riderless horse called Zuljenah (“the
winged one”), a stallion representing the steed once ridden at Karbala by
Husain; (3) the performance of matam, a communal, ritualized, and very
1
physical manifestation of grief for the Karbala martyrs, ranging from

hath ka matam (repetitive breast-beating with the palm of the hand, done
to the rhythm of chanted lamentation poems) to zanjiri matam (the
phrase literally means matam involving chains, but the term is often used
more generally to mean “bloody matam” or self-flagellation with razors,
chains, and knives); (4) tabarra, public denunciation or disparagement of
those Sahaba—especially the first three caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, and
Uthman—who after Muhammad’s death became Ali’s rivals for power
and blocked the Prophet’s heirs and descendants from achieving the
leadership that was theirs by hereditary birthright.3 In some localities
Shia leaders have recently curbed tabarra in the interest of sectarian
reconciliation; but Pakistani Shias I interviewed asserted that the practice
continues at many Muharram gatherings.
Sunni response to these rituals has often been very negative, especially
with regard to tabarra (as it involves dishonoring the Sahaba, whom
Sunnis revere) and matam (especially its bloodier manifestations, since
self-flagellation violates Sunni notions of public decorum and ritual
purity). To this day militant Sunni organizations in Pakistan focus
precisely on such points of ritual in justifying anti-Shia violence.
Traditional Shia theology insists, however, that lamentation rituals—
whether weeping or self-scourging—provide access to the intercession
granted Husain by God. But there is also a sociological dimension to
Muharram mourning. Shias I interviewed in Pakistan (and in the follow-
ing point they echoed comments I had heard from Shias in India) empha-
sized the importance of performing their rituals in public, for the express
purpose of asserting Shia communal presence and Shia solidarity.
It’s hard to overstate the assertive quality of public Shia rituals in
Sunni-majority Pakistan. Thousands of mourners march in procession
through the streets and bring traffic to a halt for hours. Hundreds of par-
ticipants beat their chests in unison, obeying the rhythm of lamentation
poems blaring from loudspeakers mounted on trucks and rickshaws.
Zealots scourge themselves with flails and leave paths of blood along the
way.
The controversial and (from the Sunni perspective) repugnant quality
of certain Shia rituals only reinforces the fact that Muharram practices
can serve to mark out sectarian boundaries and maintain separate com-
munal identities. As we will see, Iranian leaders have tried to rein in the
practice of bloody matam; but in Pakistan such attempts have met
considerable resistance.
3. David Pinault, Horse of Karbala: Muslim Devotional Life in India (New

York: Palgrave, 2001), 11-27.
1
Sectarian violence in Pakistan:

The Political Background
Despite sporadic confrontations during Muharram, Shia–Sunni relations
in Pakistan were relatively good during the nation’s first thirty years of
existence, from 1947 until the late 1970s. Founders of Pakistan such as
Muhammad Ali Jinnah had envisioned their country as a homeland for
Muslims but never attempted to impose Islamic law on its citizens. This
facilitated sectarian relations among Muslims, as no one Muslim denomi-
nation was allowed to impose its interpretation of Islam on the state.
The situation changed in 1977 when General Zia ul-Haq seized power.
To legitimize his authority and gain favor with prominent ulema (Mus-
lim religious scholars), Zia in 1979 introduced an Islamization program
to make Hanafi Sunni fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) the law of the land
and instituted the Hudood (Islamic penalties) Ordinances (legislation
mandating public punishments such as scourging for various offenses).
Zia’s program entailed the universal imposition of aspects of Sunni fiqh
(most notably the government’s mandatory collection of zakat or “char-
ity taxes”) to which Pakistani Shias objected (Shias make such payments
to charitable institutions rather than to the government).
To defend their communal identity in the face of Zia’s program Shia
ulema and other Shia leaders created the Tehrik-e Nifaz-e Fiqh-e Jafria
(TNFJ, “the movement for the implementation of Shia law”). TNFJ
spearheaded a movement that forced Zia to exempt Pakistani Shias from
zakat payments to the government. Additionally, he agreed “not to
impose the laws of any one fiqh on the followers of another fiqh.” TNFJ
remained focused on Pakistani domestic politics until Arif Husain al-
Husaini became its leader in 1984. Trained at madrasas in Iran and a
student of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Husaini transformed TNFJ’s
orientation so as to align it with the goals of Khomeini’s “Islamic revolu-
tion” and the foreign policy of the Iranian Islamic Republic. Khomeini
emphasized taqrib (“rapprochement” between Sunnis and Shias) so as to
downplay theological and ritual differences among Muslims and achieve
tactical alliances with Sunni radical movements in the Arab Near East
and elsewhere in the Islamic world. Khomeini’s goal was to export the
Iranian revolution via the theme of “unity among Muslims.” This unity
was to be achieved through a rhetoric of anti-imperialism that focused on
the United States as the designated enemy of Islam.4
4. Afak Haydar, “The Politicization of the Shias and the Development of the
Tehrik-e Nifaz-e Fiqh-e Jafaria in Pakistan,” in Charles H. Kennedy, ed., Pakistan:
1992 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 75-81; Pinault, Horse of Karbala, 165,
199.
1
After al-Husaini’s murder in 1988, leadership of TNFJ passed to a

cleric named Allama Seyyed Sajid Ali Naqvi. Although TNFJ changed
its name to Tehrik-e Jafria Pakistan (TJP, “the Pakistan Shia move-
ment”), Naqvi has remained the group’s leader to the present day and has
developed his predecessor’s pro-Iranian ideology. (In recent years the
TJP’s name changed yet again, a point to which I’ll return.)
Naqvi is known for a Khomeinist worldview that employs pan-Islamic
and revolutionary themes. In a 1992 interview with the scholar Afak
Haydar, Naqvi asserted that his organization “is not and does not want to
be a sectarian group.” Nevertheless the TJP has also worked to maintain
its reputation as the primary defender of Pakistani Shias and has been
implicated in clashes with Sunnis in various parts of Pakistan. In par-
ticular the TJP splinter group Sipah-e Muhammad (“the soldiers of
Muhammad”) has been notorious for violent assaults on Pakistani
Sunnis. Both the TJP and Sipah-e Muhammad were banned in January
2002 as part of Musharraf’s crackdown on sectarian groups, although (as
will be seen) this hasn’t kept Naqvi from exploiting recent international
political events as a way of keeping his name in the headlines.5
One of the primary opponents of such Shia groups has been the SSP:
Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan (“the soldiers of the Prophet’s Companions”).
Although outlawed since 2002 (as will be discussed below), the SSP’s
ideology continues to influence sectarian politics to this day. Its roots go
back to Deobandism. The latter is an Islamic reform movement that
arose within India in 1867 as a response to British domination of the
subcontinent. It advocated a renewal of the faith via a return to Islam in
its earliest and purest form. This involved a program of traditionalist
religious education, personal ethical rigor together with the strictest
possible moral accountability, and the banning of popular religious ritu-
als that Deobandis condemned as unislamic. Deobandi scholars con-
demned both Shia Islam and many practices linked to Sufism. In Pakistan
Deobandi power has grown under the aegis of the JUI, the Jamiat-e
Ulema-e Islam (“the association of religious scholars of Islam”). The
JUI’s influence is due in part to an extensive network of madrasas that
has offered a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam to thousands of
students, most notably the Taliban.6
5. Haydar, “The Politicization of the Shias,” 85; Anwar H. Syed, “The Sunni–
Shia Conflict in Pakistan,” in Hafeez Malik, ed., Pakistan: Founders’ Aspirations
and Today’s Realities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 254.
6. Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant
Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2000), 26, 89.
1
The SSP is described by Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid as an

“extreme splinter faction of the JUI.” The SSP’s founder, Maulana Haq
Nawaz Jhangvi, established it in 1985 in part to counter the economic
power of Shia landlords who dominated much of the political landscape
in his home district of Jhang in the Punjab. As the SSP’s power grew
beyond the Punjab its ideology evolved into a worldview that Jhangvi
regarded as a comprehensive defense of Sunnism. This is reflected in the
group’s name: Sipah-e Sahaba, “the soldiers of the Prophet’s Compan-
ions.” The SSP regarded itself as the guardians of the reputation of the
Sahaba, especially the first three caliphs, who (as noted above) are
condemned by Shias via the practice of tabarra for having blocked Ali’s
path to the caliphate.7
The SSP pursued both theological and political confrontation with
Pakistan’s Shias. It agitated for “a purely Sunni state” in which Shias
would be “declared a non-Muslim minority in Pakistan.” In its propa-
ganda the SSP tried to undercut the pan-Islamic appeal of the Iranian
Republic, reminding Pakistani Sunni audiences of Khomeini’s Shia
background and drawing attention to those aspects of Shiism that could
be relied on to offend Sunnis.8
The SSP’s founder, Maulana Jhangvi, was murdered in 1990; Sunnis
blamed Shia opponents for the killing. The SSP’s militant wing, Lash-
kar-e Jhangvi (“the Jhangvi Army”), was named in honor of the slain
founder. The SSP’s subsequent leader (after the killing of Jhangvi’s
immediate successor), Maulana Muhammad A’zam Tariq, built a reputa-
tion for his skill in headline-generating confrontations (until he himself
was murdered in 2003). In 1992, as a member of the National Assembly,
Tariq attempted to introduce a bill labeled Namoos-e Sahaba (“the honor
of the Prophet’s Companions”). Its goal was to extend Ordinance 295,
the current blasphemy law (which mandates death for anyone dishonor-
ing the prophet Muhammad’s name), so as to inflict capital punishment
on individuals found guilty of insulting the Prophet’s Companions—
clearly an attempt to forbid the Shia practice of tabarra. As one Shia
critic complained, “We look at this bill as an attempt to bar the Muhar-
ram ceremonies.”9
7. Rashid, Taliban, 92; Afak Haydar, “The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan,” in Malik,

ed., Pakistan, 263-86.
8. Aamer Ahmed Khan, “Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan,” The Herald (Karachi) 25.6
(June 1994): 35; Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “Sectarianism in Pakistan: The Radi-
calization of Shii and Sunni Identities,” Modern Asian Studies 32 (1998): 699-705.
9. Aamer Ahmed Khan, “The Blasphemy Law: The Bigot’s Charter?,” The
Herald (Karachi) 25.5 (May 1994): 44-46; Zaman, “Sectarianism in Pakistan,” 702
n. 41.
1
The tragic part of all this is that in pre-Partition India (and in at least
some parts of the subcontinent even today), Muharram was not only a
Shia religious observance but also a tamasha (spectacle) and social event
in which Hindus and Muslims often mingled companionably and in
which some non-Shias participated to a greater or lesser extent.
Among the factors contributing to the politicizing of Pakistan’s
Muharram was the dislocation of Pakistani labor migrants in the 1970s
and 1980s. Thousands of unskilled and semi-skilled workers from rural
parts of the country migrated to the Persian Gulf states in search of jobs.
They returned with their earnings not to their villages of origin but to
Pakistan’s urban centers, a movement involving over 10% of the
country’s population. These deracinated migrants no longer found so
appealing the old regionally-based Islam I encountered at the Bari Imam
shrine—the landscape-oriented faith of caves and saints’ tombs and
sacred trees. Deracinated Muslims, facing the challenges of modernity in
unfamiliar city settings, were susceptible to evangelizing by missionaries
of a new and universalist “urban, text-based Islam,” an Islam all too
ready to brand the traditional folk rituals of the countryside as Hindu-
tainted and kafir. Scholar Muhammad Qasim Zaman comments, “The
nerve centers of this ‘new’ Islam are not Sufi shrines but madrasas and
sectarian organizations.”10
Religious Apartheid and Its Implications for Pakistani Shias:

The Case of the Ahmadiyya Community
Sectarian-minded Sunnis who later joined the SSP and targeted Shias got
their start in the 1970s, as Zaman points out, by persecuting a minority
population even more vulnerable than the Shias: Pakistan’s Ahmadiyya
community. Since its origin in British India, the Ahmadis have been
condemned by fellow Muslims for denying the doctrine of khatam-e
nubuwwa (“the seal of prophethood”: the belief, shared by Shias and
Sunnis, that Muhammad was the last prophet and there can be no other
prophet after him). The Ahmadis ascribe the title of Muslim prophet to a
nineteenth-century preacher in the Punjab, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. In
1974 Sunni agitators succeeded in pressuring Pakistan’s legislature into
officially labeling the Ahmadis non-Muslim. Future SSP members also
helped formulate legal provisions in 1984 that penalized any Ahmadis
that might try to assert their faith publicly.11
10. Zaman, “Sectarianism in Pakistan,” 715.

11. Avril A. Powell, “Ahmadiyya,” in Richard C. Martin, ed., Encyclopedia of
Islam and the Muslim World (New York: Macmillan, 2004), vol. 1, 30-32; Zaman,
“Sectarianism in Pakistan,” 691-92.
1
Adherents of the sect whom I interviewed in 2002 and 2005 described

the systematic government-approved persecution they face. One Ahmadi
I met was a minority-rights advocate who approached me at a reception
after a lecture I gave in Islamabad. Fearful of being overheard in public
discussing volatile topics, he sought me out later at the guesthouse where
I stayed.
The first thing he said to me in our interview: “We Ahmadis consider
ourselves good Muslims, as good as any Sunni or Shia. We observe the 5
Pillars, the same as they do.” He acknowledged his sect differs from the
others in considering Mirza Ghulam Ahmad a prophet. “But that
shouldn’t exclude us from Islam.” As we talked he crossed the room to
check no one was listening at the door.
“If you’re an Ahmadi,” he continued, “you’re forbidden by law to call
yourself Muslim. You can’t call your mosque a mosque; you can’t issue
the azan [the Islamic call to prayer]; you can’t say al-salam ‘alaykum
[“Peace be upon you,” the salutation with which Muslims greet each
other worldwide].” Ahmadis that are caught using this greeting, he said,
are liable to prosecution under the blasphemy law. And in fact the
Human Rights Monitor report published by Pakistan’s Catholic Bishops
Conference indicates that approximately 20% of the blasphemy cases
recorded since 1987 have targeted Ahmadis.12
The restrictions imposed on Ahmadis include excruciatingly detailed
prohibitions that are startling in their vindictive small-mindedness.
According to my informants, Ahmadis are forbidden, for example, to
have printed on their business cards the basmala (the Quranic phrase
Bismi Allah al-rahman al-rahim, “In the name of Allah, the compas-
sionate, the merciful”). Such prohibitions are designed to segregate the
Ahmadis and stigmatize them as schismatic and heretical—a religious
apartheid that is neither merciful nor compassionate.13
Once the SSP–Deobandi ideologues succeeded in excommunicating
the Ahmadis, they set about trying to disenfranchise Pakistan’s Shias. In
1986 a Karachi-based mufti, Wali Hassan Tonki, published a fatwa
proclaiming that “the Shia are…outside the pale of Islam.” Tonki justi-
fied his decree in part by referring to the Shia concept of the imamate,
wherein the twelve Shia Imams, like the prophet Muhammad, are held to
be not only sinless and infallible but also mansus (divinely designated to
be leaders of the ummah). Therefore, reasoned Tonki, the Shias in effect
regard their Imams as post-Muhammadan prophets. He explicitly
12. Mani, Human Rights Monitor 2005, 38-52.

13. For documentation concerning the arrest of Ahmadis for using the phrase al-
salam ‘alaykum, see Mani, Human Rights Monitor 2005, 45.
1
equated the Shias with the Ahmadis in their alleged disregard for the
finality of Muhammad’s prophethood; therefore, like the Ahmadis, the
Shias, too, should be labeled non-Muslim. Another fatwa, this one issued
by Jamia Ashrafia, a Deobandi madrasa in Lahore, declared Shias to be
kafirs, arguing that Shia theology accords the first Imam, Ali, a rank
equal to that of Muhammad.14
In December 2005 I visited the Jamia Ashrafia and interviewed Hafez
As’ad Ubaid, a deputy administrator at the seminary who was also
running for local political office in the city of Lahore. He boasted of the
Ashrafia’s size and importance (9,000 students, he said; biggest madrasa
in the country) while denying his school’s Deobandi curriculum espoused
any kind of violence. With a politician’s adroitness he distanced himself
from the now-outlawed SSP but then disingenuously added that all
Muslims should be able to consider themselves sipah-e sahaba, “since
we should all think of ourselves as ‘Soldiers of the Companions,’ ready
to uphold the honor of Muhammad and his Sahaba.” He added that just
because a Muslim loved Muhammad and his Sahaba didn’t mean he
belonged to the SSP. He topped all this off by adding he was glad to
consider Sunnis and Shias alike to be Muslim.
Diplomatic double-talk, was the consensus among the friends who
accompanied me after we left the madrasa. Nice of him to admit Shias
are Muslim, laughed a Shia to whom I repeated the conversation. “But of
course Ubaid is careful what he says. He and his family are into politics
and are always aware they may need Shia votes in the next election.”
“We Will Make a Pile of Corpses”:

Links Between Pakistani Militant Groups and the Taliban
During the 1990s, SSP leader Muhammad A’zam Tariq helped align his
group with a pro-Taliban stance. This is not surprising, given the com-
mon Deobandi and anti-Shia ideological roots of both the Taliban and
the SSP. According to journalist Ahmed Rashid, “Thousands of SSP
members have fought alongside the Taliban,” and SSP militants partici-
pated in the massacre of Iranian Shia diplomats in the Afghan city of
Mazar-e Sharif in 1998.15
In 2001, less than three weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks,
the SSP’s leader drew crowds in Pakistan by threatening vengeance
against the U.S. if it dared to invade Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
14. Khaled Ahmed, “Pakistani Madrassas and Apostatisation of the Shia,”

Friday Times (Lahore), December 16, 2005.
1
15. Rashid, Taliban, 74, 92.
“For the third Friday in a row,” news sources reported on September 29,
2001, “pro-Taliban clerics in mosques across Pakistan orated against any
U.S. attack on Afghanistan. At Islamabad’s Red Mosque, about 3,000
people heard the leader of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan party, Azam [sic]
Tariq, warn of suicide bombings in the city if Pakistan helped the U.S. go
after bin Laden. ‘If Americans attack Afghanistan, we will make a pile of
corpses of the Americans by tying bombs to our bodies,’ he warned.”16
Immediately after the U.S.-led bombing campaign began on October
7, both the SSP and its ideological mentor the JUI became involved in
further protest rallies. According to the London-based newspaper The
Guardian,
Maulana Atta-ur Rehman, the newly appointed leader of Jamiat Ulema-e
Islam (JUI), one of the country’s most extreme religious groups, told
hundreds of supporters in Peshawar that it was their duty as Muslims to
turn against the government. “We will have an open war against Jews,
Christians, Israel, America, everyone,” he shouted to the cheering crowd…
“We condemn General Musharraf for supporting the Americans.”
Police in Pakistan placed Maulana Fazlur Rehman, co-chief of the JUI,

and SSP leader A’zam Tariq under house arrest. Both the SSP and its
affiliate Lashkar-e Jhangvi were included in the government’s ban on
militant sectarian organizations in 2002.17
I mentioned above the network of madrasas run by the Deobandi-
oriented JUI. Ahmed Rashid says of these schools and their instructors
that “Saudi funds and scholarships brought them closer to ultraconserva-
tive Wahhabism.” An analogous development is worth noting. In the
1990s Iran was reported to have provided funding and support for Shia
groups such as TNFJ/TJP. Thus, as scholar Anwar Syed remarked in a
study published in 2001, “Many Pakistani observers interpret the Shia–
Sunni conflict as a ‘proxy war’ between the Saudi and Iranian govern-
ments waged on their [Pakistan’s] soil.” In recent years, however, the
Islamic Republic of Iran—as we will see in a subsequent discussion—
has sought to increase its influence among Sunnis worldwide by capital-
izing on political conflicts where it feels Sunnis and Shias can unite in
fighting common non-Muslim adversaries that may be labeled enemies
of Islam.18
16. Mark McDonald and Juan Tamayo, “Taliban Unmoved by Pakistan

Delegation,” San Jose Mercury News, September 29, 2001.
17. Rory McCarthy, “Attack on Afghanistan: Hardline Clerics Call for National
Revolt,” The Guardian (London), October 10, 2001.
18. Ahmed Rashid, “The Taliban: Exporting Extremism,” Foreign Affairs 78.6
(1999): 26; Syed, “The Sunni–Shia Conflict in Pakistan,” 256.
1
Ritual Performance and Communal Identity:

Muharram Observances and Sectarian Controversies
in Lahore and Peshawar
My starting point for understanding Shia–Sunni relations in Pakistan was
the city of Lahore, where I began studying Shia rituals during the
Muharram season of March 2002. When I arrived, Shias and Sunnis alike
were still discussing the ban imposed by President Musharraf in January
2002 on various sectarian groups, including A’zam Tariq’s Sunni SSP
and Allama Naqvi’s Shia TJP.
Another development relevant to sectarian politics occurred several
months later with the formation of the Muttahida Majlis-e Amal (also
known as the MMA: “the United Action Forum”). A coalition of a half-
dozen ideologically variegated religious parties, the MMA includes
Deobandis, Barelvis, and Wahhabi sympathizers. They share in common
opposition to Musharraf’s policies. Despite the reputed anti-Shia bias of
at least some of the MMA membership, Allama Naqvi decided to join
this alliance. In the process Naqvi’s own organization underwent a name
change (the latest in a series of nomenclature shifts): his group became
the Tehrik-e Islami Pakistan, “the Pakistan Islamic Movement.” This
denominationally flavorless label is apparently calculated to minimize
sectarian friction within the MMA.
In October 2002 the MMA won elections in the NWFP and Baluchis-
tan and began implementing aspects of Islamic law in both provinces.
Lahore and the Punjab, however, escaped MMA domination. Lahori
Shias I interviewed claimed that their city’s freedom from the MMA’s
control makes it easier to celebrate Muharram without interference from
Islamist politicians.
As in Shia communities throughout the world, Muharram in Lahore is
characterized by the holding of majalis—lamentation gatherings in
which zakirs (preachers) recall the suffering of Husain and the other
Karbala martyrs. The majalis typically are held in the interior of
imambargahs (Shia shrines) or in the courtyards of private homes. In
Lahore nowadays each majlis tends to draw a congregation that is largely
Shia. Of more universal appeal is a ritual that dominates many of the
city’s streets for several days during Muharram: the Zuljenah jalus or
“Horse of Karbala” procession. As noted earlier, this is a public obser-
vance in which a riderless stallion is caparisoned to represent Zuljenah,
the horse that carried Husain into battle at Karbala. Each stallion used
in these processions is known as shabih-e Zuljenah (“the likeness of
Zuljenah”) and becomes a focus of popular devotion as it is led through
the streets.
1
The greatest concentration of public Muharram observances in Lahore

can be found in neighborhoods with substantial Shia populations,
especially Islampura (also called Krishannagar) and parts of the Anderun
Shahr (the walled “inner city” in the heart of Lahore, where numerous
monuments date back to the Moghul era), particularly Mochi Darvaza
and Heera Mandi. I found the densest clustering of Shia shrines in the
Old City neighborhood of Mochi Darvaza. Here is located one of
Lahore’s best-known imambargahs, Nisar Haveli. This is the starting
point for the city’s most famous Muharram observance: the bara
Zuljenah jalus (“the great Zuljenah procession”). This jalus lasts nearly
twenty-four hours, from ten o’clock at night on the eve of Ashura until
well after sunset the following day. It begins at Nisar Haveli and
concludes at Karbala Gamay Shah, an important Shia devotional center
located on the Lower Mall not far from the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh.
Involving thousands of participants and onlookers, this procession
traverses much of the Old City and nearby neighborhoods, halting along
the way for prayers and lamentation rituals at dozens of Shia shrines.
Among the primary organizers of the Nisar Haveli-Karbala Gamay
Shah procession is a prominent Lahori Shia family known as the
Qizilbash. This family owns a half-dozen stallions that it makes available
to local Shia communities for Zuljenah processions throughout the city.
The horses are stabled at what is called the “Nawab Qizilbash palace” on
Empress Road. In December 2002 I met Shia community leader Agha
Reza Ali Qizilbash, who told me that his family obtains their stallions
from the Pakistani army horse depot in Sargodha. His great-grandfather,
he told me, established a waqf (charitable endowment) to cover the costs
of stabling the animals as well as funding processions, majalis, and other
Muharram activities.
Agha Qizilbash outlined for me his family history. Originally from
Azerbaijan, the Qizilbash clan served the Safavid shahs of Iran as
soldiers. A branch of the Qizilbash has been resident in Lahore since the
1800s. For over 150 years, Agha Qizilbash told me, his family has been
sponsoring Zuljenah processions in Lahore. From Lahore, he asserted,
the practice of holding Zuljenah parades spread all over India. He also
pointed out that the Nisar Haveli imambargah that is so important for the
Ashura jalus is the property of the Qizilbash family.
But the bara jalus sponsored by the Qizilbash clan is by no means the
only such procession held in Lahore. The fifth to the tenth of Muharram
is a time when dozens of Horse of Karbala processions take place
throughout the city. The next biggest procession after the Nisar Haveli
Ashura jalus is the Zuljenah parade held in Islampura that lasts
1
throughout the day on the ninth of Muharram, drawing thousands of

mourners and onlookers.
More typical, however, are the dozens of smaller-scale Zuljenah pro-
cessions that are limited to individual neighborhoods throughout Lahore.
Many such marches, each lasting only two or three hours, are held during
the period from the fifth of Muharram to Ashura. To give an idea of the
popularity of these neighborhood-based parades: in the course of a single
afternoon, on the eighth of Muharram (March 23, 2002), I witnessed in
quick succession four different Horse of Karbala processions, in Anarkali
Bazaar, in the Heera Mandi quarter of the Walled City, in Islampura, and
finally in the courtyard of the shrine of Gulistan-e Zehra.
In Lahore as in other South Asian cities, the Horse of Karbala proces-
sions are frequently linked with rituals involving petitionary prayer. The
practice is illustrated in a Zuljenah jalus I witnessed on the eighth of
Muharram, 2002, in the Heera Mandi quarter of the Walled City (Heera
Mandi, the “Diamond Market,” is a good place for watching Muharram
rituals, in part because many of the tava’if—prostitutes—who populate
this neighborhood are Shias. These women are lavish Muharram spon-
sors, I was told, and they pay for spectacular lamentation performances
at this time of year as a way of demonstrating their piety).
On this particular afternoon I watched as a group of young men
dressed in black tunics led a riderless stallion through the narrow streets.
Outfitted splendidly, it wore a saddlecloth of black velvet threaded with
gold brocade. From the saddle’s pommel had been slung a sword and
shield representing the weapons once wielded by the Imam Husain. Atop
the saddle was fixed a gold chhatri (an ornamental parasol used to honor
royalty—a custom borrowed from Hindu India). The animal’s mane and
ears had been carefully hennaed; from its bridle dangled silver pendants.
Activity swirled about the horse as the procession advanced. In front
marched boys who sang nauhajat (Muharram lamentation poems),
reciting the words from mimeographed sheets in their hands. A man
passed out copies of the nauha-text to the crowd. Bystanders joined the
marchers in hath ka matam (the most common type of Muharram
lamentation gesture: rhythmic chest-beating with the palm of the hand,
performed in time to the nauha-chant). Vendors kept pace with the horse,
selling garlands of red carnations. Buyers draped the garlands over the
saddle and chhatri and then pressed their hands to the horse’s muzzle, its
neck, flank, whatever part of its body they could reach in the throng.
“Savab ke lie,” came the explanation when I asked about this: to earn
religious merit. Parents with young children in their arms stepped
forward and offered ten-rupee notes to one of the mujavirs (custodians
1
accompanying the horse). The mujavirs then halted Zuljenah while one
child after another was passed beneath the horse’s belly. “For the sake of
the children’s health and wellbeing,” I was told.19
What I witnessed that afternoon seems to be one of the most typical
forms of Muharram devotion in Lahore: a neighborhood procession.
“Lahore is a city of shrines and pilgrimage places,” as one resident told
me. “That’s why the Deobandis and other tablighi types don’t have so
much success here.” (He was referring to puritan missionary-reformers
who want to “purify” Islam of any practices that smack of paganism.)
And Lahore in fact is crammed with shrines honoring assorted miracle-
workers, holy women, Sufi saints, and martyred Imams. People go to
such places to pray for intercession, healing, and blessing. The Zuljenah
jalus is so popular because during Muharram a “likeness” (shabih) of the
sacred goes out among the people. The shrine becomes mobile, trans-
portable, accessible for every neighborhood and street corner. Wellbeing
and the opportunity to earn religious merit come within the reach of all.
A neighborhood Zuljenah jalus is frequently sponsored by a local
matami guruh (“lamentation association”). These are associations
typically involving Shias who organize rituals in honor of the Karbala
martyrs during Muharram. The Heera Mandi jalus described above was
sponsored by a matami guruh called Anjuman-e Safinat Ahl al-Bayt
(“the Association of the Ark of the Prophet’s Household”). The proces-
sion’s organizer, a man named Shahid Jafri, told me that this anjuman is
headquartered in the Walled City neighborhood of Sayyid Mitha Bazaar,
near the Lahori Gate. Sayyid Mitha had been the starting point for the
afternoon’s jalus, which traversed several neighborhoods within the
Walled City.
Lahore has dozens of matami guruhs. Many of them draw their
membership from the immediate locality in which they are based, and
they confine their rituals to their own neighborhoods. The membership of
other matam groups is determined by ethnicity or place of origin. I heard
of a guruh whose members trace their ethnic origin to Iran; the members
of other groups come from families that originate in specific parts of the
Punjab.
While in Lahore I met several members of the Anjuman-e Imamia
Lucknavi. This group’s headquarters is in the “Mecca Colony” neighbor-
hood of the city’s Gulbarg district, but its members reside in various
parts of Lahore. The men belonging to the Anjuman-e Imamia have in
19. For similar Zuljenah rituals in Ladakh (Jammu and Kashmir), see Pinault,
Horse of Karbala, 109-80.
1
common a background as muhajirs: their families emigrated to Pakistan

from the Indian city of Lucknow.
A member of this Lucknavi association, Nasir Husain Zaydi, took me
to numerous Muharram observances in Lahore. On the eighth of Muhar-
ram, 2002, we attended a majlis followed by a Zuljenah procession at
one of Lahore’s largest Shia shrines, Gulistan-e Zehra. I estimated that
there were over a thousand persons in attendance that night. Nasir’s anju-
man was present (seventy men, he said, nearly the whole membership),
and they helped lead the crowd in hath ka matam. For Nasir, as for many
Lucknavi anjuman members, this was very much a family affair. He
performed matam in the company of his father and his ten-year-old son.
(Public activities in such matami guruhs, as was the case with compara-
ble groups I studied in Indian locales such as Hyderabad and Ladakh, are
largely male occupations.)
Many Shias perform matam regardless of whether they belong
formally to a matam group or not. What distinguishes the matami guruhs
is their degree of organization and planning. Typically they arrange for
several dozen members (or more) to lead a congregation in performing
matam in unison. Sometimes they also provide a nauha-khan whose
chant sets the cadence for the rhythmic chest-pounding of communal
hath ka matam.
More controversial is a ritual practiced by many matami guruhs on the
ninth and tenth of Muharram (the foremost holy days of the season):
zanjir zani (also called zanjiri matam)—self-flagellation involving the
use of cutting implements. Lahore’s Zuljenah processions on the ninth
and tenth of Muharram are occasions when hundreds of men will follow
the lead of the matami guruhs in performing zanjir zani.
Elsewhere I have documented the justification for zanjiri matam
offered by Shia mourners in India: the desire to honor the Karbala
martyrs and demonstrate love for the Prophet’s family; the hope of earn-
ing shafa’ah (intercession and forgiveness of sins in Paradise) by sharing
vicariously in the martyrs’ sufferings; and a sense of pride in being
recognized publicly and communally as Shias.20 In Lahore I encountered
similar justifications.
And as in India, many Lahori Shias told me they were aware of a
fatwa issued in 1994 by the “supreme spiritual guide” of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In this decree Khamenei
declared “unlawful and forbidden” any act of matam performed in public
involving the use of weapons to shed one’s blood. The primary rationale
offered by Khamenei in forbidding this practice was the harm that might
1
20. Pinault, The Shiites, 99-108.
befall the image of Shia Islam if outsiders saw Muharram mourners

scourging themselves. “Propagandists of the Satan of Imperialism,”
claimed Khamenei, might point to bloody matam in order to “present
both Islam and Shiism as an institution of superstition.”21
Unstated by Khamenei in this decree is another concern: a desire on
the part of Iran’s leadership, dating back to the time of Ruhollah Kho-
meini, to achieve tactical alliances where possible with Sunni-oriented
revolutionary groups in the Arab Middle East and elsewhere in the
Islamic world. As noted above, this Khomeinist political orientation
(which Khamenei has also pursued) is reflected in a theological policy of
taqrib: minimizing doctrinal and ritual differences between the Sunni
and Shia forms of Islam. Given the fact that the bloodier forms of matam
have been a source of offense to Sunni polemicists for generations, it is
not surprising that Khamenei and other members of Iran’s clerical
hierarchy have tried to discourage such practices by declaring their
public performance “unlawful and forbidden.”22
Khamenei’s 1994 fatwa is certainly known to many Pakistani Shias
today. Officers of the Anjuman-e Imamia Lucknavi and other Lahori
matami guruhs took the initiative in mentioning the fatwa to me when I
asked them whether self-flagellation was controversial in their nation.
Local newspapers, they said, had covered the topic extensively when
Khamenei first issued his decree. Not that this Iranian fatwa had had
much effect in Pakistan, one Anjuman-e Imamia officer said to me:
zanjir zani is as popular as ever in Lahore.
In my conversations with Pakistani Shias, not only in Lahore, but also
in Peshawar and Islamabad, I detected considerable ambivalence con-
cerning the implications of this fatwa emanating from the Islamic
Republic of Iran. On the one hand, many Shias in Pakistan admire Iran
and consider it the leader of the Shia community worldwide. I met a few
Shias in Lahore who had made a pilgrimage to Iran to visit the tombs of
the Imams at cities such as Mashhad. They were proud of their accom-
plishment. Several Shia maulvis (mullahs) I met in Lahore and Peshawar
(especially those clerics who seemed influenced by Khomeinist ideol-
ogy) claimed that numerous Pakistanis acknowledge Khamenei as their
marja’ (authoritative spiritual guide). They added that Pakistan’s most
prominent Shia leader, Allama Sajid Ali Naqvi, president of the TJP, is
considered Khamenei’s representative in Pakistan.
21. Seyyed ‘Ali Khamenei, ‘Ashura: bayyanat-e rehbar-e mu’azzam-e inqilab-e

islami (Qom: Daftar-e tablighat-e islami, 1994), 21-22.
22. Emmanuel Sivan, “Sunni Radicalism in the Middle East and the Iranian
Revolution,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 21 (1989): 1-30.
1
On the other hand, vague admiration for Iran as the leader of the world
community of Shiism doesn’t seem to translate into compliance with
fatwas when it comes to on-the-ground realities in cities like Lahore. Part
of the reason for this has to do with what scholar Nikki Keddie calls
“Pakistan’s virtual lack of the organized clerical structure which has been
so important in modern Iranian Shi’ism.”23 Of the Shias I interviewed in
2002, many—especially the less-educated—seemed altogether unfamil-
iar even with the concept of the marja’.
This impression was confirmed in an interview I had in December
2002 with Khaled Ahmed, associate editor of Lahore’s Friday Times.
Khamenei, he asserted, doesn’t wield much influence as a marja’ among
ordinary Shias in Pakistan. “Pakistani Shias tend to identify with individ-
ual favorite zakirs [preachers] in their home neighborhoods,” he said,
“rather than with a big leader such as Sajid Naqvi or Khamenei.”
But there are other and even more compelling reasons why Khame-
nei’s fatwa has found little acceptance in Pakistan. One reason was
presented to me by Seyyed Muhammad Abbas, a senior vice president at
a bank in Karachi. We met in March 2002 when I visited the Imambar-
gah-e Gulistan-e Zehra in Lahore. He is one of the custodians there.
Annually he takes time off from his bank job in Karachi to help with the
rituals at Gulistan-e Zehra. Having heard of the intensity with which
zanjir zani is performed at his shrine, I asked Seyyed Abbas about
Khamenei’s 1994 fatwa. He certainly knew about the decree but asserted
that it hadn’t discouraged traditional practice at Gulistan-e Zehra. “All’s
fair in love and war,” he smiled, “and this [zanjir zani] is a matter of
love. So people will continue to disregard the fatwa.”
“This is a matter of love.” With these words my informant echoed the
opinion of numerous Shias I had interviewed in both Pakistan and India.
They used similar language to justify Muharram flagellation. For them
the bloodier forms of matam are a way of expressing their love for the
Imam Husain and the other members of Ahl al-Bayt (the Prophet’s family).
The issue resurfaced for me several months later, in December 2002,
when I was invited to a reception at the University of Peshawar after my
not-so-successful lecture on Shia–Sunni reconciliation. One corner of the
reception was dominated by a dozen faculty members of the Shaykh
Zayed Islamic Studies Center that I mentioned at the beginning of this
chapter. As I noted earlier, the Zayed Center professors I met were
Sunnis who openly voiced an anti-Shia bias.
23. Nikki R. Keddie, “Shi’ism and Change: Secularism and Myth,” in L. Clarke,
ed., Shi’ite Heritage: Essays on Classical and Modern Traditions (Binghamton, NY:
Global Publications, 2001), 400.
1
Knowing of my interest in Muharram rituals, Qibla Ayaz (the Zayed

Center’s chairman) introduced me to a Shia who was talking in a very
friendly way with several members of the center’s faculty. This man,
Seyyed Abd al-Husain Ra’is al-Sadat, is director of the Iranian Cultural
Center in Peshawar. The conversation that followed showed me that Mr.
Ra’is al-Sadat shares a certain amount of ideological ground with the
tabligh-minded Sunnis of the Islamic Studies Center.
I discovered this because shortly after our introduction another man
approached me, someone I’ll call Dr. Akhtar. He is a Shia and a profes-
sor in the history department at the University of Peshawar. When Dr.
Akhtar joined our conversation, several of the Zayed Center faculty were
complaining about what they called the “ignorance” of Pakistan’s Shia
population. These “ignorant Shias,” they said, persist in cutting them-
selves even though they’ve received a fatwa forbidding the practice from
Khamenei, their own leader.
At this point Dr. Akhtar spoke up. He cited a precedent for matam
from the life of the prophet Muhammad involving the battle of Uhud
(AD 625), where the Prophet had been struck in the mouth by a rock and
lost one of his teeth. One of the Prophet’s followers was so overcome
with sympathy when he saw this happen that he stooped and seized a
stone and struck himself in the mouth so as to feel the Prophet’s suffer-
ing. The Prophet had not condemned this man’s action, implying that
self-inflicted sympathetic pain is permissible. “It’s a question of emo-
tion,” argued Dr. Akhtar. “Shias are overcome with emotion when they
do zanjiri matam. The intensity of their feeling for Ahl al-Bayt earns
them savab [religious merit] when they do this.”
Courageous, I thought, to speak up like this before such a crowd. The
Zayed Center professors all turned to Ra’is al-Sadat, obviously eager to
hear what the Iranian Cultural Center’s director would say in response to
a fellow Shia. I guessed that he would side with the tabligh-crowd for the
sake of furthering Khomeinist taqrib. I was right.
“Unfortunately,” he began, “most Shias in this country lack education.
That is why they disobey the instructions of Seyyed Khamenei.” The
Iranian Cultural Center’s director went on to justify the 1994 fatwa by
pointing out that all the mazhabs (denominations) of Islam, whether
Sunni, Shia, etc., agree in forbidding any action that would cause harm to
one’s own body. “Except,” he concluded, “for actions whereby one dies
in a martyrdom operation while killing kuffar [unbelievers].”
When I returned to Lahore the following week I summarized this
exchange during a conversation with Shia community leaders. One of
them (a wealthy businessman who is most definitely not a member of
any clerical hierarchy) reacted with considerable irritation. “Iranians.
1
They act as if the Quran had been revealed to them instead of to the
Arabs. They have no business telling us what to do.”
I found evidence of this disagreement within the Shia community on a
number of occasions. During my trip to Peshawar in December 2002 I
visited the Shahid ‘Arif al-Husaini Madrasa, which is located in a part of
Peshawar called Faisal Colony. The madrasa is named in honor of the
Pakistani mullah who aligned his country’s Shia TNFJ/TJP party with
the pan-Islamic goals of Khomeini’s revolution-for-export and the
foreign policy of the Iranian Islamic Republic. Husaini was murdered by
Sunni militants in 1988 (hence the title shahid, “martyr,” in the Peshawar
madrasa’s name).24
The school’s ideological orientation is apparent as one approaches. Its
entrance archway presents flanking eight-foot-high wall portraits of
Khomeini and the martyred Husaini, together with an Urdu translation of
a statement attributed to Khomeini to the effect that he was stricken with
grief when he heard of Husaini’s murder.
After Husaini’s death, leadership of the TJP passed to Allama Sajid
Ali Naqvi. But it was not Naqvi that I was seeking out on this visit. The
director of Peshawar’s ‘Arif al-Husaini academy is Allama Javad Hadi, a
Pakistani cleric whom many individuals described to me as Naqvi’s chief
rival. This was a subject, however, that Allama Hadi seemed unwilling to
discuss. Concerning Naqvi he said only that the two of them had once
been in the TJP but that they had gone their separate ways in1997.
But Allama Hadi proved more than willing to enlighten me concern-
ing matam. Escorting me to this meeting was a Shia I’d brought with
me from Lahore. This young man was a matami guruh member and an
enthusiastic practitioner of zanjir zani (he’d spoken with pride of the
scars on his back, the product of self-scourging). I’ll call this young man
Rizvi. Rizvi introduced me to Allama Hadi by describing me as a scholar
who was researching forms of Muharram mourning, including zanjiri
matam.
This got Hadi’s attention at once. With occasional assisting comments
from the other madrasa faculty members who were present in the
academy’s guest-room, the director spent over an hour correcting what
he feared were the erroneous impressions I’d accumulated concerning
Muharram lamentation.
Muharram is simple, he argued. It has two purposes: to remember the
Imam Husain, and to protest injustice. But over the centuries since the
battle of Karbala, various people, to suit their own personal inclinations,
have introduced innovations (bid’a) to the simple act of remembrance.
1
24. Haydar, “The Politicization of the Shias,” 75-81.
These include tazias (cenotaphs of the Karbala martyrs that are carried in
parades), Zuljenah processions, and so forth. Among the most extreme of
these innovations, he said, is zanjir zani.
Shia mazhab ‘aql ka mazhab aur mantiq ka mazhab hay: “The Shia
denomination,” he announced, “is the denomination of reason, of logic.”
People who are reasonable and educated, he said, will perform a simple,
gentle hath ka matam while remembering Husain. “This,” he explained,
“is the only type of matam we do here during Muharram majalis at our
madrasa.” Only those who are uneducated, he added, get carried away
and do zanjir zani.
At this point I asked Allama Hadi about the Shia doctrine of shafa’ah
(intercession by the Imam Husain in exchange for matam). He replied
forcefully that this is a part of the tradition that needs clarification. “If
one does all five Pillars and fulfills all religious obligations and then
in addition does the permissible form of matam, then one’s ‘azadari
[Muharram mourning] is mustahabb [meritorious, although not required
by Islamic law] and one gains forgiveness of minor sins.” He went on to
emphasize that ‘azadari cannot gain one forgiveness of serious sin, nor
does it excuse one from the five Pillars incumbent on all Muslims.
Up to this point my friend Rizvi had been listening quietly. But then
he responded, and none too deferentially. “Matam farz hay”: matam is a
duty, he said. It is not simply mustahabb but rather an essential part of
Shiism. If one wants to, he added, one can do simple hath ka matam. But
whether one chooses hath ka matam or zanjir zani, both are genuine
parts of Shiism. These things aren’t optional, he insisted, and they’re
certainly not bid’a. They are a duty. He said all this so quickly and spoke
with such emotion that I had trouble following his Urdu. Afterwards in
our car I made him retrace his argument, which he was only too glad to
do.
Allama Hadi and the other mullahs stared at him in silence as if
hoping he would stop. But Rizvi wasn’t done yet.
“Rozah [Ramadan fasting], namaz [prayer], hajj: all Muslims do these
things,” he continued. “Even the Wahhabis do these things. But without
matam, zanjir zani, Zuljenah, the tazias, there’d be nothing left of
Shiism. There’d be nothing to mark us as different from the Sunnis.
There’d be nothing left of Shiism,” he repeated. “We’d be left with only
one mazhab.”
Silence for an embarrassing moment, and then Allama Hadi turned to
me blandly with some observation about Islamic doctrine as if my friend
had never spoken. But the tension in the room lingered—a demonstration
of the importance that Pakistani Shias assign to questions of Muharram
ritual.
1
Stereotyped Notions of Shiism among Pakistani Sunnis

