2022-23 Wisch Fellow: Saad Lakhani

Saad Lakhani is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University and received the 2022-23 Steven and Debi Wisch Fellowship for Graduate Research in South Asian Studies from the Center for South Asia. 

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Project Description:

Anti-blasphemy violence is an ever more normalized feature of social and public life in Pakistan. Lakhani's dissertation, “Protectors of the Prophet’s Honor: Islam, Masculinity, and Civility in Pakistan,” examines the everyday politics and public culture of religious offense taking and giving in Pakistan. His ethnographic research focuses on Barelvi religious activists, the foremost champions of Pakistan's blasphemy laws. A Barelvi resurgence around anti-blasphemy activism has disrupted the western branding of Barelvis, who endorse Sufi shrines and their traditions, as representing a "good," moderate Islam of the "silent majority." Lakhani's research suggests that Barelvi anti-blasphemy mobilization not only touches on anxieties about religious purity but also growing concerns about the breakdown of religious authority, social hierarchy, kinship, and masculinity. For many Barelvis, protecting the honor of sacred beings is also about restoring the honor and dignity of the family and the ‘ordinary man.’ Their movement to defend “the Prophet’s honor” calls for restoring the sanctity of a cosmo-social hierarchy, mandating deference for God, prophets, and saints, but also noble castes, local leaders, fathers, husbands, and brothers. Despite blaming supposedly powerful “blasphemers” for undermining a purportedly timeless sacred hierarchy, Barelvis disagree immensely about the hierarchy’s structure, nature, and ethical demands. His research thus explores how Barelvi actors debate and contest competing ideas about Islamic moral order, civility, hierarchy, and sovereignty. In doing so, it examines how everyday contestations, grievances, and anxieties within the Barelvi community set the stage for anti-blasphemy mobilization.