Protectors of the Prophet’s Honor: The Politics of Respect and Blasphemy in Pakistan
Why do marginalized people gravitate toward authoritarianism?
Protectors of the Prophet’s Honor addresses this question through an ethnographic analysis of the rise of the Tehrik Labaik Pakistan (TLP), a deeply violent and authoritarian religious movement in Pakistan that calls upon the “poor masses” of Muslims to reclaim their personal dignity and restore the Prophet’s honor by taking violent action against those deemed ‘blasphemers’ and by publicly exposing Muslim elites as co-conspirators. Led by young, working-class Muslim men and small-time mosque clerics, the TLP situates is violent politics of anti-blasphemy within an ideological narrative of class warfare that valorizes the sincere passions of the hard-working Muslim laboring class against the false pieties and vanities of the so-called ‘respectable’ and ‘educated’ classes of the Muslim elite.
Through fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and extensive digital media and archival research, this dissertation examines how it becomes possible for ordinary people to not only translate their lived experience of marginality into the deeply felt need to punish blasphemers but also to situate the anti-blasphemy movement within personal narratives around their life quest for dignity. Drawing on critical theories of value, recognition, narrative, and ideology, it shows how the anti-blasphemy movement came to be viewed by its supporters as a collective struggle against social suffering and a shared striving for mutual recognition.
Meeting ID: 973 3623 5076
Password: 543536