Everywhere I went in Pakistan, the Sunni Muslims I met were eager to
hear what I was learning about Shia practices. In Peshawar and Islama-
bad I gave lectures on Muharram rituals and Sunni–Shia relations. In
both cities the audience (to judge from their comments and questions)
was made up largely of Sunnis. These lectures—and the dozens of con-
versations I had subsequently with individuals, in Peshawar, Islamabad,
and Lahore—taught me several things.
First, many Sunnis are fascinated (even if they’re also repelled) by
Shia practices. This seemed to be true for both the Deobandi and Barelvi
Sunnis I met (Deobandism, reformist in its ideology, condemns saint
worship and other practices regarded as contaminations from Hinduism;
the Barelvi denomination has a history of greater tolerance for Sufi-
influenced rituals and other forms of South Asian folk Islam). Second,
most of the Sunnis I interviewed were ignorant about Shiism and had
little understanding of Shia doctrine and ritual. Third, these individuals
displayed considerable antipathy and prejudice against the Shia form of
Islam.
But many of these same Sunnis (in Lahore much more than in
Peshawar) emphasized that they got along just fine with individual Shias,
worked alongside Shias, and even had friends (or at least friendly
acquaintances) who were Shias. “But the way I keep my friendship with
Shia colleagues,” explained one Lahori Sunni, “is that I avoid asking
them questions about controversial issues.”
I asked him for an example of a controversial issue. “If I say to my
Shia colleagues, ‘Why do you do this zanjir zani?,’ I’m afraid they might
get angry with me. It might mean the end of our dealings with each
other.” My informant then added that this was why he was so glad to be
able to ask me about my Muharram research. “I can ask you questions I
wouldn’t dare ask my Shia colleagues. You’re a foreigner; you’re not
Sunni or Shia. They won’t get angry with you.”
During my time in Pakistan from 2002 to 2005, I collected Sunni
notions concerning Shia doctrine and practice. Of the sectarian stereo-
types I encountered, the following six are among the most common:
First: Even if in public Shias behave well in their dealings with
Sunnis, in private they curse (a practice called tabarra, as noted above)
the caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman.
Second: Shias even today regard Sunnis as usurpers (this point is
linked to the preceding).
1
Third: Shias want to dominate the whole world and impose their own
mazhab on the Sunni majority. (When I probed further I found that my
Sunni informants based this notion on their impressions of Khomeinist
internationalism and Iran’s attempts to influence Shia communities in
Pakistan and elsewhere.)
Fourth: Shias believe, so several of my Lahori Sunni informants
insisted, that Caliph Umar’s manuscript of the Quran (which was subse-
quently copied and transmitted to Sunnis) is incomplete. Ten of its
original forty siparahs (sections) were eaten up by a goat. This is why
the Sunni version of the Quran has “only” thirty siparahs today. But the
Quran manuscript given by the prophet Muhammad to Ali remains
intact, so this fable goes, and thus Shias own the only Quran-version that
is complete. (My Sunni informants were surprised when I told them that
Shias nowadays claim they, too, recognize the same thirty siparahs and
exactly the same Quran text as do Sunnis. I pointed out that Shia beliefs
in the existence of divergent and incomplete Quran texts were charac-
teristic of sects that had been rejected centuries ago as being guilty of
ghuluww—doctrinal extremism—by mainstream Shia authorities.25)
Worth noting in this context, however, is the persistence of a contro-
versial account concerning Ayesha (Muhammad’s youngest and favorite
wife, a woman loathed by Shias for her hostility to Ali). According to
this account, Ayesha left under her bed a scroll containing verses of the
Quran. At the time of Muhammad’s death, while Ayesha was outside
overseeing his funeral, a goat wandered into her house and ate up the
scroll. Arguments about this account circulate on the Internet. An anti-
Shia posting on a Malaysian Islamic website mentions the story as an
example of the heretical beliefs held by Shias and as proof of why Shias
should be labeled kafirs.26
Fifth in the list of sectarian stereotypes: Shias engage in actions that
render them na-pak (an Urdu translation of the Arabic word najis:
“ritually impure”). In a December 2005 visit at the University of Pesha-
war’s campus, Shia faculty members of the history department told me
Sunnis in the NWFP learn their bigoted stereotypes from mullahs in the
local mosques: “The maulvis tell their congregations: ‘Don’t eat with
Shias. They spit in their food. Don’t eat their meat. Shias don’t do halal
dhibh [butchering of animals in the ritually correct manner].’” One Shia
historian told me what happened when a Shia student prayed on campus
in a university-run Sunni mosque. “After the student left, the Sunnis
25. Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shii Islam (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1985), 74-78, 172-73.
1
26. Haq Char Yar, “Is Shia Kafir? Decide Yourself,” www.darulkautsar.com.
washed down the place where he’d prayed. That’s because Shias are
regarded as na-pak.” Sunnis to whom I mentioned this issue, on the other
hand, referred with very evident distaste to the Shia practice of self-
flagellation. “Cutting themselves and calling that ‘ibadat [worship]:
that’s what makes Shias najis,” was how one Sunni cleric put it. (And in
fact, according to Islamic law, spurting blood normally invalidates one’s
prayer until one ritually purifies oneself.27)
In the NWFP, Sunni notions of Shias as unclean go so far as to lead
Sunnis occasionally to compare Shias’ behavior with that of animals
considered in Islamic law impure. An historian named Salman Bangash
gave me an example. “I was chatting one day with colleagues. A Sunni
who didn’t know my background said, ‘Beware of Shias. They’ll attack
you and bite you in the face like a dog. Just like a dog.’ A friend who
was there interrupted to say, ‘Then you’d better watch out. Salman’s a
Shia.’” The bigoted Sunni, said Salman, simply couldn’t believe that
someone as well-mannered and soft-spoken and educated as he could be
a Shia. “It didn’t fit his picture.”
Sixth among the sectarian stereotypes harbored by Sunnis: During
Muharram Shias drink milk that has been blessed by having shabih-e
Zuljenah (“the likeness of Zuljenah,” the Horse of Karbala parade-
stallion) take a few sips from it first.
A number of Sunnis described for me versions of this Zuljenah custom
as practiced by Shias in Lahore. Various kinds of tabarruk (food
distributed as a “blessing” during Muharram processions) are sampled by
Zuljenah before being distributed to the crowds along the parade route. A
Sunni woman living in Islampura told me that during one Muharram
season she saw a Zuljenah horse being led to the house of her Shia
neighbors. It advanced to the threshold of the open doorway, its mouth
touched the bread laid before it, and then the family snatched the food
away for themselves. In exchange for this blessing, she said, the family
gave the horse’s attendant a cash donation. Her evaluation: jhuta khana
khana thik nehin hay (“It’s not good to eat ‘used’/ ‘second-hand’ food”).
Witnessing this, she told me, confirmed her impression of Shias as
ignorant and not as careful as they should be in matters of health and
hygiene.
I brought up this topic with some of the Shias I knew best in the
Anjuman-e Imamia Lucknavi. They confirmed that in fact the practice
exists of having the shabih-e Zuljenah bless food by consuming a small
portion of it. But they clearly were embarrassed when I mentioned this.
“Only uneducated people do this,” they said defensively.
1
27. Pinault, Horse of Karbala, 29-37.
But Pakistani Sunnis have their own Muharram customs involving

food, especially with regard to the preparation of what is known as the
sabil. This is a refreshment stand from which water, tea, etc. is offered
to passers-by to commemorate the thirst suffered in the desert by the
Karbala martyrs.
When I asked Sunnis in Lahore whether they did anything else to
mark the occasion, I heard divergent opinions. Several young men said
that on Ashura they watch the big Zuljenah procession tamasha deikhne
ke lie (“in order to see the spectacle”), especially, they said, the spectacu-
larly bloody zanjir zani. Other individuals told me they stayed away for
fear of trouble. One woman said to me: “If they [the Shias] found out I’m
Sunni, they might cause me problems.”
Concerning Lahori Sunni participation in Muharram, the most
controversial topic I raised had to do with the question of whether Sunnis
perform matam. Shias I interviewed in Lahore emphasized that matam is
primarily a Shia practice. One Shia with whom I spoke, however, said
that he had heard of Sunnis occasionally doing zanjiri matam in order to
fulfill religious vows in exchange for divine favors. “They’ll do the
zanjir zani,” he said, “alongside the matami guruhs.”
When I repeated this to my driver, a Sunni Pashtun from the NWFP,
he was emphatic in denying that Sunnis ever do matam. As for vows, he
said, when Sunnis in Lahore undertake any actions connected with such
matters they simply go to Data Darbar (the shrine of the Sufi master
Hujwiri, also known as Data Ganj Bakhsh). And the Data Darbar, he
reminded me, is not a Shia place.
One of my Sunni informants, a woman from Islampura, told me that
the only Sunnis she had ever heard of doing matam would be those who
are paid to do so by Shia jalus-organizers. In her own neighborhood she
had seen impoverished-looking Sunni men and boys bringing up the rear
of Ashura processions, wearing black tunics and performing hath ka
matam. But these are only gypsies (khanah bi-dosh), she said, and Shia
organizers hire such participants merely to enlarge the size of the parade.
During such processions, she added, gypsy women and girls work the
crowds along the route, begging for rupees and collecting free tabarruk-
food.
One of my Urdu tutors in Lahore told me that in Multan Sunnis
perform hath ka matam. But he regarded this as exceptional. In general
both the Shias and the Sunnis I encountered in Pakistan seemed to agree
with the opinion voiced by the Muslims I met in India: matam is
something that Shias do. The reason has to do with the fact that this ritual
1
is useful for demarcating and preserving Shia identity as a distinctive

minority community in relation to the Sunni majority.28
Professor Anees Ahmad of Islamabad’s International Islamic Univer-
sity told me in a March 2002 interview that in his view the gap between
Sunnis and Shias in Pakistan is widening. This is partly because of
clerics who have come under “Salafi influence”—a reformist ideology
linked to Saudi Wahhabism. Such Salafi-minded maulvis, Professor
Ahmad said, have been telling their congregations that even looking at
the Shias’ jalus is haram (forbidden). Another informant in Islamabad
told me he had heard of a local maulvi who was claiming that Sunnis
should abandon old Ashura customs such as the sabil and preparing food
for charity. To counter such polarization, Professor Ahmad told me, he
has taken the students in his courses to visit the madrasas of various
denominations—Deobandi, Barelvi, Ahl-e hadith, Shia. For most of his
students, such visits are their first exposure to a sect other than their own.
Unfortunately, he added, he is the only professor he knows of to offer
such an experience.
“Despots and Caesars of the Pagan Past”:

Muharram Politics in the Urdu Press
Given the sectarian misunderstandings described above, and Sunni
antipathy to various aspects of Shia belief and ritual, one might well
wonder how Sunnis and Shias reacted to the ban on militant sectarian
groups imposed by President Musharraf beginning in January 2002. In
fact many Sunnis I met in Lahore voiced support for what they called the
goals of the outlawed SSP, namely “guarding the honor” of the Sahaba.
My informants expressed resentment at the Shia custom of tabarra.
Nevertheless, among the Barelvi Sunnis and Shias I met, I found near-
unanimity in their rejection of sectarian violence. Sunnis and Shias alike
supported Musharraf’s campaign against sectarian organizations.
Pakistan’s newspapers, which enjoy considerable freedom of expres-
sion, reflected a range of political views in 2002 with regard to the
commemoration of Karbala. Musharraf’s Muharram speech character-
ized the season as a month of “dignity and respect.” He combined an
appeal for religious tolerance and national unity with the statement that
“we should never become a source of suffering for human beings of any
28. For matam in Multan and Sunni participation in matam, see Richard K. Wolf,
“Embodiment and Ambivalence: Emotion in South Asian Muharram Drumming,”
Yearbook for Traditional Music 32 (2000): 96.
1
race or religion.” Many of the newspaper editorials discussing the 2002

Muharram season used the occasion to deplore the Sunni–Shia violence
that occurs at this time of year. At the same time such essays voiced
support for the government’s ban on militant sectarian groups. The
Lahore-based paper Ruznama-ye Avaz stated,
This year, too, members of every denomination have honored Husain on
Ashura… But unfortunately sectarian bigots from certain regions in our
country have polluted the realm of religious harmony, and in some places
during Ashura violence has occurred and troubling acts of terrorism have
become manifest. All of this conflicts with reverence for Ashura, and
right-minded Muslims of all denominations should feel distress in their
hearts in response to these bloody events.
The editorial warns that sectarian discord is fomented in order to weaken

the nation of Pakistan.29
This theme recurred in many editorials. The newspaper Khabarain
complained, “Sectarian elements…commit acts of terror against the
safety of our dear nation.” An essay published by Ruznama-ye Pakistan
criticized the tendency among many Pakistani ulema to inflict takfir
(denunciation of someone as a kafir) on those who disagree with their
own religious stance. The result: “the killing of Muslims by Muslims.
This easily does the work of the enemies of the nation.”
While walking about Lahore’s Old City neighborhoods I saw an Urdu-
language poster entitled “Muharram 1423/2002: An Appeal for Shia–
Sunni Unity.” It was displayed on a wall beside the Nisar Haveli shrine.
“The best way to demonstrate one’s belief in the unique sacrifice of
Imam Husain,” it announced, “is to preserve the realm of peace, affec-
tion, and love during the sacred month of Muharram.” The text refers to
the activities of Pakistan ke dushman (“Pakistan’s enemies”): “Through-
out the country they light the fire of discord, riots, and the bigotry of
sectarianism.”
Common to the texts cited above, which implicitly or explicitly
support the government’s policy on sectarianism, are the following three
points. They avoid references to controversial and potentially divisive
ritual practices; they argue for the universal values of sacrifice and
generosity enshrined in Husain’s death (points on which all Muslims can
agree); and they emphasize national unity, while identifying sectarian
militants as “enemies of Pakistan.”
29. “President Calls for Promoting Tolerance,” Dawn (Pakistan), March 16,
2002. The Muharram essay in Ruznama-ye Avaz, like those appearing in other
Urdu-language newspapers cited further on in my article, appeared in the Ashura
(March 25, 2002) issue.
1
Most of the newspaper articles and posters I saw endorsed such

themes. There were, however, exceptions. Two essays published in the
Ashura (March 25, 2002) edition of Ruznama-ye Din merit attention. The
first is an opinion piece entitled Shahadat ‘uzma ka paigham (“The
Message of the Great Martyrdom”). It proclaims that “the real message
of Ashura” is the need for the continual “revival of jihad” as embodied in
Husain’s resistance to the reign of the tyrant Yazid. This article claims
that “Yazid was the first person who, in order to carry out the contempti-
ble scheme of making people forsake jihad, increased within the Muslim
government the showy monuments and the lifestyle of the despots and
Caesars of the pagan past.” Yazid is said to have “wanted to wrench the
swords and lances from the hands of Muslims and instill in them a
fondness for peacocks and music”—the latter items being symbolic of
the frivolous pleasures of palatial self-indulgence. Yazid’s purpose? To
create “an abundance of the things of the good life, so as to make the
Muslim community accustomed to bodily ease and thereby create ‘harm-
less’ Muslims.” The anonymous author of this essay then updates his
sketch of Yazid: “For centuries, governments and personalities responsi-
ble for despotic and imperialistic schemes have tried to estrange mem-
bers of the Islamic world from any acquaintance with the spirit of jihad.”
Without ever referring overtly to Pakistan, this article conveys
profound hostility to the policies that Musharraf initiated after the
September 11 terrorist attacks. The essay follows the longstanding
tradition (once used to great effect in Iran under Shah Reza Pahlevi) of
the politicized Muharram sermon, in which the preacher implicitly
equates the reigning government of the day with that of the villainous
Yazid. This essay goes further, offering a veiled critique of westerniza-
tion (“lifestyle of the…Caesars”), a condemnation of materialism (“pea-
cocks and music”), and, I would argue, an unspoken nostalgia for the
puritan austerity of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime.
This editorial concludes by reminding readers that “the desert plains of
Karbala were watered not with the salty flow of tears but with the blood
from noble veins.” Here, it seems, is an oblique criticism of the most
common form of Muharram ritual: weeping in honor of the Karbala
martyrs. This article offers a very different interpretation of Muharram:
the real commemoration of Husain’s death involves engaging in jihad in
the most physical and lethal sense.
The same issue of Ruznama-ye Din published an opinion piece by
Allama Sajid Naqvi, the Shia cleric who heads the Tehrik-e Jafria
Pakistan. The essay identified his affiliation as Qa’id-e Millet-e Jafria
Pakistan, “Chief of the Shia Community of Pakistan.” The latter title
1
was one of the more recent designations for the TJP (the name-change
was necessitated by the ban imposed on Naqvi’s TJP as part of the
government’s January 2002 campaign against sectarian groups). Like
the editorial described above, Naqvi’s essay used the Karbala story to
condemn Pakistan’s present government. He was selective in his
retelling of the tale, emphasizing not the martyrs’ sufferings (a standard
theme of Muharram sermons) but instead Husain’s defiance of the tyrant.
“Yazid’s goal,” we are told, “was to reintroduce the days of paganism in
place of Islam.” Naqvi then connected the past with the present. What
the Karbala martyrs accomplished was to “cause the word ‘Husainiyat’
[the principles of Husain’s life and martyrdom] to be inscribed on the
palace walls of each epoch’s Yazid.”
Although a religious authority and a prominent Shia cleric, Naqvi
made no reference in this essay to Muharram rituals or controversial
practices such as zanjiri matam or tabarra. Instead he emphasized
inqilab-e Husaini, “Husain’s revolution,” a phrase popularized with the
fall of the Shah and the establishing of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Naqvi remains consistently Khomeinist in his orientation, avoiding Shia–
Sunni polemics and instead attempting to rally opposition to the present
government of Pakistan wherever he can.
Conclusion:
Tactical Alliances with Traditional Enemies—
Shia Participation in the MMA
As mentioned above, Allama Naqvi’s political party underwent various
name-changes in 2002. The conspicuously Shia nomenclature of Tehrik-
e Jafria and Millet-e Jafria gave way to the title Tehrik-e Islami. The
non-denominational tone of the new name was apparently intended to
reduce sectarian tensions after Naqvi joined the Muttahida Majlis-e Amal
(MMA).
The MMA gained attention worldwide in October 2002 when it won
provincial elections in Baluchistan and the NWFP. In December 2002
and January 2003 journalists based in Peshawar reported on the various
decrees issued by the new MMA provincial government. These included
a ban on cinema billboards that were regarded as purveyors of “obscen-
ity,” a “campaign to close down all ‘pornographic’ and unlicensed movie
theaters,” a ban on music in public transit vehicles, and a crackdown
on “revellers” at celebrations involving alcohol and “female dancers.”
Press reports early in 2003 indicated that religious authorities in the Dir
district of the NWFP, emboldened by the MMA’s electoral success, had
1
imposed nizam-e salaat (a “regime of prayer”) in their region of the

North-West Frontier. Under this new regulation, volunteers see to it that
local businesses shut down for thirty minutes at the start of each azan or
call to prayer. Observers have begun to speak of the “Talibanization” of
those provinces of Pakistan now ruled by the MMA.30
The conservative religious parties comprising the MMA include the
Jamiat-e Ulema-e Islam (JUI), many of whose members are Deobandis
with longstanding pro-Taliban sympathies. Among the JUI’s ideological
offshoots, as noted above, is the now-outlawed Sunni SSP, which built a
fearsome reputation for killing Shias in Pakistan and helping the Taliban
kill Shias in Afghanistan.31
Nevertheless this history did not prevent Allama Naqvi, currently
Pakistan’s most prominent Shia leader, from joining the MMA. The
alliance can be seen as tactical. Naqvi shares with other MMA leaders an
orientation that opposes the administration of President Musharraf,
especially in terms of cooperating with the foreign policy of the US. The
MMA thus offers Naqvi a broader platform from which to pursue his
Khomeinist internationalist anti-Americanism.
The MMA’s success has generated a very mixed response within
Pakistan. An article that appeared in the December 2002 issue of the
Karachi-based Herald defended the religious alliance and praised the
MMA’s electoral victory as “an omen of good cheer” insofar as it had led
to “the refurbished image of fundamentalism transformed into democ-
ratic moderation.” And Qazi Hussain Ahmad, head of the Jamaat-e
Islami (one of the most powerful parties constituting the MMA), in an
interview shortly after the October 2002 victory, claimed that the MMA
deserved a large share of the credit for diminishing “the menace of
sectarianism” in recent months. He also noted with pride an event that
was covered extensively by the Pakistani media: the coming together of
MMA leaders to lead public prayer. “We have read our prayers ba-
jamaat [all together] in Karachi, before everyone,” he enthused, “all of
us together, Shia and Sunni.”32
Many of the Pakistanis I interviewed in December 2002, however, in
Lahore, Islamabad, and Peshawar alike, were much more cynical. “Only
30. “Cinemas Reel As MMA Cracks the Whip,” Daily Times (Lahore),
December 20, 2002; Juliette Terzieff, “Pakistani Religious Bloc Exerts Pressure on
Province,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 14, 2003.
31. Rashid, Taliban, 74, 92.
32. Akbar Naqvi, “The Politics of Maslehat,” Herald (Karachi) 33.12 (December
2002): 61-62; Sairah Irshad Khan, “Election Special,” Newsline (Karachi) 14.5
(November 2002): 42.
1
a photo op” is how several informants responded to pictures of the MMA

leaders together in prayer. Such pictures inspired considerable irrever-
ence. “Look at the TV,” one Sunni informant joked to me, “and see all
those beards gathered together, and then you’ll realize what MMA stands
for: Maulvis, Maulvis, and More Maulvis.”
The Shias I interviewed concerning the MMA tended to focus on the
event that affected them most directly: Allama Naqvi’s alliance with the
likes of the JUI. Among the various Shias I interviewed—matami guruh
members and Shia community organizers in Lahore, professors and
lecturers at the University of Peshawar—most registered their surprise
and disappointment (and, in some cases, anger) at Naqvi’s adherence to
the MMA. One Lahori Shia I interviewed—a businessman and distin-
guished community leader—in reply to the topic of Naqvi and the MMA,
proceeded to recount for me the history of anti-Shia violence in the
Punjab. He told me of an incident in which SSP militants threw acid at a
Zuljenah stallion. “Mughulpura locality, Lahore, 1986,” he said grimly.
“Be sure you write that down.” He then showed me photos of Shia
shrines in Lahore that had been destroyed in riots the same year. “Now
you can understand,” he concluded, “why so many Shias don’t care for
Allama Naqvi any more. He joined the MMA, joined forces with the
Sunnis who have always hated us.” A Hazara Shia in Peshawar responded
to my question about Naqvi and the MMA by recalling Taliban violence
against the Hazaras of Bamiyan. He recited with bitterness examples of
SSP rhetoric: “Kill a Shia, go to Paradise.”
Yet there is another side to this issue. Many of the same Shias who
voiced annoyance with Naqvi conceded that his political maneuverings
may have secured some gains for the Pakistani Shia community. Shia
faculty members at the University of Peshawar identified for me three
positive aspects of Naqvi’s alliance with the MMA. First, if Naqvi hadn’t
joined, Shias in the NWFP would not have had the chance to be part of
the political decision-making process in the wake of the MMA’s elec-
toral victory in the North-West Frontier (although one cynic immediately
asserted that Naqvi’s party is by far the weakest member of the MMA:
“He’s a junior member, that’s all. So we don’t have any real power in
any case”). Second, the much-publicized Shia–Sunni alliance apparently
contributed to a decrease in sectarian violence in 2002 (although my Shia
informants also gave credit for this improvement to Musharraf’s ban on
sectarian extremist groups). And third, the pictures of Shia and Sunni
leaders together at prayer have helped the status generally of the Shia
community in Pakistan. In the words of one Shia informant at the
University of Peshawar: “When the common people see Allama Naqvi
doing namaz [prayer] with Fazlur Rehman [head of the JUI] and with
1
other Deobandis and Ahl-e Hadith, then the ordinary people will find it
more difficult to label Shias kuffar.” In response to this comment,
another Shia lecturer at the University of Peshawar stated, “We are
struggling for our survival. The case of the Ahmadis is threatening us.
We’re always afraid that what the Sunnis did to them, the Sunnis might
do to us.” (As noted above, in 1974 legislation was passed in Pakistan
stripping members of the Ahmadiyya sect of their status as Muslims.)
One of the Shia professors at the University of Peshawar summarized
Shia responses in the NWFP to Allama Naqvi’s alliance with the MMA:
“We recognize its practical value. But we aren’t happy with it.”
When I returned to Peshawar in December 2005, the MMA still ruled
the NWFP and Naqvi was still a member of this Islamist coalition. Shias
I talked to then were more disillusioned with him than ever. They admired
his political survival skills but considered him a headline-grabber and
opportunist who’d done little to help local Shias. “The MMA keeps
saying, ‘Sunnis and Shias are brothers,’” complained a Shia lecturer in
the University of Peshawar’s history department, “but it does nothing to
help us.”
He gave me an example. On the university’s campus, he said, there are
over fifteen Sunni mosques but not one place of prayer for Shias. “We
used to be allowed to pray on the lawn of a house belonging to a Shia
professor here on campus,” he said, “but we were barred from doing that
any more.” So in February 2005 a group of Shia students approached a
senior provincial minister in the MMA government and asked him, in the
name of Sunni–Shia harmony, for help in establishing a mosque on
campus where Shias could pray. He refused.
The Shias went away feeling insulted. “The MMA minister implied
we’d turn any mosque into an imambargah [Shia lamentation hall],”
said my informant, “and do matam and create sectarian tensions and
proselytize.”
What would happen, I asked, if a Shia student simply walked into a
Sunni mosque on campus and joined Sunnis for Friday prayers? “They’d
see us with our hands at our sides,” came the reply. (Sunnis fold their
arms across their waists while Shias differ in letting their arms dangle by
their sides at a certain moment in their ritual prayers.) “Or they’d see us
using the sajda-gah.” (This is a disk, said to be made of dust from
Karbala, which many Shias place on the floor before them in prayer.
Each time they do the prostration, their heads touch the sajda-gah as a
mark of humility and devotion.) “They’d see these differences,” he said,
“and know we’re Shia. If only one of us were there at a time, we’d feel
very uncomfortable. If there were a number of us, the whole prayer
service would be disrupted.”
1
Did Naqvi, I asked, intervene in this issue to help the Shias?

“Naqvi?” frowned my informant. “He did nothing.”
Many questions are still unanswered concerning the future of Sunni–
Shia political alliances. It remains to be seen whether Allama Naqvi can
find any real areas of cooperation with other MMA members beyond a
generalized anti-Musharraf and anti-American rhetoric. Naqvi’s position
in the MMA and his subservience to Iran’s Khomeinist program may be
advantageous and attention-getting nationally and internationally. Less
certain, however, is their appeal locally. Pakistani Shias have tradition-
ally shown considerable independence in matters of zanjiri matam and
other points of ritual. It seems likely that at the popular level, local Shia
communities throughout Pakistan will continue to find ways to insist on
both their distinctiveness and their separate identity, regardless of the
alliances forged in their name by politicians who claim to be their
leaders.
1
5
SPURTING BLOOD AND ATTEMPTS
TO REGULATE RITUAL:
PAKISTANI SHIAS AND IRAN’S BID FOR LEADERSHIP
OF GLOBAL ISLAM
Avoiding Slander and Dishonor:

A View from the Iranian Cultural Center
on Self-Flagellation Rituals
I had the opportunity to update my impression of Iran’s dealings with
Pakistan’s Shias in a visit to the Iranian Cultural Center in Lahore in
December 2005. I was accompanied on this visit by my friend Nasir
Zaydi, a devout Shia who’s also an officer in Anjuman-e Lucknavi, a
matam-association that sponsors numerous public lamentation rituals
during Muharram.
From the street all one sees of the center is a high metal gate and a
blank concrete wall. Strangers wanting to visit have to plead for entrance
via an intercom voice box set in the wall by the gate. Not very inviting,
but an understandable precaution: in 1990 Iran’s consul-general was
murdered in Lahore, and in January 1997 a mob of Sunni militants
attacked Lahore’s Iranian Cultural Center, ransacking it and setting it on
fire. The militant group Sipah-e Sahaba was implicated in both acts of
violence.1
Once inside the gate we had to present ourselves at the security booth
—which also doubles as a bookstore. While Nasir worked on talking the
guards into letting us visit, I browsed the titles on display. Persian-
language dictionaries. A book entitled Imam Khomeini and the Islamic
1. U.S. Department of State, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2001:

Pakistan,” March 4, 2002 (www.fas.org/terrorism/at/docs/HR%20report/Pakistan.
htm); Regional Information Base on Terrorism, “Millat-e Islamia Pakistan
(Previously Known as Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan)” (www.ribt.org); The New York
Times, “Angry at Attack, Pakistanis Set Iran Center Afire,” January 20, 1997.
1
Revolution, beside a poster celebrating the centenary of Khomeini’s

birth. But there were also publications on more general topics. A book
called What Is Islam? An English-language children’s magazine pub-
lished in Teheran by the “Islamic Thought Foundation,” featuring
articles such as “Hijab: Multicultural Voice for Muslim Women: We are
More Precious Than Diamonds and Pearls,” and “Ramadan: Starting
Point for Becoming a Better Person.” I also spotted another Teheran-
published magazine, this one in Arabic, called al-Wahdah (“Unity”),
offering essays denouncing Israel and presenting discussions of “Ameri-
can Sponsorship for Dominating the Islamic World.” All in all, an inter-
esting introduction to how the center packages its presentation of Iran
and Islam to the Muslims of Lahore.
A twenty-minute wait, and then a guard escorted us to the center’s
main building, a structure separated from the gate by a wide lawn and a
driveway at least a hundred yards long—obviously a precaution against
car-bombs or the like that might be detonated on the street.
Another twenty-minute wait, this time in a waiting room featuring a
TV that played a video of muppet-like puppets shrilling at each other in
Farsi.
We were rescued from the muppets by a young bearded man named
Zaheer ul-Hasan, a Pakistani employee at the center. With him was the
center’s director, an Iranian who never gave us his name and who spoke
only in Persian and only to Zaheer. The latter translated his boss’s com-
ments into Urdu for our benefit.
The director wasn’t friendly. I hadn’t expected him to be. The transla-
tor shuttled between us with nervous smiles.
I asked the director his opinion about the legitimacy of the various
forms of matam that are popular during Muharram among Pakistan’s
Shias. He had plenty to say about this.
Matam itself, he said through his interpreter, is permissible as a sign
of grief for the Karbala Martyrs, but only as long as it’s not taken to
extremes. But the director presented a lengthy indictment of popular
practices that are haram (forbidden). As each forbidden ritual was iden-
tified, Zaheer preceded the comment with the phrase Irani ulema ke
mutabiq aur Irani maulvion ke mutabiq (“according to Iranian religious
scholars and Iranian mullahs”). My friend Nasir frowned each time this
phrase was pronounced and at various points looked ready to interrupt.
But for the moment he kept silent.
The following practices, said the Iranian director, are forbidden: tak-
ing off one’s shirt to do matam; shamsheer zani (gashing one’s forehead
with a knife); zanjiri matam (self-scourging with a flail to which are
1
5. Spurting Blood and Attempts to Regulate Ritual 97
attached blades and chains); and, in general, cutting oneself so as to shed

one’s blood. Before we left, the director presented us with copies of an
Urdu-language text that had been published in the Iranian city of Qom:
Istifta’at ke jawabat (“Replies to Requests for Fatwas”), authored by
Iran’s supreme cleric, Seyyed Ali Khamenei. A brief English caption on
the back cover described the author as “The Grand Marja’ [spiritual
guide] of Shiism and the Grand Leader of the Muslim Ummah”—a claim
to Islamic hegemony that is intriguing in light of the discussion to
follow.
Back out on the street and in our car once more, Nasir and I leafed
through Khamenei’s text. It offered a lengthy section on “mourning
practices.” Over the years I’ve collected various kinds of Shia publica-
tions in Pakistan and India; but this was the most detailed exposition on
matam I’d ever seen distributed by Iranian sources to Shias in the sub-
continent.
A half-dozen fatwas, in question-and-answer format, bore directly on
the topic of bloody matam. Question 359 asks, “What is the ruling on
striking oneself with chains to which blades are attached?” Khamenei’s
reply: “If the act of striking oneself with the aforementioned chains takes
place where people can see it, or if the act contributes to the dishonoring
of the [Shia] mazhab [“sect” or “denomination”], or if it causes bodily
harm, then it is not permissible.”2
Question 369 notes that “during lamentation gatherings in honor of the
Imams, some people claw and tear in grief at their faces so much that
they draw blood.” The Grand Leader’s ruling: “There is no legal merit in
these practices.” He then reiterates the criteria mentioned earlier: “If such
practices cause bodily harm or insult the sect in the eyes of onlookers,
then they are not permissible.”3
So too with Question 378:
On Ashura various practices take place, for example, striking oneself on
the head with a sword, and walking on fire, which cause spiritual and
bodily harm. Moreover, these things make the Twelver denomination
[mazhab-e ithna-‘ashari] look ugly to the ulema of various other denomi-
nations and their followers, as well as to the general population of the rest
of the world. Sometimes these practices even bring dishonor to our sect.
What is your estimable view of this?4
2. Seyyed ‘Ali Khamenei, Istifta’at ke jawabat hissa-ye davvom: mu’amalat

(Qom: Nur mataf, 2002), 191.
3. Khamenei, Istifta’at ke jawabat, 195.
1
Khamenei’s estimable view (unsurprising, given how the question was

phrased): such practices are haram. His fatwa recapitulates what most
displeases him about exuberant and bloody forms of Muharram
lamentation: “These things frequently bring about slander and dishonor
for the sect of Ahl-e Bayt [the family of the prophet].”5
The fatwa in reply to Question 379 takes his disapprobation even
further: “Is shamsheer zani [cutting one’s forehead with a knife] permis-
sible when done in private, or does your fatwa apply to all circumstances
in general?” Khamenei’s reply: “Shamsheer zani, as it is commonly
called, cannot be considered a display of sadness or sorrow. It did not
exist in the time of the Imams or their successors… Nowadays this
practice brings dishonor and shame to the sect. Therefore this practice is
not permissible under any circumstances.”6
So this collection of fatwas (published in 2002) goes beyond Khame-
nei’s well-known 1994 decree in which he forbade bloody matam per-
formed in public. The text I was given in Lahore extends the range of
prohibitions even further, to include clawing one’s face, walking on fire,
and performing self-mortification in private and away from the eyes of
onlookers. But common to the 1994 and 2002 fatwas alike is a concern
with public relations: how Shiism might appear to Sunni clerics, to the
clerics’ followers, and to the world in general. All this is consistent with
the Khomeinist policy of taqrib: reducing Sunni–Shia differences for the
sake of political cooperation.
One might question the necessity of a ban on self-scourging that is
done in private: after all, how would hidden actions trigger “slander and
dishonor”? But one could view Khamenei’s fatwa on this point as an
exercise in imposing spiritual discipline and displaying total control over
the lives of believers. It’s as if he let himself be inspired by Pakistani
ideologue Abu’l ‘Ala Mawdudi’s writings on “the Islamic State”: “In
such a state no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and
private.”7 Mawdudi and Khamenei, totalitarian Sunni and stringent Shia,
have found something on which they can agree: a vision of the Muslim
future, with believers boxed in an Islamist panopticon, policed by fatwas,
under the unwinking gaze of Allah’s lieutenants.
One more fatwa from the text given me by the Iranian Cultural Center
is worth quoting here—a reply to Question 374: “If someone dies while

7. Abu’l ‘Ala Mawdudi, “Political Theory of Islam,” in John Donohue and John
Esposito, eds., Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2d ed.; New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 266.
1
mourning the Imams by performing qameh zani [bloody matam], should

this be considered an act of suicide?” An important question, this, given
Islam’s prohibition against killing oneself.
Khamenei’s answer: “If this is not the primary cause of death, then it’s
not suicide. But if a person’s life is put at risk through this action and
death comes about through qameh zani, then the ruling is that this is
suicide.”8
The issue is by no means hypothetical. In 1991—at the request of Shia
community leaders in Hyderabad, India—I found myself serving as a
first-aid volunteer at a medical tent set up outside the Hazrat Abbas
Shrine to treat flagellants who had seriously injured themselves in mourn-
ing the Karbala Martyrs. I helped bandage dozens of badly bleeding wor-
shippers. Several had to be rushed to hospitals in ambulances. Physicians
I met that day told me stories of Shias who had died performing matam.
Traditional Muharram lamentation is extravagant in its forms of
expression; worshippers pride themselves on becoming so caught up in
mourning that they disregard their personal well-being and safety. This
attitude is reflected in the lyrics of some of the nauhajat (lamentation
poems) that mourners chant as a rhythmic accompaniment while striking
themselves in the collective act of matam:
We must live for the sake of Husain;
We must die for the sake of Husain.
This body might survive; it might cease to be;
Yet matam in honor of the one wronged must be performed.
…
If fate were to grant us this happiness,
We must give away this life of ours as a sacrifice.
Either with tears, or with heart’s blood,
We must dampen our tunics with weeping.
…
Even if streaks of blood now flow from our breasts,
May our hands never cease:
Let this matam continue.9
Another motif of ecstatic self-abnegation appears in a poem chanted by a
Hyderabadi matam-group called Anjuman-e Parwaneh-ye Shabbir (“the
Association of the Moths of Husain”):
Praise, O give praise, to the beloved splendor of Husain,
We are his lovers, the moths of Husain.

9. ‘Ali Javid Maqsud, Yeh matam kayse ruk ja’ay: nauhe (Hyderabad, India:
Maktab-e Turabia, n.d.), 8-9. For a translation and discussion of the entire poem,
see David Pinault, Horse of Karbala, 40-41.
1
We are his lovers, who offer our lives for him…

No one has ever seen or heard of
Such lamentation for any sultan.
Never before has there been such matam
For one who announced the word of the Quran.
For thirteen hundred years there has been wondrous matam.
Praise, o give praise, to the beloved splendor of Husain.
We are his lovers, the moths of Husain.
…
You, too, join these moths and say:
Praise, o give praise, to the beloved splendor of Husain;
We are his lovers, the moths of Husain.10
This poem borrows imagery from the Sufi mystical tradition. Just as the
moth risks self-destruction, so strongly is it attracted to the candle-flame,
so too the true lover of Allah flings aside worldly considerations in
pursuit of union with the divine light. Shia mourners who call themselves
“moths of Husain” modify this Sufi motif by describing their “wondrous
matam” as proof of their self-abnegating love for the Imam.
But Khamenei’s fatwas evince little patience with this kind of Islam.
The decrees issued by the “Grand Leader of the Muslim Ummah” reflect
a mentality that is rational, pragmatic, and calculating, one that is geared
to a larger political goal: subsuming regional forms of Shia practice into
a trans-national Shiism that is denominationally flavorless and capable of
being packaged as the champion and defender of global Islam.
My friend Nasir would have none of this. He said he was tired of
clerical authorities telling ordinary Shias what they may or may not do to
mourn Husain. He demonstrated his annoyance via a story that plays
with Quranic motifs:
After Joseph’s brothers throw him down a well, they go to their father,
Hazrat Ya’qoub (the Quranic Jacob), and they tell him Joseph has been
eaten by hyenas.11 Anguished with grief, Ya’qoub then summons all the
local hyenas. They emerge from the desert and gather around him.
They deny they ate Joseph; but Ya’qoub persists in his accusation.
Then the hyenas swear an oath: “If we lied to you about eating Joseph,
10. Allamah Najm Effendi, “Parwaneh-ye Shabbir,” in Mir Ahmed ‘Ali, ed.,
Karbala-wale: nauhajat-e anjuman-e parwaneh-ye shabbir (Hyderabad, India:
Maktab-e Turabia, 1989), 9. For a translation and discussion of the entire poem, see
Pinault, Horse of Karbala, 38-39.
11. The version of this tale that appears in Islamic scripture (Quran 12.17)
mentions a wolf, but I certainly didn’t want to interrupt a good story with quibbles
over details.
1
let our punishment be that in the fifteenth century [hijri, that is, the
twenty-first century AD] we have to come back to life as maulvis.”
Hyena-mullahs: a nice way of summarizing one Pakistani Shia’s
response to fatwas that try to limit his preferred way of mourning the
Imams.
Pakistani Shias, Iran, and the Question

of Global Leadership of Islam
Even if the Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwas haven’t been altogether
successful in Pakistan, they have had a more favorable reception among
Shia leaders in Lebanon, where the practice of spectacularly gory forms
of matam has long been widespread. Scholar Lara Deeb reports,
“[F]ollowing the lead of Iran, Shii clerics issued fatwas condemning the
practice as un-Islamic, and Hizbullah banned it outright in the mid-
1990s.” Hezbollah’s ban makes sense, given how extensively this group
has been supported and funded by Iran. But Deeb notes that despite such
fatwas in Lebanon, “The practice persists.”12
The complexity of Iran’s relations with Shia populations worldwide is
reflected in the career of Munawwar Abbas Alvi, former president of the
Sipah-e Muhammad Pakistan (“the Soldiers of Muhammad” or SMP).
Banned by President Pervez Musharraf since January 2002, the SMP
once had a fearsome reputation as the most violent Shia extremist group
in Pakistan. A splinter faction of the Tehrik-e Jafria and the Imamia
Students Organization, the SMP prided itself on defending the country’s
Shias by killing Sunni militant leaders. Journalists I met in Islamabad
and Lahore described how the Islamic Republic of Iran once funded the
SMP as part of Iran’s “proxy war” against Saudi Wahhabi influence in
Pakistan.13
Jailed from 1997 to 2001 for his SMP activities, Alvi has turned over
a new leaf—or at least he’s assumed a new role. Now a supporter of
Musharraf, Alvi is currently a leading member of a government-spon-
sored “Interreligious Peace Council” that is responsible for conciliatory
“sectarian dialogue” among the country’s Muslims.
I interviewed Alvi on two occasions in Lahore in December 2005. His
is a presence that’s hard to miss. Bulky and barrel-chested, he’s blessed
12. Lara Deeb, “Living Ashura in Lebanon: Mourning Transformed to Sacrifice,”

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25.1 (2005): 128 n.
31.
13. Aamer Ahmed Khan, “Sipah-e Mohammed,” The Herald (Karachi) 25.6
(June 1994), 37; Haydar, “The Politicization of the Shias,” 75-85; Syed, “The
Sunni–Shia Conflict in Pakistan,” 254-56.
1
with a voice that’s operatic in the self-dramatizing way it swoops from

growl to roar to shriek. Anyone measuring the worth of a man by how
much space he takes up in a room would have to say this guy is very
important indeed.
One night I trailed Alvi as he and his entourage made their way on
foot, slowly and majestically, through the crowded alleys of a Shia
neighborhood called Bibi Pak Daman. Individuals hailed him or
approached to ask favors or just show their respect. He may not be the
SMP boss anymore, but he still has what it takes to make followers fawn.
Alvi gave me his version of the SMP’s history: “Sipah-e Muhammad
was founded in order to create unity among Muslims. But immediately
thereafter Muhammad A’zam Tariq [head of the Sunni SSP] insulted the
Imam Mahdi [the twelfth Shia Imam] and said Shias are kafirs. Then the
Shia naujavanan [youngbloods/youths] rose up to defend the honor of
Shiism.” The Karachi-based magazine The Herald reported in 1994 that
the SMP pressured Pakistan’s Shia clerics to issue a death sentence
against Tariq; and the SMP described the Sunni leader as “the worst
Rushdie.”14 (Salman Rushdie, ever since writing The Satanic Verses, has
provided disgruntled Pakistanis with the gold standard by which apos-
tates and bad Muslims can be judged.)
In our conversation Alvi asserted that the SMP had never done any-
thing worse than engage in “self-defense” and had always been motivated
by “a wish to unite Shias and Sunnis.” He was affable enough until I
asked him about Iranian financial support for the SMP in the 1990s. At
that he turned angry (“Things get exciting here,” I noted in my journal at
the time) and denied the SMP had ever taken money from Iran. The
Islamic Republic, he said, had never supported Shia militarism in
Pakistan and had never funded conflict between Sunnis and Shias. He
followed this with a speech blaming America and India for the country’s
sectarian troubles and concluded by saying America would be wise to
open dialogue with Iran.
In short, Alvi presented the SMP’s history in a way that’s consistent
with Iran’s own recent policy of downplaying sectarian differences in
Islam. But with regard to at least one point Alvi showed himself to be
very much a traditional Pakistani Shia. He told me that in 1992 he’d been
suffering from heart disease but during Muharram he’d insisted on doing
zanjir zani (self-scourging with chains and blades) anyway. The result:
“I experienced a mu’jizat [miracle] through Husain: I was cured of my
heart trouble. This was shafa’at-e Imam-e Husain ki vajah se [on account
of the intercession of Imam Husain].” Alvi told me he’s aware of
1
14. Khan, “Sipah-e Mohammed,” 37.
Khamenei’s various fatwas against bloody matam but said as far as he

was concerned the ayatollah’s decrees applied only to Iranians.
Another Pakistani Shia whose life reflects the shifts and contrarieties
in the evolution of Iran’s global politics is a Pashtun called Syed Muja-
vir (the name is a pseudonym). An intellectual and scholar from the
North-West Frontier Province, Mujavir is an impressive figure, tall, trim,
bearded and elegant in a tailored suit. I met him in December 2005 while
interviewing educated Shia professionals in Peshawar.
In our interview Mujavir reminisced about his life. He’d spent time
in Iran and as a young man had participated in the 1987 Meccan Hajj
“demonstrations” that led to a riot and the deaths of over 400 persons.
Although he refrained from specifying the details of his role, his voice as
he referred to his own participation was filled with enthusiasm and pride.
Some months later, when I emailed Mujavir a request for more infor-
mation about the Hajj riots, this is what he wrote me:
About 1987, please note that there was almost nothing sectarian about it.
It was [a] stunningly well-organized demonstration and although Iranians
were in overwhelming majority in that demonstration, there were US
citizens, and if you see the pictures you will know that many nationalities
and sects including the Saudis even participated in it. Basically it was
[an] anti-super-power demo.15
He added that the superpowers being denounced by the demonstrators

were the USA and the Soviet Union. He concluded by exclaiming, “The
huge demo was not sectarian at all!” Thus Mujavir in his email memoir
minimized the notion of there being a Shia or exclusively Iranian dimen-
sion to the riots.
News reports from the time offer a fuller picture. Even before the
1987 flashpoint, there had been disturbances; in 1986 Iranian pilgrims
had tried to smuggle into Saudi Arabia 330 pounds of plastic explosives.
At the onset of the 1987 Hajj season the Ayatollah Khomeini had made
speeches for the purpose of politicizing the pilgrimage. According to
New York Times reports from that period, Khomeini broadcasted radio
messages to the 155,000 Iranian pilgrims encamped in Mecca, in which
he “urged the pilgrims to carry out a ‘disavowal of the pagans,’ over the
Gulf war, calling for a ‘unity rally’ to seek ‘deliverance from infidels.’
He urged Moslems, ‘Break America’s teeth in its mouth.’”16
15. Email communication of August 16, 2006.

