Arsalan Khan | Islamic Piety and Moral Order in Pakistan

Arsalan Khan holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and is an assistant professor of anthropology at Union College. His research focuses on the relationship between ritual, gender, ethics, and sociality, themes that he explores in the context of the Islamic revival in Pakistan. His first book project The Promise of Piety: Islam and the Politics of Moral Order in Pakistan examines the zealous commitment to a distinct form of face-to-face preaching (dawat) among Pakistani Tablighis, practitioners of the transnational Islamic piety movement, the Tablighi Jamaat. The Promise of Piety examines how Tablighis place a moral commitment to hierarchy at the heart of religion, how this becomes the basis for restructuring domestic and public life, and how moral hierarchy comes to be imbued with the promise of transcending a range of political crises that afflict life in postcolonial Pakistan. His work speaks to the broader relationship between Islam, secularism and modernity.

Further Reading:

Khan, Arsalan. 2018. Pious Masculinity, Ethical Reflexivity, and Moral Order in an Islamic Piety Movement in Pakistan. Anthropological Quarterly 91(1): 53 - 78. 

Khan, Arsalan. 2016. Islam and Pious Sociality: The Ethics of Hierarchy in the Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan. Social Analysis 60 (4): 96 – 113.