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South Asian Diaspora
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Transnational Sufism from below:
charismatic counselling and the quest
for well-being
Mikkel Rytter
a
a
Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Aarhus,
Denmark
Published online: 29 Nov 2013.
To cite this article: Mikkel Rytter (2014) Transnational Sufism from below: charismatic
counselling and the quest for well-being, South Asian Diaspora, 6:1, 105-119, DOI:
10.1080/19438192.2013.862103
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19438192.2013.862103
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Transnational Sufism from below: charismatic counselling and the
quest for well-being
Mikkel Rytter
∗
Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
(Received 21 March 2013; accepted 18 October 2013)
Pakistani migrants in Denmark have achieved a level of prosperity and social
mobility that first-generation migrants could only dream of before they emigrated
in the 1960s. However, their success has come at a price. Currently, migrant
families are experiencing a period of radical social change, which challenges and
alters their perception of well-being. In such a critical situation, they may turn
towards Sufi shaykhs, located in Pakistan, for help and gui dance. This article
puts forward the concept of ‘transnational Sufism from below’ in order to
explore how migrants pragmatically use religious counselling in dealing with the
contingencies of everyday life. The quest for well-being is not only related to the
pain and suffering of ‘the individual body’, but it is also related, to a large
extent, to ‘the social body’ of family and kinship relations, and seems to outline
a new kind of diffuse transnational engagement with the potential for reshaping
diasporic identities and connections between Pakistan and Denmark.
Keywords: Sufism; Islam; transnationalism; migration; Pakistani migrants;
Denmark
Over the last 40 years, Pakistani migrants in Denmark have been tremendously success-
ful in terms of social and economic mobilities. The older generation has advanced from
being unskilled factory workers to becoming self-employed businessmen and women.
Meanwhile, their children have managed an unprecedented leap in upward mobility, as
many have completed higher education and now aspire to become part of the Danish
middle class. The Pakistanis constitute a successful migrant community: the promises
of social and economic mobilities, intellectual development and human security,
embedded in the grand narratives of migration and modernity (cf. Osella and Osella
2006), have, to a large extent, materialised. However, their success has also given
rise to challenges. Currently, the structure and moral value of the family institution,
highly treasured among many Pakistanis, are being replaced by alternative social for-
mations that are supposedly more adequate to life in diaspora. The result is a ‘crisis
of success’, where a gap is developing between the pioneer generation and their
well-educated adult children, who were born and raised in Denmark and who simply
have different ideas about what it means to be and to do family (cf. Carsten 2000).
In this process, the horizon of well-being, understood as the ideal of ‘a happy extended
family’ – the ultimate goal of migration itself – seems to dissolve and fade away. One
# 2013 Taylor & Francis
∗
Email: mikkel.rytter@hum.au.dk
South Asian Diaspora, 2014
Vol. 6, No. 1, 105 –119, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19438192.2013.862103
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way for migrants to cope with this disruptive turbulence is by consulting a Sufi shaykh
(a charismatic religious teacher and healer) in Pakistan to seek help and guidance. The
way in which migrants utilise charismatic counselling in their quest for well-being out-
lines a kind of diffuse transnational engagement which has the potential to reshape dia-
spora identities and connections between Pakistan and Denmark.