16. John Kifner, “400 Die as Iranian Marchers Battle Saudi Police in Mecca,”
The New York Times, August 2, 1987; Elaine Sciolino, “Mecca Tragedy: Chain of
Events Begins to Emerge,” The New York Times, September 6, 1987.
1
Thousands of Iranians obeyed the ayatollah’s orders, filling the streets

outside Mecca’s Grand Mosque after Friday prayers on July 31, 1987.
Many of them were armed with knives and sticks. Carrying giant
portraits of Khomeini and a banner proclaiming “Victory is made by
waves of martyrs!,” they repeated chants calling for death to America,
the USSR, and Israel. A New York Times reporter noted that “it appeared
likely that Shiites from Lebanon and Pakistan may have joined the
Iranians in the demonstration.”17
The demonstration degenerated into a riot when the marchers clashed
with a cordon of Saudi policemen. Witnesses reported demonstrators
overturning cars and setting them on fire. In five hours of street fighting,
dozens of Saudis and hundreds of Iranians died—knifed, stoned, shot,
and trampled underfoot.
Iran immediately blamed the Saudi government. Speaker of the Iranian
parliament Hashemi Rafsanjani told crowds assembled in Teheran,
“We…oblige ourselves to avenge these martyrs by uprooting Saudi rulers
from the region… To take revenge for the sacred bloodshed is to free the
holy shrines from the mischievous and wicked Wahhabi.”18
Teheran’s adversaries offered a different interpretation. “Saudi offi-
cials,” according to The New York Times, “said Iranians who had been
arrested admitted there had been a plot to seize the Grand Mosque and to
force the many thousands inside to swear fealty to Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, the Iranian leader, as leader of the world’s 850 million
Moslems.”19
In other words, despite their clashing ideologies Saudi Arabia and Iran
could agree on one thing: Khomeini’s government was using the Hajj
riot to contest the Wahhabi Sunnis’ right to custodianship of the most
universal of global Islam’s symbols: the pilgrimage to Mecca.
In our conversation, Mujavir asserted that Shia–Sunni relations in
Pakistan are much better today than they were at the height of Saudi–
Iranian rivalry in the 1980s, when the Saudis funded Pakistani dictator Zia
ul-Haq and Khomeini backed militant activities among Pakistani Shias.
To close our interview Mujavir characterized himself as an inter-
nationalist. “Nationalism is a stupid idea,” he said, “the stupidest idea
possible.” When I asked him what he proposed as an alternative vision of
17. Kifner, “400 Die”; Robert D. McFadden, “Death in Mecca: In a Time of

Prayer, Tensions Explode and Yield Violence,” The New York Times, August 3,
1987.
18. John Kifner, “Iranian Officials Urge ‘Uprooting’ of Saudi Royalty,” The New
York Times, August 3, 1987.
19. “Saudi King Vows Strong Defense of Homeland and Holy Sites,” The New
York Times, August 6, 1987.
1
collective identity, he singled out the Iranian Revolution as a model. He

emphasized what he called its international quality and Iran’s future as
the vanguard of a global Islamic movement. “Its success,” he concluded,
“is inevitable.”
One can see this “international quality” at work in a development
noted by Lahore’s Daily Times. At the height of the Hezbollah–Israel
war in the summer of 2006, the Pakistani government announced it had
“banned Pakistani Shias from visiting Iran after local and U.S. intelli-
gence sources expressed fear that they might sneak into southern
Lebanon to join the Hezbollah fight against Israel.” The report added that
“Interior Ministry sources said that the government had received intelli-
gence reports indicating that groups within Pakistan sympathetic to
Hezbollah were trying to secretly send Shias to fight Israel.”20
This development can be set alongside another, more recent, one, from
2007: in Palestine, members of Fatah have taken to taunting their rivals
in Hamas by calling them “Shia”—a derogatory reminder of the support
given Hamas by the present Iranian regime.
Fatah’s taunt illuminates a fear present among both Sunni militants
and Arab governments in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia: that
Teheran will use its support for Hamas and Hezbollah to expand its
influence throughout the Arab Middle East. Teheran’s Sunni adversaries
are currently doing their best to remind Middle Eastern Muslims that the
Iranians are Shia, Persian, and non-Arab: that is, alien. Saudis refer to
Iranians as “Safavids” (a sixteenth-century Iranian dynasty that once
fought the Sunni Ottomans) and “Rawafid ” (“rejectionists,” that is, those
who reject the authority of the Sahaba, including the first three Sunni
caliphs. Rawafid is an old derogatory term for Shias, one that is calcu-
lated to remind the Arab masses of Shia doctrines that are especially
offensive to Sunnis).21
These insults help explain the thinking behind the destruction of the
Shia shrine of Samarra by Iraqi Sunni militants in 2006, as well as the
killings of Shias sponsored by al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:
this kind of violence heightens sectarian awareness, increases Shia-Sunni
violence, and consequently lessens the likelihood of Iran gaining more
acceptance among the region’s Sunnis.
Teheran for its part realizes that to increase its influence in the Sunni
Middle East it must minimize sectarian conflict. Scholar Vali Nasr
comments,
20. “Shias’ Travel to Iran Banned,” Daily Times (Lahore), July 30, 2006
(www.dailytimes.com.pk).
21. “Shias and Sunnis: The Widening Gulf,” The Economist, February 1, 2007
(www.economist.com).
1
When Abu Musab Zarqawi gave his famous declaration that you should
kill Shiites anywhere, anyhow, any time, a deputy commander of Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard…gave a very rare interview, saying there is no such
thing as Abu Musab Zarqawi; these are Zionist creations designed to
confuse the Muslims and sow discord among them. The line was very
clearly being laid that you don’t want to engage the sectarian issue; you
want to bypass it.22
And the way Iran’s leadership does this is by blaming sectarian tensions
on the entities most universally reviled in the Muslim world: Zionism;
Israel; America.
Hence the tactics employed by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadine-
jad, who is very Khomeinist in his efforts to replace Saudi Arabia with
Iran as leader of global Islam. His embracing of the Palestinian issue and
his support for Hamas; his threats to wipe Israel off the map; his
dismissal of the Jewish Holocaust as a myth—these are not the actions of
a lunatic, as some might claim, but the deliberate policy of a politician
who is counting on hatred of Israel as a way of uniting Sunnis and Shias.
One can see this strategy at work in recent events in Pakistan. In July
2006 a prominent Shia cleric named Allama Hassan Turabi was killed by
a suicide bomber. A pan-Islamist in outlook, Turabi was known for his
outspoken support for Hamas and Hezbollah and his hostility to Israel.
He was killed just after leading a protest rally in Karachi directed against
Israel and the USA. Turabi convened the rally in conjunction with the
MMA, a group I described earlier—a coalition of Sunni and Shia Islam-
ists who share enmity towards Musharraf’s government and who capital-
ize on international issues to strengthen their own position at home.
The consensus among Pakistanis I asked about Turabi’s murder was
that it was the work of Sunni extremists, possibly involving the outlawed
Sipah-e Sahaba.23 Not so, claimed Shia leaders interviewed by The New
York Times: “Everyone knows who is responsible. There is no Shiite–
Sunni strife. These are American agents.”24
This accusation was repeated at Turabi’s funeral. An article about the
funeral published by IRNA (the Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran’s
official news outlet) focused on a speech given at the burial service by
22. Vali Nasr, “The Revival of Shia Islam,” speech presented to the Pew Forum
on Religion and Public Life, July 24, 2006 (http://pewforum.org/events/index.
php?EventID=120).
23. Khaled Ahmed of Lahore’s DailyTimes wrote this about how Turabi died:
“When he [Turabi] reached home, a man trained in Afghanistan through a jihadi
madrassa (Sipah Sahaba?) killed him by embracing him and then blowing himself
up.” Personal email communication, August 17, 2006.
24. Salman Masood, “A Top Shiite Leader in Pakistan Dies in a Suicide Bomb-
ing,” The New York Times, July 15, 2006.
1
Allama Sajid Ali Naqvi. I discussed him earlier: Pakistan’s highest-

profile Shia cleric and a member of the MMA, Naqvi is head of Tehrik-e
Islami Pakistan, also known as Islami Tehrik (“the Islamic Movement,”
formerly Tehrik-e Jafria Pakistan). IRNA’s report on the funeral
mentioned that participants chanted slogans against the U.S. and Israel. It
also gave highlights from Naqvi’s funeral speech: “Sajid Ali Naqvi said
the [Pakistani] government has failed to control terrorist elements…
Allama Sajid Naqvi said mosques and religious leaders are not safe and
the rulers have lost the right to rule. He asked the people to be calm and
frustrate [the] designs of those who are trying to pitch Muslims against
each other.”25 Anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism; denunciations of the
local national government and calls for pan-Islamic unity: all this con-
forms to the Khomeinist agenda of Ahmadinejad’s government. No
wonder Iran’s official news agency gave Naqvi’s role such coverage.
Relevant here are comments made by Daily Times editor Khaled
Ahmed in an interview I had with him in Lahore in December 2005:
“Naqvi still takes orders from Iran. Iran feeds him anti-Americanism and
tells Naqvi to blame America for everything that happens. If Iraqi Sunnis
kill Shias in Najaf and Karbala, Iran tells Shia leaders in Pakistan like
Naqvi, ‘Blame America,’ and so they do.”
Iran’s news agency also featured Naqvi in its coverage of Pakistan’s
reaction to Pope Benedict’s Regensburg speech in September 2006.
IRNA’s article began by announcing that the Islamist MMA was about to
“observe a countrywide protest day…to express the outrage of Pakistani
Muslims against the disgusting remarks of Pope Benedict XVI against
Islam.” It noted that Naqvi was among those Muslim clerics who “have
appealed to the nation to come out on the streets to voice their peaceful
protest against the anti-Islam campaign by the West.”26
Iran’s agenda in Pakistan is clear: minimize sectarian differences—
both ritual and political—among Muslims in the name of a united ummah
led by Iran, while identifying America and Israel as enemies whom all
Muslims can abhor.
Can anything hinder this movement? At the very least it’s too soon to
say that Pakistan’s Shias are ready to surrender their religious autonomy
for Ahmadinejad’s sake. Forms of local resistance can be seen at work if
one knows where to look. Hyena-mullah jokes and bloody matam are
ways of reasserting traditional regional Islam in defiance of the trend
towards a globalized and militant form of the faith.
25. “Thousands Attend Slain Pakistani Religious Leader Funeral,” Islamic

Republic News Agency, July 15, 2006 (www2.irna.com/en/news/view).
26. “MMA to Hold Protest Rally Against Pope’s Remarks on Friday,” Islamic
Republic News Agency, September 20, 2006 (www.irna.com/en/news/view).
1
6
RAW MEAT SKYWARD:
PARIAH-KITE RITUALS IN LAHORE
Pariah Kites: The Poetry of Initial Encounters

I’d glimpsed them up in the sky now and again, without any attentive-
ness on my part, on every trip I’d made to the subcontinent. But as for
really seeing them, really noting them: I remember the first time clearly.
Thursday, the sixth of Muharram, March 21, 2002. Mid-afternoon, and
I was returning from Shahdara, a town north of Lahore on the other side
of the Ravi River. I’d visited Shahdara’s Shia shrines in the company of
my friend Nasir Husain Zaydi.
We were stuck in an oven-box of a little car, crawling under a hot sun
in backed-up traffic on the Ravi Bridge. Glare headachingly bright.
Exhaust fumes; hard to breathe. No air conditioning in our car.
Nasir apologized and said best to keep the windows rolled up to keep
out the smog. He was telling me something about blood rituals and self-
flagellation. The heat made it hard to concentrate on what he was saying.
In front of us, haltered oxen stood squeezed in the back of a Datsun
pickup. One ox blinked and shook its head. A message, I thought. Help.
I’m a prisoner. We’re all prisoners. Nasir was saying something about
the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the revival of Shia pride.
For my own revival I rolled down the window and looked out. And
then I saw them.
Birds, dozens of them. Big, too. Circling far above, gliding along the
thermals over the river. Carving elegant curves through the air, free of
the traffic-crawl below.
One bird suddenly dipped a wing and rode the airdrafts down in a
swift dive. One moment it was hundreds of feet above us. The next, it
was gliding level with the bridge, keeping pace with our car. It was just
beyond the bridge railing, no more than twelve feet from where I sat.
1
6. Raw Meat Skyward 109
Big wings, was my first impression, close enough so I could distin-

guish the feathering. A sharply curved beak in a head that turned from
side to side. As the head turned I could see its eyes. The gaze fell briefly
on me, then flicked away to the river below.
I felt—and so strong was the impression I made sure to write it down
later—the presence of an alien intelligence. Cold assessment, and a
sentience as remote and hard as stone. And yet it was a feeling of
contact, of kinship, of shared perception as we both stared out over the
water. I thought of California poet Robinson Jeffers’s poem Rock and
Hawk: “Bright power…fierce consciousness…the falcon’s realist eyes.”1
I pointed out the bird gliding beside us to Nasir. Almost as big as an
eagle, I said.
Nothing so noble, was his opinion. “Just a cheel.” These birds were
pariah kites. Scavengers and thieves, he explained. “Always picking at
garbage heaps.” He shrugged.
The bird dipped out of sight. But as our car inched along the bridge I
stared up at the cheels overhead. Philosopher Jerry Gill defines reality as
“the intersecting of symbiotic dimensions,” and I’d just had an experience
of intersection that made me want to learn more about the dimension
inhabited by Lahore’s pariah kites.2
Of Warlords, Trash, and the Philosopher’s Stone:

Pariah-Kite Legends from Old India
After the encounter on the Ravi Bridge, I began to watch for the presence
of these birds. On early morning walks in Lahore’s Cantonment district,
when the streets were still largely empty, I’d look up and see I had
company: the first kites of the day. Easy to spot: forked tail, five-foot
wingspan, and a drawn-out piercing cry that echoed along the sky.
Midday, when summer air-currents offer hot gusts and lift-off glide-
waves to tempt all things with wings, is when these birds are most easily
seen. Many a time, on foot among the crowds in the Old City quarter,
where the alleys are so narrow one feels walled in among flesh and sweat
and heat, I’d turn my gaze briefly skyward. With luck I’d see a cheel,
framed by the rooftops overhead, soaring about at its ease.
“Looking for refuse,” as one shopkeeper told me. “And if they see you
outside carrying a bit of food, they might just come down and snap the
bit right out of your hand.”
1. Robinson Jeffers, Selected Poems (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 56.
2. Jerry H. Gill, Mediated Transcendence: A Postmodern Reflection (Macon,
GA: Mercer University Press, 1989), 154.
1
“Everywhere parasitic on man,” is how the Collins’ Birds of India

handbook unflatteringly describes the cheel in its eating habits.3 Still, a
noble sight, to see a hundred of them riding a thermal air-spout at noon,
in a slow helix up in the sky.
Twilight, and they settle into treetops beside wastefields, sharing the
habitat with crows, sparrows and ruby-headed parakeets. Rudyard
Kipling’s verse comes to mind: “Now Chil the kite brings home the
night, that Mang the bat sets free.”4
The writer’s father, John Lockwood Kipling, was a keen observer of
the subcontinent’s animal life. His book Beast and Man in India (1891)
reflects the pleasure he took in studying the behavior of the region’s
pariah kites. He claimed that the bird’s Hindustani/Urdu name, cheel/chil
(plural: cheelayn), was derived from “its shrill thin scream.” Readers of
his book can glimpse one of the things Lockwood Kipling did for
amusement when he wanted a break from his duties in the museum’s
galleries: “Those who delight in the flight of birds, which surely is one of
the most fascinating things in life, may find less interesting diversions
than throwing fragments of food from a high roof when a fleet of swift
pirates soon assembles.”5
A gifted amateur naturalist, Lockwood Kipling was good at describing
how cheels attack a swarm of winged white ants as the termites rise up
into the sky:
The birds assemble in great numbers for this dainty feast, the kite with the
rest. One would think this wide-gaping bird would sail round in the insect
cloud open-mouthed, whale-fashion. But he uses his claws even for this
minute game, and the action of carrying them to his beak as he flies
produces a series of most graceful curtseying undulations.6
The subcontinent has its share of stories about pariah kites. I came upon
one such tale in a visit to Jodhpur’s Meherangarh Fort in the Indian
province of Rajasthan. On the fortress wall is a shrine to Chamunda (one
of the manifestations of the warrior-goddess Durga). A doorkeeper
pointed to the cheels gliding above the ramparts and told me they were
sacred to Chamunda.
He said centuries ago the goddess showed herself to one of the city’s
Rajput rulers at a time when Jodhpur was threatened with invasion by
Muslim warlords. “I will help you fight off the Muslims,” she promised.
3. Martin Woodcock, Collins’ Birds of India (London: Harper Collins, 1980), 32.
4. Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books (London: Penguin, 1987), 35.
5. John Lockwood Kipling, Beast and Man in India (London: Macmillan & Co.,
1891), 34.
1
6. Kipling, Beast and Man in India, 34.
She gave him a sword and then assured triumph for the Hindus by taking
the shape of thousands of cheels that clawed at the faces of the invaders.
In Lahore, in the library of the Berkeley Urdu Language Program, I
came upon a book that listed a number of South Asian folk traditions
concerning pariah kites. This was S. W. Fallon’s New Hindustani–
English Dictionary (not so new now, since it was published in Benares in
1879). Under the heading Chil/Cheel, this dictionary lists several vivid
expressions and proverbs. “Do pahar ki chil: A noonday kite (a child
who won’t keep inside the house).” “Chil ki tarah mandlala: To haunt,
hang about, or hover like a kite.” “Chil ke ghar men paras hota hai: The
philosopher’s stone is in the kite’s nest.”7
Lockwood Kipling—who seems to have been well acquainted with
Fallon’s Dictionary—comments as follows on this last expression: “The
paras or philosopher’s stone is said in a proverb to be in the kite’s nest, a
dark saying based on the kite’s trick of sometimes carrying off gold
ornaments, or on the Muhammadan women’s superstition that young
kites cannot see until there is gold in the nest.”8
The most interesting of all the Hindustani cheel-phrases collected in
Fallon’s Dictionary is: “Kali chil, mangal ka roz!: A pice [a small coin]
to let the kite go on Tuesday!” Here is Lockwood Kipling’s comment on
the saying: “A Delhi street-cry raised by ragged fowlers is—‘Free the
kite on Tuesday.’… The practice in the Delhi region is for a mother to
pay a pice to the fowler, who swings the kite round over her child’s head
and lets it go. This ceremony is thought most lucky on a Tuesday or
Saturday.”9
In fact in Lahore’s Anarkali Bazaar and Old City quarter I myself have
seen men walking about with wicker baskets filled with chirping spar-
rows. For a few rupees these birdmen will set a sparrow free. Onlookers
told me this was an act of charity that earned the donor savab—religious
merit.
“Free the kite on Tuesday”: reading these nineteenth-century texts
made me wonder if twenty-first-century Lahore retains any religious
rituals involving the cheels I enjoyed watching so much. The answer, I
found, is yes—and the rituals are curiouser, more interesting, and more
controversial than anything I read about in Fallon’s Dictionary.
7. S. W. Fallon, A New Hindustani–English Dictionary (Benares: Medical Hall

Press, 1879), 570.
8. Kipling, Beast and Man in India, 35.
9. Fallon, A New Hindustani–English Dictionary, 570; Kipling, Beast and Man
in India, 35.
1
Mind the Claws:

Or, the Hazards of Tossing Raw Meat from a Bridge
As I mentioned earlier, pariah kites first came to my attention during the
2002 Muharram season. But at that time I was too taken up with docu-
menting Shia rituals to give the kites their due.
My chance to focus on them came a couple of visits later, in March
2004. An early-morning walk in my Cantonment neighborhood gave me
another close look at one of these birds. A cheel, perched on a nearby
rooftop, rose up, circled directly over my head at a height of no more than
fifteen feet, and then settled onto the topmost branch of the closest tree.
I stopped and stared. In the morning light its head seemed a pale gold,
its body deep brown, its V-shaped tail barred with dark stripes. A good
two feet tall it stood: big. It eyed me, wheeled away, and then flew off
east into the emergent sun.
I enthused about this sighting when my driver Imtiyaz Yusuf came by
later that morning. He responded to my enthusiasm with a suggestion:
why not head over to the Ravi Bridge to see the cheel-gosht ka sadqah?
I had to ask him to explain what this meant. Sadqah, I knew already, is
an Urdu term (derived from Arabic) used to designate acts of charity.
(Fallon defines it as “alms dedicated to pious purposes; propitiatory
offerings to avert sickness”10). But the term cheel-gosht puzzled me.
Literally it means “kite-meat”; so cheel-gosht ka sadqah must mean
something like “kite-meat alms.” But the term’s precise meaning eluded
me.
Imtiyaz rephrased the term for me. Think of the sadqah, he said, as
cheelon ke lie gosht: alms that involve meat intended as an offering to
the kites. The practice, he said, takes place at the Ravi Bridge every day.
Although one can catch the show at almost any hour, the morning is the
best time to go. That’s when the birds are good and hungry.
This I had to see. We drove past familiar landmarks. Mall Road past
the museum and Kim’s Gun and Anarkali Bazaar; then Circular Road
around the Old City, with a glimpse of the domes of the Badshahi
Mosque before heading up Ravi Road to the bridge.
The southwestern foot of the bridge offers a parking turnoff. We got
out of the car and paused below the bridge by the shore.
But not for long. The river—with its fouled sluggish water and
exposed mudbanks and profligate trash in abundance—exudes a sewage-
drainage stink that catches you like a clenched hand to the throat. We
hurried up the stairs to the top of the bridge.
1
10. Fallon, A New Hindustani–English Dictionary, 830.
Lots of traffic up here—noise and exhaust-haze—but a stiff breeze

blew and kept away the worst of the stench from below. We stood by the
railing on the bridge footpath and took in the view. Below, black water-
buffaloes, submerged to their eyes, cooling off in mid-river. Along the
shore, dozens of tents and huts: an encampment of some kind (more on
this later). And up above, plenty of cheels, hovering over the bridge.
We didn’t have long to contemplate the view. Boys and men—some
as young as ten, others in their fifties and sixties—converged on us. Each
gripped plastic bags in both hands. Cheel-gosht, cheel-gosht, cried two of
the boys.
Imtiyaz looked up at the sky, then at me. “So,” he said. “Do you want
to feed the kites?”
I said okay. The boys shook their bags at me and hurried forward at a
run. I wondered what I was letting myself in for.
The process seemed simple. Each bag contained chunks of raw bloody
meat. Bits of goat, one of the boys said. Also mutton and beef. (I learned
later there is a slaughterhouse across the river in Shahdara that sells these
scraps cheap.)
Each bag, explained my driver, costs five rupees (about ten cents). All
I had to do was pay one of the cheel-gosht vendors and be sure to touch
the bag before he offered it to the kites. Part of the ritual, he said. The
vendor would take care of the rest.
Sounded easy enough. I handed a five-rupee note to one of the kite-
meat boys. He thrust a bag at me. As soon as I touched it, he stepped to
the railing and shook the bag out over the river. Morsels dropped to the
water. But several pieces of meat, sticky with blood and goo, adhered to
the plastic. Impatient, the boy flung the whole bag over the railing as well.
It never touched the water. A rush of cheels hurtled by us. One bird
caught the bag in midair. Others swooped after the scattered meat. I saw
one kite dive in a fast slicing arc, skim the water and then climb away
fast with a bit of raw flesh in its talons.
I wasn’t the only customer. Again and again, motorists stopped on the
bridge, rolled down their car-windows, and waved money at the vendors.
Many of the cars looked expensive—a late-model Toyota, a BMW, a
Pajero SUV. This cheel-gosht business apparently wasn’t the sole domain
of the poor. Quite a few drivers were well-dressed, in business outfits.
Professionals, many of them seemed, commuters on their way to work.
And they were in a hurry. A vendor would take the outthrust rupees
and the client would touch the cheel-gosht bag. Most drivers then sped
off without even waiting to watch the offering take place. Sometimes the
vendor flung the whole bag carelessly over the railing without bothering
to shake out the contents.
1
Me, I wanted more of a show. I also didn’t like the idea of the birds
ingesting plastic to get at their food. I bought another dime-bag and told
the boy this time to take out the meat and throw it to the cheels one bit at
a time. I told him to throw each piece up high.
So you can have a real spectacle?, he said.
I said yes that was the idea.
He grinned and stood beside me and waved the bag above his head to
get the birds’ attention.
We got more attention than we’d planned for. A sudden whir and snap
and the bag was gone: a kite had passed neatly between us and snatched
the thing. Gave us both a fright—but worth it, just to see that flash of
claws. A reminder: these creatures are raptors after all.
The boy shrieked and laughed and shrugged. I gave him five more
rupees for another bag. This time we took turns taking streaming gobs of
meat and flinging them up in the air. A messy business: my shirt was
soon spattered with blood.
But I got the spectacle I’d wanted. Kites filled the sky overhead and
caught each piece on the fly. Not once did any birds collide. And the
delicacy of the catch was impressive. A kite would wing after its food
and in mid-air grab the meat in its talons. Then, poised above us, it
would stoop forward, its head curving down to its toes to transfer the
meal to its beak. Lockwood Kipling had pegged it right: the kite’s method
of in-flight dining truly “produces a series of most graceful curtseying
undulations.”
“Hurl It Far from Yourself”: The Logic of Pariah-Kite Rituals

After my initial pariah-kite encounters, I returned to the Ravi Bridge a
number of times and interviewed both cheel-gosht vendors and their
clients. They offered me various rationales to explain the thinking that
underlies the meat-offering ritual.
First of all, as one vendor—a man in his late fifties—explained, Yeh
cheelayn Allah ke makhluq hayn: “These kites are God’s creatures.” As
is the case with other birds, one can earn savab (religious merit) for
feeding them.
The vendor asked if I’d been to the Wazir Khan Mosque in Lahore’s
Old City. I said yes. Every time I’d been there, I’d bought a handful of
birdseed from a merchant who squats by a grain sack near the entrance.
Pigeons flock to the mosque’s courtyard to eat the food scattered by
worshippers. “And every time you do that,” said my informant, “you get
savab for feeding Allah’s creatures.”
1
But the cheel gosht ka sadqah—and this is a point many interviewees

insisted on—generally involves more than just a generalized pious wish
to earn merit. Typically, I was told, donors may be motivated to give by
various pareshaniyan (“troubles,” “worries,” “problems”) involving
health, work, or family.
One of the vendors—a middle-aged man who lived in the squatters’
camp by the bridge—put it this way. “If you have a problem, come out to
the bridge and buy some meat. Be sure to touch the bag it’s in.” It’s even
better, he suggested, if the vendor presses the meat-bag to the customer’s
forehead and whirls the bag seven times around the troubled person’s
head. “Then you make sure the bag is flung up into the air. The cheel eats
the meat and at the same time eats up your problem.” He pantomimed
the ritual with great whirlings of his arm as he talked.
Another informant explained the kind of du’a (personal petitionary
prayer) that should accompany the offering of meat to the cheels: “If you
have troubles that you want to make leave, then you should throw meat
to the kites. And as the kites fly away with the food, you should ask God
that in a similar way your troubles, too, will depart.”
Muhammad Razzaq, field director of the Berkeley Urdu Language
Program in Lahore, told me of another kind of sadqah: “If you have
troubles, place meat overnight by your bed. Then early in the morning,
before sunrise, while other people are still asleep, get up, touch the meat,
take it outside, and hurl it far away from yourself, where some animal or
bird will eat it.”
In other words, it’s not essential that a pariah kite be the specific agent
for removing the trouble-laden food. This point is illustrated by some-
thing I witnessed while out walking along Canal Road in a neighborhood
of Lahore called Shadman Colony. Here there’s a wide median strip,
grassy, beside a water source (the canal), with a number of trees and lots
of crows.
A man and several boys paraded about the strip, holding up bags of
raw meat for passers-by to see. Motorists pulled over, just as they do on
the Ravi Bridge. The man in charge followed a slightly more elaborate
procedure than the ones I witnessed on the bridge (possibly, I suspect,
because there were fewer customers and less of a rushed and crowded
atmosphere here in the relatively quiet locality of Shadman).
He passed the meat-bag in a circle seven times around the client’s
head, pressing the bag to the individual’s forehead on each pass. Then he
turned and opened the bag and scattered its contents across the grass. The
crows dropped from the trees and made short work of the meat.
1
Between customers I asked the vendor about his work. He enumerated

the anxieties people bring to this ritual: worries about a child’s health;
wanting to protect a new car or new motorbike and guarantee somehow it
would never involve its owner in an accident.
Is it good work, this bird-meat business?, I asked. He smiled and
nodded at the boys and said it provided a fulltime income for himself and
his sons.
Extrapolating from the crows in Shadman and the kites on the bridge,
one can say the essential element of this ritual is simple. Touch the meat;
transfer the trouble; make sure the food—and by analogy the trouble—
gets carried off by some creature.
Ancient logic, ancient ritual—as old as the Hebrew scriptures, where
the Israelite high priest lays hands on a scapegoat to transfer the people’s
sins to the goat before it’s driven into the wastelands as an offering to the
desert-devil Azazel.11
Kite, crow, demon: all can be relied on to gobble up offerings. The
troubles that taint the meat never seem to spoil the taste.
Pariah Kites and the Art of Survival in Lahore

The Ravi Bridge is a good place to watch pariah kites. But it also gives
you a view of the dozens of makeshift huts and stained burlap tents that
line both sides of the river.
One morning in December 2005 at the Urdu Center I told my friend
Muhammad Razzaq I planned to return to the Ravi and interview the
riverbank squatters. “You’ll want company,” he decided.
I had plenty that day—not only Imtiyaz the driver and my guide Reza,
but also Muhammad Razzaq and Mushtaq, the Urdu Center’s cook, who
said he was in the mood for an outing.
Not much of an outing, I wanted to say at first as the five of us stood
on the bridge. Stench below, smog above, car horns blaring, the pavement
beneath our feet quivering from the weight of endless freight trucks. But
the guys with me leaned over the railing and laughed and shouted to each
other as if they were on holiday.
And why not? We had a bit of sky and a view downriver and a hun-
dred big-winged birds to watch. This was Lahore’s wild outdoors.
Once we’d had enough of throwing meat to the cheels we made our
way down a litter-strewn sand-slope to the huts and tents on the
riverbank by the northern end of the bridge.
11. Leviticus 16.6-28; Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology
in Early Religions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 53-55.
1
No one came forward. For a minute or so we stood about uncertainly

near the edge of the encampment. My guys seemed as hesitant as I as to
how to proceed. Imtiyaz said this was the first time he’d seen the settle-
ment up close. Muhammad turned to me and said, “We don’t want to just
wander about and walk in on any women unannounced.”
Not many individuals in sight at first. Two men lounged on charpoys.
They wore bright-colored vests—one green, one scarlet—over impres-
sively filthy tunics. Both men were bearded and dirty. A man with a sack
of fruit stood by their rope-beds. He looked as if he was trying to sell
them some, and they looked as if they were trying to cadge food for free.
One man turned on his bed and gave us an indifferent gaze. His eyes
were watery-red and unfocused.
“Malangs,” said Imtiyaz by way of explanation.
Outlaw Sufis, in other words: a species known for its mad dancers and
hashish-smokers. Neither malang made any effort to rise or greet us.
Imtiyaz said they’d probably had their fair share of dope the night before.
But someone else came forward to welcome us. A man in his fifties,
rail-thin, his skin burnt dark from years in the sun. A long white mus-
tache, carefully groomed; a length of faded blue cloth twisted turban-
style atop his head; and a woolen shawl carefully wrapped about his
chest: these gave him a statesman’s air. Clinging to the tail of his shawl
were two children, one of them a very pretty girl with gold-stud earrings.
The man greeted us warmly and walked about with us while water-
buffaloes nearby browsed on dusty grass and clumps of sedge. Like most
of the people I encountered in this city, he spoke Punjabi as his first
language. So I asked my questions in Urdu and Muhammad translated
them into Punjabi. The man was chatty and animated and glad to talk
with us.
He was from Sheikhupura, he said—a town some thirty-five miles
north of Lahore. He’d come here with his family three or four years ago
in search of work. He did in fact find a job—using a cart and donkey to
haul things about in the city. But he couldn’t find anyplace he could
afford to live in Lahore, so he and his family had chosen to camp out
here by the river.
It wasn’t so bad here, he said. Almost all the people living as squatters
on this north shore of the Ravi were also from his town of Sheikhupura.
So he and his family didn’t feel alone.
As our Sheikhupura host spoke, other individuals came forward, men,
boys, a few young girls. In this and subsequent conversations I was able
to piece together details about the lives of the squatters who survive on
the banks of the Ravi.
1
Some individuals were beggars, getting by on charity (like the malangs

I’d spotted). Others were day-laborers or vendors who sold types of
food—fruit, bread, and so on.
But at least a dozen of the Ravi squatters I met told me they made
their fulltime living selling cheel-gosht on the bridge to motorists. One
man told me he was also from Sheikhupura and spent most of his nights
camped out by the bridge. He showed me the plastic meat-bags he was
selling. They contained bits of cow-kidneys and livers, he said. Like the
other men I met he said he got the scraps from the nearby slaughterhouse
in Shahdara. The thirty-five miles between his home-town and Lahore
made it impossible for him to go home often. So he lived here on the
riverbank for a week or more at a time, then returned to Sheikhupura for
a few days before coming back to Lahore.
Lahore draws unskilled labor from a number of towns. Another kite-
meat vendor I met told me he’s from Gujranwala (about forty-two miles
north of Lahore). He’d been living here on the shore of the Ravi by the
bridge for almost twenty years. Once a month he went home to give
money to his wife and family.
From these talks I acquired a sense of the riverbank by the Ravi
Bridge—despite its polluted wasteland appearance—as a valued perch
for the survival-minded from throughout the Punjab. For those who earn
their rupees selling cheel-gosht, a number of factors conveniently con-
verge at this location: a slaughterhouse; a traffic bottleneck on the bridge
and a ceaseless stream of potential clients; unclaimed real estate for the
squatting; and—for company—squadrons of magnificent birds with
limitless appetites for all the merit-yielding alms they can get. One could
do worse.
But survival and pariah kite-meat weren’t the only topics I learned
about from the squatters. On that day in December 2005 when I met the
white-mustached gentleman from Sheikhupura who welcomed us so
courteously, a pedestrian on the bridge spotted me and my friends and
hurried down the slope to join us by the water.
Turns out he was a peddler, quick to spot a knot of potential custom-
ers. He carried a covered basket and a portable stand made of bamboo. In
no time he’d set up the stand and placed the basket on top and showed us
what he had for sale: bread and biscuits and fresh chicken patties.
Friendly and easy to talk to, this individual, like itinerant salesmen
anywhere you care to name. He heard me asking questions about reli-
gious life and cheel-gosht rituals. At this he got excited and broke into
our talk to say he’d seen something here by the bridge that was stranger
than any kite-meat charity.
1
Strange always gets my attention. I asked what he’d seen.

It was part of his job, he said, to go back and forth along this bridge all
day. He sold to motorists, donkey-cart drivers, squatters under the bridge,
anyone with a few rupees to spend. He did this all day and stayed on the
bridge until his stock was exhausted—until nine, ten, sometimes eleven
pm.
Sometimes, he said, when he finished late and he finally headed home
for the night, he’d see solitary men seated in isolated spots on the river-
bank, doing wird (religious chanting). He never disturbed them because
he knew they were undertaking a chillah—the forty-day ritual that—if it
doesn’t end in something disastrous—gives a person mastery over an
assortment of jinns.
This seemed to me an appropriate place for such disciplines, for the
Ravi has its own history as a nexus of illuminationist encounters. While
meditating on the shore of the river, Mulla Shah (a seventeenth-century
resident of Lahore and a Sufi mentor of Prince Dara Shikoh) experienced
a vision in which “a man emerged out of the water”—a man who proved
to be al-Khidr. Revered as a guide for spiritual wayfarers, al-Khidr is a
legendary figure believed to have gained immortality by drinking from
the “Spring of Life.” He approached the Sufi on the riverbank, spoke
briefly with him, and then vanished.12
My cheel-gosht informants on the Ravi Bridge had a lot to say about
mystical disciplines and the chillah. But this takes us into the realm of
the demonic—a topic I’ll save for the next chapter.
Conclusion: Rituals for the Road

Back in my room at night in the Cantonment, and I was packing my bag
for next morning. Muhammad and Reza and Imtiyaz and I had organized
a car-trip to Peshawar, and we were planning an early start.
A knock at my door. Ranee the housekeeper asked whether I’d like to
join Fatima Sahiba in the parlor for tea.
I said sure. I liked my landlady’s company, and Fatima liked asking
me about the things I saw each day in this city of hers that she loved.
She often disapproved of the individuals I consorted with, but she
liked my stories anyway. She said they involved people she’d never
normally talk to—Shia flagellants, parrot fortune-tellers, and so on.
Today’s experiences were no exception. She listened avidly as I told
her about the Ravi Bridge and my conversations with the kite-meat men
12. Bikrama Jit Hasrat, Dara Shikoh: Life and Works (2d ed.; Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1982), 93-94.
1
and their lives on the riverbank. And as soon as I finished, she put down
her teacup and said, “You know these types of people are not good
Muslims.”
My landlady enjoyed a good argument in the evening. To keep the
discussion going I said that as far as I could tell, all these people I spoke
to regarded themselves as proper Muslims.
She admitted she herself years ago used to give money for food to be
fed to the cheels. But she stopped when her maulvi told her this custom is
“against Islam.” Her local mullah, she said, explained that the practice
came from Hinduism. “ ‘And if it comes from Hinduism,’ my maulvi
says, ‘we must eliminate it’.”
She said her mullah reminded her the goal is to purify Islam. So
instead of feeding cheels and continuing a corrupt Hindu practice, her
mullah advised her, she should donate her money to the mosque, and he
would see to it that the money would be used to feed the poor instead of
feeding some birds.
Ranee the housekeeper poured us more tea. Before I went off to bed
Fatima Sahiba told me to remember: all this kite-meat business wasn’t
the right form of Islam.
I said I’d be sure to keep it in mind.
Which made me smile the next morning when my guys came to get
me and we left the city by way of the Ravi Bridge. Razzaq had us stop by
the river and clapped his hands and announced, “Time for sadqah.” He
waved over a cheel-gosht boy from the crowd on the bridge.
I recognized the kid from one of my interviews. He lived in Shahdara,
just across the Ravi. Unlike the riverbank squatters from Sheikhupura
and Gujranwala, he walked back and forth every day between his home
and the bridge.
First Muhammad ordered up four bags of meat, one for each person in
our car. We each in turn touched a bag. As my bag was presented to me,
Muhammad suggested I might want to pray for a safe trip. Imtiyaz
seconded the idea. This was the way to start things right, he said, with an
offering to keep us all unharmed.
I got out of our little Hyundai to watch as the boy flung the flesh out
over the water. The kites overhead spotted their meal fast. The nearest
raptor gave me a good show. Abruptly it closed its wings and folded
them tightly against its chest and then pitched headlong in a rocking
side-to-side high-dive. Its claws hooked a meat-gob before the morsel
could touch the water.
Muhammad wasn’t quite done yet with the sadqah. For an extra ten
rupees he bought two more gosht-bags and motioned to the Hyundai.
1
The boy walked all the way around our car, lifting the bags shoulder-
high and twirling them dramatically as he completed his circle. Then he
pitched this meat, too, at the kites.
Muhammad explained these two bags were intended to enhance the
likelihood that the car itself would come through the trip all right—no
accidents or mechanical mishaps. Lots of people, he said, do a cheel ka
sadqah at the beginning of a trip to ensure a safe journey. For Lahoris
heading north, the Ravi Bridge—the last stop before leaving the city—is
a good place to do a kite-offering.
“So,” said Muhammad with a big smile as we all squeezed back into
the Hyundai and drove across the bridge, “this way—God willing—we’ll
have no worries on our trip.”
Did it work?
We made it all the way to Islamabad and Peshawar, through the
Punjab to the North-West Frontier Province, and then safely back to
Lahore again.
And our car didn’t break down once.
1
7
JINNS AND SORCERY IN LAHORE:
TEXTUAL SOURCES AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
Introduction: What Buzzes in the Brain

Tell friends you’ve been interviewing Lahori sorcerers, and you’re likely
to be asked: have you had any creepy moments in such dealings? Any
encounters that have spooked you?
Well, one or two. Most of my interviews have been pleasant, even
prosaic. But then there’s the time Mustafa was telling me how he used
his tame jinn to facilitate his travel arrangements:
Mustafa and I are sitting facing each other across a small worktable.
He tells me he employs his jinn to help others but sometimes the jinn
does favors for him as well. For example: at one time Mustafa was having
trouble getting a visa from the Indian Embassy to visit his family in
Delhi. His solution: he dispatched his jinn to the consulate. It then “went
into the brains of the embassy people” and somehow induced them to
grant the visa.
A disturbing image hits me: jinns buzzing around in people’s heads.
Mustafa has guessed what I’m thinking. No sooner does he mention
his jinn than he leans suddenly across the table and taps my hand and
jabs a finger at my face and says, “Yes, like that—it can go straight to
your brain.”
I flinch and back away. A reflex—I can’t help it: like dodging the
threat of a fly up one’s nose. An instinctive reaction, I tell myself.
Yet I feel embarrassed. I look again at Mustafa. He’s watching me,
with a slow sly smile on his face.
Another creepy moment: hearing about the night Mustafa’s son (who
also practices sorcery) found out his house was besieged by angry jinns—
swarms of them—and learning from him what form they took, by the
thousands, when the young man made them show themselves, and how
the whole family had to fight them for possession of the house.
1
7. Jinns and Sorcery in Lahore 123
But to savor a story like this, one should start at the beginning. In my
case, the beginning had to do with outdoor advertising, newspaper ads,
and Urdu lessons with a jinn-master.
“If You Are Afflicted With Any Kind of Trouble At All”:

Marketing Strategies for Sorcerers
The research project that brought me to Lahore to begin with involved
Shia ritual. But Lahore is so rich in the visual stimulants it offers that it’s
hard to stay focused for long on exclusively one topic.
Among the stimulants I noticed one day while traversing Anarkali
Bazaar was a big placard on which were painted a black hand and a text
in Urdu. I was riding in a car with my research assistant Reza. We passed
the sign before I could read it all; but I caught the words “palmist” and
“astrologer.”
Interesting. More intriguing, however, and puzzling to me were other
words I glimpsed on the sign: jadoo-shekan (“magic-breaking”) and
‘amil (“practitioner”).
I turned to Reza for an explanation. I knew jadoo refers to magic of
the dark or illicit kind, but what was entailed in “breaking” jadoo? And
what kind of practices, I asked, is an ‘amil/practitioner engaged in?
Reza hesitated. He looked uncomfortable. When he spoke he chose a
dismissive tone. Such people only want money, he said. ‘Amils generally
aren’t good Muslims, their practices are unislamic, and their spells often
don’t work. Only uneducated people, he said, waste their rupees consult-
ing ‘amils and asking them for healings and the miraculous resolution of
difficult family circumstances. ‘Amils, he concluded, were charlatans,
experts in exploiting the ignorant. The whole business, he implied,
wasn’t worth my time.
His vehemence surprised me at first. After all, he himself—a very
active member of Lahore’s Twelver Shia community—had often told me
stories of healings and miraculous resolutions to problems.
But Reza’s stories were linked to Shia shrines and Shia rituals. The
whole realm of the ‘amil apparently represented a rival enterprise—one
that competed with the spiritual leaders to whom Reza owed allegiance
(though in fact the realms of the ‘amil and of Shia devotion overlap at
many points).
Yet there was another factor as well. Katherine Pratt Ewing, who did
extensive research among Sufi masters in Lahore, notes a frequent
phenomenon in interactions between Pakistani Muslims and foreign
ethnographers. Many Pakistanis, eager to identify themselves with the
rationalism and scientific empiricism associated with modernity, are
1
quick to disown aspects of popular Islamic practice they consider irra-

tional in their dealings with academic representatives of the modern
West. Ewing found herself in this bearer-of-modernity role in her deal-
ings with Sufis; and I experienced this, too, in my talks with Muslims
such as Reza. But as Ewing also astutely notes, people are segmented in
their identities. We may pride ourselves on consistency in our views, and
we may present ourselves as rational empiricists in public dealings with
outsiders. But in our private lives we might very well fall back on tradi-
tional worldviews and traditional rituals for dealing with the large and
messy patches of our lives that resist resolution by rational discursive
analysis. This was as true for my assistant Reza as a Shia as it is for me
as a Catholic.1
Nevertheless Reza wouldn’t tell me anything else about ‘amils. For
that I had to turn to my Urdu tutor Qamar Jalil, who suggested I look in
the advertising pages of local Lahori newspapers.
This was good advice. Here’s an example of what I found—the March
21, 2004 issue of the “Sunday Magazine” supplement to the Urdu-
language newspaper Khabarein. Jostling for attention amid blurbs for
facial creams, hair oil, male potency lotions, and breast-enlargement
schemes, numerous advertisements trumpeted the claims of rival ‘amils.
One practitioner, based in the Punjabi town of Faisalabad, bore the
titles of “professor” and “hajji” (veteran of the pilgrimage—Hajj—to
Mecca), thereby insisting simultaneously on both his scientific-scholarly
and orthodox-devotional qualifications. (This advertisement also featured
a photo of the ‘amil: frowning, bearded, and wearing a prayer cap, the
man seemed a very picture of foursquare Islamic sobriety.) The ad
described him as Shahanshah-e jinnat: “the supreme shah of the jinns,”
and it followed this with a promise that was headlined in black and
yellow: Jo chahoge mil ja’ayga: “You will get what you want.” How
could a claim like this fail to draw readers?
Another ad featured the “internationally renowned Professor Baba
Nihal Shah” (“Baba”—literally “father,” “grandfather,” or “old man”—is
a word commonly used as an honorific in addressing ‘amils and other
men thought to have holy powers).
Baba Nihal’s claims encompass the whole world of domestic worries.
“If you are afflicted with any kind of trouble at all”—here the ad enumer-
ates treachery in business dealings, marital problems, unemployment,
mental anxiety, alcoholism, and “enmity in your home”; in short: “if you
consider yourself desperate as to your own fate and have lost courage”—
1. Katherine Pratt Ewing, Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and

Islam (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 103-27.
1
then, counsels the ad, “At the first opportunity take the time to arrange a
meeting with Baba Nihal Shah, and God willing, all your desires and
hopes will be fulfilled. If you’ve already wasted time and money going to
‘practitioners’ (‘amilon), astrologers, and conjurers, then do not despair:
there is no problem Baba Nihal Shah can’t solve.” The ad goes on to
describe him as jinnat ke be taj badshah: “the uncrowned king of the
jinns.”
Under a supplementary headline—“He breaks the power of black
magic (kala jadoo), satanic spirits, and demons”—the same ad also
features what purports to be a testimonial from “a mother in Lahore.”
The mother in question tells a sad story of how her cherished son’s
behavior mysteriously changed for the worse shortly after he got married.
“He would come home late at night. He would quarrel with his wife over
the slightest things. It reached the point that seeing his wife’s face did
not please him; instead he loathed the sight of her.” (Bear in mind it’s not
uncommon for newlywed Pakistanis to move in with the husband’s
parents, thereby affording the mother a ringside perch for observing the
progress of the son’s marriage.)
The woman’s daughter-in-law was miserable; her son wept tears of
blood. Distraught, the mother sent for “various ‘amils, astrologers, and
prestigious purveyors of medicines.” All for nought: “Lots of rupees
were wasted in this process.”
Salvation came only when this Lahori mother happened upon an ad
for Nihal Shah’s services. “One day I glanced at the newspaper. I saw
Shah Sahib’s name. Without thinking I knew I had to go to him. I told
him the whole story.”
Nihal Shah told the mother her son would be healed within three days.
“As soon as I heard what Shah Sahib said, tranquility came to my heart.”
And this ‘amil was as good as his word. “In this way Allah made mani-
fest a miracle: on the third day, my son came home, and although my
eyes couldn’t believe it, it was true: now my son has been restored to
happiness.” She concludes with praise for Nihal Shah: “From the depths
of my heart I am grateful to Shah Sahib.”
As advertising, this can’t be beat. It presents a domestic situation with
which many readers can identify. Interesting to note, too, is how open-
ended this testimonial is. Never explained is precisely what or who was
afflicting the woman’s son. But the headline preceding the testimonial,
with its assertion that Nihal Shah “breaks the power of black magic,”
implies that demonic forces of some kind had been at work. Thus readers
who know of quarreling newlyweds are implicitly encouraged to be on
the lookout for the malefic influence of satanic magic—and by extension
such readers are also encouraged to give Baba Nihal Shah a call.
1
Jinns in the Quran and Medieval Islamic Storytelling

Many Pakistani spirit-beliefs can be traced back to ancient pre-Islamic
Arabia, where jinns were revered and feared as nature demons. Trees,
pools, caves, and abandoned ruins might each constitute the residence of
a jinn. But it was especially the desert regions—the uninhabited waste-
lands—that formed the realms of these beings. As with the god Pan of
Greek antiquity, the Arab jinns were linked with the feelings of awe and
unease that unpeopled nature inspires in solitary human wayfarers.
Unpredictable and morally capricious, the beings that inhabited such
regions might well choose to lash out at any humans that ventured into
their territory.
But these spirit forces were not always—or at least not entirely—
harmful. According to pagan Arab belief, they could choose to initiate
relations with individual humans (in which case the individual was said
to be majnun, possessed by a jinn).
But the Quran doesn’t deny the jinns’ existence. Far from it. Instead it
circumscribes their power in accordance with the Islamic concept of
tawhid: the monotheistic assertion of Allah’s oneness. Jinns, like humans,
are said to have been created by Allah. Jinns are made of fire, humans of
clay; one race is invisible, the other visible. Although they normally have
much longer lifespans than humans (I met persons in Lahore who claimed
they’d had encounters with jinns that knew the prophet Muhammad
fourteen centuries ago), nevertheless they are mortal. Jinns die and—so I
was frequently told in Lahore—some get killed by sorcerers.
From a theological point of view, the most important trait jinns share
with us is that they are volitional. Jinns, like humans, are capable of
moral choices. Chapter 72 of the Quran depicts a company of jinns
gathering around Muhammad—at a time when humans rejected God’s
word—and listening awe-struck to the revelation.
This means that there are Muslim and non-Muslim jinns, just as there
are Muslim and non-Muslim people—a point (as we will see) of consid-
erable importance for the popular religious imagination in Pakistan today.
The Quran also implies that jinns share human appetites. Among the
pleasures reserved for believers in paradise are virginal houris, “whom
neither man nor jinn has yet deflowered.” Another appetite shared with
humans is the desire to gain power by learning divine secrets. The Quran
depicts jinns confessing the following behavior: “And we probed and
searched heaven, but we found it filled with fierce guards and blazing
comet-fires. We used to perch in heaven’s vicinity, attempting to listen.”
Medieval Arab folk traditions describe heaven’s angels casting fireballs
1
at prying jinns and hurling them down from the sky. This is worth know-
ing, because, as we will see, the use of jinns as spies to ferret out secrets
is popular among Lahori sorcerers today.2
Among the jinns mentioned in the Quran are the shayatin or “satans”
(shayatin is the plural of shaitan; the Quran characterizes Satan as one of
the jinns). These shaitans are “infidels” or non-Muslim and hence are
immoral in their behavior and rebellious against God’s authority.3
The Quran counters this rebelliousness via the figure of King Solomon.
Allah is said to have given this prophet mastery of both the wind (“which
storms violently in its blowing”) and the shaitans (who are described as
“bound up in chains”).4 In describing the extent of Solomon’s power,
Islamic scripture repeatedly groups together the wind and the shaitans
(both of which are elemental, invisible, and unruly). These Quranic
verses thereby implicitly confirm the pagan understanding of the jinns as
part of the undomesticated natural forces of the earth.
Solomon is said to have coerced some jinns into service as divers
(Quranic commentary describes these shaitans as retrieving pearls for
Solomon from the ocean depths). Other jinns were conscripted into
enormous armies, where they joined the ranks of armed men under the
prophet’s command. These human-genie legions of clay and fire were
created to invade neighboring kingdoms of unbelievers that resisted the
message of Islam. Thus the jinns were linked to the early history of
Muslim jihad.5
But it is not only in the Quran that one hears of jinns’ enlistment in the
wars of humans. Consider the military campaigns of India’s seventeenth-
century Moghul emperors. As noted in a previous chapter, Shah Jahan
sent his favorite son, Dara Shikoh, on an expedition against the Afghan
fortresses of Kandahar (also known as Qandhar). Chroniclers of the time
report that when he set out from Lahore, Prince Dara included in his army
various specialists in spiritual warfare, including “a number of pious
ulamas [Muslim religious scholars] and Hindu magicians as a supple-
ment to his war-like equipments.” The following detail is of particular
interest: “A Hindu sannayasi [renunciant/ascetic] was employed by the
prince to work a miracle in the expedition; and a Haji, a master of forty
genii, who claimed to be a great magician and hypnotist, was entrusted to
secure the reduction of Qandhar by prayers and magic.” But Kandahar
2. Quran 55.74, 72.8-9; E. W. Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern

Egyptians (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1908), 230.
3. Quran 18.50; Lane, Manners and Customs, 228.
4. Quran 21.81-82, 34.12-13, 38.36-38.
5. Quran 21.82, 34.12-13, 38.36-38; Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Meaning of the
Holy Quran (Beltsville, MD: Amana, 1989), 812 n. 2738.
1
defied all such tactics. Dara Shikoh lacked the martial skills as well as
the perfect mastery of the jinn-world possessed by King Solomon.6
A medieval Arabic source, al-Qazwini’s thirteenth-century ‘Aja’ib al-
makhluqat (“The Wonders of Created Beings”), described the race of
jinns in ways that are reflected in Muslim folk beliefs of the subcontinent
today. The following passage is from a chapter in Qazwini’s text called
“Wondrous Stories Concerning the Jinns.” God has just granted Solomon
dominion over the jinns, and Gabriel summons them all to manifest
themselves so that the prophet-king can inspect them:
Then the jinns and shaitans emerged, from the deserts, mountains, and
hills, from the dried river-beds, waterless wastelands, and thickets. They
said, “We are here, at your command!” The angels herded them along,
the way a shepherd herds his goats, until all the jinns were assembled, in
a packed crowd…before Solomon.
He gazed at their features, at the marvels of their varied shapes. There
were white jinns and black, yellow jinns and fair-skinned and piebald.
The forms some took resembled horses; others, mules and lions. Some
had elephant-trunks; others, tails, and hooves, and horns.
Then Solomon prostrated himself before Allah most exalted and said,
“O God, give me strength and the ability to inspire awe. For I cannot bear
to look at them.”
Then Gabriel came to him and said, “Allah has given you power over
them, so get up and rise from your place.”
Then he rose…and he asked them about their religions and their tribes
and their dwellings and their food and drink.7
A nicely imagined scene, three aspects of which are worth noting here.
First, so dreadful are these creatures to look at that even Solomon feels
weak-kneed. This is Qazwini’s way of asserting a basic point of Islamic
doctrine: any power an individual human might acquire in controlling
jinns comes about only bi-idhni Allah, “with God’s permission.” Second,
although their elemental essence is fire, jinns can mimic creatures of clay
by taking on the shape of animals when they are summoned to present
themselves. Third, jinns can belong to any one of a number of “religions
and tribes”—a bit of data that will be important in the sectarian
landscape of present-day Pakistan.
In popular Islamic literature of the pre-modern era, the concept of the
jinn offered a way to understand non-Muslim faiths. In the Arabian
Nights story called “The City of Brass,” a rebellious jinn known as
6. Bikrama Jit Hasrat, Dara Shikuh: Life and Works (2d ed.; Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1982), 41.
7. Zakariyya ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini, ‘Aja’ib al-makhluqat wa-ghara’ib al-
mawjudat (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1966), 215-16.
1
Dahish ibn al-A’mash inhabits a red carnelian idol. Dahish speaks

through its mouth and issues commands to the pagans that worship it.
When the prophet Solomon hears of the idol, he calls on the pagans to
smash this symbol of false religion. But Dahish urges them to resist,
animating the statue so that it seems to be reciting seductively bellicose
poetry. War ensues; the prophet’s hordes triumph; paganism is brought
low.8
Dahish’s idol is reminiscent of one of the most notorious historical
artifacts of the pre-Islamic era: a statue of the god Hubal, made of red
agate in the form of a man. The medieval Muslim scholar Ibn al-Kalbi
tells us in his Book of Idols that the pagan Arabs used to offer sacrifices
to Hubal and consult it as an oracle.9
The Arabian Nights story may be interpreted as a Muslim attempt at
using Islamic cosmology and Islamic conceptual categories to understand
otherwise incomprehensible pagan ritual. In the Muslim worldview, jinns
are real; they are known for seductive speech (after all, the worst of
them—Satan—is denounced in the Quran as alladhi yuwaswis fi sudur
al-nass, “the one who whispers temptingly into the hearts of human-
kind”); and they have a reputation for intruding themselves into human
affairs. So what is to prevent them from animating a statue and speaking
through its lips and making it seem alluringly alive? Small wonder, then,
if pagans bow down before it.10
An analogous explanatory model can be seen at work in the writings
of an author from a different religious tradition: Justin Martyr, the
second-century Christian Church father. Rather than deny the existence
of the gods of the Greco-Roman pantheon, he conceded they were real.
But he equated them with the offspring of the biblical “sons of God,”
who in chapter 6 of Genesis are said to have mated with human women.
Justin described these hybrid offspring as daimones (demons). Among
the ancient Greeks and Romans, the term was favorable, denoting minor
gods that were benevolent to our race. But for early Christians, daimones
were demonic: the children of the “sons of God” and earthly females
were foul devils, and their leader, Zeus-Jupiter, was known to the Chris-
tians as Satan.11
8. ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Safati al-Sharqawi, ed., Alf laylah wa-layla (Cairo: Bulaq,
1835), vol. 2, 37-52.
9. William H. McNeill and Marilyn Robinson Waldman, The Islamic World
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 10-11.
10. Quran 6.112, 114.5.
11. Adela Yarbro Collins, “Satan’s Throne: Revelations from Revelation,”
Biblical Archaeology Review 32.3 (May 2006): 26-39.
1
Thus medieval Muslim storytellers and early Christian authors found a

way to fit paganism into monotheistic cosmology, by matching polythe-
istic belief with references in biblical and Quranic scripture (sons of God
and satanic jinns). Thereby the object of pagan worship was acknowl-
edged as something real and powerful. But it was construed as evil rather
than good, and subordinate to the one true God.
But in at least some parts of the Islamic world, the jinns’ linkage with
pre-Islamic paganism is not always understood as negative. Edward
William Lane, an Englishman resident in Cairo in the early nineteenth
century, was a close observer of Egyptian Muslim religious beliefs.
Among his numerous reports on the genii (jinns), one in particular is
relevant here:
Some of the people of Cairo say that a party of genii, in the forms and
garb of ordinary mortals, used to hold a midnight “sook” (or market)
during the first ten days of Muharram, in a street called Es-Saleebeh, in
the southern part of the metropolis, before an ancient sarcophagus, which
was called “el-Hod el-Marsoud” (or “the Enchanted Trough”)… It was
removed by the French during their occupation of Egypt, and is now in
the British Museum. Since its removal, the sook of the genii, it is said,
has been discontinued.12
But the goods offered for sale by these jinns, so Lane’s Egyptian infor-
mants insisted, were beneficial rather than harmful: “Whoever happened
to pass through the street where they were assembled, and bought
anything of them, whether dates or other fruit, cakes, bread, &c., imme-
diately after found his purchase converted into gold.”13
This anecdote, which occurs in the context of a discussion of Egyptian
Muslim beliefs about benevolent jinns, implies a positive assessment of
Egypt’s pharaonic legacy: in some unexplained way, the “enchanted
sarcophagus” provided a gathering point for jinns that distributed largesse
to passers-by. Once this physical link with the pagan past disappeared, so
too did the handouts of gold.
I mention Lane’s report because Pakistan, like Egypt, is a Muslim
country where numerous artifacts survive from the country’s pre-Islamic
heritage. In contemporary Pakistan, both Muslim folk belief and Urdu
pulp fiction (as we will see) invoke the jinns frequently, as a way of
commenting on the still-thriving presence of Hinduism across the border
in neighboring India, and as a way of confronting the lingering—and
disturbing—physical legacy of the Hindu gods in Muslim Lahore.
12. Lane, Manners and Customs, 433.

