Overview

In Pakistan, religious talk shows emerged as a popular television genre following the 2002 media liberalization reforms. Since then, these shows have become important platforms where ideas about Islam and religious authority in Pakistan are developed and argued. In Religious Television and Pious Authority in Pakistan, Taha Kazi reveals how these talk shows mediate changes in power, belief, and practice. She also identifies the sacrifices and compromises that religious scholars feel compelled to make in order to ensure their presence on television. These scholars, of varying doctrinal and educational backgrounds-including madrasa-educated scholars and self-taught celebrity preachers-are given screen time to debate and issue religious edicts on the authenticity and contemporary application of Islamic concepts and practices. In response, viewers are sometimes allowed to call in live with questions. Kazi maintains that these featured debates inspire viewers to reevaluate the status of scholarly edicts, thereby fragmenting religious authority. By exploring how programming decisions inadvertently affect viewer engagements with Islam, Religious Television and Pious Authority in Pakistan looks beyond the revivalist impact of religious media and highlights the prominence of religious talk shows in disrupting expectations about faith.

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Reviews

In this penetrating ethnography of religious television in Pakistan, Taha Kazi challenges basic assumptions in the study of the relationship between media and religion. Most importantly, Kazi questions the notion that religious programming in Muslim societies inevitably results in the cultivation of pious Muslim sensibilities, and, instead, brings attention to its contradictory and ambivalent outcomes. Her subtle consideration of the irreverent and critical engagements with Islam that arise from religious programming in Pakistan are based on carefully conducted in-depth fieldwork in Karachi. Religious Television and Pious Authority brings much-needed attention to aspects of Islam's role in Pakistan and the wider world that have been neglected in recent work in the social sciences.--Magnus Marsden, Professor of Social Anthropology, Director of Sussex Asia Centre, University of Sussex This book is a careful and persuasive account of the way we should be thinking about relations between religion and media. In Taha Kazi's telling, Pakistan demonstrates how the boundaries between these two domains are today blurred, and the substance of contemporary religion emerges somewhere in between them.--Stewart Hoover, Director, Center for Media, Religion and Culture and Professor of Media Studies, University of Colorado Boulder In this pioneering book Kazi analyses the impact of the religious television shows which have proliferated in Pakistan since 2002 when President Musharraf liberalised the media. She demonstrates how these shows led to a reduction in the authority of the ulama, the rise of the non-madrasa trained scholar of Islam, and an audience, often faced by conflicting opinions, which increasingly came to make its own decisions about religious belief and practice. This is an important example of how technological change is bringing about religious change in the Muslim world.--Francis Robinson, Professor of the History of South Asia, Royal Holloway, University of London

In this penetrating ethnography of religious television in Pakistan, Taha Kazi challenges basic assumptions in the study of the relationship between media and religion. Most importantly, Kazi questions the notion that religious programming in Muslim societies inevitably results in the cultivation of pious Muslim sensibilities, and, instead, brings attention to its contradictory and ambivalent outcomes. Her subtle consideration of the irreverent and critical engagements with Islam that arise from religious programming in Pakistan are based on carefully conducted in-depth fieldwork in Karachi. Religious Television and Pious Authority brings much-needed attention to aspects of Islam's role in Pakistan and the wider world that have been neglected in recent work in the social sciences. -Magnus Marsden, Professor of Social Anthropology, Director of Sussex Asia Centre, University of Sussex This book is a careful and persuasive account of the way we should be thinking about relations between religion and media. In Taha Kazi's telling, Pakistan demonstrates how the boundaries between these two domains are today blurred, and the substance of contemporary religion emerges somewhere in between them. -Stewart Hoover, Director, Center for Media, Religion and Culture and Professor of Media Studies, University of Colorado Boulder In this pioneering book Kazi analyses the impact of the religious television shows which have proliferated in Pakistan since 2002 when President Musharraf liberalised the media. She demonstrates how these shows led to a reduction in the authority of the ulama, the rise of the non-madrasa trained scholar of Islam, and an audience, often faced by conflicting opinions, which increasingly came to make its own decisions about religious belief and practice. This is an important example of how technological change is bringing about religious change in the Muslim world. -Francis Robinson, Professor of the History of South Asia, Royal Holloway, University of London

Author Information

Taha Kazi earned a PhD in Social Anthropology from SOAS University of London.

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