Sufi Civilities Religious Authority and Political Change in Afghanistan

"An engaging, compelling, and beautifully-written ethnography that traverses the heterogeneous Sufi sociosphere of contemporary Afghanistan. Schmeding documents, in arresting detail and acute sensitivity, the dexterity of Sufi adepts in creating and maintaining civil communities amidst violence and ruptures. At once profound, riveting, and timely, the book is a vital contribution to the study of religion and civil society."-Ismail Fajrie Alatas, New York University "Sufi Civilities opens the door to a marvelous world of faith that lies hidden in plain sight. Schmeding's path breaking ethnographic account of diverse Sufi communities in contemporary Afghanistan is both new and exciting. Over the past half century they have outlasted every radical political regime that failed to appreciate just how deeply Sufism is embedded in Afghanistan's Islamic culture."-Thomas Barfield, Boston University "Afghan Sufis have been hidden from view by attention to mujahidin, Taliban, and al-Qaida. Through astute anthropological observation, Annika Schmeding shows how Sufis became important players in the contests for religious authority that emerged from the cultural whirligig of a NATO-supported Islamic Republic. This is a major contribution to the study of modern Afghanistan."-Nile Green, University of California, Los Angeles "Sufi Civilities will remain for decades a mandatory (English-language) text for understating the role of Islam in Afghanistan."
-Kate Clark, Afghanistan Analysts Network "Rather than the top-down approach to civil society imposed on Afghanistan, Sufi Civilities offers a blueprint of the strategies Sufi communities use that fit the bottom-up cultural structures of the country, highlighting new pathways for progress."
-Soraya Afzali, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies "The ethnographic breadth of the work and the willingness to learn to think otherwise about matters of spiritual negotiation and authority are what lend this work its unique perspective... Schmeding's careful attention to their interlocuters' ways of knowing, dreaming, intuiting, valuing, and judging amid the dissolution of traditional orders is crucial to the book's role in revealing a philosophy of the self that takes seriously the occult and the place of gnosis in collective life."-Fatima Mojaddedi, International Journal of Middle East Studies