1
13. Lane, Manners and Customs, 433.
Sorcery in Lahore: Initial Encounters

One of my first meetings with a “spiritual practitioner” in Lahore came
about when I happened across a multicolored leaflet, illustrated with
images of a lamp, a zodiacal chart, and a palmist’s hand (within which
was inscribed a skull and crossbones), advertising the services of an
individual named Pirzada Hafeez Shah (Pirzada is an honorific title,
indicating someone is the descendant of a Sufi master).
The Urdu text caught my attention right away with this headline:
“Why shouldn’t wishes come true? Fate can be changed through the
influence of prayer. A message of healing for those who are suffering
and in despair.”
The leaflet specified the kinds of problems Hafeez Shah was ready to
handle: “Every type of situation—for example, the influence of evil
satanic amulets, travel abroad, failure in love, lucky lottery numbers,
problems with relatives, friendship, enmity, fights at home, failure in
business—all these things are resolved by means of nuri ‘ilm [literally,
‘luminous knowledge’ or white magic] and are accomplished with the
utmost secrecy.”
“Success,” the leaflet promised, “will be achieved in twenty-four
hours.”
After a build-up like that I was eager to meet this man. I phoned the
number printed on the sheet and spoke with an assistant. I told him who I
was and said something about my research interests and asked if I might
interview Hafeez Shah. I was instructed to come the following afternoon
and was given an address in Lahore’s Gulbarg quarter.
I showed up the next day with my driver and two Pakistani friends.
We knew we’d found the right place when we saw a sun-blistered plac-
ard: Hafeez Shah. Khavvateen ke lie purdah: “Private space for ladies.”
“Women,” commented one of my friends, “provide most of the busi-
ness for ‘amils.” Children’s health, husband’s job, quarrels with the
relatives, oppression by a bullying mother-in-law with whom one has to
share a house: “Women,” as he summed it up, “have it a lot worse in life.
The ‘amil provides some relief.”
From the outside the site didn’t look overly impressive. Hafeez Shah’s
office was one of many crowding the second floor of a badly weathered
cinderblock storefront strip. Beneath his office was a bakery. The stairs
were littered with bread crusts, corn cobs, and plastic bags. Knots of
snarled truck traffic belched fumes in our faces.
Upstairs was better. We went through a glass-fronted entranceway and
found ourselves in a tiny but neatly arranged reception area. A deferen-
tial assistant behind a counter had us sit while he made a phone call.
1
Shelves behind the counter displayed enormous Quran-texts bound in

green leather. The walls were covered in tilework that depicted flower
vases alternating with scriptural verses.
The assistant put down his phone. He looked embarrassed. He said
Hafeez Sahib wasn’t in. He’d had to go somewhere on urgent religious
business. Could we come back tomorrow?
My friends saw the disappointment on my face and jumped from their
seats. Perhaps Mister Hafeez doesn’t realize it, they said, but this is a big
professor doctor Sahib, come all the way from California, USA, to inter-
view people like Mister Hafeez. The professor wants to meet with the
‘amil today, not tomorrow.
The assistant said he could do nothing.
My friends said he should phone his boss again and ask him to rush
over here.
My friends’ voices got louder. The assistant’s voice got louder, too.
Finally my guys wore down the receptionist. He sighed and picked up
the phone again and dialed. A minute’s worth of pleading whispers, and
then he stepped around the counter to a door at the back of the office. He
opened the door and ushered us in.
Within this inner room—to my surprise, and that of my friends—sat
the man I’d been trying to meet: Pirzada Hafeez Shah. Beside him on a
couch lounged a young man. The two were watching TV.
My guys and I traded glances. All this time our sorcerer hadn’t been
away on urgent religious business but instead was at his ease in his
sanctum. Later my friends speculated that Hafeez Shah had instructed his
receptionist to make us wait and re-book our appointment just so he
could give the appearance of having a busy schedule.
Mister Hafeez was young, in his late twenties, pudgy and bearded. He
wore a baggy shalwar-qameez (trousers and tunic) and a brocaded vest. I
got things off to an awkward start through a careless choice of words: I
asked him to tell me about his practice of jadoo (magic).
That made him sit up. He was an ‘amil ruhani (“spiritual practitioner”),
he said, and ‘amils don’t do jadoo. Jadoo is something only magicians—
jadoogars—do, those who dabble in kala ‘ilm (“black knowledge”), kala
jadoo (“black magic”).
In that case, I asked, how would you describe your own work?
‘Amils like himself, he said, are those who break the spells cast by
jadoogars. “We counter black knowledge with luminous knowledge.”
And this in fact proved to be the answer I got in every talk I had with a
practitioner of sorcery. They themselves didn’t do jadoo, they said; magic
was something perpetrated by others. My informants insisted that what
1
they themselves did was to negate the malicious effect of charms and
amulets created by workers in jadoo. In short, magic was wrong and
casting spells to harm others was wrong.
But defending oneself and one’s clients against magic was perfectly
moral, they argued. After all, I was frequently told, the last two chapters
of the Quran are amuletic and are meant to serve as a defense against the
black jadoo associated with satanic whisperings. With the Quran as a
precedent, no one, they said, could object to defensive sorcery.
Hafeez Shah evaded my subsequent questions. He shied away from
talk about jinns, his fee scale, and the specific types of talismans he
created. “I never ask for money,” he said. He insisted everything he did
was undertaken fi sabil Allah, “in the path of God,” out of selfless reli-
gious duty. In other words, he earned so much divine merit in his job that
he’d never accept anything except purely voluntary donations. (My
friends’ caustic comment on this, once we’d left the office: “Yeah. That’s
what they all say.”)
But Hafeez Shah did have some information he was eager to share.
Black jadoo, he said, is often triggered by hasad and chashm-e bad: envy
and the evil eye. One must beware the eye of envious neighbors. And
when I asked him about his job qualifications, whether he’d had to go
through a special course of study to be qualified as a sorcerer, he said
only two things were needed: a thorough knowledge of the Quran, and
steadfast yaqeen (certainty and absolute conviction in one’s faith).
To illustrate for me the importance of yaqeen, abruptly he asked
whether I knew the shape of the letter alif. I said yes: it’s the first letter of
the Arabic (and Urdu) alphabet; its shape is a simple vertical stroke like
the upright blade of a dagger.
“Then perhaps you will understand this,” he said. “One alif from the
Quran, just one, recited with yaqeen, is enough to slice a rock in two.”
As he said this he extended his index finger and slashed it down through
the air like a knife halving a grapefruit.
Impressive.
He waved his alif-finger at me. “That’s what you need for breaking
spells,” he said. “Quran recitation, done with yaqeen.”
He smiled. He looked pleased with his flourish.
On the way out I saw the reception room now held customers. Several
women, all veiled. They sat huddled together talking but stopped as we
passed through the room.
They looked worried, all of them. Worried, but hopeful, maybe, too.
With any luck, I thought as my friends and I retreated down the stairs,
they’ve come equipped with yaqeen: enough to help Mister Hafeez slice
in two any problems they might have.
1
“This is the time they are abroad in the air”:

Warnings to Children about Jinns
Luckily for me, other sorcerers I met in Lahore were more communi-
cative than the dagger-alif-wielding Hafeez Shah. Particularly helpful to
me were a father and son, both of whom engaged to some extent in nuri
‘ilm practices. I met them through a woman I’ll call Nabeela, a young
Urdu-language instructor at BULPIP (the Lahore headquarters of the
University of California’s “Berkeley Urdu Language Program in
Pakistan”).
Knowing of my interest in folk religion, Nabeela one day mentioned
during our tutoring session something she knew would get my attention.
A friend of hers at Punjab University, who had been enduring intense
emotional distress, suddenly announced one day she’d figured out what
was the source of her troubles. She’d become majnun.
“I told her this was fazool bat [nonsense],” recalled my instructor.
Nabeela told me she’d suggested to her friend that she take a harder look
at the dynamics of her own life before blaming her troubles on the
interference of jinns.
I asked whether her friend took her advice.
She said no. I asked whether she’d been able to offer her friend any
other help.
“Yes, I did.” She said she’d encouraged her friend to keep repeating
Surat al-Fatihah, Ayat al-Kursi, and Surat al-Nas (all of these are Quran-
passages believed to be efficacious against jinns).
I reminded Nabeela she’d said this majnun business was fazool bat.
She looked uncomfortable. She said yes she knew that, and yes she
and her friend were both university-educated, but all the same it was just
as well to be on the safe side.
This illustrates a point I noticed repeatedly in my visits to Pakistan. It
is unsurprising to find belief in jinns widespread among all social classes
of Muslims—after all, jinns are referred to repeatedly in Islam’s scrip-
ture. What surprised me, however, was to find anxiety about the active
intrusive presence of malevolent spirit-forces among both the educated
and uneducated, the higher- and lower-income groups alike.
I found this to be the case also among Muslim students I’ve taught in
California, at Santa Clara University. Several of my Pakistani Muslim
students—all of them female, all from prosperous families—volunteered
information on the jinn-lore to which they’d been exposed since child-
hood.
1
An example is Jameela, a young woman from Karachi’s Clifton

locality—a fashionable and well-to-do neighborhood. This is what she
had to say:
We couldn’t have a dog when I was little, because there’s a hadith [a
statement attributed to the prophet Muhammad] that says: “No angel will
enter a house where there’s a dog or a picture,” and if no angels are there,
a jinn can get in.
When I was a little girl my mother always told me, “Never stand in a
doorway during maghrib azan [the evening call to prayer, at sunset]: this
is the time when churails [ghosts of women who died in pregnancy or
childbirth] and jinns are abroad in the air. They might take you.”
Mother also said, “Never wear perfume if you go out at maghrib; never
go out with your hair wet or loose or uncovered. Jinns are much more
attracted to women than to men, so be careful not to do anything to attract
them.”
If we were outside playing, Mother would always call us in as soon as
she heard the maghrib azan. It was like a warning bell, this azan.
My mother wouldn’t let us sit under trees as it got near sunset. Jinns will
drop down on us from the treetops, she said. They perch in trees.
Jameela laughed as she recalled her mother’s talk, but it struck me as a

nervous laugh. She said even now she remembered the warning when-
ever she heard the maghrib azan.
Easy enough, of course, to psychologize all this and discuss it as a
parental ploy to keep attractive young daughters indoors. But as Jameela
spoke, a vision came to me, of winged spirits swarming through the
evening air and then roosting on some tree-branch like a flock of restless
crows to eye stray children below. Yes, I could imagine how a memory
like that might arouse unease.
Later, I was to hear a sorcerer assign a religious denominational
identity to treetop-perching jinns; but I’ll save this explanation for below,
when I discuss sectarianism in the spirit-world.
The Thing on the Wall: The Use of Children

to Contact the Spirit-World—
and What Happens When the Contact Goes Bad
Now back to my Urdu tutor Nabeela. Perceiving my interest in the jinn-
realm, she suggested I seek out a gentleman living in Lahore who, she
said, was known for a fact to use a ma’sum beta to establish contact with
jinns.
Beta is the Urdu for child or boy; ma’sum means innocent, sinless, or
pure. Ma’sum beta refers to a child that is not yet sexually active.
1
I asked Nabeela exactly how “pure children” were used to establish

such contact. She said I should ask the man myself.
I did. In fact I hired him as one of my Urdu tutors. I’ll call this man
Mustafa Akhtar.
Mustafa was in his late fifties, from a muhajir background (which
meant that his family had emigrated from India—from Delhi, in his
case—to Pakistan in 1947, at the time of Partition and the creation of the
national Muslim homeland). Conservative and pious in his worldview, he
favored a carefully trimmed beard and a neatly shaved upper lip—a
grooming style he referred to as sunnah (conforming to the example
offered by the lifestyle and personal habits of the prophet Muhammad).
And yes, he said without hesitation when I raised the question, he did
make use of a ma’sum beta when he wished to summon a jinn. Or more
specifically, a ma’sum beti: a girl. His daughter, to be precise. She was
nine years old, he said.
But before we reached that point in our Urdu conversations, Mustafa
told me something first of how he’d initially chanced to have direct
experience of genies.
He’d had a neighbor, he said, who was an ‘amil, a practitioner of the
good kind of sorcery, he said: nuri ‘ilm. This sorcerer controlled so many
dozens of jinns that he offered to make Mustafa a gift of one. Without
giving the matter much thought, Mustafa accepted.
The jinn the ‘amil chose for him was Muslim—hence, said Mustafa,
benevolent and obedient. But this was a jinn that took its Islam seriously.
It was strictly orthodox in its observance of prayer and the like, and it
expected the same of its humans (as Mustafa was to learn later). Its
name: Suleiman (Arabic for Solomon, a good name for a good Muslim
jinn).
Mustafa lacked the skill—so he told me—to summon his jinn unaided;
nor could he make the creature render itself visible to him. He couldn’t
do these things because he’d never undergone a chillah (the “forty-day
retreat,” about which I was to learn more in subsequent visits). But with
the help of his daughter—his ma’sum beti—he could summon Suleiman
whenever he needed.
Here’s how it worked:
I have my daughter sit down [he said] and close her eyes. Then I recite Ya
Nur (“O Light,” one of Allah’s “beautiful names”) eleven times. Then
Ayat al-Kursi (the “throne verse,” Quran 2.255), once. Then I breathe on
my daughter, to transfer to her the power of these words to protect her
body against the jinns.
1
Then I ask her: Can you see anything? Yes, she’ll say. She can see the
jinn, even though I, her father, cannot. Then I’ll explain to her the job for
which the jinn has been summoned.
I asked Mustafa about the jobs the jinns are made to do. “Black jadoo”
practitioners, he said, use genies for harmful, even murderous, designs
against neighbors and rivals (and the way to summon “satanic” jinns for
such purposes, he said, entails invocation-rituals that include blasphe-
mous acts such as tearing a page of the Quran).
But ‘amils that do nuri ‘ilm use their jinns benevolently, for chores
ranging from finding lost objects around the house to medical diagnoses.
He gave me an example of how he’d used Suleiman not so long ago.
Mustafa had had no contact for some time with his relatives back in
Delhi, and he wanted to know how they were. He commissioned
Suleiman to check up on them. To do this, said Mustafa, the jinn went to
India in the company of Mustafa’s daughter’s hamzad. (Literally mean-
ing “twin” or “born together,” hamzad has a special significance in the
context of sorcery: “a jinn, or familiar spirit, said to be produced at the
moment of the birth of every child, and to accompany him through
life.”14)
His daughter’s hamzad, he said, had readier access to knowledge of
family matters—such as the location of his relatives’ home in Delhi—
than would an “outsider” jinn such as Suleiman. Together the two spirits
shot off to India’s capital, where the girl’s hamzad found the house and
pointed it out to Suleiman. Then Suleiman listened in on the relatives’
doings, and the pair returned to Lahore in a flash. Suleiman reported his
findings to the girl, who conveyed all the information to her father.
“All of us,” Mustafa told me, “have a hamzad. You do; I do. On our
own we can’t access or make use of our ‘twin,’ but jinns can do this for
us.”
Fascinating, this anecdote, in part because of the way it suggests how
the spirit-world can be marshaled to compensate for difficulties in cross-
border contacts between families that are cut off from each other because
of the sporadically hostile quality of international relations between
Pakistan and India.
In another conversation Mustafa explained that sometimes he would
have his daughter stare into a mirror, and the jinn would suddenly show
itself in the glass. At other times, the jinn would even use the girl’s
thumbnail as a view-screen in which it would display itself to her.
14. John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1884), 1234.
1
Wouldn’t the sight of a jinn, I asked, frighten a little girl? (At that
moment I was thinking: it would be enough to frighten me, for sure.)
No, no, said Mustafa, with a smile that suggested: Everything stays
firmly under control. Yeh jinn insani shakl leta hay: “This jinn takes on a
human shape,” so as not to frighten the child. According to his daughter,
Suleiman most typically appeared in the form of a man in his fifties,
handsome and bearded. “Much like you,” I said. He took this as a
compliment. I left it at that.
The invocation-ritual described by Mustafa apparently has a long
lineage. The Leyden Papyrus, a Greco-Egyptian magical text of the third
century AD, features numerous spells for conjuring forth a variety of
gods. As with Mustafa’s use of a ma’sum beta, many of the spells
stipulate that the magician “bring a pure child” to the invocation site.
Other spells in the papyrus make clear what type of purity is involved:
“You take a boy, pure, before he has gone with a woman”; “You take a
clean bright lamp…you make the boy stand before it, he being pure and
not having gone with a woman.”15
The logic underlying the use of children for divination is explored in a
Latin text of the second century AD, Apuleius’s Apology. Apuleius, a
neo-Platonic philosopher who wrote about the Egyptian Isis-cult, com-
posed the Apology to defend himself in court against a charge of harming
individuals through the practice of sorcery. In the following passage he
declares his own beliefs about divinatory practices:
I believe in Plato’s assertion that there exist certain divine powers that are
positioned, in nature and in place, midway between gods and humans. It
is these intermediary powers that govern all gifts of divination and the
miracles wrought by mages. I also think it possible for the human soul,
especially the simple soul of a child [animum humanum praesertim
puerilem et simplicem]—whether via the chanting of verses or the incan-
tatory effect of inhaling certain scents—to be lulled asleep. Then for a
little while, it forgets its present surroundings and is detached from all
memory of its body. Thereupon it returns to its true nature, which is
immortal and divine. While it is in this kind of sleep, it may foretell
things of the future.16
Two points are worth noting here. First is that the “intermediary powers”
he describes bear at least some resemblance to the jinns. Second—and
much more interesting—is what Apuleius says about the divinatory
15. F. L. Griffith and Herbert Thompson, eds., The Leyden Papyrus: An Egyptian
Magical Book (New York: Dover, 1974), 77, 35, 159.
16. Paul Vallette, ed., Apulée: Apologie (Paris: Société d’édition “Les Belles
Lettres,” 1924), 52-53.
1
potential of the animum humanum praesertim puerilem et simplicem:

“the human soul, especially the simple soul of a child.” Implicit in this
Latin text, I think, as in the Egyptian Leyden Papyrus, and in the
Pakistani use of the ma’sum beta, is the assumption that the pre-sexual
self, because it is not yet fully entangled in the social world of adult
relations, is simplex and ma’sum: simple and pure. Hence it offers a
clearer mirror for catching a glimpse of the divine, of the realms that are
not subject to the limitations of bodies of flesh.
The Leyden Papyrus offers what I consider another point of compari-
son with the jinn-summonings I learned about in Lahore. The “pure”
child to be used as a medium in the Egyptian ritual is positioned by the
sorcerer so that the child’s face is directly over a bowl filled with water
or oil—a reflective surface meant to function, I believe, like the mirror
used in Lahori ritual.
The Egyptian magician then chants, “Open to me the earth, open to me
the Underworld, open to me the abyss,” while invoking various deities:
“a rearing uraeus [cobra]”, “the lion-ram,” “Balkam the dread one of
heaven,” “the almighty four-faced demon,” etc. Other spells may invoke
the spirits of persons who have been drowned or murdered. Meanwhile
the child is expected to be ready for the appearance of Anubis (the
jackal-god of the Egyptian underworld). When Anubis appears, the child
is to say, “Go forth, bring in the gods.”17
Naturally the papyrus has nothing to say about what all this must have
been like as an emotional experience for the “pure child” who was used
as a medium—with one’s face inches above a lamp-lit basin, in which
one is to be on the lookout for jackal-gods, four-faced demons, and
drowned and murdered men. But one does get a hint of the dangers
involved: the magician calls on any benevolent god that might be pre-
sent, saying, “Do thou protect this boy whose face is bent down.”18
Which brings us back to Mustafa and his daughter. At first when I
asked whether it was frightening for the girl to find herself used as a
medium, he said no, not at all. As mentioned above, Suleiman the jinn,
being well-intentioned, appeared to her in an insani shakl, “human
shape,” reassuringly like that of her own father.
17. Griffith and Thompson, The Leyden Papyrus, 21.

18. Griffith and Thompson, The Leyden Papyrus, 25. The use of children for
divination in the setting of the Subcontinent has its own history in fiction of the
British colonial era. See Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), Rudyard Kipling’s
Kim (1901), and Talbot Mundy’s Om: The Secret of Ahbor Valley (1924). All these
novels refer to boys being made to gaze into ink-pools for the purpose of clairvoyant
contemplation.
1
But in a subsequent session Mustafa told me of an incident that was

much more disturbing. One night, he said, he used his daughter to sum-
mon Suleiman and then had her command the spirit to go to the house of
another ‘amil. He said he wanted Suleiman to “learn what he could” of
the other ‘amil’s household (which I took to mean that Suleiman was
supposed to snoop about—like one of the Quran’s heaven-probing jinns
—and spy out the man’s professional secrets).
Although Mustafa didn’t explain the identity of this sorcerer in any
detail, the latter was apparently a rival—and, as Mustafa found out, a
much more skilled “practitioner” than he.
Suleiman was abjectly unable to enter the other sorcerer’s house at all:
the rival had “lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of demons at his command.”
Unfortunately the matter didn’t end there. By way of retaliation, the
other sorcerer sent one of his own jinns to terrify Mustafa’s household.
Mustafa’s family was sitting quietly at home when his daughter
looked up and suddenly screamed. She said she’d just seen eik bahut
unchi chiz (“a very tall thing”) of indeterminate shape, outlined on the
wall. No reassuring human figure this time; just a huge thing on the wall.
It had to have been an ‘ifrit, said Mustafa: a species of jinn known for
its violence and malice.
The girl, I thought, was the one who ended up paying the price for her
father’s dabbling. Having been trained to catch mirror-glimmerings of
“luminous” jinns, it was unsurprising that eventually she would also
happen upon glimpses of the manifestations of sorcery’s darker side as
well.
On the Dangers of Dancing in Mixed Company

Mustafa’s daughter was not the only member of his family to get caught
up in sorcery. His son Tariq—a man in his late twenties when I first met
him—became involved as well, to the extent that—unlike his father—he
became a professional specialist in nuri ‘ilm, with a diploma to prove it.
Tariq’s interest arose when his father’s “gift” jinn Suleiman started
getting out of control.
Was there an incident, I asked Mustafa, that triggered this loss of
control?
Apparently there was. Suleiman, he reminded me, was not only a
Muslim but a piously observant and orthodox jinn. It became angry when
the family attended a wedding and Tariq indulged himself in a consider-
able amount of dancing.
I asked whether dancing was really all that bad.
1
It wasn’t just the dancing, explained Mustafa. It was also the fact that
it was in mixed company. Dancing, and the presence of men and women
together: that was enough to disrupt Mustafa’s relationship with the jinn.
Thereafter Tariq began to experience petty harassment: money stolen,
a pair of his lace-up shoes mysteriously tangled and left dangling from a
coat-rack—troubling behavior, which the family knew had to be the
work of the jinn. Finally Suleiman ceased responding to any attempts at
invocation by Mustafa.
But this wasn’t the end of the family’s dealings with the jinn-realm.
Tariq apprenticed himself to a Sufi named Ustad Muhammad Aman
Allah, a member of the Chhisti and Qadiri tariqas (Sufi orders), who was
also a master sorcerer. Mustafa assured me his son was far more profi-
cient as a jinn-tamer than he was, and soon I arranged to hire Tariq as an
Urdu conversation-partner as well.
The young man wasn’t the easiest tutor to get on with—he seemed
suspicious when I explained I was an academic researcher and I admitted
I’m a non-Muslim and a Christian. He eyed me warily as I did my con-
stant note-scribbling, and at times he was clearly reluctant to share key
bits of information with an outsider and unbeliever. And I made things
worse by showing enthusiastic interest in Shia self-flagellation, parrot
fortune-telling, and other practices that are condemned as heretical by
many Muslims. Nonetheless I learned a lot from him. I met with Tariq
repeatedly in the course of several trips to Pakistan, and over time I heard
plenty of strange stories.
He warmed to me a bit (or at least became less unfriendly) the day his
father told me Tariq had just recently finished his studies with his mentor
and had been awarded an ijazah (a permit to undertake practice on his
own). I asked Tariq whether he had a diploma he could show me. The
young man was happy to oblige.
He pointed with pride to the key sentences in the certificate:
Together with permission to practice, Tariq Akhtar is given this testimo-
nial of accomplishment as a spiritual practitioner and healer of bodily
conditions. Through the grace and favor of Allah most exalted, he is
enabled to undertake treatment for dealing with jinns, magic [jadoo], and
bodily illnesses.
This same mentor had also written a booklet called Chehel kaf ki qalami
(“Manuscript of the Forty K’s”). Tariq had a copy, and he let me glance
at it briefly.
It begins by urging the neophyte to read the following saying of the
prophet Muhammad: “Any one of you who can help his brother should
certainly do so.” First the text is given in its original Arabic. Thereafter
1
follows a translation in Urdu—but a translation that adds information

concerning the type of help to be offered: “Any one of you who can help
his brother (in the form of breathing upon him in prayer or through the
use of talismans) should certainly do so.” (“Breathing in prayer” upon
someone—dam is the Urdu term used here—is a very popular practice.
The practitioner holds his hands to his face while praying and then
breathes upon the beneficiary, pointing his hands at the other person or
touching the patient; the efficacy of the prayer is thus transferred via the
breath.)
Citing a prophetic hadith at the very beginning of this book is, of
course, a way of emphasizing the orthodox quality of the practices
contained therein.
I asked about the “forty k’s” (chehel kaf ) mentioned in the booklet’s
title. He explained this was “an Arabic prayer in the classical style of the
holy Quran,” to be chanted by the ‘amil before beginning the treatment
of clients. He explained that the Arabic letter kaf appears in the prayer
exactly forty times (an auspicious number).
He recited the prayer for me, and he did so in a staccato hurried
murmur that was all but incomprehensible (I caught bits of it—kafaka
rabbuka kam yakfika, “Your Lord has protected you; how often does he
protect you.” Also something-something kaukab al-falak, “the star of the
celestial sphere”; but that was all).
Nonetheless the burst of rapid-fire kafs was impressive, and I told him
so. That made him happy. He said the text should be recited fast but with
no slip-of-the-tongue mispronunciations: quite a challenge.
Few clients, I imagine, could ever understand what he was saying; but
intelligibility wasn’t the point. The point was to take classical Arabic
phrasing and turn it into something incantatory and, quite literally, spell-
binding.
Throne-Verse and Safety Ring:

Precautionary Measures for the Forty-Day Retreat
But it was the chillah—the forty-day retreat—that I particularly wanted
to hear about. I wasn’t sure how much Tariq would be willing to share
with me on this topic. But he, unlike his father, had completed the
chillah, and he was proud to tell me stories of his experiences. He
sketched for me the regimen one must undergo:
First you seek permission from your murshid [guide/spiritual director].
He will stipulate a particular surah [Quran chapter] for you to recite and
indicate how many times a night you must repeat it during each of the
1
forty nights of the retreat. You must complete all the stipulated recitations
for all forty nights without interruption in order for the chillah to be
effective and for the goal of jinn-mastery to be attained.
A book by the nineteenth-century Indian Muslim author Ja’far Sharif, the
Qanun-i-Islam, describes what would-be jinn-masters did to achieve the
necessary state of spiritual focus: “They go to a house or place outside
the town, or to a mountain, cave, or well, or some place where water is at
hand. The noise of a town distracts the attention, and in this work the
mind must be concentrated and the thoughts must not wander.”19
The way Tariq put it is that chillah-disciples may seek out viran
jaghayn, “deserted places,” such as the banks of Lahore’s Ravi River by
night. But it is also possible, he said, to do the retreat right in one’s own
room in the city—“provided you can be left alone for forty nights.”
He also emphasized the need for “purity”: abstention from sexual
relations and from eating meat. These things, too, constitute distractions.
Each night, he said, you begin by reciting Ayat al-Kursi, the Quranic
“throne-verse,” so named because it refers to God’s throne, which is said
to “extend over the heavens and the earth”; it also asserts that neither
drowsiness nor sleep can overtake Allah. Thus the verse emphasizes both
God’s vigilance and wide-ranging power—traits that pious Muslims
believe can be invoked for one’s own protection. Hence Ayat al-Kursi is
one of the most frequently recited Quran verses for purposes of talis-
manic self-defense.
Having begun by reciting this verse, said Tariq, you then sit and with
your finger make the motion of drawing a circle around yourself, to
demonstrate to any beings that are watching that this has become a
protected area. ‘Ifrits, shaitans, jinns of any kind cannot enter this circle.
This, he said, is your “safety ring.”
Excursus:
A Note on Magic Circles, from Pariah-Kite Bridge
On one of my visits to Lahore’s Ravi Bridge in December 2005, I had
the opportunity to learn more about the art of summoning jinns.
It was a sunny morning, traffic on the bridge was heavy, and the men
and boys who make a living selling cheel-gosht (meat for pariah kites) to
passing motorists were doing brisk business. I inquired whether other
rituals besides kite-meat offerings take place here along the river. Several
vendors said they’d occasionally observed a chillah occurring on the
riverbank at night.
19. Ja’far Sharif. Islam in India or the Qanun-i-Islam (London: Curzon Press,
1972), 220.
1
One detail in particular from our conversation is immediately relevant

in this context. A sixty-year-old man from the Punjabi town of Gujran-
wala, who told me he’d been working as a vendor along the river for
many years, said he’d heard that for the chillah to be successful, the
would-be “practitioner” needs to draw a protective circle around himself.
One should use either an iron rod or a knife containing iron to draw the
circle. The rod or knife is then stuck upright in the ground in the circle’s
center.
This is necessary for protection, the man from Gujranwala emphasized.
Buri taqatayn (malevolent powers) will try to assail you, try to do you
harm, in order to keep you from controlling them and to keep you from
becoming an ‘amil.
I asked about the significance of iron. No consensus here. Loha lohay
ko katta hay, one man said, quoting a proverb: “Iron cuts iron.” So
maybe, he reasoned, the iron rod and knife indicate that one is summon-
ing buri taqatayn to fight off other buri taqatayn. But he admitted this
was speculation.
Pertinent to this question is a remark by Edward Lane on nineteenth-
century Egyptian magical practices. He describes a defense against the
zoba’ah (desert whirlwind): “A charm is usually uttered by the Egyptians
to avert the zoba’ah, when it seems to be approaching them: some of
them exclaim, “Iron, thou unlucky!”—as ginn are supposed to have a
great dread of that metal.” Ja’far Sharif also notes the use of iron in
Indian rituals “to scare evil spirits.”20
But again, why iron rather than some other substance? A scholar of
Tibetan Buddhism named Thomas Marcotty offers a useful historical
perspective. In an exhaustive study of Tibetan “dagger priests,” who use
iron-bladed knives to repel demons, Marcotty traces the origin of such
rituals to ancient Mesopotamia:
Sumerian daggers…served for the so-called soil consecration. This means
they were driven into the ground as a kind of border marking to indicate
to everybody, mainly the roaming demons, that the thus marked and
bordered area was inhabited by man and thus out of bounds to demons…
To this desire of denying access to demons may have been added a
more practical purpose. Anyone who [has] struck a tent on a camping site
will now know what this is about: ritual daggers resemble the pegs by the
aid of which nomads used to tie their tents to the ground from times
immemorial. Such pegs should best be made of iron so that the tent
dwellers may be in a better position to drive them also into stony soil.21
20. Lane, Manners and Customs, 229-30; Sharif, Islam in India, 23, 93 n. 3.
21. Thomas Marcotty, Dagger Blessing: The Tibetan Phurpa Cult (Delhi: B. R.
Publishing, 1987), 12.
1
The Shape That Things May Take:

On Asking for a Glimpse of Jinns
“And thus out of bounds to demons”: a reassuring thought, as one
constructs one’s magic circle.
But now back to Tariq Akhtar, and his ritual for undertaking and
surviving the chillah:
After you’ve drawn the ring around yourself [he said], you recite the
Throne-Verse yet again. Then blow onto your hands [thereby transferring
the power of the just-recited verse] and rub your hands all over yourself,
to protect your entire body from possible harm.
Then remain seated within the circle for as long as it takes to recite
your assigned surahs the stipulated number of times.
I interrupted him. “And then what happens?”

“The first ten or twelve nights,” he said, “nothing.”
“But the dozenth night or so,” he said, “if you’ve prayed properly, you
begin to sense there’s something outside the circle. You begin to sense a
presence.”
At this point he paused and said he had to explain something about the
nature of jinns. “Jinn azad makhluq hayn.” Jinns are free creatures, and
they value their independence. “Because they sense that someone wants
to enslave them, and because they don’t want to be ensnared, they try to
foil your plan through various stratagems.”
He detailed a typical stratagem: “Jinns can cause images of your
mother, sister, wife, or any other relative to appear, and you will have the
feeling someone wants to kill them. Your impulse will be to rush out of
the circle to check on them and save them.”
“If you give way to that impulse,” he said, “the chillah is broken, and
you have to start over from day one. But if you make it through forty
consecutive nights uninterrupted, then various jinns will come under
your dominion to serve you.”
“And you have such dominion now?” I asked.
“Right now,” he said, “at this very moment, three jinns are roaming
about this room, watching over me, guarding me.” He pointed to the
ceiling.
Naturally I looked up. Naturally I saw nothing.
I asked whether he—as someone who’d successfully completed the
chillah—was ever able to behold these jinns and see what they look like.
The answer was yes. “They take various shapes, animal shapes, at
various times for various needs.”
1
Could he give me an example, I said, of one of the shapes they

typically take. I visualized tigers, or perhaps dragons of some kind.
Something fearsome.
At home, he said, when they’re guarding his family’s house and prop-
erty, they typically take the shape of chhipkalian.
Chhipkalian. The word was new to me. My hands flew to the Urdu
dictionary on the table between us.
Chhipkalian: plural of chhipkali: lizard. The accompanying illustration
showed a picture of a cute little gecko.
Gecko lizards?
That was precisely what he meant.
Geckos I knew about. Every home, guesthouse, and hotel room I’ve
ever inhabited in the subcontinent always had its share of them. They
hide behind the toilet bowl and draperies and at night race along the
walls and eat mosquitoes. I’ve always thought of them as friendly pres-
ences, but not, I admit, as awe-inspiring jinns.
The puzzlement on my face must have been plain to see. “You want to
know,” Tariq said, “why my jinns take the shape of geckos.”
I admitted yes I did.
The reason, he said, is that geckos are so useful. They’re small, they’re
common, they’re everywhere—to such an extent that people don’t pay
them any attention.
Geckos come and go in and out of houses easily and unnoticed, he
said. So they’re perfect as spies, for collecting information useful to an
‘amil. What better shape for a jinn to take?
That gave me something to think about. Back in my room in Lahore’s
Cantonment neighborhood that night, I lay on my bed in the dark and
listened as my favorite gecko ran along the walls. I’d seen him up close
more than once, motionless behind the curtains: big (five inches long),
pale green, dappled with paler translucent splotches. A benevolent room-
mate.
But a spy? That would depend on its attention span. For the moment it
seemed more interested in chasing bugs than watching me.
Next morning I had another question for Tariq: “There are lots of
geckos in your house, aren’t there? So how do you know whether one
gecko is your jinn, and whether another gecko is just some ordinary
gecko?”
He agreed this was a good question. By way of answer he told me a
story:
One day [he said], my jinns said to me, “We have to go out and bury one
of our comrades in the cemetery.” I asked, “How did he die?”
1
They said, “He was protecting you, positioned on a wall outside, beside
the main gate of your house, facing the alley.” [Tariq paused to explain
that this jinn was in the shape of a gecko.] “A boy in the alley,” they said,
“came up and threw a stone and killed the gecko—and thereby he killed
the jinn.”
The surviving jinns told me what I should do. “Tell everyone in the
neighborhood not to kill any geckos on the wall beside the gate, or next
time we’ll take vengeance on the boys in the alley.”
So I told everyone in the neighborhood. That’s how my jinns let me
know what wall and portion of wall they occupy, so I won’t kill them by
mistake, and no one else will harm them.”
His anecdote reminded me of an Arabian Nights story, in which a travel-

ing merchant who is eating lunch outdoors carelessly tosses away a date-
stone and in the process accidentally kills an unseen jinn. The jinn’s
father then comes storming up, ready to kill the merchant in revenge. But
the father’s anger is assuaged by three aged travelers who happen by.
Each of them tells the demon a pleasing tale as ransom for the merchant’s
life.22
In the Arabian Nights as in Tariq Akhtar’s Lahore, the jinns are of a
quicksilver temperament, as volatile and unpredictable as the wasteland-
sprites of the ancient pagan world.
“The Night the Jinns Besieged My House”: Or, the Need for
Precautionary Measures When Passing by a Graveyard
But jinns are not limited to the form of geckos when they choose to
manifest themselves. In fact, said Tariq, a good ‘amil will detect the
presence of jinns in phenomena ordinary folks dismiss as random.
This led to another anecdote:
My ustad [spiritual teacher] had always warned me, “When you go by a
cemetery, be sure to recite the Throne Verse.” That’s because such places
are pleasing to jinns and other spirits as places to inhabit. Without the
Throne Verse or another such Quran verse to protect you, you will be
vulnerable to jinns.
But one day I was driving by a cemetery on my motorbike, and I was
ghaflan [forgetful, negligent]. Suddenly my left arm became heavy and
useless, so I had trouble driving my motorbike. I reached my ustad’s
house. He breathed on my arm and I felt better and could lift my arm
again.
22. Muhsin Mahdi, ed., The Thousand and One Nights (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1984), vol. 1, 72-73.
1
But once I was back on the road, I had the same numbness. Now it was
spreading over my whole body.
I got to my house. My whole family was home. I had just enough
strength to summon one of my own jinns. I asked if we were under attack.
It said yes we were.
I commanded it to show us the ‘ifrits that were besieging us.
At once the room was filled everywhere with ants, lakhs [hundreds of
thousands] upon lakhs. The whole house swarmed with them.
So everyone in my family, all of us, we started crushing them. We used
sandals, whatever we could [here Tariq smashed his hand onto the table,
miming destruction].
Every time we crushed an ant, it spurted blood, then disappeared. This
went on for hours. Finally they were all gone.
Afterwards my ustad came over and drew a circle around the whole
house, to keep any more jinns from entering.
The night the jinns besieged my house: this taught me the importance
of the Throne Verse.
Numbness in the arm; an infestation of ants: to other people these might

seem like the stray annoyances of day-to-day life. Not to Tariq Akhtar.
As a sorcerer, as a “spiritual practitioner,” he inhabits a world where
nothing is random, where everything and every incident are assigned a
deeper meaning.
Ordinary folks miss the signs, but the ‘amil is at the nexus, at the
center of the whirl of phenomena, the center around which the phenom-
ena crystallize into patterns.
Responding to these events, recognizing their hidden significances:
this is the sorcerer’s job. The other key players in this cosmic drama are
the jinns, who—like the ‘amil—have the potential to act as agents of
pattern-integration.
Knowing When to Take Two Aspirins:

Jinns and the Field of Medical Sorcery
A significant percentage of the cases handled by ‘amils such as Tariq
Akhtar involve various symptoms of sickness. In an impoverished coun-
try like Pakistan, where medical facilities are few and poverty is wide-
spread, both sorcerers and mullahs are called on as ad hoc physicians.
In Lahore’s poorer neighborhoods as in many other Pakistani cities,
local mosques often serve as first-resort health clinics for neighborhood
residents suffering from any one of a myriad aches and sufferings. If a
prayer or amulet suffices to relieve the pain, well and good; but the
responsible and ethically minded healer (and this I heard from several
sources) will know when to send a patient on to a medical facility.
1
Tariq told me he had several diagnostic tools for discerning the cause
of a patient’s troubles. Among them: he’d send one of his jinns into the
patient’s body to study the person’s organs, bloodstream, etc. Such an
examination, he claimed, would quickly tell him whether the individual
was suffering from a mere bodily affliction or from the onslaught of
some spirit. And he knew precisely which type of ta’wiz (amulet or
charm) to write for exorcising any one of a number of satanic forces.
The day we talked about his work as a healer, I’d just come back from
Rawalpindi. There, at the Ganjmandi Bridge, in the vicinity of Raja
Bazaar, I’d met a parrot-master who—in addition to using his parrot to
tell fortunes—also sold little jars of medical remedies that he made up
himself. Each jar, the man assured me, was good for a number of
ailments.
I told Tariq this, and I also mentioned that the parrot-master sold talis-
mans to guard people from sickness. I wondered what his assessment
would be of someone who was more or less in the same line of work as
he was.
Tariq’s response was immediate and fierce. First of all, he said, these
totevale log (parrot-people) get their practices from Hinduism. Everyone
knows, he said, that the tota-fal (parrot oracle) comes from the Hindus.
So what they do is worthless.
Second, he said, these people have no training. So they have no busi-
ness dabbling in healing and medicine.
Third, they don’t have a diploma. Whereas, he said, he did have train-
ing, and he did have a diploma. He reminded me of the certificate he’d
shown me earlier. The more time I spent with him, the more aware I
became of how competitively-minded Tariq was in assessing fellow
healers.
I had a chance to watch him in action one night after evening prayer.
He had a small mosque of his own, and neighborhood residents came to
him with complaints and ailments of various kinds.
During a lull, my driver Imtiyaz asked Tariq for help with a small
complaint of his own: a headache he’d been having all day. Tariq sat him
down and asked him where precisely the pain was. Imtiyaz pointed to his
left temple. Tariq began whispering something, over and over, while
tracing whorl-patterns of some kind with his right index finger over my
driver’s temple. This went on for several minutes.
Later I asked Tariq what he’d been doing. He told me he’d traced onto
Imtiyaz’s temple the Arabic phrase li-yu’adhdhibahum (“He will punish
them” or “that He might punish them”). The words appear in the Quran
(9.55): “God’s intention is that He will punish them in this life, and that
1
they will die in a state of unbelief.” It is one of a number of scriptural

passages detailing Allah’s coercive power to dominate the spiritually
unruly.
Fascinating to me was to see how Tariq adapted this decontextualized
Quranic verse-fragment for the purpose of “spiritual healing.” He
explained he hadn’t had time to do a thorough diagnosis on Imtiyaz, but
that if a jinn had in fact been causing the ache, then threatening it with
God’s punishment would have been enough to drive it away.
The next morning when I got in the car I asked Imtiyaz how he was
feeling. Much better, he said.
I asked whether Tariq’s treatment had helped.
He said he thought so. A little bit, at least.
Then he turned to me and grinned.
“But as soon as I got home,” he added, “I helped myself to some
aspirin.”
1
8
A COMPARISON OF MUSLIM AND HINDU PERSPECTIVES
ON THE REALM OF THE JINNS
The Jinn in the Elephant:

A Muslim Sorcerer’s View of Hindu Gods
In his capacity as my driver, Imtiyaz Yusuf accompanied me on trips to
many parts of Pakistan—not just drives within Lahore, but expeditions to
Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and eight-hour hauls to Peshawar. This gave
him plenty of opportunities to tell me anecdotes; and one of his favorite
topics was the activity of jinns.
Some of his remarks were simply brief comments on locales in our
vicinity as we traveled about. For example, during a trip to Khyber
Agency in December 2002, on a drive through the Khyber Pass, he said
of Landi Kotal (a nearby site): “There are many jinns there.” When I
asked why, he said, “It’s wild and lonely, and jinns like viran jaghayn
[empty/deserted places].”
Jinns also arose one evening over dinner in Lahore at a Pizza Hut
(eating there was not my idea, by the way: the tomato-and-cardboard-
flavored slices were just as bad as I’d feared; still, I chewed gamely under
the beaming gaze of smiling Pakistani hosts, who imagined they knew
what would appeal to an American).
Among those seated at the table was Imtiyaz, and he talked about how
jinns can cause car trouble.
One night while driving in the Northern Areas, his car broke down on
a lonely mountain road near Gilgit. No houses nearby, no lights any-
where, no other cars on the road. He and his passengers were stuck there
in the dark for hours.
Finally a car came by and a man stepped out, “a Sufi-like man, with a
long beard,” according to Imtiyaz’s description.
The Sufi came up to the car and rested one hand on the hood. He bent
over and said, “Tum in logon ko bahut tang kar rahe ho” (You’re caus-
ing these people much annoyance). Then the man told Imtiyaz and his
passengers to get back into the car.
1
The car, said Imtiyaz, started right up.

