Rebuilding Community tells the story of Shia Ismaili Muslim women who recreated religious community (jamat) in the aftermath of successive displacements over the course of the twentieth century. Drawing on oral histories, fieldwork, and memory texts, Shenila Khoja-Moolji illuminates the placemaking activities through which Ismaili women reproduce bonds of spiritual kinship: from cooking for congregants on feast days and looking after sick coreligionists to engaging in memory work through miracle stories and cookbooks.
Rebuilding Community tells the story of Shia Ismaili Muslim women who recreated religious community (jamat) in the aftermath of successive displacements over the course of the twentieth century. Drawing on oral histories, fieldwork, and memory texts, Shenila Khoja-Moolji illuminates the placemaking activities through which Ismaili women reproduce bonds of spiritual kinship: from cooking for congregants on feast days and looking after sick coreligionists to engaging in memory work through miracle stories and cookbooks.
Shenila Khoja-Moolji is the Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani Associate Professor of Muslim Societies at Georgetown University. She is the author of two award-winning books, Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia and Sovereign Attachments: Masculinity, Muslimness, and Affective Politics in Pakistan.
Inhaltsangabe
Note on Translation Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Re-Assembling Community 2. Ismaili Women's Lifeworlds, 1890-1970 Interlude: Fleeing, 1971-1972 3. Fostering Sacred Spaces 4. Storying Divine Intervention 5. Culinary Placemaking 6. Placemaking in the Second Generation 7. Conclusion: Spiritual Intimacies Notes Bibliography Index