Reimagining Muslim Religiosity – a Case Study of Ahmadi Muslims through Field Inquiries and Methodological Nuances

Sociological writings often face the dilemma of encountering events that are vested with latent meanings and a certain form of interiority. In conceptualising categories like Muslimness, the visible is often privileged, writing is then put at its service to unpack the neglected. Islam has witnessed transformation across the globe especially in the context of South Asia in the last two centuries. The term ‘Muslim’, both as a religious ascription and social identification, underwent significant mutations over the years. However, the contemporary definition of ‘being’ and ‘being seen’ as a ‘Muslim’ requires critical intervention. The paper builds on the methodological challenges and the creative agency of the researcher in bridging the gap between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’. Ahmadi Muslims being persecuted minority in most of South Asia employ creative ways to animate their religious life in an unfamiliar setting. The sense of belonging in the society acquires new meaning when a community is circumscribed from practicing one’s religious identity. What happens when Ahmadis are situated in a Muslim minority setting? How does muslimness of the community come to fore when the social milieu is a Muslim majority? The paper attempts to discuss the public imaginaries of religion using the performative assertion of Ahmadis amidst an incriminating everyday. Thus, opening a dialogue on the Muslim striving as a sociological debate and the positionality of researcher as both an ‘endurer’ and a ‘witness’. Using the trope of an insider, where the researcher is equally the object of inquiry, the paper finally probes the quintessential question of prolonged silences and refusal from the field interlocutors. It contextualises the transactions of historical suffering by documenting lived experiences of the community as an othered Muslim and therefore, the various ways in which ‘muslimness’ is embodied and further performed as an active denomination constantly being produced and reproduced.