The Sufi’s car drove off, preceding them, in the same direction they
were headed. After ten minutes the man’s car disappeared from view.
Imtiyaz was convinced his car’s engine had been plagued by jinns, and
that the mysterious stranger who intervened had been some sort of bozorg
(holy man). The other people around our table at Pizza Hut concurred.
Several diners then matched his tale with similar ones of their own.
Imtiyaz also had firm and outspoken opinions about the religious
denominational identity of jinns. In March 2004 he accompanied me on a
trip from Lahore to Peshawar. At a truck-stop off the Grand Trunk Road
near Attock, we sat and ate lentils and Afghan bread.
I brushed away the flies that buzzed over our food and made some
joke about their being as bothersome as jinns.
As far as Imtiyaz was concerned this was no topic for joking. As he
waved flies away he said, “Most jinns are Hindus. Very few jinns are
good.”
What about Muslims, I asked. Weren’t there also Muslim jinns?
A few, he said. But his maulvi had told him God created ten times as
many jinns as humans in our world, and almost all these jinns were
kafirs. And these kafir jinns were almost all Hindus.
But wasn’t it possible, I persisted, that some jinns might be Sikh or
Christian or Jewish?
He agreed it was at least possible. “But my maulvi told me almost all
jinns are Hindu.”
And Hindu, I learned from Imtiyaz and many other Pakistani Muslims,
was all too often conceptually interchangeable with kafir, which in turn
was interchangeable with bura (bad, evil).
The young sorcerer Tariq Akhtar told me he’d had plenty of dealings
with Hindu members of the spirit world. One morning in March 2004, he
told me that the night before he’d had to rush on his motorbike to a
Muslim home in Lahore in response to an “emergency call” on his cell-
phone.
When he arrived, the lady of the house told him her daughter-in-law
was “feeling afflicted” every evening. He walked about and studied the
house and found out that “Hindu jinns” were living in a tree in the
family’s yard.
The Hindu jinns conveyed a message to him: “We’ve lived here a long
time. We don’t like her. She has to go.”
Tariq’s response: first, he wrote out a ta’wiz (a protective text, to be
folded up and inserted into an amulet to be worn by the person to be
protected). Standing in the yard near the tree, he announced out loud that
he’d return in eleven days. If the ta’wiz wasn’t enough to drive off the
1
8. A Comparison of Muslim and Hindu Perspectives 153
jinns, then he’d draw a circle around the tree and begin a series of con-
jurations that would either expel the jinns or kill them.
On hearing this, I thought of the stories told me by my Pakistani
female students at Santa Clara University: of childhood in Karachi, and
how their mothers warned them of jinns roosting in treetops, jinns who
were hungrily waiting to pounce onto attractive young girls.
Then an obvious question occurred to me: how did Tariq know these
jinns were Hindu?
“I didn’t find that out; my jinn did,” he said. He’d summoned one of
his domesticated genies and dispatched it around the house. It was his
jinn, he said, that spotted the troublesome beings in the tree and interro-
gated them and discovered they were Hindu.
House calls were part of his job, Tariq explained. He seemed to see
himself as a door-to-door exterminator. He was proud of the number of
Hindu demons he’d hunted down and expelled from homes in Lahore.
But a phrase haunted my mind, a statement Tariq said the defiant jinns
had made. “We’ve lived here a long time.”
Hindu people, after all, were known to have lived in Lahore for centu-
ries, long before the creation of Pakistan and the forced exodus of
Hindus from Lahore in 1947. So it seemed only natural that today’s
Lahori residents would imagine there to be Hindu spirits still lingering in
a population center that had been Hindu for so long.
As Tariq the sorcerer told me his stories, I had a sudden sad vision of
what one could call sectarian cleansing in the spirit world, of an expul-
sion of genies to match the expulsion of people at the time of Partition.
My impression was reinforced by a story told me in March 2004 by
Tariq’s father, Mustafa. This involved something that happened to
Mustafa’s uncle. The man was a professional singer; and Mustafa made
clear at the outset of this anecdote that in his own opinion singing, like
dancing (I recalled the story about Tariq dancing at the wedding), is
something unislamic.
His uncle’s habit, said Mustafa, was to ride his bicycle early every
morning along the banks of the Ravi River, then over the Ravi bridge
and back again, pedaling slowly and taking his time and practicing his
singing in a very loud voice.
One morning while out bicycling, the uncle was surprised to see a
beautiful little lamb, all by itself in the middle of the deserted bridge. The
lamb seemed to be staring right at him.
He decided to appropriate the lamb for himself and take it home. He
stopped the bike and put the lamb in a carrier-basket mounted above the
rear fender. Then he started to pedal off.
1
He hadn’t gotten clear of the bridge when he heard what sounded like
something scraping along on the ground behind him. The sound followed
him as he pedaled.
He turned and saw that somehow one of the lamb’s legs had grown
and become so long it was dragging on the ground behind the bicycle.
The lamb itself was staring fixedly at him, opening its mouth as if it were
about to speak.
Sheer terror: the uncle realized he’d taken on board something unnatu-
ral. He pitched the lamb from the basket and flung it behind the bike.
At once it changed into a woman. She ran after him, crying Thairo,
thairo: Wait, wait! The man peddled home for all he was worth. And
soon after reaching safety, he collapsed and came down with a fever.
The lamb, explained Mustafa, must have been a churail (the ghost of a
woman who dies in pregnancy or childbirth). Such creatures often roam
the earth looking for mates.
Mustafa’s way of concluding the story was to say that from that time
on, his uncle has never returned to the Ravi to do any more bellowing.
Now he practices all his singing indoors, at home. Something like
satisfaction—or vindication—shone in Mustafa’s face as he said this:
unislamic behavior had earned its comeuppance.
As he told me all this I thought about other data I’d collected about the
Ravi River: of pariah-kite rituals, chillah-meditations by night on the
shore, of spirits rising up out of the water.
I remarked that the area around the Ravi and its bridge seemed to be a
magnet for stories of the kind he’d just told me. I asked if he knew why
that might be.
At once he replied, “The Hindus used to cremate bodies there, on the
riverbank. Perhaps there are bhuts [ghosts] there. Perhaps there’s simply
some left-over bura ta’assur from the time of the Hindus.”
An interesting choice of words. Bura ta’assur: “bad feeling,” “evil
sensation,” “ugly mark.” Ta’assur is a word derived from the Arabic
term athar: vestige, relic, or ancient monument.
Ancient monuments: Lahore, it seems to me, is haunted today by
the vestiges of its Hindu legacy. This is a legacy about which there is
apparently a lingering and subliminal collective guilt—a (largely
unacknowledged and conflicted) feeling that Pakistan has impoverished
itself through the various sectarian explosions that have marred its
history. This is a legacy Islamic Pakistan has tried to exorcise, sometimes
by expelling Hindu demon-jinns, sometimes by acts of physical destruc-
tion—as Lahori Muslims did in December 1992, when they tore down
the Hindu temples that formed some of the last visible reminders of the
city’s pluralistic past.
1
But Mustafa was not done telling me about the realm of kafir spirits.
He told me of an Indian Muslim ‘amil named Yusuf Bhai who lived in
Delhi and who had succeeded in gaining mastery over many genies.
Among them were a number of Hindu jinns.
Through them, Yusuf Bhai reported to Mustafa, he’d learned that
some Hindu jinns take on the form of the deity Ganesha: an elephant’s
body, with a long elephant-trunk. Other Hindu jinns take on the shapes
of other assorted Hindu divinities. These disguised jinns are what India’s
Hindus mistakenly worship as gods.
I see this as an explanatory model by means of which some Muslims
of the subcontinent come to terms with what they perceive as the very
evident power of Hindu idolatry. Yusuf Bhai’s claim is reminiscent of
the “City of Brass” story mentioned earlier from the Arabian Nights: a
genie speaks through the mouth of a statue and overawes people into
false worship. So too with the Christian Church father Justin Martyr,
whom I also mentioned earlier: he accounted for Roman paganism by
describing Zeus-Jupiter and the other Olympian gods as the offspring of
the biblical “sons of God” and daughters of men.
And in Pakistan today many Muslims account for the palpable power
and attractiveness of Hinduism—and reduce it to something manageable,
something less terrifying—by describing it as a religion animated by a
gang of unruly kafir jinns.
Lahore’s unseen world of malevolent spirits is troubling to its Muslim
residents, to be sure. But calling these forces “Hindu jinns” fits them into
a historical and Quranic framework over which Pakistani Muslims can
claim some mastery—even if this mastery is perpetually unstable.
Krishna, the Jinns, and “Suitable Punishments”:

A Rajasthani Hindu Explanation of Islamic Demonology
I had the good fortune to get a completely different perspective on

demonic presences in our world when I visited the province of Rajasthan
in August–September 2004 (Rajasthan, in western India, is located just
over the border from Pakistan; the bulk of its population is devoutly
Hindu).
I toured the Rajasthani city of Jodhpur with an elderly Hindu gentle-
man named Narayan Gupta. Mr. Gupta described himself as a Vaishna-
vite (devotee of the god Vishnu). He knew the city’s history and its
monuments well; but his passion, he said, was “philosophical discourse
on religion,” which he studied with a local guru.
1
One morning while touring Jodhpur’s Mandore Gardens and its

gallery of deity-statues, I told Mr. Gupta what I’d been told in Lahore
earlier that year: that Hindu worship could be explained as the product of
a colossal act of deception by kafir jinns. I repeated the assertions I’d
heard from Lahori ‘amils: that Hindu jinns defy Allah by assuming
elephant shapes and the like, thereby luring Indians into idolatry.
My guide considered this calmly and then replied: “Muslims typically
have things all wrong in their heads. Krishna explains all these things
properly in the Bhagavad-Gita.”
The Bhagavad-Gita (composed c. first century AD) is a devotional
text that honors Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu. For centuries it has been
one of the most popular and widely known texts in Hinduism.
The Gita’s “Ninth Teaching” expounds the concept of what can be
termed “temporary heaven.” Individuals who have accrued a measure of
karmic merit in their lifetimes (but who haven’t yet reached the state of
passionless detachment that permits moksha or eternal deliverance from
the cycle of reincarnation) will in their afterlife enjoy a limited period of
reward in “the world of heaven.” Thereafter, however, they will eventu-
ally be reincarnated on earth to continue their spiritual education.
Krishna speaks as follows in the Gita:
They savor the heavenly delights
Of the gods in the celestial sphere.
When they have long enjoyed
The world of heaven
And their merit is exhausted
They enter [once more] the mortal world.
As for the fate of “demonic men”:
Confused by endless thoughts
Caught in the net of delusion,
Given to satisfying their desires,
They fall into hell’s foul abyss…
These hateful, cruel, vile
Men of misfortune, I cast
Into demonic wombs
Through cycles of rebirth.1
My Rajasthani guide applied the Gita’s concept of reincarnation

and temporary heavens and hells to reinterpret Lahore’s Islamic demon-
ology:
1. Barbara Stoler Miller, trans., The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time

of War (New York: Bantam, 1986), 85-86, 135.
1
Normally [Mr. Gupta said], people after death enjoy rewards in some
heaven. Then after their account is used up, they return to earth. Bad
people likewise are reincarnated after suitable punishments. But if some-
one is very bad, then Krishna causes him to come back as a pret. [The pret
is variously defined as “the malicious ghost of someone dead” or as a
“ghost, goblin, sprite, evil spirit, fiend.”2] Krishna makes souls that have
done great evil experience a cycle of existence as a pret, in a life as a
special kind of evil ghost. These jinns you talk about: they’re simply one
type of demons from among the prets.
In other words, Mr. Gupta had drawn on the Gita to construct a demonol-
ogy that countered the system propounded by Muslim sorcerers across
the border in Lahore. My Lahori informants explained away Hinduism’s
genesis in terms of sinful jinns defying Allah; my Rajasthani informant
explained Islam’s spirit-world in terms of reincarnational cycles imposed
by Krishna. Each demonology swallows up the religious phenomena of
the other faith and subordinates these things within its own explanatory
framework.
Conclusion:
Siege Mentalities and the World of Jinns
In his study of Muslim–Hindu devotionalism at sacred sites in the
religiously mixed Indian village of Arampur, Peter Gottschalk raised the
question “whether the recent national tensions exacerbated by Hindu and
Muslim chauvinists had penetrated even the realm of the dead, such as
bhut-pret and jinn.” Despite the evidence for a certain amount of polariz-
ing, Gottschalk was guardedly optimistic in asserting that “area residents”
had managed to “create an intercommunal public sphere.”3
The issue is relevant to Lahore, where, it seems to me, “Muslim
chauvinists” have in fact polarized “the realm of the dead” and the world
of jinns, through the process of labeling hostile spirit forces as not only
kafir but Hindu.
The politics underlying such polarization become clearer when we
take into account the terms used by one such chauvinist—the Lahori
sorcerer, Tariq Akhtar—to describe himself.
One afternoon in December 2002 I arrived a few minutes late for a
meeting with him. I apologized, explaining I’d just come from down-
2. Peter Gottschalk, Beyond Hindu and Muslim: Multiple Identity in Narratives

from Village India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 192; John T. Platts,
A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal,
1993), 259.
1
3. Gottschalk, Beyond Hindu and Muslim, 137.
town and the Shia shrine of Karbala Gamay-Shah, where I’d bought
some posters from a kiosk near the entrance.
Curious to get his reaction, I unrolled the posters—all of them pictures
of a bloodstained Zuljenah, the arrow-pierced “Horse of Karbala,” one of
the most prominent icons of South Asian Shia Islam.
He did no more than glance at the posters before looking away. Easy
to see the man was displeased. Abruptly he announced he was Deobandi.
As discussed in a previous chapter, Deobandism—a reform movement
that inspired the Taliban—seeks to purify the faith of “unislamic” influ-
ences. Tariq didn’t define for me in so many words what he understood
Deobandism to be. But he gave me a pretty good idea by the turn the
conversation took next.
He told me a story about a healer in the Pakistani province of Sindh
named Ali Sher Haydari. He described the man as “an ex-Shia who’s
now become a Muslim” (a description that implies a great deal about
Tariq’s view of Shias). A boy was brought to this Ali Haydari. The boy
had fallen from a roof and was about to die. Ali wrote out a ta’wiz-spell,
the gist of which was a sentence—repeated numerous times—stating that
“the Shias are kafirs.” God was so pleased with this spell, Tariq told me,
that He allowed the boy to be healed.
In his own opinion, Tariq added, the term kafir applied to both the
Shias and the Ismailis. (Ismailism is actually a sub-sect of Shia Islam,
but Tariq, like most Pakistani Muslims I’ve met, used the term Shia
specifically to designate “Twelver” Shiism. Most Shias, in Pakistan as in
Iran, are Twelvers. They revere a succession of twelve Imams, the last of
whom they believe disappeared from the earth in the ninth century.
Ismailis, however, revere a “living Imam” known as the Agha Khan.)
I asked Tariq why he considered Shias kafirs. First, he said, they insult
the Sahaba (the Prophet’s Companions) and consider the Sahaba’s
actions wrong. Second, they believe there are forty siparahs (sections) to
the Quran (the Quran actually has thirty), the missing ten of which are
supposedly in the possession of the Shias’ Imam Mahdi. “This makes the
Shias think we Sunnis have copies of the Quran that are incomplete.”
His third objection had to do with the posters I’d shown him. “These
posters of Zuljenah: this is all part of Shias’ practice of but-parasti (idol-
worship/idolatry). This makes the Shias more like Hindus than Muslims.”
In a subsequent meeting Tariq expanded on the list of Muslim
denominations whose practices he condemned. He was explaining his
view of the difference between Deobandis and Barelvis (Barelvism is a
form of South Asian Sunni Islam that—compared with Deobandism—is
much more accommodating of traditional folk religion).
1
He said the biggest difference between Deobandism and Barelvism is

that the Deobandis are strict in upholding tawhid (God’s divine oneness),
whereas the Barelvis violate tawhid by claiming that the awliya’
(“friends” of God, or Sufi saints) can receive our prayers and thereby act
as intercessors with God. Also, he said, the Barelvis claim the talismans
they write have a power that is independent of God and always effective.
By neglecting tawhid, he said, the Barelvis behave like Hindus.
As diplomatically as I could, I pointed out to Tariq that he himself
belonged to a Sufi order and wrote amulet-spells for clients every day.
He was quick to point out the difference. “As a Deobandi I acknowl-
edge that sometimes the ta’wiz and dam (breathing on a person in prayer)
are ineffective, because God decides not to help. These things I do are
effective only bi-idhni Allah (‘with God’s permission’).”
I was skeptical. I’ve talked to Sufis in many countries, and all of them,
I’m sure, would agree that the healings and miracles for which Sufi
masters are famous can take place only bi-idhni Allah.
Nevertheless I thought I saw a pattern emerge in Tariq Akhtar’s
worldview. In an earlier chapter I argued that many Pakistani Muslims
see themselves as a beleaguered minority—a notion that makes sense,
despite the fact that Pakistan’s population is 97% Muslim, if one recalls
that until relatively recently (1947: still within living memory for many
Pakistanis) Pakistan was part of India, a country much larger than Paki-
stan that is also overwhelmingly Hindu.
Pakistani Deobandism can be seen as an ideological expression of this
siege mentality. Tariq’s complaints—at various times he identified him-
self to me as anti-Shia, anti-Ismaili, anti-Barelvi, anti-Hindu, and even
anti-parrot-fortune-teller—all have to do with safeguarding a collective
Islamic identity that is perceived to be under attack.
Deobandism, as articulated by this ‘amil, is a way of safeguarding
Pakistani Islamic identity. It does so—to borrow a term from Tariq’s line
of work—by drawing a “safety ring,” a magic circle, around Pakistani
Islam, to exclude whatever has been “tainted” by Hinduism.
So too in the spirit world. For many of the Pakistani Muslims I met,
the sense of being an imperiled minority applies also to the unseen
demonic realm that presses in on us from all sides, where helpful (Mus-
lim) genies are few and harmful (Hindu) ones are in the vast majority.
The solution: taking refuge within a magic circle, and using purity and
prayer to keep the spirit-forces at bay.
For someone like Tariq Akhtar, perhaps, what sorcery and Deobandism
share as attractive qualities is a promise of survival in a world that is
perceived as swarming with hostile and impure forces. This survival is
1
achieved via a process of exclusion, demarcation, and the assertion of

absolute control over boundaries.
The worldview of an ‘amil like Tariq, then, becomes sectarian in its
hostility to Shias and other minorities in Pakistan; it becomes political in
its embrace of Deobandism; and it becomes harmful in its rejection of
any form of pluralism.
1
9
LAHORI PULP FICTION:
THE WORLD OF KHOFNAK DIJAST (“FRIGHT DIGEST”)
Grinning skulls that drip blood tend to grab one’s attention. It worked for
me.
I was following my usual early-morning routine in Lahore’s Canton-
ment. A walk before breakfast down the block to shop at Rahat Bakery,
then a stop at the newsstand to pick up the day’s papers.
I was hefting a loaf of fresh bread and a copy of The Friday Times and
a couple of Urdu-language dailies, Jang and Khabareyn—reassuring
parts of ordinary day-to-day normality.
That’s when I spotted it, on a rack behind the kiosk’s pile of papers:
the cover of Khofnak Dijast (“Fright Digest”).
The blood-dripping death’s-head filled one corner of the illustration.
But what dominated the cover was the picture of a young woman. Big
blue eyes, soft glowing skin, flowing hair and pouty red lips: beautiful
enough to kiss.
But that was just half her face. The other half: fangs, and a scalp of
bleeding raw flesh, flesh that oozed and was held together by Franken-
stein-monster stitching. She wore a burgundy-colored gown—but the
gown’s brocade-work was an ocean of skulls, each impaled on a stake.
Above the skulls flitted an upsurge of bats.
The cover did its job. I asked the kiosk man how much.
Thirty-five rupees. About half a buck.
I added Fright Digest to my day’s reading.
As he handed me a copy the vendor grunted. Disapproval? In any case
I saw he had quite a stack of them for sale.
I asked who bought them. Young men, was all he had to say.
I opened to the first page and saw that this magazine is published in
Lahore, in the city’s Gulbarg quarter. So: this was very much a local
publication (although later I found copies on sale at newsstands in
Islamabad, Rawalpindi, and Peshawar).
At breakfast The Friday Times lost out to the girl in the skull-brocade
dress. She was my introduction to the world of Fright Digest.
1
Pulp Fiction in the Pakistani Context

Fright Digest is a good example of what I’ll call Lahori pulp fiction
(other Urdu-language magazines of this genre that I saw on sale in Lahore
included titles like Spy Digest and True Story). To appreciate what I
mean by pulp, let’s define the term in its American context. Later we can
test how applicable the label is with regard to Pakistani publications like
Khofnak Dijast.
Robert Lesser’s study, Pulp Art, reviews the heyday of American pulp
fiction in the 1930s and ’40s. An essay in this volume by Roger T. Reed
describes the kind of stories that were printed in magazines such as Spicy
Adventure, Dime Detective, and Weird Tales. They were “generated by
formula and printed on below-newsprint-grade ‘pulp’ paper. They were
cheap in every meaning of the word. Yet their weaknesses were also
their strengths.”1
This weakness–strength duality is linked, I believe, to the fact that
these stories were, as Reed says, “generated by formula.” In other words,
pulp fiction is genre fiction, keyed to the widest possible audience. In
general, genre fiction indulges rather than challenges its readers, which is
another way of saying that genre writing—whether romance or western
or (as in the case of Khofnak) horror—offers a satisfying and reassuring
degree of predictability.
To illustrate: as a teen I faithfully bought issues of the Marvel comic
Tales to Astonish. Of course I wanted these stories to be startling and
terrifying and—as the title promised—astonishing. At the same time in
buying such a comic I was secure in the knowledge it would furnish the
quota I wanted of monsters and heroes and close-call escapes. That I
could count on. That much was predictable.
Reed’s essay emphasizes the salient feature of this kind of fiction: “It
was action, above all, that sold the pulps.” Character development, soul-
searching dialogue, sustained philosophical speculation, introspective
asides? Not a chance. As Reed says, “The pulps’ contents tap directly
into our primal nervous system: the fight-or-flight reflex, the pleasure
center, the gut and the tearducts—places where violence, power, awe,
sex, horror, hero worship and xenophobia stir our impulses.”2
One can see an example of American xenophobia at work in stories
from the 1930s that featured villains like “the mysterious Wu Fang”—a
1. Roger T. Reed, “The Pulps: Their Weaknesses Were Their Strengths,” in

Robert Lesser, ed., Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp
Magazines (New York: Castle Books, 1997), 8.
1
2. Reed, “The Pulps,” 9.
9. Lahori Pulp Fiction 163
mirror of the racial preoccupations and anti-Chinese prejudice of the

time.3 When we examine Lahore’s Fright Digest stories, we can check to
see whether xenophobia is likewise tapped to “stir our impulses.”
Khofnak Tota (“The Frightful Parrot”)

My first example of a story from Khofnak Dijast is a tale called Khofnak
Tota: “The Frightful Parrot.”4 It appeared in the February 2005 issue, the
cover of which features a beautiful young woman, big-eyed, with lots of
makeup (the standard look for Khofnak’s cover art, to judge from the
issues I’ve collected over the past four years). But the girl’s mouth gapes
open, to reveal vampire fangs; and behind her are ranged skeletal corpses
with staring eyes and bloodstained teeth.
A curious thing about these skeletal figures: they grin in a crazed and
jovial way that, for an American reader like me, is distinctly reminiscent
of the 1960s-era “Rat Fink” cartoons of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth.
Which points to an interesting feature of Khofnak Dijast. Its stories
draw heavily (as we will see) on localized forms of South Asian folk
religion; but its illustrations are heavily indebted to the Halloween-
conventions of American pop-culture monster-art. Sometimes the bor-
rowings are so overt as to be inescapable: a Wolfman-drawing looking
like a copy of a movie poster for the actor Lon Chaney; a gnome that
resembles Andy Serkis’s Gollum from Peter Jackson’s film version of
Lord of the Rings. Thus the pictures serve to update and “westernize”
(however superficially) stories that draw on centuries-old Islamic
narrative figures such as the jinns.
As for the “Frightful Parrot” story itself: like most of the Khofnak tales
I’ve encountered, it’s told in the first person. The author, Ghulam Mustafa
‘Arabani, is said to be a resident of the Pakistani province of Sindh
(typically, the authors are Pakistani men who often describe themselves,
in the opening lines of their stories, as regular readers of the magazine).
Now to the action:
The narrator (who refers to himself as Mustafa, thereby appropriating
the author’s own name) says the incidents he’s about to describe, involv-
ing himself and his friend Mir Muhammad, occurred six or seven years
ago. At that time, he explains, “We were young men, but in our actions
we were children”—the first hint that this will be a tale with a strong
moralizing and didactic dimension.
3. Lesser, Pulp Art, 104-107.

4. Ghulam Mustafa ‘Arabani, “Khofnak Tota,” Khofnak Dijast (Lahore) 8.15
(February 2005): 132-34.
1
As the story opens, Mustafa describes the young men’s idea of recrea-
tion: shooting birds with a pellet-gun, and capturing those they don’t kill
to raise for their own amusement. “It was lots of fun,” he confesses, “but
we did this to the point of madness.” Their parents disapprove, but the
two young men do it anyway.
One day the youngsters go bird-hunting in a jungle at some distance
from their village. The jungle, notes Mustafa, is beside a qabaristan—a
graveyard.
They fire their guns and make a lot of noise; they sit and eat and chat
in the shade of a tree—which happens to be right beside the cemetery.
Any fairytale-reader can guess that the place the young men have
chosen for sitting—the shade of a tree at the jungle’s edge, beside a
graveyard—is a liminal zone, on the threshold between the civilized
world of humans and the untamed world of the uncanny.
More important is the way these two have approached the border zone.
They make noise and fire guns and carelessly eat and chat. In other
words, like Tariq Akhtar (the sorcerer we met in a previous chapter), in
passing by a graveyard they are ghaflat-zade: heedless, unmindful. For
Tariq, as we saw earlier, the consequences entailed a temporarily para-
lyzed arm and a swarming onset of jinn-ants. For the two trespassers in
this story, the consequences will be worse.
While seated in the tree-shade, they hear the “sweet voices” of parrots.
Looking up, they glimpse the birds’ “noble and beautiful” appearance.
And they spot something else, something enticing, high above their
heads: a hole in the tree-trunk, a hole that must serve as a nest. The two
decide to raid the nest and capture some parrots for sport.
The narrator’s friend Mir Muhammad climbs the tree and easily
reaches the nest. So far, so good. Then he sticks his hand into the hole.
And that’s when the trouble starts.
From below Mustafa hears his friend scream for help. In a flash the
nest-raider tumbles unconscious to the ground.
The narrator rushes to his friend and sees what’s happened: “The
parrot had mercilessly bitten off Mir’s index finger.”
For an instant the bird perches on Mir Muhammad’s motionless body.
Then the story tips over into the supernatural: the bird bobs its head and
mysteriously disappears within the chest of the offending human.
Thus we face a sudden reversal: within the space of a paragraph, that
which was originally presented as sweet, noble, and beautiful becomes a
devouring menace. Things happen fast in the pages of Fright Digest.
Mir Muhammad wakes up, and for a second it seems he’ll be fine. But
when he opens his eyes they’re a glaring inhuman red.
1
Worse is to come. He runs off to the nearby village and mindlessly

attacks a herd of water buffaloes and cows. He leaps onto an ox and with
his hands and teeth kills it and gobbles it down to the bones. Mustafa
tries to intervene but is shoved to the ground. Mir Muhammad dashes
away, “emitting cries like a parrot.”
For days the bird-possessed Mir roams the environs of the village,
preying on the cattle. Together, the narrator and the villagers capture and
briefly restrain Mir Muhammad. They urge the youngster’s family to
consult with the local ‘amil baba (spiritual practitioner). To no avail:
“They were educated people,” reports Mustafa, “and they had no regard
for such things.”
Instead, the family insists on bringing in a physician, who tries to
inject the captured Mir Muhammad with a sedative. But the poor doctor
isn’t equipped to deal with a parrot-man. Mir squawks and screeches,
and the hypodermic needle goes flying from the startled doctor’s hand
before he can give his intended patient the injection.
The needle flies up into the air and hits the physician himself in the
arm. The result: “The doctor became altogether as rigid as a statue.”
That’s the last we see of the doctor in this story. So much for modern
medicine.
For days the ravenous Mir Muhammad attacks one cattle-herd after
another. The villagers approach his family and threaten to confine him to
a pagal-khana (insane asylum). Desperate, the narrator makes a du’a
(petitionary prayer) to “Allah most exalted”: “O my Lord, restore the
health of my friend and brother.”
And that’s when order begins to be restored.
The morning following the du’a, a new character enters the story: the
possessed youngster’s older brother Rashid. He tells the narrator that last
night he had a dream in which there appeared to him a bozorg (“great
one” or holy man). In the dream the bozorg instructed the older brother
to come to him on Thursday night. “Then,” promised the holy man in the
dream, “I will heal your brother.”
On Thursday night Rashid and Mustafa go to the cemetery. Unstated
in the narrative (because these things are presumably well known to
Khofnak’s readers) are the following points. First, the most powerful
bozorgs are often those that are dead, and the place to contact such beings
is the graveyard. Second, the cemetery–jungle boundary is where the
initial offense occurred, so it makes sense for the healing to commence
there. And third, Thursday night is an auspicious time for healings, as
this is the eve of Islam’s Sabbath and the favorite night for Sufi mystical
gatherings.
1
At the cemetery they find an old man with a long white beard. He’s
wearing robes and a turban that are green (a color associated with para-
dise and the Islamic faith).
The bozorg says he’s been waiting for them and they take him to the
house where the parrot-man is currently a prisoner. He demands a black
goat and says he’s going to enter the room alone where Mir Muhammad
is confined. The holy man instructs Rashid to stay outside and slaughter
the goat the moment he enters the room. (Animal-slaughter for cures is
not unfamiliar in Pakistani folk Islam: Katherine Ewing’s study of
Lahori religious practices analyzes goat-sacrifice as a way of “ritually
transferring harmful influence to an animal.”5)
Rashid follows his orders and kills the goat as the bozorg enters the
room. The agitated family and other onlookers make du’as of entreaty on
the possessed youngster’s behalf.
And then:
Immediately thereafter the sound of the parrot’s screeches came forth
from the room. Then the baba came out and in his hand was the very
same parrot, dead—the very parrot that had entered my friend’s body.
The baba said, “Don’t be afraid. Now Mir Muhammad is completely
well. Soon he’ll regain consciousness.” He said this and then vanished.6
Things are now back to normal. But tokens remain of the experience:
“The villagers said that on the night the holy one appeared, the jungle
around the cemetery caught fire. It was reduced to ashes”—a nice way of
symbolizing the bozorg’s mastery of the jungly forces of chaos.
And then there’s this:
After what he went through, my friend has learned his lesson. In accor-
dance with his request, I’m writing this story… And the remaining mark
of the tale is this: my friend Mir Muhammad’s finger, which the cruel
parrot cut off and ate up, remains cut off to this day. For this reason I ask
all my friends to give up this passion for hunting.7
In reviewing the story I’m struck by its folkloric quality. The narrator
begins by describing the obsessive bird-hunting he and his friend do as
something they pursue “to the point of madness.” They insist on doing
this hunting even at the border of a graveyard—thereby signaling the
reader they’ve reached the boundary of the forbidden. They then cross the
boundary and commit a transgression. Thereby Khofnak Tota conforms
5. Katherine Pratt Ewing, Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and

Islam (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 97-103.
6. ‘Arabani, “Khofnak Tota,” 134.
1
7. ‘Arabani, “Khofnak Tota,” 134.
to one of the traditional narrative patterns outlined by Vladimir Propp in

his Morphology of the Folktale: “interdiction/the interdiction violated/
bodily injury–mutilation.”8
Folkloric, too, is the story’s conclusion. Mir Muhammad loses a finger
but “has learned his lesson” and swears off shooting birds. Pathei mathos,
Aeschylus tells us: “Through suffering, understanding.” Loss of a body
part, coupled with a compensatory gift: think of the Norse god Odin,
who sacrificed an eye to gain wisdom, or Teiresias the blind seer, or
Hephaestus the smith, who walks with a limp.9
Another transgression is on display in this story, one that would be
familiar to many Pakistani readers: carelessly lounging at the foot of an
inhabited tree. The inhabitants appear to be parrots—their appearance is
sweet and attractive; but their behavior is demonic. Carelessness is pun-
ished, and the hunting-tale turns into a narrative of uncanny possession.
So that ultimately this becomes a story of healing—or more precisely,
a tale of two competing forms of healing. Those who put their faith in
secular medicine get jabbed with their own needle: the doctor can’t
handle a crazed parrot-boy. But those who put their faith in bozorgs and
‘amil baba-types are vindicated: their petitionary du’as are answered.
In the end this story demonstrates the efficacy of heartfelt prayer to
Allah—and that’s a cure that’s within the reach of any reader of Fright
Digest.
Ayat al-kursi ki barakat

(“The Blessing Associated with the Throne-Verse”)
The author of this story, one Qaysar Jamil Parwana of Rafiqabad, begins
like this: “The incident I’m going to tell you happened to me and is
100% true. My cousin, Khalid Salim Diwana, was present, too.”10
The story (which appeared in Fright Digest’s March 2004 issue) is
simple and brief enough. Qaysar Parwana eases into his tale by describing
the setting (which happens to be his home town—thereby adding to the
narrative’s verisimilitude): “I live in a neighborhood in Rafiqabad. Beside
the village of Rafiqabad is a well. Near it is a very big massive tree.”
A prominent tree at the margin of a town: this is familiar enough to us
now as a potential lurking place for things supernatural.
8. Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (Bloomington: Indiana Univer-

sity Press, 1958), 26-36.
9. The phrase pathei mathos is from Aeschylus’s drama Agamemnon. See Arthur
Sidgwick, ed., Aeschyli Tragoediae (London: Clarendon Press, 1902), vol. 1, 177.
10. Qaysar Jamil Parwana, “Ayat al-kursi ki barakat,” Khofnak Dijast 7.11
(March 2004): 65.
1
Qaysar says originally he was a skeptic about such matters: “I’d heard
that at night jinns, churails, et cetera come here. But I’d never put any
faith in these things.”
Then comes the incident that upends his worldview.
One night his cousin Khalid drops by to borrow a video. The film is
with Qaysar’s uncle, who happens to live near the well.
Even though it’s ten-thirty at night, says the narrator, he and his cousin
set out for the uncle’s house “without any fear or timidity.” But when
they reach the well and pass by the tree, they both suddenly feel fright-
ened. And then they hear something: “Wondrous and strange voices
began coming forth.”
That’s when they see an apparition—a woman, dressed in white and
carrying a club. “Her teeth were very big.” Looking at her feet, says
Qaysar, made the cousins realize: “This was a churail.” (Such beings are
said to have feet that are turned backward—reverse-order anatomy being
a telltale trait of quasi-human visitors from the other world.11)
The men forget about watching their movie:
We began running away from there. In our hearts we kept reciting the
Throne-Verse. The churail followed us for a while. Then all of a sudden
it disappeared. This was due to the excellence of the Throne-Verse. We
gave thanks to Allah, who had saved our lives. Today, whenever we
remember this incident, our hair stands on end. After that, we’ve never
gone there again at night.12
A short and simple enough story, yet remarkable for what it accom-
plishes within the space of a few paragraphs. Note how it begins with a
family member dropping by to borrow a video—a homey touch that
offers us something convincingly familiar before things get weird. In
both its described predicament (the presence of churails, jinns, and
haunted trees) and its prescribed solution (recitation of the Quranic
Throne-Verse), the world visualized here is recognizably that of present-
day Lahore as recounted to me by the sorcerers I’ve encountered.
The story does more. It rebukes doubters and shows skeptics turning
into believers. In short, it vindicates traditional beliefs, with regard to
both spiritual menaces and defensive countermeasures against such
threats. The “100% true” quality insisted on at the story’s beginning thus
applies not just to the anecdote itself but to the whole spirit-universe
Khofnak readers are invited to share.
11. Helle Hinge, “Islamic Magic in Contemporary Egypt,” Temenos 31 (1995):

93-112.
1
12. Parwana, “Ayat al-kursi ki barakat,” 65.
Khofnak Jinnat (“Frightful Jinns”)

The same March 2004 issue of Fright Digest featured a second and much
longer story by Qaysar Jamil Parwana. It offers some of the same narra-
tive elements found in the Ayat al-Kursi tale but emphasizes substantially
different themes.
Qaysar Parwana gives a bit more information about himself at the
beginning of this story, saying he’s been a Khofnak Dijast reader since
1998 and expressing the hope his story will be accepted for publication.
Then he gets down to business:
I live in the village of Rafiqabad, in Mamun ka Najn (district). Across the
street from our house is a school. Near the school is a date-palm tree. On
this tree jinns and other such creatures have been roosting for centuries.
In fact these are Hindu jinns. They harass every passer-by.13
Parwana packs a lot into a few lines. The scenario he offers would be
instantly familiar to the Lahori sorcerer Tariq Akhtar—Hindu jinns
perched atop trees, causing trouble to inoffensive humans. And—again,
like the bothersome genies described to me by Tariq—these jinns have
been around a long time, “for centuries.” This narrative aside can be
construed as a storyteller’s acknowledgment of Pakistan’s enduring—
and, for many, disturbing—Hindu legacy.
The action gets underway when a newcomer to the village, a man
named Thaqib Rahman, befriends Qaysar Parwana (as in the other story,
the tale is told in the first person and the narrator is given the author’s
name). One day Thaqib suggests they go pluck dates from the palm tree
near the school.
Qaysar knows this is unwise and tries to talk him out of it: “The jinns
vex and beat anyone that plucks dates from that tree.” Against his better
judgment, our narrator allows himself to be persuaded.
They approach the tree. Voices issue from it, voices that get louder as
they draw near. Like the “Frightful Parrot” story, this narrative has a
fairytale quality to it: right at the beginning, the interdiction is announced,
the warning given.
Which of course the two men disregard. They climb up and pluck
dates and eat and eat. And once they’ve brushed aside the warning and
become trespassers, punishment swiftly follows.
Voices all around them come forth: “Now that they’ve plucked the
fruit, they’ve earned our enmity. Why don’t we teach them such a lesson
13. Qaysar Jamil Parwana, “Khofnak Jinnat,” Khofnak Dijast 7.11 (March 2004):
91.
1
that for the rest of their lives they’ll never bother us again? For centuries
we’ve been the ones who have eaten the fruit. We’ll seize them by the
throat.”
Frightened, the men stop eating and recite the Quranic Throne-Verse.
But in this tale—unlike the Ayat al-Kursi story previously described—
the words do no good. The jinns “assumed an enraged form and began to
terrify us.”
The men try another defense: reciting Surat al-Nas (surah 114 of the
Quran, a talismanic chapter specifically designed to repel jinns) as loudly
as they can. But they chant in vain.
Then a jinn becomes visible and lunges at Thaqib Rahman. We’re
given an incomplete but nonetheless vivid description of the demon:
“From its body a long sharp tongue, like the blade of a knife, extended
outwards. Blood dripped from the tongue.”
The narrator lingers over the next part: how the jinn seizes his friend
and kills him and plucks out and eats his liver and heart and eyeballs.
We’re given piles of detail that can best be described as disgusting. Here
the magazine earns its title: Khofnak. Frightful.
Capriciously, the jinn then spares Qaysar, who runs off, vowing
vengeance.
But a few days later he returns to the tree to confront the killer-jinn.
When he threatens retaliation, the genie only laughs. “You people can’t
harm me. Muslims can’t do anything to Hindu jinns. Get out of here.”
Then it makes a threat of its own: it will dispatch a snake to attack this
insolent human.
Sure enough, on the way home Qaysar gets into life-and-death combat
with a cobra. Using sticks and rocks, he finally manages to crush the
thing dead.
But that’s not the end of his serpent-worries. He makes it home and
goes to bed. Then: “I fell asleep but had the feeling there was something
suspended above my head.” He opens his eyes, to see a second snake
before him, poised to strike. It springs; he runs; and amid his screams, it
disappears.
In the morning he comes to a decision: he needs to consult “some
good spiritual practitioner.” He goes to the home of one such ‘amil,
where he finds “people standing about and waiting their turn.” Then “my
turn came and I gave my salaams to the ‘amil baba. I sat down and told
him the whole matter from start to finish.” All these details feel real
enough and resemble the kind of interactions one can witness during
consulting hours in the office of any Lahori sorcerer.
1
The ‘amil baba listens. “For some time he remained in thought. Then
he said, ‘My son, this is the female mate of the snake you killed. For this
reason it will take vengeance on you.’ ” To counter this jinn-inspired
snake, says the ‘amil, Qaysar will have to undergo a five-day chillah
(spiritual retreat).
Our hero follows the sorcerer’s instructions precisely. At night he
leaves home and goes out to a viran jagah (“deserted place”). He draws a
circle around himself and, all night long, until he hears the dawn call to
prayer, he sits up reciting the Quranic Throne-Verse. Again, these details
match the actual rituals of the chillah as described to me by informants in
Lahore.
The first night, nothing happens. But things begin to get alarming on
the second:
As I sat there and spent time in the chillah, a bird passed over my head.
When I looked up, I had the feeling that thousands of birds were flying
by. I heard their voices and my eardrums began to burst. I began to pray
in a very loud voice. Then the birds grew less, and after that the dawn call
to prayer [fajr ki azan] began to sound.14
So Qaysar has survived the second night. When I first read this passage I
recalled the words of the Lahori sorcerers I interviewed: demon-forces
don’t want to be tamed, so they’ll press up against the circle and try to
disrupt the chillah by creating distractions in any way they can.
On the third night Qaysar finds his safety-ring under attack:
A half-hour before the end of the chillah, in the distance there came into
view a number of snakes. They came right up to me and then stopped,
exactly as if they had come to besiege me. I screamed, and they disap-
peared, just as there came forth the sound of the call to dawn prayers [fajr
ki azan].15
Consider, for a moment, the role played here by the fajr ki azan (the
dawn prayer-summons, which in Pakistani cities is broadcast from
loudspeakered minarets all over town). In this story the azan is more than
a wake-up call. It demarcates day and night, separating the familiar
human-dominated workaday world of sunlit time from the dark hours
when demonic forces are abroad. Like a shaft of light in vampire movies,
the azan rescues sleepers from the things that press round at night.
The fourth evening of the chillah passes uneventfully. But with the
fifth and final night comes the payoff.
14. Parwana, “Khofnak Jinnat,” 92.

