Overview

This eloquent ethnography reveals the daily lives and religious practice of ordinary Muslim men in Tajikistan as they aspire to become Sufi mystics. Benjamin Gatling describes in vivid detail the range of expressive forms—memories, stories, poetry, artifacts, rituals, and other embodied practices—employed as they try to construct a Sufi life in twenty-first-century Central Asia. Gatling demonstrates how Sufis transcend the oppressive religious politics of contemporary Tajikistan by using these forms to inhabit multiple times: the paradoxical present, the Persian sacred past, and the Soviet era. In a world consumed with the supposed political dangers of Islam, Gatling shows the intricate, ground-level ways that Muslim expressive culture intersects with authoritarian politics, not as artful forms of resistance but rather as a means to shape Sufi experiences of the present.

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9780299316808

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Reviews

Offers important insights into Islam, and Sufism more particularly, in Tajikistan, as well as to more general debates about tradition, social memory, temporality, and expressive forms. --Maria Louw, author of Everyday Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia Drawing on tradition, poetry, and Sufi practice, Gatling shows how the present--and the nostalgia it facilitates--is always produced within a political context that tries to manage cultural expression. A lasting contribution to Central Eurasian studies and Islamic studies that deserves to be widely read. --David Montgomery, author of Practicing Islam: Knowledge, Experience, and Social Navigation in Kyrgyzstan

""Drawing on tradition, poetry, and Sufi practice, Gatling shows how the present--and the nostalgia it facilitates--is always produced within a political context that tries to manage cultural expression. A lasting contribution to Central Eurasian studies and Islamic studies that deserves to be widely read."" --David Montgomery, author of Practicing Islam: Knowledge, Experience, and Social Navigation in Kyrgyzstan ""Offers important insights into Islam, and Sufism more particularly, in Tajikistan, as well as to more general debates about tradition, social memory, temporality, and expressive forms."" --Maria Louw, author of Everyday Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia

Offers important insights into Islam, and Sufism more particularly, in Tajikistan, as well as to more general debates about tradition, social memory, temporality, and expressive forms. --Maria Louw, author of Everyday Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia Drawing on tradition, poetry, and Sufi practice, Gatling shows how the present--and the nostalgia it facilitates--is always produced within a political context that tries to manage cultural expression. A lasting contribution to Central Eurasian studies and Islamic studies that deserves to be widely read. --David Montgomery, author of Practicing Islam: Knowledge, Experience, and Social Navigation in Kyrgyzstan

Author Information

Benjamin Gatling is an assistant professor of folklore at George Mason University.

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