1
15. Parwana, “Khofnak Jinnat,” 92.
Just as I was finishing the chillah, a nagin [female snake] appeared. It

began to writhe on the ground. Fire surrounded it on all sides. The snake
burned up and was reduced to ashes.
So I went home happily and gave my family the good news. They, too,
were happy.
But we had one worry. The jinn itself might harm my family.16
So Qaysar returns to the date-palm tree once more to confront the jinn
with news of his triumph. He’s ready for any one of a number of possible
fresh assaults.
Instead the jinn surprises him, announcing, “Now I consider you my
friend.”
Here the plot twists in a curious and interesting fashion. Qaysar allows
himself to be seduced by the promise of friendship with this alien being.
For days he is the jinn’s companion, wandering about with it, eating food
in the company of jinns, chatting with them. His mother forbids him to
keep returning to the tree; but he disregards her words. Moral corruption
has set in.
One day the narrator’s new “friend” announces it’s hungry. Obligingly
the human climbs a mango tree and gathers fruit for it. But this doesn’t
satisfy the demon for long.
It says it’s thirsty for blood and—with Qaysar as a helpless onlooker—
it pounces on two wayfarers who happen along at that moment. The
genie rips out their hearts and drinks their blood.
So much for the try at jinn–human friendship.
Qaysar flees and retreats to his family’s house. But at night the jinn
appears in his room and threatens him. Our hero tries defending himself
again with the recitation of the Throne-Verse, but, as was the case
before, this proves a waste of effort.
The genie laughs in his face and says, “We’re Hindu jinns. These
Quranic verses will have absolutely no effect on us.”
The narrator describes himself as turning red with “anger, contempt,
and hatred.” But he’s powerless, and the jinn maliciously emphasizes the
sectarian divide that separates them:
“You are Muslim. We are Hindu jinns. There’s a big difference
between you and us. Well, don’t talk nonsense now. I will not leave you
in peace.”
Then the demon vanishes from sight.
The next day a desperate Qaysar Parwana visits the ‘amil again. Once
more the narrative emphasizes the religious-denominational identities of
the antagonists, this time via the words of the ‘amil: “My son, what we
1
16. Parwana, “Khofnak Jinnat,” 92-93.
have here is a very difficult case. This is a Hindu jinn. You are Muslim.
How can you match him? Quranic verses have no effect on him.”
The sorcerer tries an alternative strategy, giving Qaysar a magic sword
and kerchief. The latter, when wrapped around our hero’s head, renders
him invisible.
At first he lacks the moral discipline to employ his gifts properly. He
uses his invisibility to steal fruit and cash and play pranks on his mother
and generally indulge himself. “A wickedness overcame my mind.”
But things get more serious when he returns to the tree and the jinns
assembled there laugh at him and his sword. “Why does he keep forget-
ting,” one of them says, “that we’re so powerful that not even an ‘amil
can kill us? He’s Muslim. We’re Hindu. There’s a big difference between
us and these Muslims. Now go!”
But Qaysar won’t back off. He singles out his former “friend” and
“then I ran up and struck him in the head with the sword. The head fell a
long way away.”
The end of our hero’s problems? Not yet. These are die-hard jinns:
“The head flew up again and reattached itself to the jinn’s neck.”
Then the demon laughs and says, “Who’s the fool that’s trying to kill
us?”
Qaysar’s reply impressed me as particularly chilling, for the way his
words reverberate far beyond the confines of this tale: Mayn chikha mayn
tum logon ko marna chahta hum aur tumhayn khatm karna chahta hum
(“I screamed, ‘I want to kill you people, and I want to finish you off’.”)
More episodes intervene, but—to cut to the climax—Qaysar achieves
victory as follows. First, he asks his mother to perform du’a (petitionary
prayer) for the success of his attempt to “finish off” the date-palm jinns.
Then he returns once more to the ‘amil for help. The sorcerer tells him to
use again the weapon he gave him, but he adds a further stipulation: this
time, before engaging in combat, recite the Throne-Verse over the sword.
And that makes all the difference.
Qaysar dashes back to the troublesome tree and chops it down with the
sword. It topples to the ground. The genie that once “befriended” him
now shows itself.
Our hero wastes no time. He recites the Throne-Verse ten times over
the sword, then quickly strikes the jinn in the head and chest. Jinn and
tree burst into flames and are reduced to ashes.
Qaysar returns home in triumph, to find his mother still at prayer,
faithfully persisting in her du’as.
And the story ends with a happy family reunion.
Some thoughts in response to this tale:
1
First, it offers plenty of lurid detail—heads flying, eyeballs and livers

eaten, snakes rearing up in the dark—enough to situate the story firmly in
the genre of pulp horror.
But more disturbing than the head-lopping and blood-spurting is the
religious-denominational labeling throughout the tale. The only Hindus
in this story are jinns, and when one of them offers Qaysar friendship, it
leads to treachery and violence and the incipient moral corruption that
begins to corrode our hero’s soul.
Islamic scripture says nothing about Hindus, but it does advise this
when it comes to dealing with non-Muslims: “O you who believe! Do
not take the Jews and Christians as friends. They are friends only of each
other.”17 It is as if our author substituted “Hindus” for “Jews and
Christians.”
Again and again, this narrative emphasizes the hostility and the bara
farq (“big difference”) dividing Muslims and Hindus. The fact that the
Throne-Verse is inoperative for most of the story adds yet another dis-
quieting element. Nor does the ‘amil’s sword do any good, at least when
used alone.
What does work in the end is a combined prayer-and-sword offensive:
religion paired with violence. The story exalts jihad of the most physical
kind, directed against demonic Hindu enemies of Islam.
What we’re left with are the words screamed by Qaysar at his one-
time friend: “I want to kill you people, and I want to finish you off.” In
other words, we’re looking at “sectarian cleansing” in the spirit world,
much like what I encountered in my talks with Lahori sorcerers.
For me, one image in particular lingers from the story: a tree toppling
and bursting in flames, a tree that had housed Hindu spirits “for centu-
ries.” As I reviewed those lines, I remembered a New York Times photo
from December 1992: rioters swarming over the spire of an old Hindu
temple in Lahore, making ready to send it crashing to the ground.
Purana Mandir (“The Old Temple”)

This tale, authored by one Minwar Nadhir (who is listed as residing in
Vihari, in the Punjab), appeared in Khofnak Dijast’s March 2003 issue.
Of all the Fright Digest stories I’ve read, this one is the most closely
grounded in discernible events of recent Pakistani history. Here’s how it
starts:
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17. Quran 5.51.
In our city is a temple that extends over a large area. When the Hindus
conspired to demolish the Babri Masjid, then we in turn unleashed our
anger against the temple and set it on fire. From that time until today, this
place has become an abode of desolation, depopulation and ruin.
But even before this, it was uninhabited. Nor did any Hindus come here
to offer puja-worship rituals. Yet even the stories from the time of its
being populated are remote and few and far between. What did the
Hindus once do here?
Its time as a school is also finished. When was this school built, and
why did it come to an end?
We can hear the school’s strange and wondrous story in detail from the
school’s chaprassi (caretaker/watchman), Shafi’ Muhammad. After much
insistence on my part, he told the story with his own lips.18
This introduction closely parallels the actual history of one of Lahore’s

best-known non-Muslim religious monuments—the Jain Mandir. Like
the “old temple” in this story, the Jain Mandir was destroyed by Muslim
rioters in December 1992 in retaliation for the destruction by Hindu
militants of the Indian mosque known as the Babri Masjid. Also like the
ruined temple in the story, after the 1992 riot the Jain Mandir in fact
became “an abode of desolation, depopulation, and ruin” (although, as I
noted in an earlier chapter, when I visited the ruins in 2004 I saw that
squatters had recently taken over the site and made it part of a rickshaw-
repair shop).
Again, like the temple in the story, the Jain Mandir had served as a
Muslim school for some years before the 1992 riots. (At Partition, in
1947, the Mandir had been abandoned by its original worshippers, who
fled to India, and for some years the temple had simply stood empty.)
The close correspondence to actual events in Lahore’s religious history
makes this story especially compelling.
After the introduction quoted above, the story’s narrative shifts to the
voice of Shafi’ Muhammad the watchman. The action begins in 1954,
several years after Partition and the Hindus’ abandonment of the “Purana
Mandir.” Local Muslims decide to convert the temple to a school, and
Shafi’ is one of the men hired to enter the empty shrine and tidy things
up in preparation for its first day as an academy.
“We cleaned it and made it ready for use,” he says. But the place
makes him uncomfortable: “From the cavernous chambers, something
akin to hatred could be felt.”
Despite his unease, Shafi’ accepts the job when he’s hired as a live-in
watchman. He brings his luggage and establishes his bed in one corner of
the structure. He notes that the temple has three towers, but the towers
1
18. Minwar Nadhir, “Purana Mandir,” Khofnak Dijast 6.11 (March 2003): 161.
are kept locked. In any case he avoids this part of the temple on his
rounds; he doesn’t like the feeling emanating from there.
He has time on his hands: the academic year hasn’t started yet, and
he’s all alone in the vastness of this dead space.
This is how his first night on the job goes: at twilight the air becomes
suddenly chill. Bats come swooping from the top of the towers and fly
about the halls. At the same time he senses a “great terror” radiating from
the towers.
Sleep seems out of the question. He lies awake in the dark watching a
“yellowish glow shining from the eyes of the bats.” Then he hears a
pounding on a door somewhere and the indistinct growl of voices. The
tone is menacing. “I was completely overcome with fear,” confesses the
watchman, “even though I’m a brave man.”
The pounding and the voices grow in volume, and his fear increases
along with them, until there comes a welcome interruption: the sound
from outdoors of the dawn azan. “As I regained consciousness and
returned to the world,” he says, “all this felt like a dream… I didn’t know
what all this was, but I decided my imagination had overcome my
reason. The morning sunlight was shining on the horizon.” As in the
“Frightful Jinns” story, the dawn azan divides the rational world of
Muslim daylight from the unislamic shadow-realm of night.
A week passes. Classes have not yet begun, and Shafi’ Muhammad is
still alone in the temple. At night he begins to hear the sound of someone
weeping. It seems to come from a sealed room at the foot of one of the
towers in the locked quadrant of the shrine. But he has yet to venture
forth to solve the mystery.
All this changes one night when he wakes up suddenly and feels
thirsty and goes to the sink by his bed for a drink. He turns the faucet. No
water.
This leads him to climb a ladder in the dark to the roof to check on the
building’s water tank. (Like the video-loan in the “Throne-Verse” story,
this is a convincing and homey detail: I myself have had the experience
of clambering up to Lahori rooftops at night to see what’s wrong with the
water tank.)
But quickly Shafi’ Muhammad forgets all about the water. From the
roof he has a view through one of the tower windows. A glimpse, noth-
ing more: “Something black showed itself.” He decides to investigate.
He uses the ladder to descend and try to inspect the locked towers. But
he slips and falls and hits the floor. He’s barely picked himself up before
he hears a voice in the dark bark an order: “Seize that bastard!” Unseen
hands grab him and haul him off. He’s brought to a torch-lit chamber:
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In its yellow radiance I saw a frightful sight. I shivered all down my

backbone.
The creature that had seized me was a skeleton of white bones. They
gleamed all the more brightly in the torchlight. The skeleton squatted in
front of me in the manner of a yogi and then began drawing near to me.
There was a small platform on which there was a black idol. It was a
dreadful, awe-inspiring black; but it glittered and shone. From its mouth
hung a red tongue that protruded all the way down to its chest.19
Good lurid stuff, worthy of the 1939 movie version of Gunga Din: the
description of the idol (black skin, protruding red tongue) is detailed
enough to identify this as a shrine of the goddess Kali (who will be
referred to by name later in the tale).
The story’s principal villain emerges from the shadows: a knife-
wielding skeleton named Ram Das (“slave of the god Rama”). Mysteri-
ously, its skull is half-crushed. Only later will Shafi’ Muhammad—and
we the readers—be allowed to discover the reason for the damage to its
skull.
Right now the poor watchman has more pressing problems. Ram Das
announces to the other skeletons that their prisoner is to be offered as a
sacrifice: “We’ll be able to obtain his spirit easily. Then we can restore
the splendors and beauties of this temple. These Muslims thoroughly
trampled underfoot our Hindu teachings and religion. Now we will take
revenge. Bring him here.”
We are then treated to several paragraphs’ worth of suspenseful build-
up before the sacrifice: Shafi’ Muhammad’s futile attempts to resist; his
being trussed and dragged before the Kali statue; the behavior of the
ghoulish onlookers (“The other skeletons stood before the platform with
its idol and joined their hands and babbled”—an unflattering caricature
of pious Hindus at prayer); and the watchman’s frantic emotional state
(“My heart was pounding like a petrol engine”).
Our hearts are pounding, too. We readers are as eager as he is to know
if there’s any way to fend off the skeleton’s knife. This—as Roger Reed
reminds us in his essay—is what pulp fiction is all about: action, and
primal emotions.
And here’s what happens next:
With both hands Ram Dass raised the dagger. He came round behind me.
His dark eye-sockets were fixed on my neck. With one violent stroke, he
was about to cut off my head and imprison my soul and accomplish this
black sacrifice to his shaitan (Satan).
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19. Nadhir, “Purana Mandir,” 163.
My eyes failed. I didn’t want to die in this way.

My heart stopped and my senses failed. Maybe I was already dead, and
their foul and impure incantations had succeeded.20
When he wakes up, the hero finds the skeletons have mysteriously
retreated. His attention is drawn to something he’s heard before: the
sound of weeping, issuing from a room at the base of one of the towers.
Curiosity leads him to find a way inside the chamber, the walls of which
are covered with “beautiful decorations” and painted female figures (a
description evoking the interior of Hindu shrines).
But the author focuses our attention on the person Shafi’ Muhammad
discovers in this chamber: a young woman, seated in a chair, her face in
her hands, weeping. Nearby is a bed.
Beside her is something that alarms him: “A knife, a bloodstained
knife, looking exactly as if it had just been pulled from a body.”
Frightened, he backs away. But the young woman lifts her face and
speaks reassuringly. Her name is Lakshmi, she says, and she’s been
waiting for him for a long time. “I was sure you would come,” she says,
“in order to hear my story.”
“What story is that?” asks the watchman.
Now we know he’s hooked. Just as in the medieval Arabian Nights,
where the discovery of strange objects and strange behavior makes one
character demand from another the story behind the oddities, a similar
scene occurs here in the twenty-first-century genre of Lahori pulp
fiction.21 The watchman gives up any attempt at flight and stays to hear
the story that will explain the mysteries: why the knife, why the weeping,
why the skeleton with the crushed skull. He wants to know, and so do we
the readers.
Lakshmi explains she’s from a village called Rajunpura. Years ago
she fell in love with a young man named Deepak. Her family, however,
had already arranged a marriage with someone else. Escaping the
arranged marriage, Lakshmi fled with her lover here to the city and took
refuge in this temple.
“At first,” says Lakshmi, “we thought we were in a safe place.” Ram
Das, the guru in charge of the temple, had his disciples offer the couple
hospitality and a room in the temple precincts. But he coveted the
beautiful Lakshmi for himself. Late one night he crept into their room
while the young lovers slept. He awakened her and tried to seduce her.
20. Nadhir, “Purana Mandir,” 163.

21. For a discussion of such scenes in medieval Arabic literature, see David
Pinault, Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992),
118-29.
1
She refused him, and the angry guru knifed Deepak where he slept. In
turn Lakshmi picked up a jar and broke it over Ram Das’s head and
crushed his skull. With his last strength the dying villain stabbed her
between the ribs.
Concluding her story, Lakshmi tells the watchman she has something
to show him. She steps to the bed and pushes it aside. Underneath is a
skeleton. Things are crawling on it: “Maggots were writhing all over.
The maggots were fat, very fat. They crawled out of its vacant eye-
sockets and into its hollow jaws.”
A satisfyingly horrific revelation.
Then Shafi’ Muhammad glances back at the beautiful young Lakshmi:
My gaze fell on her, and she, too, suddenly became a skeleton. It stood
there, elegantly dressed in a sari. On its sari, near the ribs, were stains of
dried blood. The sari was torn. The knife, too, was still there, near the
black stains of dried blood.
I saw everything as if in an evil trance.
“Come, Stranger,” she said. “We’ll offer you as a gift to Kali and fulfill
her command.”
She advanced on me with her withered legs.22
Shafi’ Muhammad does what any of us in the reading audience would

do. He runs like mad. He rushes to the roof “while death advanced on
me, from behind and from beneath me.”
He jumps from the roof and picks himself up. Then he runs and runs.
Here are the story’s closing lines: “But soon I felt one of my legs
become paralyzed. I fell down on the spot. I woke up in the hospital. One
of my legs had been cut off.”
And that’s the end. An abrupt conclusion, and not altogether satisfying
(did he lose his leg in the hospital or at the bony hands of the ravenous
ghouls?). But the tale does at least share a formal symmetry with the
“Frightful Parrot” story. In each case a Muslim victim is rescued from
satanic forces, but at the price of a limb or other body part. Walter
Burkert’s study of “escape and offerings” in his book on the archaic
origins of world religions explores the persistent popularity of this motif
in ancient myth and ritual from Paleolithic times to the present: to evade
the jaws of a hungry demon or predatory beast, individuals sacrifice a leg
or finger.23
Note Purana Mandir’s overwhelming sense of claustrophobia and iso-
lation. Amid a menagerie of bats and animate skeletons and cadaverous
22. Nadhir, “Purana Mandir,” 165, 172.

23. Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 34-55.
1
Hindu phantoms, Shafi’ Muhammad is the only character who is both

Muslim and fully human. Naturally this is the figure with whom Paki-
stani (and presumably Muslim) readers are likely to feel some kinship.
His situation is theirs. A threat to his life is (imaginatively, for as long as
the story’s spell lasts) a threat to theirs.
Earlier we noted the similarities between the fictional Purana Mandir
of this story and the actual Jain Mandir of Lahore. Both temples stood
abandoned for some time, were reoccupied for use as Muslim schools,
and were destroyed in the wake of the Babri Masjid riots. Given the fact
that this story was published in Lahore, it seems fair to regard it as an
explanatory fable. The tale’s author imagined a fantasy-horror story to
explain why Lahore’s Jain Mandir had stood empty for so many years.
Underlying this horror-fantasy, it seems to me, is a certain air of
defensiveness and self-justification. Some Lahori Muslims I interviewed
in 2004, as I noted in an earlier chapter, voiced regret for the retaliatory
destruction of the city’s Hindu legacy. This Purana Mandir story
amounts to a rebuttal and a refusal of any such regret. See what such
kafir places were really like, implies this story.
After the revelation of what lurked within the empty temple—writhing
maggots, vicious gurus, red-tongued Kali idols—Muslim readers are
tacitly invited to come to one inescapable conclusion. If that’s what had
been going on in the temple, then thank Allah we tore it down in ’92.
At the same time, the author permits a note of pathos: star-crossed
lovers, fleeing a disapproving family and an arranged marriage. This is a
situation with which South Asian readers of any religious persuasion
might identify.
But just when we begin to feel sorry for Lakshmi, she reveals her true,
skeletal self and orders our hero served up to Kali.
So: sympathy for Hindus, like friendship with them in the “Frightful
Jinns” story, can prove fatal. The message seems to be: best to shun them
altogether.
A Note on Style and Theme in Fright Digest Stories

Characteristic of these tales is their mix of three sets of motifs: South
Asian (Kali idols, churails, saris, ‘amils), Arab/Islamic (jinns and
Throne-Verses), and American/cinematic (knife-wielding skeletons and
eye-crawling maggots, served up with B-grade Hollywood panache).
Heterogeneously jumbled, these elements are each described vividly
enough to give us a thrill. Then we’re hurtled forward to the next lurid
scene.
1
Pulp-fiction readers demand action, and Khofnak stories certainly

deliver. How to describe this magazine’s narrative style? To borrow the
breathless title of one of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami’s postmodern
pop-art paintings, call the style “And Then And Then And Then And
Then”: linearity and nonstop forward propulsion.24
What the literary critic Tzvetan Todorov says of Arabian Nights char-
acters also applies to Fright Digest heroes. They are generally stick-
figure “narrative-men,” barely individualized or given distinguishing
characteristics except insofar as such traits serve to advance the action.25
But note what does characterize Khofnak’s “narrative-men”: their
most consistently distinguishing feature is that they are Muslim. Either
they use their Islamic faith and Islamic resources to confront the Other
(Throne-Verses and spells supplied by Muslim ‘amils), or else their
Islamic identity makes them the target of demonic non-Muslims.
Hence Khofnak’s heroes offer a persona that any reader can inhabit,
and a mask that any reader can wear, as long as such readers identify
with Islam as a constituent and conscious part of their identity. Such
identification emphasizes the collective and the sectarian rather than the
individual.
Khofnak offers action-oriented pulp fiction, but it also belongs to the
genre of horror. One way to appreciate the four stories outlined above is
via consideration of Victoria Nelson’s book The Secret Life of Puppets,
which explores the spiritual motifs latent in various forms of modern
literary works.
Nelson focuses on stories she labels “grotesque.” As a visual art form,
the term describes paintings in which hybrid-shaped fantasy creatures
(men with fishtails, serpents with lions’ heads) share the canvas with the
normal inhabitants of our day-to-day world (and in fact the half-human
half-monster females of Khofnak’s cover art certainly conform to this
definition).
As background to her analysis of the grotesque in literature, Nelson
locates the origin of this term in the Italian Renaissance. Craftsmen of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries created grotto-art (hence the term
grottesca): garden-paths leading to caves within which lurked carved
gaping mouths and monstrous forms of various kinds. Strollers could
thus engage in a visit to the netherworld, following a primordial pat-
tern: leaving the daylight of ordinary life, crossing the threshold to an
24. Arthur Lubow, “Tokyo Spring!: The Murakami Method,” The New York
Times, April 3, 2005.
25. Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1977), 66-79.
1
alternate realm, and thereby experiencing a revelation, glimpsing the

grotto-esque/grotesque unveiling of a reality that ordinarily remains
unseen. Because such excursions took place within the framework of a
safely managed structure—in the gardens of some nobleman’s estate—it
could be classed as entertainment.26
Grotesque entertainments in the literary genre of horror tend to follow
one of two possible narrative paths. The monstrous may seek out victims,
when the latter stray near the liminal zone between the everyday and the
unseen. An example is Khofnak Tota, where the parrot bites an individual
near a graveyard at the margin of a village. Or—following the footsteps
of Renaissance strollers—a hero may cross the threshold from daylight
reality into the grotto-esque lair of the monstrous. The best example here
is Purana Mandir, where the Hindu temple functions as a kind of twilit
cave leading the watchman-protagonist to an unislamic underworld.
Temple as grotto and place of uncanny encounters: this is a concept
with a long history. Think of the subterranean Mithra-vaults once fre-
quented by Roman legionary troops in sun-scorched Parthia and darkest
Britain.
“Light upon light”: this is how the Quran describes Allah’s pervasive
presence in our world.27 Blinding radiance drives away shadows, and the
theological reflection of such imagery can be found in the Quran’s war
on the forces of darkness as represented by satanic pagan jinns. Islam
insists jinns are accountable to God: creatures of only limited power,
subject to creation and death, moral choice and moral consequences,
heaven and hell—much as we are. The Quran saddles jinns with ethical
burdens and the need for long-range behavioral planning. That is, Islamic
scripture rationalizes what is at heart capricious and irrational: the realm
of the wasteland, the non-human, and the sense of unease that haunts
solitary wayfarers in such realms.
But Joyce Carol Oates, in her own work on the literary genre of the
grotesque, reminds us of a truth of human nature. In analyzing the per-
sistent popularity of horror fiction, she asserts the following: “This
predilection for art that promises we will be frightened by it, shaken by
it, at times repulsed by it, seems to be as deeply imprinted in the human
psyche as the counter-impulse toward daylight, rationality, scientific
skepticism, and the ‘real’.”28
26. Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2001), 1-3.
27. Quran 24.35.
28. Joyce Carol Oates, Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque (New York: Penguin,
1995), 305.
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This ambivalence in human nature is mirrored, I think, in Khofnak

Dijast’s horror fiction. On the one hand these stories are Islamically
orthodox insofar as Muslims are shown as heroes and Hindus/pagans
as villains. The ‘amil kills the evil parrot; Qaysar Parwana repudiates
friendship with Hindu genies and burns down the jinn-roost.
On the other hand the Muslim watchman Shafi’ Muhammad in Purana
Mandir barely escapes with his life and loses a leg to the Hindu ghouls.
Hardly a triumph; and readers are left with the feeling—as I suggested
earlier—that if old kafir temples are haunted, it’s best to tear them down.
The effortless divine mastery over darkness asserted so confidently in the
Quran—“Light upon light”—seems eternally precarious in the pages of
Khofnak. Consequently one could assume that, regardless of what scrip-
ture tells us, human normality is constantly threatened by forces that
press in all around us.
Thus Lahori pulp fiction uses jinns and Hindu ghosts as a way to talk
about those aspects of life that resist human domestication—the viran
jaghayn (wasteland places) outside the magic safety circles we work so
hard to maintain.
Advertisements, Gender and Audience

in the Pages of Fright Digest
Men as heroes, women as ghouls and skeletal ghosts. Easy enough to
assume Khofnak Dijast’s intended audience is male. As mentioned
earlier, the kiosk vendor I asked told me the buyers of such magazines
are “young men.” And Khofnak’s artwork, with its high-gloss pin-up
focus on beautiful girls that are both luscious and deadly, could be
construed as targeting male appetites and fears.
But such a notion wouldn’t do justice to the range of Khofnak’s audi-
ence. I showed copies of Fright Digest to my Santa Clara University
female Pakistani students—some of whom, as noted earlier, had much to
say about the activity of jinns.
They all knew the publication and agreed it’s widely circulated. One
student told me, “Magazines like this are very popular—but only among
the lower classes, servants, drivers, and so on. Not among the better
classes. We take our amusements in English. Urdu is too hard to read for
pleasure—especially with that tiny script.” (In true pulp tradition,
Khofnak Dijast is printed on cheap paper; the lines on each page are
minuscule and squeezed together and sometimes smudged.)
Jameela, whose comments I quoted earlier on jinns, trees, and the
evening call to prayer, had this to say:
1
I myself don’t like to read these magazines. Too scary. They give me bad
dreams. And the print is so small, it’s impossible to read. But my older
sister used to read things from Khofnak Dijast out loud to me when I was
little. She managed to frighten me thoroughly. Quite a few girls read
these things.
Now consider the advertisements that crowd the end-pages of Fright

Digest. Ads for Akhbar-e Krikat (“Cricket News”), with its sports cover-
age of Pakistan’s favorite teams, might well be targeting young men. But
what to make of this (from Khofnak’s November 2005 issue): an ad for a
publication called Bahurani khavvatin ka mahnama—“Queen Bride:
Ladies’ Monthly.” Featuring a picture of a teenaged girl resplendent in
gown, brocade-shawl, and gold jewelry, the ad exclaims, “If you want to
become a fine bride, then you certainly must read Bahurani!”
Then there’s a full-page color ad on the back cover of the February
2001 issue, showing a young Punjabi male singer—smiling and clean-
cut, a dreamy-eyed heartthrob—and trumpeting his new record album
Kalaj ki larki (“High School Girl”).
And the December 2005 issue highlights a blurb for a magazine called
Javab ‘Arz (“Question and Answer”). The accompanying illustration
shows a young woman in high heels and a Western-style evening dress.
The text describes this publication as offering “the true stories of
wronged women who cannot bear to express these stories themselves”—
thus implying that Javab ‘Arz provides a voice for the voiceless female.
The ad continues: “The magazine that reveals the true stories of
women and men, in which every month wholesome stories appear con-
cerning the lives of young women and young men!” Regular features that
are promised in each issue include “relations between women and men”;
“unforgettable incidents of life”; “sorrows of life”; “horoscope”; and “the
diary of my life.”
Such ads, which seem to aim at the dreams and aspirations of a young
female readership, make one go back and take a second look at Fright
Digest’s story illustrations.
For example, a picture in the November 2005 issue shows a young
woman confronting a nasty terror: a male figure holding a blood-dripping
sword. The latter’s face is concealed by a hockey mask (again, we see
the influence of American horror-movie clichés). But the artist gives a
great deal of attention to the female in the picture: flowing dark hair,
lipsticked lips, plucked eyebrows, eyes rimmed generously with kohl.
Or consider this picture (from the same issue): a cadaverous humanoid
beast—male—bites the luscious neck of a swooning young woman. She
lies back, throat exposed. (“Swooning” is a word one doesn’t get to use
1
much nowadays. But it seems apt—the posture of the two figures con-
forms so well to the late-Victorian vampire-Bram Stoker mode.)
In other words: are pictures like this intended only for kiss-hungry
adolescent males—or might they also offer an imaginative space within
which female viewers can construct fantasies of their own?
Relevant here is an analysis of American slasher films by New York
Times reporter Alex Williams. Entitled “Up to Her Eyes in Gore, and
Loving It,” the essay argues that nowadays, “Young women bond with
horror films.” No longer, claims this article, are young men the sole
audience for this type of movie. Williams interviewed one twenty-one-
year-old woman in Manhattan who felt that “the tension-and-release
cycle that accompanies cinematic terror brings about something like a
gambler’s high.” A twenty-three-year-old interviewed in Washington,
DC, confessed she enjoyed the “fantastically campy and hypergritty” feel
of slasher movies. “ ‘You’re trapped in a basement with cockroaches on
the floor and there’s dirt,’ she said. ‘I feel dirty when I watch them. I like
that about them’.” And a twenty-year-old video editor in North Carolina
admitted she especially favored movies in which alluring women tempt
foolish men into gruesome deaths.29
Sex, power, revenge; crossing the threshold into forbidden spaces
where one leaves normal everyday life behind: this is the raw material of
dark fantasy in both slasher films and pulp horror fiction. To judge from
the advertising, and from the Pakistanis I’ve talked to, it seems Fright
Digest succeeds in offering a parade of ghouls that manages to appeal to
women readers as well as men.
“The Islamic Page”: Sin and Story in Fright Digest

Even more remarkable than its stories is another form of writing that
appears in Khofnak Dijast: a monthly nonfiction column called Islami
Safhah (“The Islamic Page”). Authored by individuals who display
considerable knowledge of both scripture and hadith, “The Islamic Page”
is a regular feature, one to two pages in length, at the beginning of
almost every issue.
When I initially discovered Khofnak, the first thing I noticed about
it—as I confessed earlier—was its sex-and-blood-skull cover. The second
thing that grabbed my attention was the Islami Safhah. How to reconcile
these two components?
29. Alex Williams, “Up to Her Eyes in Gore, and Loving It: Young Women
Bond with Horror Films,” The New York Times, April 30, 2006.
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This made me want to figure out what makes Khofnak Dijast tick. My
first goal was to locate every back issue of the magazine I could find. My
Urdu tutor Qamar Jalil patiently accompanied me one blisteringly hot
March afternoon to Lahore’s Anarkali Bazaar, where we went from
bookstall to bookstall hunting for old copies of Khofnak. We emerged
with armfuls of issues dating back to the year 2000.
To convey an idea of the column’s contents, here’s a sampling of
essay titles from the magazine’s “Islamic Page.” August 2000: “The
Judgment Rendered Against Those That Don’t Do the Prescribed Man-
datory Prayer.” December 2000 (a pair of essays): “The Resurrection of
the Dead” and “Fear of the Grave.” May 2002 (again, a pair of essays):
“The Fire and Darkness of Hell” and “The Snakes and Scorpions of
Hell.” November 2002: “Five Sights Seen in the Grave That Brought a
Sinner to Repentance.”
As might be guessed from the titles, Islami Safhah is moralizing in
tone. Its columns encourage ethical behavior via a device as old as Islam:
urging the reader to remember what awaits us in the (all too rapidly
approaching) afterlife.
The Islami Safhah column frequently drives home its themes by means
of hadith citations. Here’s how the “Fear of the Grave” essay begins:
Hazrat Abu Sa’id Khadrami says that one day the holy Prophet entered a
mosque where people were laughing and chattering idly. The holy Prophet
thereupon offered the following guidance: “If you were plentifully
mindful of death, which puts an end to pleasures, then it would also put
an end to your busying yourself with those things that have been a source
of amusement to you.”30
The same essay also warns us what to expect in the tomb:

Every person’s [predestined] grave makes a daily announcement: “I am
the abode of complete desolation; I am the abode of maggots…When an
evildoer or kafir is buried…seventy serpent-dragons will begin biting
him. They are so poisonous that if even one of them exhales its breath
onto the earth, then until the Day of Resurrection no grass or crops will
ever grow on that spot. These serpents will bite at him continuously until
Judgment Day.”31
More on sinners’ punishments, from the “Islamic Page” column in

Khofnak’s May 2002 issue: “Compared to hellfire, the flames of this
world of ours are very cold. For this reason, earth’s fire would seem
relaxing and comfortable to a denizen of hell.” Another afterlife tidbit,
30. Amir Husain, “Qabr ka khawf,” Khofnak Dijast 4.8 (December 2000): 2.
1
31. Husain, “Qabr ka khawf,” 2.
from the same issue, concerning the scorpions Allah has allowed to
infest hell as a punishment for sinners: “The testimony of their poisonous
power is this: when one of them stings, the denizen of hell will feel the
lingering burning pain of the sting for forty years.”32
The Islami Safhah column in the November 2002 issue features a
hadith concerning a grave-robber who repents after the discovery he
makes in the tombs he tries to plunder: the tortured corpses of sinners.
One corpse has been transformed into a tightly fettered pig; another
burns in flames; a third is pierced with “nails of fire.”33
Worth quoting in its entirety is the “Islamic Page” essay from
Khofnak’s March 2004 issue. Its title is “The True Fear of God and Fear
of the Afterlife”:
We—thank Allah—are Muslims, and all of us believe that sooner or later
we have to die, and that death has a claim on us. In the pure Quran, Allah
the pure has given us this guidance, that “every soul must taste death.”
We believe that death conveys justice and that it can come in youth or old
age, and that after death we will live again and will have to render an
account to the Lord of Creation.
Nevertheless, in spite of our faith in the Book of Accounts, why do we
do so little in the way of good works? Why don’t we prepare for death
before death? Because we’re so involved with life and family that we
spoil the chances for our own afterlife?
To these questions the answer is the following. We believe in death, life
after death, and eternal life, but we don’t prove our faith in these things
through deeds. If we make space in our hearts for the fear of God, then
we will have a cure for every one of our fears.
If we followed the example of our pious ancestors, and prepared travel-
ing provisions for the journey to the afterlife (akhirat ke lie zad-e rah
tayyar karte rahayn), then we could be successful. If out of the twenty-
four hours in the day, we sat alone for just one hour and imagined the
terrors of the Day of the Resurrection of the Dead, the torments of the
grave, the fire of Jehennum, and the troubles and afflictions of the after-
life, then we would be incapable of sinning the other twenty-three hours
of the day.
If we always kept in mind that God most exalted sees us, then we
wouldn’t be able to sin. We should do our namaz [required prayer] in the
proper way. We should perform our namaz slowly, with humility and
submissiveness.
Remember, namaz is the key to the garden of paradise. Namaz is the
marker that distinguishes between the believer [mu’min] and the infidel
[kafir].
32. Mukhtar ‘Ali Parimi, “Dozakh ki ag aur andhera,” Khofnak Dijast 6.1 (May
2002): 3.
33. Shabnam Daoud Shinakeh, “Panj qabron ki chashmdid-e halat ne gonahgar
ko tawba par amada kar diya,” Khofnak Dijast 6.7 (November 2002): 4.
1
After this, we must give our attention to fasting in the blessed month of
Ramadan, offer zakat [mandatory alms-giving], and—if we are able—
undertake the hajj [Mecca-pilgrimage] to the Sacred Precinct. If we can-
not undertake the hajj, at least we must have the wish to do so. We should
also get into the habit of reciting the glorious Quran.
Jihad, too, is most intensely necessary for the recovery of occupied
Muslim lands. In whatever form it may be, may God most exalted pro-
vide us the means to fulfill all of His divine commands properly.34
What becomes clear as one reads Khofnak’s “Islamic Page” is that this
nonfiction column shares a number of features with the fictional stories
that make up the bulk of each issue.
Both have a thematic preoccupation with death and the afterlife—but
with particular attention to the punishments of Jehennum rather than the
pleasures of paradise. There’s nothing surprising, of course, in the prefer-
ence many writers show for hell over heaven. The devil’s realm has a
way of gripping people’s attention. (And of course Muslim authors aren’t
alone in this preference. Think of Puritan New England and Jonathan
Edwards’s 1741 sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: “The
God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or
some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully
provoked.”35)
Both the fiction and nonfiction in Fright Digest share thematic ele-
ments (for example, maggots and darkness; revelation/disclosure after
someone enters a forbidden zone: a Hindu temple or a tomb). Fiction and
nonfiction in Khofnak share a taste for the vivid and visceral (a knife
between the ribs; corpses transfixed with nails of fire). Both forms of
writing, after all, are targeting the same audience, so it isn’t surprising if
their style shares much in common.
Perhaps the best way to understand Khofnak’s “Islamic Page” in
relation to the magazine’s fiction is to consider both of them forms of
entertainment. The stories provide entertainment in the form of shock-
filled revelatory narrative; Islami Safhah, entertainment in the form of
shock-filled revelatory sermons.
Another element that Khofnak’s stories and Islami Safhah share in
common is an emphasis on Muslim identity and communal Islamic
solidarity. Khofnak’s fiction employs Hindu jinns and Hindu ghouls as
villains, while pious Muslims are the heroes and victims of predatory
34. Muhammad Harun Chaudhry, “Haqiqi khawf-e Khoda aur andesha-ya

akhirat,” Khofnak Dijast 7.11 (March 2004): 4.
35. Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” The Jonathan
Edwards Center at Yale University 2005 (http://edwards.yale.edu/images/pdf/
sinners.pdf).
1
kafirs. The “Islamic Page” column takes for granted that its readership is
entirely Islamic: as the March 2004 essay declares, “We—thank Allah—
are Muslims.”
The same nonfiction essay strives to encourage its readers to be not
only nominal Muslims but rigorously and piously observant in their
Islam: “Namaz is the marker that distinguishes between the believer and
the infidel.” The descriptions of hellfire in such essays serve to encour-
age the performance of rituals that mark one as Muslim and thus worthy
of salvation in the afterlife.
References to contemporary politics occur in both the fiction and
nonfiction writing found in Fright Digest. As we’ve seen, the Purana
Mandir story is based on the actual destruction of India’s Babri Masjid in
Ayodhya and Lahore’s subsequent anti-Hindu riots that occurred in
December 1992. The Islami Safhah column quoted above from Khof-
nak’s March 2004 issue is by one Muhammad Harun Chaudhry, an author
whose residence is listed as “Azad Kashmir.” The term Azad Kashmir
(“liberated Kashmir”) is used by Pakistanis to designate that part of the
disputed territory of Kashmir which is under the control of Pakistan. And
many of the Islamic militant organizations that launch terrorist attacks on
Kashmiri sites across the border in India are based in Azad Kashmir. So
when this Kashmir-based writer states, “Jihad, too, is most intensely
necessary for the recovery of occupied Muslim lands,” Khofnak’s readers
can be expected to understand exactly which “occupied Muslim lands”
he has in mind.
Fright Digest’s December 2005 issue begins with an essay by the
magazine’s editor, Shahzada ‘Alamgir, in which he insists on a religio-
political interpretation of a recent natural catastrophe: the October 2005
earthquake that devastated dozens of towns across Pakistan. The essay is
lengthy; here I present my translation of the text’s most noteworthy
passages. It begins with a traditional medieval prayer, which is presented
first in its original Arabic and then in Urdu: “O Allah! Your forgiveness
is greater than my sin, and more is to be expected from Your mercy than
from my deeds.”
‘Alamgir continues as follows:
On October 8, 2005, at a few minutes before nine in the morning, there
was a strong earthquake. This earthquake was the biggest disaster in the
fifty-seven years of Pakistan’s history. In this earthquake, hundreds of
thousands of persons were injured and martyred, and hundreds of thou-
sands were made homeless. O God, be merciful!
Today, I’m weeping, and my heart is weeping, because I have seen the
biggest disaster of my lifetime. In this disaster hundreds of thousands of
my own Muslim sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, boys and girls,
1
sons and daughters, have seen all their goals and dreams—the same goals
and dreams we all long for with our hearts and souls—become nullified…
Why did Allah most exalted inflict this disaster on the ummah
[community of believers] of his dear and beloved Muhammad (may God
bless him and his family)?
Why Allah did this, Allah knows best. But this matter surely must be in
accordance with the divine plan.
Allah most exalted created this world to be temporary. Some day every-
thing will be swept away… At one time or another everyone becomes
tied up in relations with dear ones and dear things, and every life becomes
entangled in the threads of those relations.
But Time the tyrant slowly strips away the threads of these relations…
Death is a truth that can never be denied. Death must come to every
living being, to some quickly, to others later. Allah most exalted has
determined the time of death for every living being…
Readers! Because of this earthquake, the whole world has seen the zeal
and passion, the compassion and brotherly help demonstrated by the
Pakistani nation. The whole world has come to recognize that this nation
is a living nation. Its energy and courage are as big as the disaster itself.
Today the Muslim nation [Musulman-e qawm] is displaying a devotion
and zeal that will be inscribed with golden letters in the history of Mus-
lims. Under the influence of such devotion and fervor, the Muslim nation
defeated even the greatest power in the past. History is a witness of this.
Today I praise the young soldiers of my country who risked their lives
to rescue earthquake victims. I praise the president of my country—the
Islamic Republic of Pakistan—Pervez Musharraf, under whose out-
standing leadership the army supported the people with great courage and
energy.
The younger generation has also taken part. I salute each person that
has participated in aiding the brother-Muslims of his country…
Readers! Today I especially ask each of you that you, too, take part in
this pious task of aiding your Muslim sisters and brothers…
Allah most exalted is compassionate and noble. He is the dispenser of
mercy. May Allah most exalted show us forgiveness for our sins.36
Three things impress me as remarkable in this essay by Khofnak’s editor.

First, it bears the hallmark of conventional Islamic devotionalism: the
emphasis on divine mercy, the forgiveness of sins, and the need for pious
fatalism in the face of God’s will as manifested in natural catastrophes.
Second, ‘Alamgir reiterates the death-in-the-midst-of-life motif that
occurs so frequently in both the fiction and nonfiction sections of
Khofnak.
36. Shahzada ‘Alamgir, “Ya Allah rahm farma!,” Khofnak Dijast 9.8 (December
2005): 2-3.
1
Third—and, again, much like the stories and “Islamic Page” columns
in his magazine—the editor takes for granted a Muslim audience for his
essay as he highlights the motif of Islamic solidarity. He does so by
sounding the theme of Pakistani patriotism (note his praise of President
Musharraf); but this is a patriotism that is framed entirely in religious
terms, as a pan-Islamist nationalism (Musulman-e qawm is the phrase
‘Alamgir favors: “the Muslim nation”/“the Muslim people”).
One omission is worth noting. He praises Pakistanis for helping fel-
low Pakistani Muslims but says nothing about the massive amounts of
humanitarian aid offered by the United States and other foreign nations.
This reminds me of something I noticed in my visit to Pakistan in
December 2005, barely two months after the earthquake. Several Paki-
stani friends told me of a TV show that aired shortly after the quake. The
show featured several mullahs who stood ready to take live on-air ques-
tions on religious topics from a studio audience. Frequently, my friends
noted, the mullahs disagreed vehemently with each other in answering
questions.
One audience member spoke up and addressed the mullahs, mention-
ing TV news footage showing American helicopters and members of the
U.S. military delivering food and blankets to quake survivors in Azad
Kashmir.
The audience member’s question was this. These Americans are kafirs,
and normally infidels can safely be expected to be condemned to hellfire
in the afterlife. But given the generosity of these foreigners in helping
Pakistani Muslims after the earthquake, isn’t there at least a possibility
Allah will reward them with paradise?
The mullahs were unanimous and swift in their reply. True, they said,
Allah will reward the Americans and other foreigners for their aid. But
the reward will be solely in terms of material blessings in this lower
worldly life. Paradise is out of the question. Unbelievers, they said, are
barred from heaven, regardless of how many good deeds they do.
On Being Pelted With Slippers,

Or, The Hazards of Public Speaking: The Uses of Piety
in Fright Digest and the Arabian Nights
Several Lahori Muslims to whom I showed my copies of Fright Digest
pointed out the very pragmatic function served by the Islami Safhah
section of the magazine. Essays entitled “The Islamic Page” disarm
critics. After all, a Pakistani magazine that features cover art showing
gorgeous young women with fangs dripping blood is bound to rouse
1
charges that its stories are frivolous and lewd. “Readers,” as one Lahori
friend said to me with a smile, “can point to the Islami Safhah section
and say, ‘See? This is a good Muslim publication’.”
Displaying conspicuous piety to keep stories from being banned is a
stratagem with a long history. The Quran itself (31.6-7) expresses dis-
pleasure with those who recite “frivolous stories,” because of their
potential for distracting listeners from the recitation of the word of Allah.
Throughout the medieval era many Muslim religious scholars displayed
a similar hostility to “frivolous stories.” In response, professional story-
tellers (known in Arabic as qussas) defended themselves via a technique
we can recognize from the pages of Fright Digest: they incorporated
100% Islamic elements into their narratives.
Many of these qussas performed before large audiences in the court-
yards of urban mosques, and they were generally careful in their choice
of subject matter. They often began by quoting Quranic verses, especially
those concerning Judgment Day, hellfire, and the need to prepare for the
afterlife. The qussas then illustrated these verses with vivid anecdotes
about well-known figures from Islamic scripture.
Religious authorities were forced to acknowledge the popularity of
these performances but warned against their doctrinal weakness. Many
storytellers fabricated hadiths, falsely ascribing utterances to the prophet
Muhammad. Others, influenced by Sufi mysticism, mingled wine poetry
and love stories with their discourses on the quest for union with the
Divine.
The educated feared the sway over mosque crowds held by the qussas.
To take one example: the thirteenth-century author Ibn al-Jawzi tells
what happened to a famous Quran scholar, ‘Amir al-Sha’bi, when he
unwisely interrupted a storyteller to correct the speaker’s faulty hadith
citation concerning the angelic trumpet of Judgment Day. The mosque
crowd immediately got angry. Encouraged by the storyteller, people
in the audience pelted al-Sha’bi with sandals and slippers until he
acknowledged the entertainer as correct. Interrupting a good tale is risky
business.37
Ibn al-Jawzi understood the implications of such power over the
masses. Himself a scholar and preacher employed by the caliphal gov-
ernment in Baghdad, he was careful not to condemn the qussas as a
class. Instead he drew attention to the storytellers’ potential for educating
commoners in their faith. But he insisted that the qussas meet strict
37. David Pinault, “Story-Telling,” in Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey,
eds., Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature (London: Routledge, 1998), vol. 2, 735-37.
1
standards of behavior and education: training in Islamic law and scrip-

ture; moral integrity and the ability to resist the temptation to extract
money from the audience; and the willingness to hold gatherings and
offer their distinctive combinations of story-cum-sermon only after being
given permission by the government.38
The pressure to justify narrative entertainment via conspicuous piety
can be seen at work in medieval Islam’s most notorious story collection,
the Arabian Nights. In the pre-modern era and even in recent years,
arbiters of Islamic identity have tried to suppress publication of the
Nights because of its stories’ alleged “immorality, debauchery, and per-
version.”39 But any careful reader of the Nights could point out that in
fact many of its tales were composed so as to highlight orthodox Islamic
themes.
A good example is a narrative called Madinat al-nahas (“The City of
Brass”). At one level it is an adventure story. The hero, an emir known as
Musa ibn Nusair, is commissioned by the caliph ‘Abd al-Malik to search
the Sahara for magic bottles from the time of King Solomon. En route he
and his companions encounter jinns, enchanted statues, eerily abandoned
desert palaces, and a lost city of the sands, where death-traps await the
unwary.
But at another level the tale is structured so as to illustrate Islamic
doctrine. The abandoned city and palaces encountered by Musa and his
friends contain poetic inscriptions warning travelers of the evanescence
of life and the need to prepare for the pilgrimage to the afterlife:
Look carefully, O man, at what you see here,
and be on your guard before you leave on your journey.
Prepare for yourself good provisions (wa-qaddim al-zad min khair)
with which you may cross the desert,
For everyone now dwelling in a home must one day depart.40
Of course these “good provisions” are not food in the ordinary sense but
rather good works in preparation for judgment by God at the end of life’s
journey.
Thus Musa’s travels through the desert become a dramatized enact-
ment of one of the Quran’s dominant metaphors: human existence as a
journey towards the afterlife. Islamic scripture contains a prayer in which
believers entreat Allah to “guide us along the straight path.” Moral
38. Pinault, “Story-Telling,” vol. 2, 735.

39. Pinault, Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights, 1-4.
40. ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Safati al-Sharqawi, ed., Alf laylah wa-laylah (Cairo:
Bulaq, 1835), vol. 2, 48.
1
conduct is described in terms of traversing a bridge, a way, a “path of

God.” Immoral conduct is understood as being “led astray.”41
In other words, Arabian Nights stories such as “The City of Brass”
function simultaneously as adventure tale and sermon-as-entertain-
ment—a reliable way of ensuring the survival of a story that must endure
the gaze of potentially hostile Muslim critics in a piously Islamic
environment.42
“The gaze of potentially hostile Muslim critics” is also a feature of the
Taliban-and-Deobandi-inflected environment in many parts of Pakistan
today. No wonder, then, that the Pakistani magazine Khofnak Dijast
shares thematic elements with the Arabian Nights. Some of Khofnak’s
phrasing is very similar to that of “The City of Brass.” The “Islamic
Page” column cited above from the March 2004 issue talks about the
need for preparing akhirat ke lie zad-e rah (“traveling provisions for the
journey to the afterlife”)—a demonstration of how both the medieval and
twenty-first-century texts have been influenced by the Quran and its
metaphors.
Thus in their emphasis on action and exotic adventure, in their
indulging of popular tastes while invoking the vocabulary of conven-
tional piety, both the Arabian Nights and Lahore’s Fright Digest can be
said to belong to the genre of Islamic pulp fiction.
41. Quran 1.6-7.

42. On the genre of Arabic sermon-as-entertainment, see Pinault, Story-Telling
Techniques in the Arabian Nights, 233-37.
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10
THE POLITICS OF JOGGING:

WOMEN’S STATUS IN PAKISTAN
Marathons, Morality, and the Red Mosque

For several of my visits, I rented a room in a private home in one of the
wealthier neighborhoods of Lahore. My landlady was a middle-aged
Punjabi I’ll call Fatima Sahiba. The daughter of a senior airforce officer,
she displayed the easy confidence of the well-born (in Pakistan’s social
hierarchy, the military outranks religion and business). Tall and attractive,
with a taste in clothes that ran to bright colors and fine fabrics, she was
unmarried and glad to be so (“I don’t want a husband telling me do this,
do that”). Servants and idlers up and down the street gossiped about my
presence. She shrugged it off.
Fatima liked her evening walks. Sometimes, if I got back to my room
before dark, after a long day of interviews and shrine visits and getting
stuck in traffic, I’d hear a knock on my door and find her housekeeper
inviting me to share Fatima Sahiba’s promenade. I was tired but knew
she liked company for her outings.
Usually we’d hike the circuit at the Polo Ground. The track looped
around a pond, and the smell of water on the air was good after the day’s
heat. Bats emerged into the lamplight and flitted overhead. We walked at
a leisurely pace, making way for occasional runners, earnest men who
came puffing by in zippered-up Adidas suits. But women, too, used the
track. One night we passed a couple, a prayer-capped graybeard marching
with stiff dignity beside a diminutive burqa-shrouded figure. Frequently
we were overtaken by clusters of women—some college-aged, others
older—striding purposefully, elbows pumping. Once in a while I’d see a
solitary woman. In all cases they dressed modestly—traditional kameez-
shalwar (tunics and baggy trousers) and dupattas (diaphanous shawls)
that barely covered their heads—but their faces and hair were uncon-
cealed and veiled only by the night.
1
I told Fatima I was impressed to see unescorted young women out and
about on the track. “This is Lahore,” she reminded me, “not some tribal
backwater.” She said proudly this was a cosmopolitan city and here
women could move about as they pleased.
But when it involves women, jogging in Pakistan acquires a political
edge. In April 2005 stick-wielding men attacked female participants in a
coed road race held in the Punjabi town of Gujranwala. The assailants
belonged to the MMA, the Islamist political coalition that specializes in
the policing of public morality. “Since gaining control of the provincial
government in the North-West Frontier Province [in 2002],” according to
news reports, “the MMA has banned music and dancing in public, torn
down advertising billboards featuring women, and introduced gender
segregation on college campuses.” An MMA spokesman explained why
his group had disrupted the race: “Marathons are not objectionable—as
long as the menfolk and womenfolk run separately.” According to other
MMA adherents, “Women runners should race separately, and indoors.”1
A few weeks after the attack in Gujranwala, municipal authorities in
Lahore caved in to the Islamists by banning “mixed-gender races.”
Human-rights activist Asma Jahangir joined with other social justice
advocates to defy the ban by organizing a “symbolic one-kilometre mini-
marathon” in Lahore that involved both male and female participants.
Jahangir indicated that the event’s purpose was to condemn violence
against women in Pakistan and criticize “the lack of state protection for
women wishing to participate in public sports events in the face of
interference by Islamist groups.” The race had barely begun before local
police stepped in to break it up. Amnesty International’s report on the
incident notes that police officials claimed “they had intended to protect
the demonstrators against Islamist attack.” Lahori police notions of
protection involved assaulting the runners and targeting the women for
public humiliation: police officers slapped women and pulled them about
by their hair. Jahangir’s clothes were torn from her back.2
Jahangir is the most outspoken and courageous defender of women’s
rights in Pakistan today, so her involvement in the marathon guaranteed
nationwide interest. Progressives and Islamists alike continue to refer to
“mixed-gender races” as something emblematic in their divergent visions
of the country’s future.
1. Declan Walsh, “Mullahs Target Women Runners,” The Guardian, April 12,
2005 (www.guardian.co.uk); “Pakistani Women Race Peacefully,” BBC News,
January 29, 2006 (http://news.bbc.co.uk).
2. “Pakistani Women Race Peacefully”; “Pakistan: Peaceful Rally of Human
Rights Defenders Stopped by Police, Participants Arrested,” Amnesty International,
May 16, 2005 (http://web.amnesty.org).
1
10. The Politics of Jogging 197
The issue surfaced in one of the most violent incidents to trouble Paki-
stan in the summer of 2007—the storming of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid
(also known as the Red Mosque). The Lal Masjid’s leaders, two brothers
named Maulana Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi, had organized the
students in their madrasa into “Taliban-style vigilante squads.” Their
goal was the imposition of shari’ah throughout Pakistan; their tactic,
kidnapping alleged prostitutes and Chinese masseuses, harassing video
shop clerks, and raging against pleasures they deemed unislamic.
In July 2007 government troops besieged and overran the Red Mosque.
More than one hundred persons died in the fighting, including Abdul
Rashid Ghazi. In an interview Ghazi had condemned Musharraf’s gov-
ernment for the kinds of public behavior it tolerated: “Vulgarity has been
promoted—women running in marathons, brothels, pornography in CD
shops… All these things have been accumulating in the minds and in the
hearts of the people of Pakistan.”3
In lieu of “women running in marathons,” the Red Mosque’s leader-
ship offered its own vision of appropriate female behavior. The most
notorious image from the Red Mosque affair was the sight of dozens of
female students from the Jamia Hafsa (the mosque’s madrasa for
women), clad in enveloping black robes, wearing niqabs (face-veils that
permit only the eyes to be seen), and wielding five-foot bamboo sticks.
These niqabis (as they were called in the Pakistani press) frequently
led the charge in raids on Islamabad’s video shops and massage parlors.
Some of them boasted they were ready to die as martyrs in suicide
attacks.4
Of the many commentators on the Red Mosque showdown, the most
perceptive is a U.S.-based attorney named Rafia Zakaria. In her analysis
she focused on Jamia Hafsa’s female students and how they were taught
to accept a concept “deeply embedded in the fabric of Pakistani society…
the belief that women are the source of ‘fitna’ [discord/civil war] and the
cause and basis for all strife and corruption.” Women who internalize
such notions “choose and ratify their own oppression if they want to be
good Pakistani and Muslim girls.” Modern Western concepts of femi-
nism and women’s liberation are rejected as foreign and unislamic. The
Jamia Hafsa students illustrate this mentality, says Zakaria, in their
religious conviction that “they are eliminating the fitna-producing ele-
ment of their femaleness by donning burqas. They have adopted the
3. William Dalrymple, “Letter from Pakistan: Days of Rage,” The New Yorker
(July 23 2007): 26-35.
4. “Pakistani Women Threaten Suicide Attacks,” Contingency Today, May 15,
2007 (www.contingencytoday.com).
1
violence of men and happily embraced the fundamentalist doctrine that

justifies their own subjection.”5
Zakaria argues that many Pakistani Muslims supported these burqa-
clad students in their anti-vice rampage, and she analyzes the public-
relations strategy used by the Red Mosque’s leaders in deploying veiled
females on violent missions in the name of Islam: “The stratagem divides
women into two falsely constructed moral categories: the ‘good’ face-
less, nameless women courageously wielding sticks against the ‘bad’
prostitutes, foreigners, and other ‘fallen’ women who must be saved and
brought to the right path by their niqabi sisters.” This, Zakaria says, is
the moral vision that has seduced so many Pakistani Muslims—“the
construction of simplistic moral binaries where all good women are
militant niqabis and all bad women are prostitutes,” a way of thinking
that seductively promises to resolve the vexing problems of modernity
with a slogan and a length of bamboo.6
But my landlady in Lahore moved in a different world, one that mixed
traditional piety with a Western-inflected lifestyle. Fatima Sahiba drove
her own car. Whenever she started the engine she touched the little Quran
she kept on the dash and breathed a good-luck Bismillah: “In the name of
Allah.” Evenings we sat in her living room and watched old Disney films
and other Hollywood fare. When the sunset call to prayer sounded from
the neighborhood mosque, she kept her eyes on the TV but lifted the
dupatta from her shoulders up over her head as a mark of devotion.
One night we drove to a party at the home of well-to-do family friends.
I remember a spacious lawn sheltered behind a high brick wall that was
topped with jagged glass—designed to keep impoverished Lahore from
climbing in. The host presided over a drinks table featuring whisky and
gin. But at first I paid no attention to the guests; I was busy getting
acquainted with the household’s pair of dogs—big friendly slobbering
Labrador retrievers.
The dogs followed me across the lawn to where Fatima stood talking
with a stern young man in a suit and tie. She started to introduced me to
him—an accountant named Asad Something; I didn’t catch it all—when
the Labs thrust their muzzles among us in a bid for attention.
Fatima sprang back in alarm. I said I didn’t think they’d hurt anyone.
Asad—who’d also backed away—informed me I was missing the point.
5. Rafia Zakaria, “The ‘Anti-Woman’ Pakistani Woman,” Daily Times (Lahore),

April 29, 2007 (www.dailytimes.com.pk).
6. Rafia Zakaria, “Faceless, Yet Famous,” Daily Times (Lahore), July 7, 2007
(www.dailytimes.com.pk).
1
“If one of them touches you, it makes you najis [ritually impure].” He
sipped a virtuous orange juice in lieu of a Dewar’s and quoted a saying
of the Prophet: “No angel will enter a house where there’s a picture or a
dog.”
The View from Cooco’s Café: Nightlife, Romance, Talibanization

It was Fatima Sahiba who introduced me to my favorite dining spot in
Lahore: Cooco’s Café. A massive crumbling building four stories tall,
it’s located among the crowded alleys of the walled Old City. We always
preferred a table on the rooftop terrace, with its view of the Shah Alam
Gate and the minarets and bulbous domes of the seventeenth-century
Badshahi Mosque.
Startling was the best word for Cooco’s décor. In a marble alcove in
the vestibule stood a statue of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman. The
restaurant’s walls were lined with paintings of quasi-abstract nudes and
fat tavayif (dancing girls/prostitutes) that posed lounging on divans. (A
waiter told me the paintings were all the work of the café’s owner, Iqbal
Hussain, a man with stories to tell—as will be revealed later—about both
Hanuman and the tavayif.) Floral-motif tilework—copper-orange,
sunburst-yellow—decorated the stairwell. Near the stairs on the roof was
more statuary from a variety of faiths—a Virgin Mary, a Shiva accompa-
nied by the sacred Nandi bull, a Bodhisattva in the ancient Greco-
Buddhist style of Gandhara.
Equally remarkable was the discovery that Cooco’s provided a thriv-
ing nightlife venue for dating. Each time I visited I saw clusters of young
men and women, teens and undergraduates. Couples sat alone together in
unsupervised bliss. They held hands and laughed in the dark and sang
along to the music of Punjabi pop stars.
Fatima watched me studying the scene one night and said, “If the
maulvis [mullahs] came to power in Lahore, all this would go. Plus I’d
have to cover my head all the time. That’s why,” she added, “I support
Musharraf. He keeps the maulvis from taking power with their shari’ah.
They’d suffocate us women.”
I sampled mullahs-in-power on my trips to Peshawar. There the
MMA’s religious coalition has ruled since 2002. As noted above, the
MMA has curbed the playing of music and mandated gender segregation
on university campuses. In December 2005, at the invitation of the
University of Peshawar’s history department, I gave a lecture to a hall
full of undergraduates. I asked whether both male and female students
would be allowed to attend and the history chairman said certainly.
1
And both males and females did attend—although they were segre-
gated from each other at either side of the hall. Over fifty women showed
up, every one of them veiled in either a burqa or niqab. This taught me
something. When an audience is faceless, it’s hard to gauge how much of
what one says sinks in.
Nevertheless young women were getting an education in Peshawar—
although this may be imperiled if recent trends worsen. News reports in
2006 and 2007 documented the ever-increasing Talibanization of the
NWFP. Concomitant with the Taliban’s resurgence in southern Afghani-
stan in recent years has been the rise of what is known as the “Pakistani
Taliban” in the Tribal Areas along the Afghan–Pakistani border. In tribal
regions such as North Waziristan, the Taliban have imposed their own
bleak version of shari’ah. But even more alarming has been the
deployment of Taliban “mobile units” from Waziristan to regions in the
NWFP such as Swat and Bannu. There they’ve forbidden a range of
activities they consider unislamic: singing at weddings, selling music
cassettes, shaving off beards.7
Symptomatic of this Talibanization in the NWFP has been the rise of a
Pakistani cleric named Maulana Fazlullah. Head of a group called
Tehreek-e Nifaz-e Shariat-e Muhammad (“Movement for Implementing
Muhammad’s Shari’ah”), he controls a horde of armed and militant
seminary “students.” He preaches openly in the NWFP and in March
2007 successfully defied attempts by government forces to arrest him.8
Fazlullah’s movement loudly condemns education for girls. “For
months, using a pirated radio channel,” reported the Christian Science
Monitor, “Fazlullah had warned locals against sending their girls to
school, calling it un-Islamic and a violation of purdah.” The Monitor
quoted one of Fazlullah’s pronouncements: “A woman has been asked to
remain behind the four walls of the house. Men have been given prefer-
ence by God.” (The latter sentence is a paraphrase of Quran 4.34: “Men
are providers for women, insofar as Allah has preferred the one over the
other.”)9
In 2006 and 2007 Islamist militants bombed several girls’ schools in
the NWFP and intimidated families into keeping their daughters at home
7. Carlotta Gall and Ismail Khan, “Taliban and Allies Tighten Grip in Northern
Pakistan,” The New York Times, December 11, 2006; Barbara Plett, “Pakistan Faces
the Taliban’s Tentacles,” BBC News, May 22, 2007 (http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk).
8. David Montero, “Pakistan Losing Territory to Radicals,” Christian Science
Monitor, May 29, 2007 (www.csmonitor.com).
9. David Montero, “Pakistani Girls’ Schools in Radicals’ Sights,” Christian
Science Monitor, May 31, 2007 (www.csmonitor.com).
1
and away from any classroom. A sad trend, given that—as noted by
Christian Science Monitor reporter David Montero—“Pakistan has one
of the highest rates of female illiteracy in South Asia, at about 60 per-
cent.” In Pakistan’s Tribal Areas things are worse—only one percent of
the female population can read.10
The groundwork for Talibanization in Pakistan and institutionalizing
the oppression of women was laid in the 1970s by the dictator General
Zia ul-Haq. To please fundamentalist clerics Zia sponsored a nationwide
Islamization program. Its most infamous component: the Hudood (“reli-
gious penalties”) Ordinances, which were enacted in 1979.
Particularly disastrous for women was the ordinance on sexual activity,
which criminalized zina (adultery and fornication). The Hudood Ordi-
nance mandated shari’ah punishments of public whipping and stoning for
zina. Rape cases, to be tried in Islamic courts as a religious offense, were
among the crimes subject to judgment under the Hudood laws. Under the
terms of the zina Hudood Ordinance, if a rape victim wanted justice
against her assailant, she had to produce four witnesses to the rape who
were adult male Muslims known for their piety. If a victim came forward
and failed to offer the requisite qualified witnesses, she was liable to
prosecution as an adulteress or fornicator, based on the grotesque logic
that she had admitted to engaging in illicit sex.11
This happened to rape victims on numerous occasions. “Women’s
groups used such cases to highlight the morbid injustice of the Hudood
laws,” reported Pakistani attorney Abira Ashfaq. She cited “the 1983
case of Safia Bibi, a blind 16-year-old girl who was raped by the sons of
a wealthy landowner and was sentenced to three years in prison, 15
lashes, and a fine.” Safia Bibi ultimately was released on appeal. Other
women were not so lucky. Hundreds endured imprisonment or public
lashings.12
The Hudood Ordinance criminalizing zina legitimized additional
abuses. If the accused rapist claimed innocence and four pious male
Muslim witnesses weren’t forthcoming, he would go free. But pregnancy
in the victim constituted proof of her guilt. Such “was the case of Jehan
10. Montero, “Pakistani Girls’ Schools in Radicals’ Sights.”

11. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998),
275-77. If the alleged rapist was non-Muslim, then the ordinance allowed testimony
from non-Muslims.
12. Emma Duncan, Breaking the Curfew: A Political Journey Through Pakistan
(London: Arrow Books, 1989), 222-23; Abira Ashfaq, “Reform in Pakistan: Real
Change, Or a Band-Aid?,” Peacework Magazine (American Friends Service
Committee), January 2007 (www.peaceworkmagazine.org).
1
Mina, a 13-year-old raped by her uncle and cousin. She too was con-
victed of zina after becoming pregnant.”13
The traditional expectation in Pakistan was that rape victims would
commit suicide rather than dishonor their families by drawing attention
to what had happened to them. Mukhtaran Mai refused to conform. A
victim of legally endorsed sexual brutality, she went public with the
violence she’d undergone. New York Times correspondent Nicholas
Kristof helped bring her story to the world’s attention. She is a Punjabi
peasant, sentenced to gang-rape in 2002 by her village council in retalia-
tion for a supposed offense by her brother. “After four men raped her,”
reported Kristof, “she was forced to walk home nearly naked before a
jeering crowd. She then defied tradition by testifying against her attack-
ers… She is also campaigning against honor killings, rapes and acid
attacks that disfigure women.”14
The Hudood Ordinances embodied this culture of pervasive misogyny.
Gender, religion, and social class all played a role in determining those
who would suffer most because of the zina legislation. A human-rights
advocate working with women imprisoned under the Hudood laws noted
that “a large number of the women I spoke to held for zina crimes at the
Karachi Jail in 2004 had suffered domestic violence, were not literate,
and worked the most menial jobs.”15
Religious identity is also a factor in sexual violence. The Human
Rights Monitor, a report published annually by the Pakistan Catholic
Bishops Conference, has documented numerous cases where young
Hindu and Christian women—many of them employed as servants in
Muslim households—have been raped and beaten by Muslim employers
and neighbors. Frequently the assailants were released because the
victims couldn’t produce the requisite number of witnesses stipulated by
the Hudood laws. The Human Rights Monitor comments on the coercive
social function of sexual violence in Pakistani society: “This humiliation
would remind non-Muslim labourers of their infinite subjugation to their
masters and Muslim compatriots.”16
After years of advocacy by human-rights groups, in November 2006
Pakistan’s parliament amended the Hudood Ordinances by enacting the
Women’s Protection Bill. The new legislation makes rape subject to
13.Ashfaq, “Reform in Pakistan.”

14.Nicholas Kristof, “A Free Woman,” The New York Times, June 19, 2005.
15.Ashfaq, “Reform in Pakistan.”
16.Emmanuel Yousaf Mani, ed., Human Rights Monitor 2005 (Lahore: National
Commission for Justice and Peace, 2005), 53-62; idem, Human Rights Monitor 2006
(Lahore: National Commission for Justice and Peace, 2006), 84-91.
1
adjudication under Pakistan’s civil code rather than shari’ah. Hence the
Islamic requirement of four male Muslim witnesses is abolished. Victims
unable to produce sufficient witnesses are no longer automatically liable
to prosecution for adultery or fornication. Consensual sex outside mar-
riage, however, remains a criminal offense.17
Women’s groups hailed the new legislation as a partial victory but
said the Hudood Ordinances should be abolished altogether. The religious
parties were furious. MMA representatives denounced the amendments
to the Islamic Hudood as “part of an American agenda.” The new bill,
according to MMA leader Fazlur Rahman, would turn Pakistan into a
“free-sex zone.”18 Such talk is reminiscent of the rhetoric of Abu’l ‘Ala
Mawdudi, founder of the Jamaat-e Islami (the most prominent of the
parties comprising Pakistan’s MMA). In his writings Mawdudi warned
Muslims of “that satanic flood of female liberty and licence which threat-
ens to destroy human civilization in the West.”19
Resistance to clerical attempts to dominate Pakistan come in many
forms. One form resistance takes is art. An example is a 2006 exhibition
called “Karkhana: A Contemporary Collaboration” (karkhana means
“workshop”). The works in this show were created by a half-dozen
Pakistani artists, most of them women, all of them graduates of Lahore’s
National College of Arts. Their art bristles with political themes chal-
lenging Pakistan’s networks of authority. An example: an untitled water-
color from 2003 depicting a row of bearded mullahs, pious and somber,
garbed in prayer caps and long clerical robes. They stare at a woman
shrouded in a burqa. The line of mullahs emanates sobriety, control, and
order—except for one unruly thing. From beneath each cleric’s robe
protrudes the hairy hindquarters and hooves of a goat.20
To close this chapter, another example of resistance, this one an anec-
dote from Cooco’s Café. In March 2004 I happened to visit on an even-
ing when Iqbal Hussain, the proprietor, was present. A waiter introduced
us. Seated at an outdoor table in the alley in front of his restaurant, Iqbal
17. “Musharraf Signs Women’s Bill,” Dawn (Pakistan), December 2, 2006

(www.dawn.com).
18. Syed Shoaib Hasan, “Strong Feelings Over Pakistan Rape Laws,” BBC
News, November 15, 2006 (http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk); “The Location of Honor,”
Asian Human Rights Commission, February 12, 2007 (http://www.ahrchk.net).
19. Abu’l ‘Ala Mawdudi, “Political Theory of Islam,” in J. Donohue and J.
Esposito, eds., Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2d ed.; New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 265.
20. Some of these artists’ collaborative work is available in an exhibition
catalogue: Hammad Nasar, ed., Karkhana: A Contemporary Collaboration (Ridge-
field, CT: Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2005).
1
was enjoying the night air. Every passer-by seemed to know him and
paused to chat.
We talked about his paintings of tavayif. Born in Heera Mandi (the
“Diamond Market” locality of Lahore’s Old City, famous for its prosti-
tutes), Iqbal is the son and brother of dancing girls. He paints the life he
knows, that he grew up with, that he refuses to be made ashamed of
despite the morality-mouthings of Lahori mullahs.21
I asked about the café’s décor, the Hindu statues and Blessed Virgins
and Bodhisattvas. He said he got them from all over the Old City and
beyond. Many of the artifacts came from buildings that have stood empty
and abandoned since Partition. “I see myself as rescuing these pieces
from destruction.”
What about my favorite artwork, the statue in the alcove on the ground
floor, the monkey god Hanuman? That, he said, he’d retrieved from an
old haveli (palace) in the city.
Then he told me a story about this Hanuman. He used to display the
figure out on the street by the entrance, to serve as a kind of greeter for
customers. But one night a group of mullahs came up to him where he
sat and said, “This is a Muslim city. Take that thing inside.” They said
otherwise they’d have him killed.
Iqbal shrugged and said to me, “What could I do? I sit outside here in
the alley all the time. Very easy for someone on a motorbike to come by
and shoot me.”
So for now the monkey god stays inside. I hope it survives. It’s a
vestige of Pakistan’s pluralist legacy—a legacy that one day might be
freed to come out from behind closed doors and back onto the street.
21. For a study of the Old City’s tavayif, see Louise Brown, The Dancing Girls
of Lahore (New York: Fourth Estate, 2005).
1
11
THE GRECO-BUDDHIST PAST:
THE PESHAWAR MUSEUM
AND PAKISTAN’S PRE-ISLAMIC HERITAGE
Few buildings have functioned simultaneously as a dance hall and a

showcase for ancient artifacts. Pakistan’s Peshawar Museum has done
both.
When it first opened a hundred years ago, the Victoria Memorial Hall
(as it was then called) served as a social center for officials and soldiers
of Britain’s Indian Empire. But it also displayed recently excavated
Greco-Buddhist statues from India’s Northwest Frontier. Party-goers
could pause between dances to admire the massive stone Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas that lined the walls of the central ballroom. A second-floor
balcony above the ballroom provided seating that allowed onlookers to
admire the dancers and sculptures below or gaze upward at the coffered
ceiling with its intricate leaf-and-flower pattern.
The Indian Empire is gone, and Peshawar is now part of Pakistan. But
the balcony and coffered ceiling are still there, as is the old ballroom,
which is now the main hall of the Peshawar Museum.
Today the museum’s collection includes coins, manuscripts, Kashmiri
shawls, and folk art from South Asia and Iran. But the Peshawar Museum
is especially known for its Gandharan art—the largest such collection in
the world. The term Gandhara refers to a land that in antiquity extended
from Kabul (in what is now Afghanistan) to the Indus River valley of the
Punjab. Gandhara formed the heart of the Indo-Greek empire ruled by
successors of Alexander the Great, who conquered the region in the
fourth century BC. Later, the invading Kushans of Central Asia estab-
lished control over the area in the first centuries of the Common Era. At
that time, Gandhara formed part of the Silk Road linking China with
Rome. Artisans and craftsmen from the Mediterranean joined the mer-
chants and other travelers who ventured along this route.
1
In Gandhara, a style of sculpture and carving evolved that combined

the iconography of the Indian subcontinent with the canons of Greco-
Roman portraiture. The result: a unique and Hellenized form of Buddhist
statuary.
Afghanistan’s Kabul Museum once boasted a superb collection of
Gandharan art. Then came 1996 and the militant-Islamist rule of the Tali-
ban. Despising Afghanistan’s pre-Islamic heritage as pagan, Taliban
zealots systematically vandalized Kabul’s archaeological holdings. They
did the same elsewhere in Afghanistan as well, destroying the colossal
cliff-face Buddhas of Bamiyan in March 2001.
Luckily, Gandharan art survives elsewhere, most famously in Paki-
stan’s ‘Aja’ib-Gher (“Wonder-House”), otherwise known as the Lahore
Museum. Anglo-Indian author Rudyard Kipling had a special affection
for this place—his father worked there as curator. In his celebrated novel
Kim, Kipling described the Lahore Museum’s Gandharan artifacts: “In
the entrance-hall stood the larger figures of the Greco-Buddhist sculp-
tures done, savants know how long since, by forgotten workmen whose
hands were feeling, and not unskillfully, for the mysteriously transmitted
Grecian touch.”1
Less well known, but far more extensive, is the Gandharan collection
at the Peshawar Museum. I had the opportunity to see this collection in
2002 and again in 2005, while taking a break from my research on Shia
rituals. In touring the museum’s old ballroom-cum-display hall, I saw
that the explanatory texts accompanying a number of the objects indi-
cated that many pieces had been donated to the museum in the days of
the Indian Empire by the Queen’s Own Corps of Guides.
How the Guides acquired these objects is a story in itself. The Corps
of Guides (the first unit in the British Army to be issued khaki uniforms
instead of conspicuous scarlet) was created in mid-nineteenth century
India especially for reconnaissance and “collecting trustworthy intelli-
gence beyond, as well as within, our borders,” as reported in Colonel G.
J. Younghusband’s history, The Story of the Guides. Captained by British
officers, the Guides recruited tribesmen from throughout the Northwest
Frontier—Afridis, Khuttucks, and Yusufzai Pathans, among others. The
headquarters of the Guides was situated close to the old Afghan–Indian
border, in the village of Mardan—which also happened to be just a few
miles from the ruins of Gandharan sites such as Jamal Garhi, Takht-i-
Bahi, and Shahbaz Garhi.2
1. Rudyard Kipling, Kim (New York: Dell, 1959), 10.

2. Col. G. J. Younghusband, The Story of the Guides (London: Macmillan & Co.,
1908), 4.
1
11. The Greco-Buddhist Past 207
A number of officers of the Guides and Royal Engineers chose to use

their leave-time excavating for Greco-Buddhist artifacts at these sites.
Their boyhood education in classical studies endowed them with an
enthusiasm (attested in the memoirs of various officers serving in India at
that time) for any traces of Greco-Roman antiquity they might encounter
in the ruins of Alexander’s Asian empire.3
Some finds they donated to the British Museum in London; others
found a home in the Guides’ mess hall in Mardan. There the artifacts
shared space with other trophies in the dining room—heads of ibex and
Marco Polo sheep, banners and swords taken in battle, and prizes for
triumphs in polo. In his history of the Guides, Colonel Younghusband
describes the Mardan dining hall as it looked a century ago: “The present
mess is full not only of historical mementoes, as is only natural, but also
of archaeological treasures.” He goes on to say of the Gandharan
artifacts:
The archaeological treasures consist of sculptures and friezes of Greco-
Buddhist origin, illustrating incidents in the life of Buddha, while the
statues represent the life of Gautama and some of his disciples. Most of
these are still in perfect preservation… They were all discovered, many
years ago, within a few miles of the mess, and are naturally preserved with
the greatest care. Savants from even so far afield as France, Germany, and
America have journeyed to see them.4
Nowadays amateur treasure-hunting of this sort is widely condemned.

But it might be worth keeping in mind something told me by Pakistani
scholars I met in Peshawar. To this day, many tribesmen and peasants in
the NWFP still consider it an act of piety, if by chance they unearth a
Gandharan figurine while plowing fields or planting crops, to smash the
thing at once (after all, the Urdu term for idolatry is but-parasti—
“Buddha-worship”—a less-than-flattering evocation of the region’s pre-
Islamic heritage). The only exception: if a looter is in the neighborhood
and is ready with cash, the find might survive to appear on the illicit-
antiquities market in Peshawar and abroad. In this light the Guides’
careful preservation of such treasures at Mardan and subsequent donation
of the artifacts to the Peshawar Museum seem perhaps not quite so bad
after all.
Among the Corps of Guides’ donations now on display at the Museum
is a sculpted panel depicting a scene from the life of Siddhartha. The
Buddha-to-be, accompanied by his attendant Vajrapani, is on his way to
3. See, for example, Francis Yeats-Brown, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (New
York: Viking, 1930), 41-42.
1
4. Younghusband, The Story of the Guides, 188-90.
Bodhgaya (where he will sit in meditation until he attains enlighten-

ment). On the way he meets a grass-cutter, who humbly presents a gift to
Siddhartha of all he has to offer: a sheaf of mown grass (which the
Buddha will use as a seat while he meditates). Sculptures such as this,
illustrating the stages of Siddhartha’s spiritual evolution, were meant to
be viewed by pilgrims and other worshippers at public shrines along
Gandhara’s Silk Road.
The Buddhist iconography in this work is unmistakable—Siddhartha’s
elongated earlobes, his halo and piled-up knot of hair (signifying spiri-
tual knowledge). But even more remarkable are the marks of classical
Greco-Roman influence: the toga worn by Siddhartha and the portrayal
of Vajrapani. The latter figure, known as “the Thunderbolt Wielder,” was
revered in the Gandharan era as a chastiser of sinners and protector of
devotees in need. Here his beard, muscled figure, and club-like weapon
raised in a clenched fist all suggest the hero Hercules.5
Also showing influence from the Mediterranean world is a pair of
sculpted Buddha portraits, both from Sahri Bahlol (a Gandharan site that
was excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India from 1906 to
1926). The forehead of one, a pedestal-mounted sculpture, bears a gouge-
mark that once held a gemstone signifying the “third eye” (representing
the Buddha’s state of “enlightened perception”). The facial features of
both Sahri Bahlol sculptures, together with the carefully articulated
drapery of the second Buddha’s garment, however, are reminiscent of
Hellenistic and Roman depictions of the god Apollo.
The main hall of the Peshawar Museum is crowded with panels repre-
senting scenes from the Buddha’s earthly life. One shows Siddhartha’s
father, turbaned and shaded by a parasol, leading a procession (including
an elephant bearing a royal howdah) to welcome his son home after
young Siddhartha’s victory in an athletic contest. The elephant and line
of celebratory figures recall Roman artwork depicting the god Dionysus
and his triumphal march through India.6 Worth noting here is the
historian Arrian’s remark that when Alexander reached Nysa (in the
Kabul Valley region, near the present-day Afghan city of Jalalabad), his
troops took the presence of ivy growing on nearby Mount Merus as an
auspicious legacy of the ecstatic god’s conquest of the region.7
5. Roy C. Craven, Indian Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 1976), 90-91; Robert
E. Fisher, Buddhist Art and Architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 48.
6. See, for example, the “Sarcophagus with the Triumph of Dionysus,” a Roman
artifact of the second century AD on display at the Walters Art Museum in Balti-
more (www.thewalters.org/works_of_art/itemdetails.aspx?aid=21).
7. Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander (trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt (Harmonds-
worth: Penguin, 1971), 255-56.
1
11. The Greco-Buddhist Past 209
On all the occasions I visited, I had the Peshawar Museum pretty much
to myself. The few visitors I saw were local residents, who confined
themselves to the newly installed manuscript gallery featuring exquisite
hand-calligraphed texts of the Quran and Persian poetry. Museum staff
members informed me that funding for this gallery was provided by the
U.S. Embassy—a well-placed goodwill gesture.
While in Peshawar I asked whether foreigners often visit the museum.
I was told that occasionally Japanese tourists turn up here on “Buddhist
heritage tours.” And in December 2005, the Frontier Post, one of Pesha-
war’s local newspapers, published a photo of a “friendship delegation”
from China posing in the main hall for snapshots beside various Gand-
haran Buddhas. But in general, the foreign tourist presence is low—
understandable, given the volatile politics along the Afghan–Pakistani
frontier.8
Dr. Ihsan Ali, Director of Archaeology and Museums for the North-
West Frontier Province, hopes to find ways to attract more tourists. On
my most recent visit to the Museum, in December 2005, Dr. Ali took me
on a tour of a freshly constructed building that will house the museum’s
Islamic and ethnological collections. The transfer of these objects from
the main building, he explained, will permit the display of more Greco-
Buddhist material (over three-quarters of the museum’s four thousand-
plus Gandharan artifacts are currently locked away in outdoor storage
sheds). The goal is to foster an appreciation for pre-Islamic culture that
might help safeguard Peshawar’s collection from the fate suffered by the
Kabul Museum and the Buddhas of Bamiyan.
In January 2007 the museum marked its hundredth anniversary with
conferences, speeches, and celebrations in the main hall. The old ball-
room once again echoed with the sound of festivity and life. I think the
vanished dancers and party-goers of a century ago would have approved.
8. “A Friendship Delegation From China,” The Frontier Post (Peshawar),

December 15, 2005.
1
12
THE HAZARDS OF BEING A FREE-THINKER:
PRINCE DARA SHIKOH AND THE PROSPECTS
FOR RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY PAKISTAN
Introduction: Degradation, Pity,

and a Final Gift from a Prince in Disgrace
Delhi, September 8, 1659. Crown prince Dara Shikoh, son of Shah Jahan,
has been defeated in battle and captured by his rival and bitter enemy—
his own brother, Aurangzeb. The latter has had court mullahs publish
decrees against Dara, who has penned speculative treatises claiming both
Hinduism and Islam to be valid pathways to God. The result: a fatwa
declaring Dara a kafir and apostate from Islam—a ruling that targets the
captive for death.
But first Aurangzeb wants to humiliate his brother. He orders him
paraded through the city by elephant. Dara rides chained at the ankles,
dressed in dirty clothes. Eyewitness François Bernier, a French physician
present in the Delhi bazaar, describes the prisoner as “seated on a miser-
able and worn-out animal, covered with filth”—a mockery of Dara’s
once-royal status. Mounted guards with drawn swords force a path
through the crowds. Another traveler’s account refers to the procession
as “a melancholy spectacle, creating compassion in all those who saw
him.”1
If the new emperor hopes by this degradation to turn the commoners
against Dara, he’s miscalculated. “Piercing and distressing shrieks” rise
up from the crowd as the prince passes in chains; there are “men, women,
and children wailing,” according to Bernier’s account, “as if some mighty
1. François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656–1668 (trans.

Archibald Constable; Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1999), 98; W. E. Begley and Z.
A. Desai, The Shah Jahan Nama of ‘Inayat Khan (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1990), 559; Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor (trans. William Irvine; Delhi:
Oriental Books, 1981), vol. 1, 336-37.
1
12. The Hazards of Being a Free-Thinker 211
calamity had happened to themselves.” For Dara Shikoh—known for his

generosity to the poor, a donor to Hindu and Muslim shrines alike, a
friend to pundits, mystics, freethinkers, and wanderers—is popular in
Delhi.2
He recognizes in the crowd a fakir who cries out to him. Exhausted
though he is, Dara—impulsive as ever—makes his last gift: a travel-
stained cashmere shawl, which he takes from his shoulders and flings to
the beggar. But guards snatch it away. A prisoner, they shout, has no
right to bestow anything.3
Finally the procession halts before the royal palace. Here the captive,
helpless and exposed to the sun, is made to linger for hours, awaiting the
pleasure of the victorious Aurangzeb, who will decide at his leisure how
best to dispose of this heretic-prince.
The Uses of Moghul History (i):

Portraits of Dara Shikoh in Pre-Partition India
The power struggle between Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh offered a grim
cautionary tale for writers in early twentieth-century India who supported
Mahatma Gandhi’s attempt to bridge Muslim–Hindu communal differ-
ences to achieve independence from Britain. French orientalist Louis
Massignon and Muslim scholar A. M. Kassim published an article in
1926 entitled “A Seventeenth-Century Attempt at Forming a Muslim–
Hindu Coalition: The Mystical Humanism of Prince Dara.” These schol-
ars were fascinated by the career of Dara Shikoh, who is celebrated—or
infamous, depending on one’s point of view—for his attempt to harmo-
nize Hindu and Muslim religious concepts. Massignon and Kassim con-
textualize their study of Dara Shikoh’s thought in the opening paragraph
of their 1926 essay:
The political crisis that is presently obstructing the national unification of
India, hindering the great spirit of social reconciliation that since 1917
had united Hindus and Muslims in a community of sufferings endured
together and in shared admiration for an apostle like Gandhi, evokes for
us another moment of crisis: that which, in the middle of the seventeenth
century, put an end to the generous efforts of an enlightened prince, Dara
Shikoh.4
2. Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 99.

3. Manucci, Storia do Mogor, vol. 1, 336-37.
4. Louis Massignon and A. M. Kassim, “Un essai de bloc islamo-hindou au
xviième siècle: l’humanisme mystique du prince Dara,” Revue du monde musulman
63 (1926): 1.
1
According to Massignon and Kassim, Aurangzeb’s success in wresting

the Moghul throne from Dara Shikoh had dreadful consequences for the
“Muslim–Hindu coalition” envisioned by Massignon and Kassim in the
1920s. According to these scholars, Dara Shikoh’s defeat caused “all the
national hopes of India to vanish for more than two centuries.”5
The enlisting of Dara’s intellectual legacy in the service of the inde-
pendence struggle can also be seen in the writings of Kalika-Ranjan
Qanungo, who in 1935 published a biography of the prince:
I feel that at this moment, when the unity of India depends on a new
attempt at the mutual comprehension of the two spiritual elements
(Hinduism and Islam), attention can legitimately be paid to the figure of
Dara Shukoh, who attempted in the seventeenth century what Kabir and
Akbar had done before in the fifteenth and sixteenth respectively.6
In the preface to the second edition of this same biography in 1952,

Qanungo goes further in linking the theme of Indian nationalism with the
life of a Muslim prince who had been condemned as an apostate for
attempting to reconcile Muslim and Hindu religious thought:
The independence of India has been as much favourable to the memory of
Akbar and his worthy great-grandson Dara, as to our own happiness, for
only a free and secular State like India to-day can truly appreciate the
worth of these two liberal thinkers. In their own times both of them were
looked down upon by the orthodox ulema as infidels, or at best as Hindu-
ised Moslems. The lives of these two statesmen prove that our future is
hopelessly dark if the spirit of India is not unchained from bondage to
bigotry and dogmatic theology, whether Hindu or Muslim. Our patriots
should remember that the path of Akbar or Dara is not for cowards, but
only for men who are prepared to sacrifice their personal gain and popu-
larity in the pursuit of their honest convictions.7
The interpretation of Dara Shikoh by Massignon, Kassim, and Qanungo,

whereby they envisioned him as an advocate of humanistic religious
pluralism in the context of Indian secular nationalism, can be found more
recently in a verse drama authored by Gopal Gandhi and published in
Delhi in 1993. Entitled Dara Shukoh: A Play, Gandhi’s drama focuses
on the last years of Dara’s life, when he struggled against his brother
Aurangzeb in an unsuccessful bid to succeed their father Shah Jahan as
ruler of the Moghul empire. The closing scenes depict Prince Dara in jail
awaiting execution. Rather than indulge in self-pity or lament his own
5. Massignon and Kassim, “Un essai de bloc islamo-hindou,” 1-4.

6. Kalika-Ranjan Qanungo, Dara Shukoh, Volume 1: Biography (2d ed.;
Calcutta: S. C. Sarkar & Sons Ltd., 1952), vii-viii.
1
7. Qanungo, Dara Shukoh, v.
death, Dara is depicted by the playwright as having the gift of foresight,

of seeing the long-term consequences of Aurangzeb’s triumph, and of
predicting the end of the Moghul dynasty because of the failure of future
Moghul emperors to understand or respect the diverse populations over
whom they reign:
It is they [the Moghul rulers of the future] who will grieve,
When forlorn, forsaken,
They run through history’s sieve…
For no other reason than
Their never having tried
To get under India’s skin,
Inside her wondrous soul,
Never trying to win
Her trust, which is her all.8
Gandhi then has Dara in his jail cell go on to predict the 1947 Partition of
India and its attendant communal violence:
What is truly tragic
Is we are ensuring
Our future will be sick,
Vengeful, unforgiving
Will hatch a reaction
Much worse than our action.
The future will pay
For the present’s delay,
Its failure of role
To see, understand
India’s textured whole
And stay Division’s hand.
We were meant to unite
Those we have taught, now, to fight.
That is my true regret.
The rest, my fate, I can forget.9
The Uses of Moghul History (ii):

Pakistani Portraits of Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb
Pakistani representations of Dara Shikoh—especially those published in
the years immediately following the creation of Pakistan—have tended
to be much less uniformly positive than what one finds in India. In 1957
8. Gopal Gandhi, Dara Shukoh: A Play (New Delhi: Banyan Books, 1993), 180.
1
9. Gandhi, Dara Shukoh: A Play, 180-81.
A. Aziz, a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly, wrote a book called

Discovery of Pakistan, which chronicles the political and social develop-
ments that led to the creation of Pakistan. In his preface Aziz states,
“This book…exposes the threads which have woven the structure of the
myth known by the terminology Hindu, and lays naked the hands which
have seated the Brahman [priest] on the pedestal of Bharata Varsha [the
nation of India].” The book’s dedication is “to the victims of Brahman-
ism.” Hinduism is depicted as the religion of priestly oppressors crushing
the inhabitants of the subcontinent.10
Further context for evaluating Aziz’s appraisal of Dara Shikoh can be
gained by noting his depiction of Dara’s great-grandfather, the emperor
Akbar the Great. (Akbar, through his creation of the syncretistic din-e
ilahi or “divine religion,” is often represented as Dara’s predecessor and
model in showing a sympathetic interest in Hinduism and other non-
Muslim faiths.) “Islam’s decadence in India,” asserts Aziz, “set in with
Akbar, the Great Pagan.” This is how Aziz characterizes early twentieth-
century scholarship that depicted Akbar in a favorable light: “[I]n the
days of pre-partition India, Akbar was presented by some writers as a
deity installed on a pedestal to be worshipped with bell and brass.”11
Aziz dismisses Dara Shikoh’s study of Hinduism as a political trick:
“In the hope of engaging to his side the inclination of Rajputs and Brah-
manic people in the coming contest for the throne of Delhi, Dara…
eagerly employed his time in flirting with Brahmanism.” Aziz interprets
Dara’s sympathy for Hindu thought as a symptom of anti-Muslim senti-
ment. “Dara forgot,” notes Aziz with apparent satisfaction, “that his
childish criticism of Islam would alienate the sympathies of his own
people.” Worth remarking here is the unspoken assumption on Aziz’s
part, that the only persons to be regarded rightfully as Dara’s “own
people” are the Muslims of the subcontinent (an assumption far different
from the pluralistic vision espoused in Gopal Gandhi’s drama). Aziz con-
trasts Dara with Aurangzeb, “the ablest son of Shah Jahan,” and Aziz
lavishes praise on Aurangzeb for his competence, modesty, and orthodox
piety.12
More balanced than Aziz’s assessment is a work published in 1964
entitled Muslim Civilization in India. The author, S. M. Ikram, was at
one time a member of Pakistan’s Civil Service and a visiting professor of
international affairs at Columbia University. Ikram acknowledges that
10. A. Aziz, Discovery of Pakistan (2d ed.; Lahore: Sh. Ghulam Ali & Sons,
1964 [1st ed. 1957]), vii.
11. Aziz, Discovery of Pakistan, 62.
1
12. Aziz, Discovery of Pakistan, 79-80.
Dara “seems to have been a center of an entire literary, spiritual, and

intellectual movement” in India.13 But he weakens any positive impres-
sion a reader might acquire of Dara by piling one negative reference atop
another. After remarking on the prince’s “arrogance and tactlessness,”
Ikram refers to a claim by the traveler Bernier that Dara arranged the
killing of Shah Jahan’s prime minister. This constitutes evidence, says
Ikram, “that he [Dara] was not the paragon of virtue his partisans would
have him.” Likewise Ikram asserts of Dara: “[H]is interference with
Aurangzeb’s efforts to extend the empire in the south shows his inability
to rise above personal enmity.”14
Ikram’s portrait of Dara’s brother Aurangzeb, on the other hand, is
highly laudatory. He acknowledges the negative effect on Hindus of
Aurangzeb’s policies of reimposing the jizya (the discriminatory tax on
non-Muslims) and “ordering the destruction of newly built Hindu
temples.” But he describes Aurangzeb’s administrative decrees as
“reforms which could make his dominion a genuine Muslim state.”
Concerning Aurangzeb’s military campaigns, Ikram says, “He greatly
enlarged the Mughal empire and much of what he accomplished has
endured. A large part of what is East Pakistan today was either con-
quered or consolidated during his reign.” Ikram then concludes his
chapter on Aurangzeb with this assessment: “Aurangzeb can be seen not
as the instigator of policies that led to ruin but as the guardian of the
Islamic state in India.” Thus Ikram’s portrait depicts Aurangzeb not only
as the forerunner of present-day Islamist shari’ah -minded politicians but
also as virtually a founding father of the nation of Pakistan (at least in the
version in which it still existed in 1964). The portrait seems calculated to
appeal to Pakistani national pride.15
A much more sensationalistic approach to the life and execution of
Dara Shikoh appears in a popular-format book published in Lahore in
1971 entitled Unique Trials for Virtue and Vice. Authored by one Masud-
ul-Hasan, the book offers capsule histories of famous trials and death
penalties imposed on various personages over the centuries, ranging
from Socrates and Jesus Christ to Joan of Arc and Louis the Sixteenth.
Hasan’s chapter on the death of Dara Shikoh can best be appreciated
by looking first at what the author says concerning the trial and execution
of two other Muslims. One is famous: Husain ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, the
tenth-century Sufi who went about crying Ana al-haqq, “I am the divine
13. S. M. Ikram, Muslim Civilization in India (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1964), 188.
14. Ikram, Muslim Civilization in India, 187.
1
15. Ikram, Muslim Civilization in India, 188, 198-99, 208.
Truth!,” and who was put to death in Baghdad for his allegedly blasphe-
mous outcries. The other is not quite so famous: Ghazi Ilm Din, a young
man sentenced to death in Lahore in 1929 for killing a Hindu publisher
who had issued a book Muslims considered offensive.
Concerning the caliphal Islamic state’s execution of Hallaj, Hasan has
this to say: “The announcement that al-Hallaj had become God was blas-
phemy… He was tried, and he held that he was the Truth. This was
heresy, for it implied incarnation.” Hasan concludes his description of
Hallaj’s trial by quoting the verdict on Hallaj’s heterodox faith issued by
the eleventh-century Sufi master Data Ganj Bakhsh al-Hujwiri: “ ‘There-
fore, although he is dear to my heart, yet his path is not soundly estab-
lished on any principle, and his state is not fixed in any position, and his
experiences are largely mingled with error.’” The use of this quotation is
an astute stratagem on Hasan’s part. Data Ganj Bakhsh is Pakistan’s
best-known Sufi saint, a figure whose tomb in Lahore is an object of
veneration for pilgrims from the Punjab and the entire country. The
criticism by Data Ganj Bakhsh is used to corroborate Hasan’s own
verdict—“blasphemy” and “heresy”—as the author aligns himself with
the defenders of Islamic orthodoxy.16
Hasan’s chapter on the trial and execution of Ghazi Ilm Din in 1929
further illuminates the author’s viewpoint concerning Islam. He justifies
Ilm Din’s murder of a Hindu publisher on the grounds that the latter had
published “a scurrilous book against the Holy Prophet of Islam.” Because
of this offense, Hasan sees Ilm Din’s act of violence as having been both
necessary and praiseworthy: “The story of the trial and martyrdom of
Ghazi Ilm Din is a story of love and sacrifice—a youth offering his life
for the vindication of the honour of the Holy Prophet of Islam.” Because
the government had not punished the Hindu publisher with the rigor such
a person deserved, Hasan argues, self-sacrificing individuals like Ilm Din
were forced to take direct action. “The Muslims had waited in vain for
the courts to do justice,” says our author, “and under the circumstances
there was nothing left for the lovers of Islam, but to take the law in their
own hands.”17
Hasan’s judgment of Hallaj and Ghazi Ilm Din provides perspective
for appreciating his assessment of Dara Shikoh. According to Hasan,
when Aurangzeb and Prince Murad first began to challenge Dara’s claim
to the throne, Shah Jahan advised against the use of force in dealing with
this incipient rebellion. Other Muslim noblemen, says Hasan, also tried
16. Masud-ul-Hasan, Unique Trials for Virtue and Vice (Lahore: Unique
Publications, 1971), 13-14, 17.
1
17. Hasan, Unique Trials for Virtue and Vice, 63, 68.
to prevent civil war. What then caused the outbreak of this fratricidal
conflict between Muslims? Hasan asserts, “The Hindu nobles were of the
view that the rebel princes should be dealt with once for all with force.
Dara Shikoh fell in with the advice of the Hindu councillors.” As in his
chapter on the execution of Ghazi Ilm Din, Hasan draws attention to the
supposed presence of Hindu provocateurs and troublemakers as the
source of problems for the Muslim community.18
Given his preoccupation with the notion of Hindu conspiracies, it is
not surprising that our author foregoes any serious examination of Dara
Shikoh’s mystical speculations. Instead he recapitulates the charges
brought against Dara that demonstrated how the prince’s faith had been
contaminated by his study of Hinduism. Hasan gives particular attention
to the notion that Dara regarded the Vedas as the original source of
Islamic scripture. Here is Hasan’s judgment on Dara’s attempt to recon-
cile the Hindu and Muslim scriptural traditions: “In howsoever mystical
language, abstruse and enigmatic he might have expressed the idea [sic],
in ultimate analysis it meant that the Quran was not the word of God, and
was based on the Vedas. That shook the very foundation of Islam. This
was heresy and kufr [unbelief] in unmistakable terms.”19
Thus it is with a complete lack of sympathy that Hasan recounts the
murder of Dara Shikoh following the fatwa issued by Aurangzeb’s ulema
finding him guilty of apostasy.
This theme of the threat to Islam posed by Hindu influence on Dara
Shikoh’s thought recurs in numerous Pakistani texts that deal with the
conflict between the rival Moghul brothers. One example is a book by
Moinul Haq entitled Ideological Basis of Pakistan in Historical Perspec-
tive, published in 1982 by the Pakistan Historical Society. The book’s
preface states:
For students of history, particularly in the universities and colleges of
Pakistan, the study of the ideological background of Pakistan in its his-
torical perspective is indispensable, because they are likely to get con-
fused in this regard by western concepts of nationalism and nationhood
which in most cases form the basis of modern states. On the contrary, in
Islam the basis of ummah [the Muslim community] is common religious
belief.20
Haq’s emphasis on the importance of “common religious belief” for

building national identity helps explain his hostility to Dara Shikoh. His
18. Hasan, Unique Trials for Virtue and Vice, 39.

19. Hasan, Unique Trials for Virtue and Vice, 42.
20. S. Moinul Haq, Ideological Basis of Pakistan in Historical Perspective, 711–
1940 (Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society, 1982), v.
1
text offers nothing on the content of Dara’s intellectual lifework—noth-

ing, that is, except the remark that Aurangzeb would never have felt it
necessary to seize the throne for himself “if Shahjahan had been only fair
to him and taken the necessary steps to stop Dara from making a joke of
the Islamic principles. Where Islam was concerned, Awrangzib [sic] was
not prepared for a compromise.”21
Referring to Aurangzeb by his throne-name ‘Alamgir, Haq asserts that
the reign of this pious and uncompromising emperor delayed the subse-
quent rise of Hindu political power: “It was only when the disintegration
of the Moghul Empire had set in after ‘Alamgir’s death that the Maratha
Peshwa conceived the idea of establishing Hindu pad padshahi (Hindu
rule).”22
Discussion of Aurangzeb’s rule in terms of a perceived threat from
Hinduism also appears in S. F. Mahmud’s Concise History of Indo-
Pakistan, published in Karachi in 1988. The book’s back-cover
advertisement-copy announces that this text is “intended for secondary
school and college level students.” Mahmud’s representation of the con-
flict between Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh is preceded by an unflattering
description of Akbar’s din-e ilahi, a description not calculated to soothe
present-day Pakistani communal anxieties:
Akbar appeared to favor the Hindus more than the Muslims… The encour-
agement of the Hindus gave a great impetus to the ideas of Hindu national-
ism which were rising in India… His virtual anti-Muslim policy…also
started a reaction among the Muslims in favor of orthodoxy, which
culminated in the reign of Aurangzeb.23
Worth noting here is the anachronistic transposition of “Hindu national-

ism” to sixteenth-century Moghul India.
In characterizing Aurangzeb’s reign Mahmud gives particular attention
to the ruler’s piety: “He learned the Quran by heart and gave all his sons
and daughters a sound education in Islamic studies… He never missed
any observance of Islam, whether praying, fasting, or almsgiving.” Our
author says very little about Dara Shikoh except to note his “unorthodox
views about the Quran,” his assertion that the Hindu Upanishads were
“equally sacred” in comparison with Islamic scripture, and his subse-
quent execution for apostasy.24
21. Haq, Ideological Basis of Pakistan, 22.

22. Haq, Ideological Basis of Pakistan, 110.
23. S. F. Mahmud, A Concise History of Indo-Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1988), 144.
1
24. Mahmud, A Concise History of Indo-Pakistan, 161-63.
Considerably more interest in the prince-mystic’s religious thought is

displayed in Muhammad Salim’s Dara Shikoh: ahwal o afkar (“Dara
Shikoh: Life-Circumstances and Ideas”), published in Lahore in 1995.
Salim offers individual chapters on Dara’s Sufi treatises, his poetry, and
his translation of the Upanishads. Nevertheless the book’s preface makes
clear the politically driven nature of Salim’s interest. He claims that
hitherto “there has been no analysis of what would have become of the
map of India had [Dara] been vested with the crown of sovereignty.”
Salim announces that his book will include such an analysis.25
The partisan quality of Salim’s analysis comes through most clearly in
a chapter entitled Shakhsiyat aur mazhab (“Personality and Religion”).
Here is how he describes the changes in Dara’s personality and moral
character that occurred as a result of exposing himself to Hindu scripture:
“Along with learning Sanskrit, he began the study of the sacred books
of the Hindu religion, especially the Upanishads. A feeling of his own
greatness became fixed in his mind, and he began to believe that along
with being a prince, he was someone upon whom rested the divine favor
of God.”26
Of particular interest to Salim is how Dara’s study of Hinduism
affected his understanding of Islam: “Dara Shikoh had the habit of inter-
preting the holy Quran and the hadith according to his own personal
inclination. But in reality, after all his encounters with pundits, yogis,
and Hindu renunciants, and after studying the Upanishads and the Hindu
science of idols, his manner of thought had become completely altered.”27
From Salim’s point of view, the study of Hinduism had a corrupting
influence on Dara Shikoh, and this influence had powerful and dire politi-
cal implications:
The Hindus were the largest community in India. They were attracted to
him because of his ideas and deeds. They had the notion that when Dara
Shikoh sat on the throne, they would regain the favor and influence they
had acquired during the time of Akbar… Not only Aurangzeb but also
Shah Jahan’s Muslim emirs considered Dara Shikoh unacceptable as suc-
cessor to Shah Jahan because he had become so influenced by Hinduism
that he abandoned ritual prayer, Ramadan fasting, sharia, and other divine
precepts mandated by God. From his thoughts and deeds it had become
clear that if he gained the throne, all kinds of new interpretations of Islam
would arise, a blow would be struck against the beliefs of Muslims, and
the reign of Akbar would return.28
25. Muhammad Salim, Dara Shikoh: ahwal o afkar (Lahore: Maktabat-e Karvan,
1995), vii-viii.
26. Salim, Dara Shikoh: ahwal o afkar, 159.
1
28. Salim, Dara Shikoh: ahwal o afkar, 162-63.
After this alarmist scenario, Salim quotes Muhammad Iqbal, whom

Pakistanis revere as their nation’s intellectual progenitor: “The seed of
heresy fostered by Akbar grew forth and sprouted within the cunning
temperament of Dara.” Salim then asserts, “There is no doubt that if Dara
Shikoh had become emperor, Islam in India would have been shrouded
by the cloak of Hinduism.”29 Thus his analysis is dominated by a percep-
tion of Dara’s religious inquiries as a threat to both the Islamic faith and
Muslim political domination of the subcontinent.
My next text is from a very different source—an Urdu-language leaflet
recently distributed in Pakistan by a group that calls itself al-Muhajiroun
Harakat al-Khilafah (a title that could be translated as “the pious emi-
grants of the caliphate movement”; the term “muhajiroun” evokes early
Islamic history and those faithful Muslims who followed the prophet
Muhammad’s lead in emigrating from pagan Mecca to found a Muslim
community in Medina). Like other pan-Islamic partisans of the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries, members of the Muhajiroun deride the
concept of national boundaries as unislamic and call for the reunifica-
tion of the ummah under the global leadership of a caliph. The group
is militant and confrontational in its politics (to take one example: in
2003, on the occasion of the second anniversary of the September 11
terrorist attacks, the Muhajiroun website issued a statement praising the
hijackers as the “Magnificent 19”). Based in London (where they are
now banned), the Muhajiroun have been active in Lahore and elsewhere
in Pakistan.30
The Urdu Muhajiroun leaflet I referred to is entitled Pakistan meyn
jashan-e kufr kyon (“Why are there pagan festivals in Pakistan?”). I
found a stack of copies of this leaflet in March 2002 in the vestibule of
the Shah Faisal mosque in Islamabad. The text was authored by the
Muhajiroun headquarters office in Lahore. The leaflet condemns Presi-
dent Pervez Musharraf for permitting the observance of two “pagan
festivals” in Pakistan—Valentine’s Day and the annual spring festival
known as Basant. Basant is famous in Lahore (as it is across the border
in India) as an occasion for the sport of patang-bazi (kite-flying). The
Muhajiroun condemn patang-bazi as a frivolous activity unworthy of
Muslims. Such condemnations are not unknown elsewhere in the Islamic
world; consider the banning of kite-flying in Afghanistan under Taliban

30. The Muhajiroun’s statement about September 11 and the “Magnificent 19”
can be found in an article entitled “Bush & Blair Choke on the Fallout From Septem-
ber the 11th,” at the Muhajiroun website: http://www.almuk.com/obm/pr/2003/
911.html.
1
rule.31 But I draw attention to this leaflet in the present context because of
the way in which the Muhajiroun make use of Moghul history to justify
their hostility to the sport:
The historical background of Basant is connected with a Hindu who
behaved with arrogant rudeness toward the dignity of the pure Prophet.
Aurangzeb, the ruler of the Islamic government at that time, proclaimed
the sentence of death against that individual. The Hindu who insulted the
pure Prophet’s dignity was fond of patang-bazi and was very skilled at
flying kites. On the yearly anniversary date of his execution, Hindus
celebrate a festival in this man’s honor, and they give this festival the
name Basant.32
Thus the strategy used by the Muhajiroun to discourage Pakistani Mus-

lims from pursuing this popular sport is to link it with Hinduism and past
insults to the prophet Muhammad. The figure invoked as the guardian of
Muslim honor and the chastiser of Hindu villains is the Moghul emperor
Aurangzeb—a role consistent with the portrayals we have seen in Paki-
stani historical accounts, where Aurangzeb rescues Islam from the cor-
rupting Hindu influence introduced by Akbar and perpetuated by Dara
Shikoh.
The Uses of Moghul History (iii):

Evaluations of Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb
in Pakistani School Textbooks
On my most recent visit to Lahore, in December 2005, I stopped by
Ferozsons, the city’s best bookshop, to see what titles were in print and
available to the Pakistani public on Moghul history and the Dara Shikoh–
Aurangzeb conflict.
The two publications I found that were the most nearly even-handed in
their treatment of the brothers’ rivalry were textbooks for students. One
was a history of Pakistan published by the Karachi branch of Oxford
University Press. Its author, Farooq Naseem Bajwa, received a PhD in
international relations from the London School of Economics. Bajwa
says nothing about Dara’s most interesting legacy—his fascination with
Hinduism and attempts to merge Quranic and Vedantic teachings—and
instead limits himself to the observation that “Dara lacked a military
31. For the banning of kite-flying by the Taliban in Afghanistan, see Ahmed
Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 217-19.
32. Pakistan meyn jashan-e kufr kyon (leaflet distributed by the Lahore office of
al-Muhajiroun Harakat al-Khilafah).
1
temperament and was more interested in Sufism than administration.”33

The other school textbook is by a former Pakistani government minister,
Wali-ur-Rehman. Like Bajwa, Rehman spends little time on Prince Dara,
noting merely he was “a Sufi and a religious eclectic who had translated
the Upanishads into Persian.” Rehman criticizes Aurangzeb for his
“harsh treatment” of his family—to seize the throne Aurangzeb not only
murdered Dara but killed his other brothers and imprisoned his own
father, Shah Jahan, for life—but nonetheless Rehman seems impressed
by the winner in this dynastic dispute: “Aurangzeb was the superior in
both military talent and administrative skills. Aurangzeb easily outclassed
his brothers in the bid for power.”34
Another book I found at Ferozsons, Shaykh Muhammad Ikram’s
Raud-e kauthar, an Urdu-language cultural history of Moghul India,
offers more detail than the other texts on Dara Shikoh’s intellectual
work. Ikram concedes one benefit of the prince’s translations of Hindu
scriptures into Persian: “Some Muslims began to understand that not all
Hindus were idolaters who gave their gods human attributes and vulgar
human qualities; some were pure-minded, selfless, sincere ascetics.” But
he concludes his discussion as follows: “Like-minded individuals used to
call Dara Shikoh ‘a reviver of the faith and the community,’ but Muslims
will certainly find unacceptable the fact that he kept company with Hindu
yogis and holy men.”35
Much harsher in its treatment of Dara is an undergraduate textbook by
a professor at Lahore’s Aitchison College named Muhammad Tariq
Awan. After praising Aurangzeb as “a pious man” and “a practicing
Muslim,” Awan has this to say about Dara’s religious writings: “He
wanted to impress the Muslims with his sainthood, but…he shocked
them by stating that the Prophet practiced the control of breath…in the
cave of Hira and meditated…in the same way as the Hindu yogis did. In
this work, Dara Shikoh unfolded…his proclivities for Hinduism.” Judg-
mental is the best word to describe Awan’s assessment of Majma’ al-
bahrain (“The Mingling of the Two Oceans,” Dara’s treatise on Quranic
and Vedantic scriptures, which triggered the fatal fatwa from Aurang-
zeb’s clerics): “In Majma’ ul-Bahrain, 1655, he brought Islam (the
33. Farooq Naseem Bajwa, Pakistan: A Historical and Contemporary Look

(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 51.
34. Wali-Ur-Rehman, Indo-Pak History 712–1815 (Lahore: AN Publishers,
2004), 87.
35. Shaykh Muhammad Ikram, Raud-e kauthar: islami hind aur pakistan ki
mazhabi aur ‘ilmi tarikh-e ‘ahd-e moghuliyyah (Lahore: Idarat-e thaqafat-e islamiy-
yah, 2005), 447, 453.
1
religion of monotheism) on level with Hinduism (the faith of idol-wor-

shippers) and failed to find any difference between the two, implying
therefore that one could attain salvation by following either of the two
religions.” Given the attitudes towards Hinduism prevalent in Pakistan
today, Awan’s textbook seems calculated to ensure that Muslim students
find Dara repugnant.36
Even more partisan is a book that a clerk at Ferozsons enthusiastically
recommended. It’s an elementary-school text published in Lahore called
“First Steps in Our History.” The author, a “Dr. Kh. Abdul Haye,”
announces his didactic approach in the preface: “History is like a drama
in which the great heroes…leave a permanent mark on the minds of
those who read it… It is for us to keep burning brightly the torch which
our forefathers had lit.”37
Haye’s textbook criticizes Dara’s ancestor Akbar for promulgating a
religious policy that amounted to coddling Hindus: “Akbar thought that
since most of his people in the empire were Hindus, he should try to keep
them in good humour. He therefore abolished many taxes that they did
not like to pay.” Haye says nothing about Dara’s spiritual writings but
offers a damning thumbnail character assessment: “Dara…was a good
man, but he was rather lazy and weak.” Aurangzeb, however, comes off
as a beacon of piety and manly virtue: “Aurangzeb was a God-fearing
ruler… He had great love for learning, but he was not a timid book-
worm. He turned out to be a great scholar and brave soldier… For his
own livelihood he earned small sums of money sewing [prayer] caps and
copying the Holy Quran.”38
Professors I interviewed at the University of Peshawar’s history
department said most Pakistanis today are altogether ignorant of Dara
Shikoh and his life. This was my impression, too. I drew a blank men-
tioning his name in casual talk with mechanics, rickshaw drivers, and
streetside vendors. “Common folk who have heard of him,” said one
history professor, “think of Dara as a heretic who favored Hindus.”
Zahid Ali, a University of Peshawar history lecturer who happens to
be Shia, asserted there’s a sectarian divide in how Pakistanis view their
Moghul past. In detailed emails he sent me on the subject he wrote that
Pakistani Sunnis—who are much more familiar with Aurangzeb’s name
than with Dara’s—view Aurangzeb as a “true follower of Islam, a
36. Muhammad Tariq Awan, History of India and Pakistan (Lahore: Ferozsons,
1994), 394-96.
37. Kh. Abdul Haye, First Steps in Our History: Book 2 (Lahore: Ferozsons,
1990), vi.
1
38. Haye, First Steps in Our History, 44, 61, 64.
mujahid and a great saviour of the faith…when great odds and challenges
were posed by Hindus.” Shias, Zahid argued, tend to be much more
conversant with the details of Islamic history. “Hope you will agree with
me,” he wrote, “if I say that a Shia individual knows and is aware and is
more conscious of the past and is vigilant in the present he/she lives in
and is more fearful of the future. The reasons are easy to understand.”39
My correspondent briefly reviewed the recurrent persecution of the
Shia minority by the Sunni majority. The result of such persecution:
“The Shias had to and have to be conscious of the affairs around [them].”
For their own survival, Zahid wrote, Pakistani Shias have had to develop
a more finely tuned and accurate awareness of the realities of Islamic
history than that possessed by Sunnis.
“With me,” he concluded, “and the majority of those Shias in touch
with history, Aurangzeb’s era was a repetition of those of Umayyads,
Abbasides, and Ottomans, where Shias had been persecuted, tortured,
killed and exiled… They [the Shias of Aurangzeb’s time] in no way
could opt and support the cause of Aurangzeb, who had no liking for the
faith they professed and had no mercy on them. On the other hand Dara-
shikoh was a proclaimed secular and had made it very clear that nobody
[would] be treated or harassed in the name of blood, colour or faith.”40
Syed Minhaj-ul-Hassan, the history department’s chairman at the
University of Peshawar, summarized for me the view of Aurangzeb
among ordinary Pakistani Sunnis: “A pious simple man, the savior of
Islam in India, the last good Moghul ruler.” He also mentioned Aurang-
zeb’s reputation for stitching together his own prayer caps.
Worth noting here is a glimpse of Aurangzeb offered by a seventeenth-
century Venetian adventurer, Niccolao Manucci. A teenaged soldier of
fortune in Dara’s army, he stayed at the doomed prince’s side even as the
latter’s Muslim entourage deserted him. (Manucci’s loyalty led Dara to
weep and exclaim, “See, you others, the fidelity of this European Farangi
lad.”) Manucci had this wry observation about Aurangzeb’s conspicuous
piety: “He let it be known that he underwent severe penances and
fastings; he allowed himself to be found in prayer or reading the Quran.”
Aurangzeb knew the worth of what today we’d call the photo op.41
On my visits to Pakistan I occasionally met men named Aurangzeb
or ‘Alamgir (“World-Seizer,” Aurangzeb’s throne-name) in honor of
the triumphant Moghul. Not once did I encounter anyone named after
Aurangzeb’s vanquished philosopher-mystic brother—except in literature.
39. Zahid Ali, email communication, July 30, 2003.

40. Zahid Ali, email communication, December 4, 2003.
1
41. Manucci, Storia do Mogor, vol. 1, 294.
Mohsin Hamid’s novel Moth Smoke features a protagonist called

Darashikoh Shezad.42 An unemployed dopehead adrift in late-twenti-
eth-century Lahore, Hamid’s fictional Darashikoh is a loser and ne’er-
do-well. Loser though he is, the hero of Moth Smoke—much like his
Moghul-era namesake—is an appealing character, perceptive, honest,
and impulsive—even as he finds himself overtaken by ruin.
Conclusion: The Death of Dara Shikoh—

and Prospects for the Revival of His Spirit
Delhi, September 10, 1659. After being paraded in chains through the
city streets, Dara is forced into a prison cell. He knows he’s unlikely to
live long. With just a few hours of life remaining, he thinks of an old
friend, a Flemish Jesuit named Henriques Buzeo, “much loved by the
prince,” according to Manucci, “…and well liked by all the nobles, who
delighted in his conversation.” Dara asks his guards to bring the priest.
They refuse. Time has run out.43
Aurangzeb sends slaves to Dara’s cell to kill him. But he resists. He’s
concealed a small knife in his pillow. No use: they fling him to the
ground. Three men hold him down; a fourth decapitates him.
Aurangzeb orders the severed head brought to him on a tray. He con-
templates it a moment and then has the head tossed to the floor. He gloats
over his dead brother, stabbing the head three times with a sword and
saying, “Behold the face of a would-be king.” When the new emperor is
done with this sport he turns and says, “Take him out of my sight.”44
Whereupon Aurangzeb began a decades-long reign that is hailed today
by Islamists for its pious orthodoxy but recalled with dismay by progres-
sive-minded reformers for its violent intolerance towards non-Muslims
(especially Hindus and Sikhs) and religious minorities (especially Shias).
In recent years some Pakistani Muslim authors have sought to extract
from these Moghul brothers’ rivalry lessons that might be applicable to
the challenges facing twenty-first-century South Asia. Anthropologist
and diplomat Akbar Ahmed has borrowed Samuel Huntington’s “clash
of civilizations” paradigm to question whether religious and nationalist
conflict between India and Pakistan is inevitable. He identifies two forms
of Islam in South Asian history, the “inclusivist” and “exclusivist,”
linking the first with Dara Shikoh and the second with Aurangzeb. The
42. Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke (Delhi: Penguin, 2000).

43. Manucci, Storia do Mogor, vol. 1, 215; vol. 2, 144.
44. Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 102; Manucci, Storia do Mogor, vol.
1, 340.
1
latter, says Ahmed, “drew the boundaries tightly around Islam.” The
triumphant emperor’s legacy: “The next centuries saw the depletion of
compassion, vitality and learning in Muslim society.” Ahmed sees the
ideological consequences of Aurangzeb’s reign as Deobandism, the intel-
lectual godfather of the Taliban. Whereas Dara Shikoh, according to
Ahmed, sought to perpetuate the national policy promulgated by his
great-grandfather Akbar: sulh-e kull, “universal reconciliation,” a vision
of state-sponsored religious tolerance. Ahmed sees sulh-e kull in South
Asia today as threatened by terrorism, “religious prejudice,” and “closed
minds that exclude compassion.”45
The divergent visions of Dara and Aurangzeb inspired a recent medi-
tation on the Iraq war by a Pakistani writer for Lahore’s Daily Times,
Syed Mansoor Hussain. His essay is entitled “The Poisoned Iftar” (Iftar
denotes the meal eaten at sunset to celebrate the end of the islamically
mandated daylong fast during Ramadan).
Hussain begins with a confession. “For years I have felt bad as a
Muslim.” He explains why: “Sectarian violence, Muslims killing each
other even in mosques, intellectual backwardness.” But a news item from
October 2006 marked a low point for Islam: the report that “dozens of
Muslim policemen were…poisoned in Baghdad as they broke their fast.
Poisoning an iftar? Is this what we have come to, and become?”
Hussain extrapolates from Iraq’s Muslim-on-Muslim killings to con-
sider the condition of his own nation: “Even within a Pakistan awash in
‘enlightened moderation’ [a favorite slogan of Musharraf’s admini-
stration], government policy as well as mainstream religious thought
continues to support violence in the name of religion.” He traces the
origin of this vice to a moment in Moghul history:
Emperor Akbar and his great-grandson, Dara Shikoh, attempted to make
Islam more inclusive, at least in the context of India. Their detractors saw
this as heterodoxy and all attempts at inclusiveness ended completely
with the death of Dara Shikoh and his entire family at the hand[s] of his
brother.46
A harsh indictment. But the fact that Dara Shikoh’s life continues to
inspire thoughtful responses to current events seems to me a hopeful
sign. The murdered prince will not have died altogether in vain if he
helps revive in Pakistan the imperiled tradition of pluralism.
45. Akbar S. Ahmed, “Search for a Muslim Ideal in South Asia: The Path to
Inclusion,” Zaman Daily Newspaper Online (Istanbul), September 11, 2005
(www.zaman.com).
46. Syed Mansoor Hussain, “The Poisoned Iftar,” Daily Times (Lahore), October
16, 2006 (www.dailytimes.com.pk).
1
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Younghusband, Col. G.J. The Story of the Guides. London: Macmillan & Co., 1908.
Zakaria, Rafia. “The ‘Anti-Woman’ Pakistani Woman.” Daily Times (Lahore), April 29,
2007. www.dailytimes.com.pk.
—“Faceless, Yet Famous.” Daily Times (Lahore), July 7, 2007. www.dailytimes.com.pk.
Zaman, Muhammad Qasim. “Sectarianism in Pakistan: The Radicalization of Shii and
Sunni Identities.” Modern Asian Studies 32 (1998): 689-716.
1
INDEX
Abdul Latif Shah, Syed, 61 Anjuman-e Parwaneh-ye Shabbir, 99

acid throwing Anjuman-e Safinat Ahl al-Bayt, 76
and violence against women, 36, 202 An-Na’im, ‘Abdullahi Ahmed, 56-57
directed at Shia Zuljenah horse, 92 Anubis (Egyptian god), 139
Aeschylus, 167 Apostasy Act, 54
Afghanistan, 90-91, 205-206 apostates, 54, 57-58
Dara Shikoh’s military campaign in, Apuleius, 138
21 Arabian Nights, The, 9, 128-29, 147,
and Taliban, 40, 53, 72 155, 178, 193-94
Ahl al-Bayt, 80, 98 Arrian, 208
ahl al-kitab, 35 Ashura, 75, 86-89
Ahmad, Mirza Ghulam, 70 Aurangzeb, 210-26
see also Ahmadiyya avatar, 15, 21
Ahmad, Qazi Hussain, 91 Ayat al-kursi, 7, 167-68, 170-73
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 106 Ayesha, 84
Ahmadis, see Ahmadiyya Ayodhya, 23
Ahmadiyya, 57, 69-71, 93 azan (Arabic adhan), 135
Ahmed, Akbar S., 43, 225-26 and Muslim-Hindu relations, 33, 70
Ahmed, Khaled, 79, 107 and protection from attacks by jinns,
‘Aja’ib al-makhluqat, 128 171, 176
Akbar the Great, 43-44, 212-14, 220 Azazel, 116
‘alam, ix Azerbaijan, 74
‘Alamgir, Shahzada, 189-91
Alexander the Great, 205, 208 Baba Lal Das, 20-22
Ali ibn Abi Talib, 63 Babri Masjid, 23-30, 174-80
Ali, Ihsan, 209 Babur, 23
All Pakistan Minorities Alliance Badshahi Masjid, 16-17, 199
(APMA), 56-57 Bahawalpur, terrorist attack on
America, 103-104, 106, 207 Christians in, 40, 45
perceptions of, 48, 96, 102, 106 Baluchistan, 48, 73, 90
see also USA Bamiyan, 92, 206
‘amil ruhani, 123-25, 165, 170-73 Barelvis, 42, 73, 83, 87, 159
‘Amir al-Sha’bi, 192 Bari Imam (shrine in vicinity of
Anarkali, 111, 186 Islamabad), 61, 69
animals, and spirit-world, 145-47, 163- Basant, 220-21
67, 170-72, 176, 186 Beg, Rajab ‘Ali, 9
Anjum, Javed, 50-51 Benedict XVI, Pope, 52, 56, 107
Anjuman-e Imamia Lucknavi, 76-77 Bernier, François, 210, 215
Index 233
Bhagavad-Gita, and Islamic Constitution of Pakistan, 50

demonology, 156-57 conversion
bhut, 154, 157 and caste, 41-43
Bibi Pak Daman, 32, 102 attempts at forced conversion, 50-51
Bible, and Christian-Muslim dialogue, from Hinduism and Christianity to
49 Islam, 41-42
Biblical citations from Islam to Christianity, 42, 54
Genesis 6.1-4, 129 Cooco’s Café, 199, 203-204
Luke 10.29, 49
Galatians 3.28, 41 “dagger priests,” Tibetan, 144
bid’a, 81 dam, 142, 159
blasphemy laws, 37-58 see also “breathing in prayer”
see also Ordinance 295 B-C Daniel (Quranic prophet), 6
blood, and Shia ritual, 65 Dara Shikoh, xi, 20-22, 119, 127-28,
“breathing in prayer” upon a person, 210-26
136, 142 Data Darbar, 1, 86
see also dam see also Data Ganj Bakhsh
British India, 16-20, 47, 67, 205-209 Data Ganj Bakhsh, 74, 86, 216
Buddhism, Tibetan, 144-45 see also Data Darbar
Buddhist art in Pakistan, 199, 205-209 da’wah, 52
Burkert, Walter, 179 Declaration of Human Rights, 56
but-parasti, 207 Deeb, Lara, 101
Delhi, 136-37, 155, 210
caliphate revival movement, 220 Deobandi movement, 9, 67, 71-73, 76,
caste 83, 91, 158-60, 194
and conversion to Islam, 41 see also Jamiat-e Ulema-e Islam
legacy of, in Pakistan, 41-43 dhimmi, 44-46
Catholic Church in Pakistan, 36, 46-58 dhimmitude, 41-45
Catholic-Protestant relations, 60 Dhul fiqar, 7
Chamunda, 110 din-e ilahi, 44, 214, 218
chhatri, 75 Dionysus (Greek god), 208
chillah, 119, 136, 142-45, 171-72 dogs, status of, in hadith, 135, 198-99
Chiniot (Punjab), 41 du’a, 165, 173
Christian iconography, and parrot oracle- Durga (Hindu goddess), 110
cards, 3
Christians, 38-58, 72, 174 earthquake of October 2005, Pakistani
and relations with Hindus, 34-36 reactions to, 189-91
and relations with Muslims in education in Pakistan, 36
Pakistan, 38-58 textbooks and religious bias in
and relations with Shia Muslims in Pakistani, 36-37
Lahore, 45-46 see also madrasas
sexual violence against Pakistani Edwards, Jonathan, 188
Christian women, 36, 202 Egypt
chuhra, 42-43 folk beliefs concerning jinns in, 130
churail, 135, 154, 168 sorcery in Greco-Roman, 138-39
circles, magic safety, 143-45, 171, 183 “enchanted sarcophagus,” and jinns in
The City of Brass, 128-29, 155, 193-94 Egypt, 130
Ewing, Katherine Pratt, 123-24, 166 Hazara Shias, 92

Heera Mandi (Lahore), 74-75, 204
fal-nama, 5 Hezbollah, 101, 105-106
Fallon, S.W., 111 hijab, 96
Fasana-ye ‘aja’ib, 9 Hinduism
Fatah (Palestinian faction), 105 and Hindu-Christian relations, 34-36
Fatima (daughter of Muhammad), 63-64 and Hindu-Muslim relations, 22-37,
fatwa, 78-80, 97-101, 103 169-80, 210-26
issued against Dara Shikoh, 210, 217 and parrot-oracles, 3-4
Fazlullah, Maulana, 200 in Lahori pulp fiction, 169-80
fiqh, 66 in Pakistan, 11-37
fitna, 197 influence on Pakistani Islam, 9, 61,
flagellation, 77-78 75, 120, 149
see also zanjir zani and zanjiri Hindus
matam and sectarian identity of jinns, 152-
freedom of conscience in Islam, 52-53 60, 169-74
in Lahore, 11-37
Gandharan art, 199, 205-209 sexual violence against Pakistani
Gandhi, Mahatma, 211 Hindu women, 202
Ganesha (Hindu god) stereotypes concerning, 26, 36, 48
jinns in form of, 155 Hirsi Ali, Ayaan, 52
geckos Holi (Hindu festival) in Lahore, 33
and shape-shifting jinns, 146-47 Hudood Ordinances, 56, 66, 201-203
Ghazi, Abdul Rashid, 197 Human Rights Monitor (Pakistan), 35-
Ghazi Ilm Din, 216 36, 50-51, 70, 202
Gill, Jerry, 109 Husain ibn ‘Ali, 17, 45-46, 62-65, 88
Gottschalk, Peter, 157 al-Husaini, Arif Husain, 66-67, 81
grotesque Hussain, Iqbal, 203
as literary genre, 182 Hyderabad (India), 3, 19, 77, 99
grotto
as venue for encounters with the Ibn al-Jawzi, 192
uncanny, 181-82 iftar, 226
Gujranwala, 118, 144 and Muslim-Christian relations, 49
coed road race in, 196 imambargah, 74, 93
Gulistan-e Zehra (Lahore), 77, 79 Imamia Students Organization, 101
Gup Shup, 28 India, 48, 67, 102, 175
insaniyyat, 49
Hadi, Allama Javad, 81-83 intercession in Shia Islam, 64, 77, 82,
Hajj, 124, 188 102
riots in Mecca during, 103-105 interfaith dialogue, 55
al-Hallaj, Husain ibn Mansur, 215-16 Inter-Religious Affairs Council
Hamas, 105-106 (Lahore), 31
Hamid, Mohsin, 225 Iqbal, Muhammad, 220
hamzad, 137 Iran, Islamic Republic of, 66-67, 72, 80-
Hanuman (Hindu god), 15, 31, 199, 204 82, 89, 94-107
hath ka matam, 65, 75, 82, 86 relations with Pakistani Shias, 77-82,
Haydar, Afak, 67 94-107
Index 235
Iranian Cultural Center sectarian identity of, 126, 136, 152-

in Lahore, 95-98 60, 169-74
in Peshawar, 80 jizyah, 44
Iraq, 45, 64, 105 Jodhpur, 110, 156
sectarian violence in, 226 Joseph (Quranic and Biblical figure),
iron 100-101
use of, to ward off spirits, 144 Justin Martyr, 129, 155
Islamabad, 39, 61, 87
Islami Tehrik, 107 Kabirpanthi (school of mysticism), 20
see also Tehrik-e Jafri Pakistan kafir, 35, 40, 60, 69, 71, 84, 187, 210
“Islamization” program (Pakistan), 66 most jinns perceived as, 152-60
and Pakistani school textbooks, 36- see also kuffar; kufr; and takfir
37 Kali (Hindu goddess), 19, 33, 177-80
and Pakistani Shias, 66-67 Kandahar, 21, 127
and street names in Lahore, 28-29 Karachi, 70, 135, 153
and women’s status, 201-202 Karbala, 33, 45, 64, 90, 107
Islampura (Lahore), ix, 28, 74 Karbala Gamay Shah shrine (Lahore),
see also Krishannagar 74, 158
Ismailis, 64, 158 Karzai, Hamid, 40
Israel, 61, 72, 96, 104 Kashmir, 43, 189-91
and relations with Iran, 106 Kassim, A.M., 211
Keddie, Nikki, 79
jadoo, 125, 133 Khamenei, Ayatollah Ali, 77-80, 97-101,
Jahangir, Asma, 196 103
Jahiliyah, 8 khatam-e nubuwwa, 69
Jain Mandir (Lahore), 23-29, 175-80 see also Ahmadiyya
Jama’at-e Islami, 48, 91, 203 al-Khidr, 119
Jamia Ashrafia madrasa (Lahore), 71 Khofnak Dijast, 161-94
Jamia Hafsa madrasa (Islamabad), 197 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 66, 78,
Jamia Hassan madrasa (Punjab), 51 95-96, 103-104
Jamiat-e Ulema-e Islam (JUI), 67-68, 72, Khomeinism, 67, 78, 91, 94, 98, 106
91 Khyber Agency, 151
see also Deobandi movement Kipling, John Lockwood, 8, 39, 110, 206
Jeffers, Robinson, 109 Kipling, Rudyard, 11, 17-19, 39, 110,
Jesus Christ 206
sufferings of, as model for Pakistani Kirche In Not, 51
Christians, 45 kite-flying (patang-bazi), 220-21
Jews, 61, 72, 174 Krishannagar (Lahore), ix, 28, 74
Muhammad’s relations with, 44 see also Islampura
stereotypes concerning, 26, 48 Krishna (Hindu god), ix, 3, 28, 156
Jhangvi, Maulana Haq Nawaz, 68 Krishna Mandir (Lahore), 30-34
jihad, 89-90, 188-89 Kristof, Nicholas, 202
Jinnah, Muhammad Ali, 43-45, 66 kuffar, 35, 80
jinns, 122-60 see also kafir; kufr; and takfir
and houris of paradise, 126 kufr, 217
attracted to young women, 135 Ladakh, 77
lifespan, 126 Lahore, ix, 1
Christian community in, 38-58 meaning of, in the context of

fortune-telling parrots in, 1-10 sorcery, 135-40
Hindu community in, 17-37 matam, 64-65, 75-87, 95-102
Hindu legacy in, 13-17 see also zanjir zani
Islamization of street names in, 28 matami guruh, 76-78
jinns in, 152-60 Mawdudi, Abu’l Ala, 98, 203
Masonic Order in, 39 Mecca
Shia community in, 17, 73-79 Hajj riots in, 103-105
Lahore Museum, 208 Millet-e Jafria, 90-91
Landi Kotal see also Naqvi, Allama Seyyed Sajid
and its population of jinns, 151 Ali and Tehrik-e Jafria
Lane, Edward William, 130 mirror
Lashkar-e Jhangvi, 68, 72 use of, in sorcery, 137-38
see also Jhangvi, Maulana Haq Mithra (Persian god), 182
Nawaz; Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan; MMA
and Sipah-e Sahaba Party see Muttahida Majlis-e Amal
Lebanon, 101, 104-105 Mochi Darvaza (Lahore), 74
Lesser, Robert, 162 Moghul empire, 21, 23, 210-26
Leyden Papyrus, 138-39 moksha, 21, 156
“Little India” (Singapore), 3 moth-flame imagery
Logos in Sufism and Shiism, 99-100
and Islamic law, 56 Moti Lal Mandir (Lahore), 28-29
in Christian theology, 52 Mountbatten, Lord Louis, 43-44
muhajir, 136
madrasas Muhajiroun, 220-21
and Deobandis, 67, 71-72 Muhammad (prophet of Islam), 8, 220
in Lahore, 49, 71 alleged insults against, 216
in the North-West Frontier Province, and blasphemy laws in Pakistan, 46-
49 58
in Peshawar, 81-83 and matam, 80
in the Punjab, 51 and relations with Jews and
Mahdi (twelfth Shia Imam), 63, 102, 158 Christians, 44
Mahmud of Ghazna, 13 succession after the death of, 63
Mai, Mukhtaran, 202 Muhammad al-Muntazar, 63
majlis, 64-65, 73 see also Mahdi
Majma’ al-bahrain, 222 Muharram, ix, 17-19, 64
malangs, 117 and folk beliefs in Egypt, 130
Manucci, Niccolao, 224 in Lahore, 17-19, 73-79
Marcotty, Thomas, 144 in Peshawar, 79-82
Mardan, 207 Sunni participation in, 86-87
marja’, 78-79, 97 Mulla Shah, 119
martyrdom, 46, 64, 88-89 Multan, 86
Mashhad, 78 Murakami, Takashi, 181
Massignon, Louis, 211 musalli, 41-42
ma’sum Musharraf, Pervez, 36, 40, 47-48, 67, 72,
meaning of, in the context of Shiism, 87, 101, 190-91, 199, 220, 226
63-64 Muslim-Christian dialogue, 55
Index 237
Muslim-Hindu relations, 22-37, 169-80 as demonic spirits in Lahori pulp

mutilation fiction, 163-67
as price of wisdom, 167, 179 Partition of India, ix, 19-20, 153, 175-80,
Muttahida Majlis-e Amal (MMA), 48, 213
54, 73, 90-94, 106, 196, 199 People of the Book, 44
Peshawar, 59-60, 72, 79-82, 91-93, 199-
najis, 85, 199 200, 205-209
Nakhshabi, Ziya al-Din, 9 Peshawar Museum, 205-209
Namoos-e Sahaba, 68 pilgrimage, 1, 61, 64
see also blasphemy laws by Pakistani Shias to Iran, 78
Naqvi, Allama Seyyed Sajid Ali, 67, 73, see also Hajj and Mecca
79, 81, 89-94, 107 Plato, 138
see also Tehrik-e Jafria Pakistan pluralism, 60,159-60, 204, 226
(TJP) defined, x-xi
Nasr, Vali, 105 Polo Ground (Lahore), 195
National College of Art (Lahore), 41, pret, 157
203 Propp, Vladimir, 167
National Commission for Justice and Protestant Church in Pakistan, 39, 46
Peace (Pakistan), 36, 47, 51 pulp fiction, 162-63, 177
National Council for Interfaith Dialogue Punjab, 46, 51, 54, 69, 73, 196
(Pakistan), 49 purity
nauha, 75, 99 and ritual, 65, 84-85, 143
Nelson, Victoria, 181 see also matam and najis
niqabis, 197-98
Nisar Haveli (Lahore), 74 al-Qaeda, 40-41, 105
North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Qanun-i-Islam, 143
47, 53-54, 59-60, 73, 90, 196, 199- Qanungo, Kalika-Ranjan, 212
200, 205-209 al-Qazwini, Zakariyya ibn Muhammad,
nuri ‘ilm, 131 128
Qizilbash, 74
Oates, Joyce Carol, 182 Queen’s Own Corps of Guides, 206-207
Odin (Norse god), 167 Quran, 3, 10, 12, 48, 134, 182, 209, 218,
oracles, 1-10 223
Ordinance 295 B-C, 37, 46-58, 68 allegations of incompleteness of, 84,
see also blasphemy laws 158
alleged desecration of, 36-37, 46-58
Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference, and blasphemy laws, 37
35, 47 use of, as oracle, 5-6
Pakistani Shias, 59-94 Quranic citations
and relations with Iran, 77-82, 95- 1.6-7, 193
107 2.255, 7, 134, 136, 143, 148, 167-73
Palestinians, 43, 61, 105 4.34, 200
pariah kites, 108-21, 143 5.48, 60
parrots 5.51, 174
and fortune-telling, 1-10 6.112, 129
and medical treatments, 149 9.55, 149-50
18.50, 127
21.81-82, 127 use of, as insult, 105

24.35, 182 Sahaba, 63, 68, 105, 158
31.6-7, 192 sajda-gah, 93
34.12-13, 127 Salafi, 87
38.36-38, 127 salat, 41
55.74, 127 differences between Sunnis and
72.1-15, 127 Shias in performance of, 93
114.1-6, 129, 134, 170 Saldanha, Lawrence (Catholic
qussas, 192 Archbishop of Lahore), 47, 55-57
Sangla Hill, 46-47
Rafsanjani, Hashemi, 104 Saudi Arabia, 72, 87, 101, 103-106
Rahman, Fazlur savab (Arabic thawab), 75, 80, 114
see Rehman, Maulana Fazlur September 11 terrorist attacks, Pakistani
Rajasthan, 110, 155-57 responses to, 71-72, 89, 220
Ramadan, 49, 226 shabih-e Zuljenah, ix, 73, 76, 85
Ramananda, 21 shafa’ah
Rashid, Ahmed, 68, 71 see intercession in Shia Islam
“Rat Fink” cartoons, and Lahori pulp Shah Faisal mosque (Islamabad), 220
fiction, 163 Shah Jahan, 20, 210, 216
Ravi River (Lahore), 108, 112, 115 Shahdara, 108, 113, 120
and al-Khidr, 119 Shahid ‘Arif al-Husaini Madrasa
and pariah-kite rituals, 112-21 (Peshawar), 81
as site for chillah rituals, 143 shaitan, 127
as the haunt of jinns, 153-54 shamsheer zani, 96, 98
Rawafid, 105 shari’ah, 56, 197, 199-200
Rawalpindi Sharif, Ja’far, 143-44
fortune-telling parrots in, 4, 6, 149 Shaykh Zayed Islamic Studies Center
Red Mosque (Islamabad), 72, 197-98 (Peshawar), 59, 79-80
Reed, Roger T., 162, 177 Sheikhupura, 117-18
Regensburg speech, 52, 107 Shia Islam, 59-107
see also Benedict XVI, Pope stereotypes concerning, 83-87, 158-
Rehman, Maulana Atta-ur, 72 60
Rehman, Maulana Fazlur, 72, 203 tradition of voluntary self-sacrifice
ritual in, 46
and Muharram, 64-82 Shia Muslims, 59-107
and pariah kites, 108-21 and relations with Christians in
and purity, 65, 84-85, 143 Lahore, 45-46
and Shia communal identity, 65 and relations with Sunnis in Lahore,
and sorcery, 135-50, 170-73 83-90
see also chillah and matam and relations with Sunnis in
Roof, Wade Clark, x Peshawar, 59-60, 79-80, 85, 92-94
Roth, Ed “Big Daddy,” 163 attempts to disenfranchise, 70-71
Rushdie, Salman, 102 in Lahore, 17-19, 73-79
in Pakistan, 40, 59-94, 95-107, 224
sabil, 86-87 in Peshawar, 79-86, 93-94
sadqah, 112, 120-21 shared devotions with Sunnis at Bari
Safavids, 74 Imam Shrine, 61-62
Index 239
stereotypes concerning, 83-87, 158- “Talibanization” in Pakistan, 91, 200

60 taqrib, 66, 78, 98
Shiva (Hindu god), 15, 32-33, 199 Tariq, Maulana Muhammad A’zam, 68,
Siddhartha, 207-208 71-72, 102
Siebrecht, Marie-Ange, 51 see also Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan
Sikhs Tattooing, 7-8
in India, 19 tava’if
in Lahore, 14, 16, 19, 34 see tavayif
Singapore tavayif, 75, 199
and parrot-oracles, 3-4 tawhid, 126, 159
Sipah-e Muhammad Pakistan, 67, 101- and Muslim-Hindu dialogue, 33
103 ta’wiz, 152, 159
Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), 67-68, tazia, 19, 82
87, 91, 95, 106 Tehreek-e Nifaz-e Shariat-e Muhammad,
see also Sipah-e Sahaba Party 200
Sipah-e Sahaba Party (SSP), 40, 67-68 Tehrik-e Islami Pakistan, 73, 90
see also Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan see also Tehrik-e Jafria Pakistan
siparah, 84, 158 Tehrik-e Jafria Pakistan (TJP), 67, 78,
Solomon (Quranic prophet), 127-29, 193 81, 90, 101
Somnat, 13 see also Naqvi, Allama Seyyed Sajid
sorcery, 123-25 Ali; Tehrik-e Islami Pakistan; and
and medical practice, 149 Tehrik-e Nifaz-e Fiqh-e Jafria
sparrows Tehrik-e Nifaz-e Fiqh-e Jafria (TNFJ),
and folk ritual in Lahore, 111 66-67, 81
SSP see also Tehrik-e Jafria Pakistan
see Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan (TJP)
Sufism, 1, 20, 76, 100, 141, 151-52, 159, “temporary heaven,” 156
192, 216, 222 Todorov, Tzvetan, 181
sulh-e kull, 44, 226 Tonki, Wali Hassan, 70
sunnah, 63 trees
Sunni Muslims, 63, 105 as the roosting-place of jinns, 135,
and taqrib, 78 152-53, 169-74
in Pakistan, 40, 224 Tribal Areas (Pakistan), 40, 53, 201
relations with Shias in Peshawar, 59- Turabi, Allama Hassan, 106-107
60 Tuti-Nama, 9
shared devotions with Shias at Bari Twelver Shiism, 63, 97
Imam Shrine, 61-62
Syed, Anwar, 72 Ubaid, Hafez As’ad, 71
Uhud, 80
tabarra, 65, 68-69, 83, 90 Umar (caliph), 83
tabarruk, 85 ummah, 63, 70, 97, 107, 217, 220
tabligh, 59, 76 United Nations, 56
takfir, 60, 88 Upanishads, 20, 219, 222
see also kafir; kuffar; and kufr USA, 103
Talbi, Mohamed, 52 Pakistani perceptions of, 72, 94, 191
Taliban, 40, 53-54, 67, 89, 158, 194, see also America
197, 206
Vajrapani (Buddhist bodhisattva), 207- yahood aur hunood, 26

208 see also Hindus, stereotypes
Valentine’s Day, controversies concerning; and Jews, stereotypes
concerning, 220 concerning
Vishnu (Hindu god), 15, 156 yaqeen, 133
Yasin, Shaykh Ahmad, 61
Wahhabism, 42, 72, 82, 87, 101, 104 Yazid ibn Mu’awiya (Umayyad caliph),
Walbridge, Linda, 43 45, 64, 89-90
waqf, 74 Younghusband, Colonel G.J., 206-207
Wazir Khan Mosque (Lahore), 114 Zakaria, Rafia, 197-98
Waziristan, 53, 200 Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, 69
women, 8, 125, 195-204 zanjir zani, 65, 77, 102
and ‘amils in Lahore, 131-32 fatwas concerning, 77-82, 96-101
and Hudood Ordinances, 201-202 see also flagellation; matam; and
and Islamic ritual, ix shamsheer-zani
as alleged source of fitna, 197-98 zanjiri matam
as pulp-fiction readers, 183-85 see zanjir zani
jinns attracted to young, 135 al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab, 105-106
literacy rates among, 201 Zaynab bint Ali, ix
newlywed, and jinns, 125 Zeus-Jupiter, 129, 155
participation of, in marathons, 196- Zia ul-Haq, 36, 47, 66, 104, 201
97 zina, 201-203
Shia women attacked in terrorist see also Hudood Ordinances
bombing, 40 Zuljenah (Arabic Dhu’l janah), ix, 7, 64,
“women of Karbala,” 33 74-76, 82, 92, 158
Women’s Protection Bill, 202
wudu’ and fortune-telling, 5

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NOTES FROM THE FORTUNE-TELLING

Published in the series:

Earth, Empire and Sacred Text

ISLAM AND THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

Equinox Publishing Ltd

First published 2008

© David Pinault 2008

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

ISBN-13 978 1 84553 345 8 (hardback)

Typeset by Forthcoming Publications Ltd

Printed and bound in the UK by Antony Rowe

Inspiration to write this book first came when I encountered Liaqat

legitimacy of religious and spiritual alternatives, which is something

1. Wade Clark Roof, “Pluralism as a Culture: Religion and Civility in Southern

and the faculty of the Department of History at the University of

Santa Clara, California

supposed to stay with our car—a tiny box-shaped Hyundai—but he

“Powerful as an Enchanted Steed”:

mildly—emotionally demanding. Wandering the streets for distraction is

Talismans and Palmistry:

Like their counterparts in India and Singapore, the parrot-masters I

1. Anonymous, Qur’at al-Qur’an ya’ni fal-nama-ye Qur’an-e majid (Lahore:

Pierced Hearts and Scorpions:

On the Orthodoxy of Oracles:

2. Mufti Abdulla al-Faqeeh, “Tattoos in Islam,” Fatwa No. 8383, www.

One parrot-man I spoke to pointed to the painted sign he uses as

Prospects for Survival:

But something else on display in the same room caught my attention: a

Idols Vomit Jewels:

This is the image of the subcontinent’s history some South Asian

One measure of the dynamism of the city’s Hindu presence can be

3. Syed Muhammad Latif, Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and

Two things in Muhammad Latif’s comments are remarkable—breath-

“Like the Crunch of Termites”:

4. Latif, Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and Antiquities, x.

Gazette. Consider, for example, the article he published in October 1887

Worth noting is that the practice of using Hindu festivities to confront

7. Thomas Pinney, ed., Kipling’s India: Uncollected Sketches 1884–88 (New

Hyderabad, Hindu nationalist organizations have routed processions in

In Kipling’s Lahore, Hindu–Muslim tensions were held in check by a

11. Pinault, The Shiites, 155.

Collins and LaPierre conclude their description of Lahore’s 1947 Parti-

The Prince and the Guru:

15. Collins and Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, 330.

17. S. M. Ikram, Muslim Civilization in India (New York: Columbia University

Babri Masjid and Lahore’s 1992 Anti-Hindu Riots.

20. Huart and Massignon, “Les Entretiens de Lahore,” 287.

One of the rickshaw mechanics described the demolition of the Jain

these temples. Such talk—revanchist in its ideology—reflected an utter

24. “All Hindu Street Names of Lahore to be ‘Islamised’,” GupShup Forums,

onlookers, crowding together on rooftops, in the streets, perilously close

Being Hindu in Twenty-first-Century Pakistan:

On our way he talked about the life of religious minorities in Pakistan.

(I’m glad to report that reconstruction at the Krishna Mandir was

This view was corroborated in my many conversations with Khaled

Hindus I met in my visit to Lahore’s Krishna Mandir praised President

for their lives while “a mob chanting anti-Hindu slogans gathered in

Golden Light, Shattered Glass:

1. Raymond Bonner, “Two Americans Killed in Attack on Pakistan Church,”