Numerous recent studies of Sufism focus on the embodied charisma of a living
shaykh (Werbner and Basu 1998), on religious festivals and the veneration of deceased
saints at Sufi shrines (Curie 2006; Frembgen 2011), on the practical and emotional
aspects of zikr (commemoration of God) gatherings (Lizzio 2007; Pinto 2010; Irwin
2011), and on the global reach and plasticity of contemporary Sufism (Werbner
2003; Malik and Hinnells 2006; Geaves, Dressler, and Klinkhammer 2009; Bubandt
2011; Stjernholm 2011; Mathiesen 2012). However, until now, little emphasis has
been placed on what I call ‘transnational Sufism from below’, which focuses on the
pivotal role that the charismatic shaykh located outside Europe may have on the life
trajectories and organisation of everyday family life among migrants abroad. The
concept builds on a distinction developed in migration studies between transnational-
ism ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ (Smith and Guarnizo 1998), the first of these refer-
ring to formal hegemonic phenomena (such as global economy, multinational
corporations or international religious organisations) and the latter addressing how
global processes affect power relations, cultural construction and social organisation
at the level of the specific locality. In the context of Sufism, ‘transnationalism from
below’ addresses the various religious practices, technologies and beliefs that South
Asian migrants pragmatically engage with in order to reach specific goals. In contrast
to much recent writing on global Sufism, I suggest inverting the figure– ground
relationship and allowing the migrant family (and the way people pragmatically
search for help and guidance in order to deal with idiosyncrasies of everyday life) to
become the main figure or text. Accordingly, the organisation of the Sufi tariqa
(path, order), the hagiography and genealogy of living or deceased shaykhs, and the
more-or-less mystical rituals and experiences become the ground or context for under-
standing migrants’ ongoing quest for well-being. Approaching migrants’ religious
beliefs, relations and practices ‘from below’ not only emphasises the more functional
aspects of Sufism, but also enables a discussion of the socio-spatial dimensions of trans-
national social fields, stretched between Europe and South Asia.
From a different starting point, Ballard (2011) has suggested that we distinguish
between two domains of religious life, which he calls madri muzhub and padre
muzhub.
1
Madri muzhub is concerned with religious practices deployed in relation to
domestic issues and family life, including child-rearing, gender relations, parental auth-
ority, maintaining good relations within the household and with the extended family,
etc. Madri muzhub here refers to religious ideas and practices used to maintain,
create and contest moral orders and notions of relatedness within local and transnational
families. The private domain of madri muzhub stands in contrast to the more public
domain of padre muzhub, which refers to institutionalised orthodoxy as performed in
mosques, temples or churches. According to Ballard, madri muzhub serves functional
purposes and has particular salience within migrant communities where members find
themselves exposed to rapid and disturbing processes of social and environmental
change (2011, 36 –37). A focus on ‘transnational Sufism from below’ has much in
common with madri muzhub: both are concerned with the way migrants attempt to
utilise religious technologies and seek charismatic counselling in order to deal with
the contingencies of life in the diaspora and hopefully change them for the better.
M. Rytter106
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The material presented in this article is based partly on doctoral fieldwork among
Pakistani migrant families in Denmark 2007– 2008 (cf. Rytter 2013), as well as a
post-doctoral project on Sufism and transnational spirituality in 2011 –2012. First,
the article elaborates on the current ‘crisis of success’, and how it affects notions of
relatedness in migrant families. Then it discusses how the shaykh–murid relationship
works in a transnational field. Finally, it looks at the instructive cases of how Noreen
and Irfan deal with infertility, the controversial love marriage between Jamila and
Naem, and Shazia’s growing suspicion of occult attacks perpetuated by her ex-
husband and his family. These three cases facilitate a discussion of how Sufism from
below can affect migrants’ everyday lives, as well as the constitution and dynamics
of the transnational social field. All names in this article have been changed, in order
to respect the anonymity and integrity of the interlocutors.
The Pakistanis of Denmark
Pakistanis started coming to Denmark as ‘guest workers’ in the late 1960s. In 1973, the
Danish Government banned further labour-related immigration, but Pakistanis kept
coming to Denmark through family reunification. Today, approximately 25,000
people residing in greater Copenhagen have a family history related to Pakistan.
Most of them originate from villages near Gujarat and Jhelum in rural Punjab.
With economic recession and increasing unemployment in the late 1970s and
1980s, many semi-skilled Pakistanis lost their jobs and became self-employed,
running restaurants, travel agencies, groceries, corner shops (kiosks) or taxi firms
(Hjarnø 2000). These businesses were run and financed with the help of biraderi net-
works (classificatory brotherhood), consisting in the Danish context of trusted friends,
fellow villagers and members of the extended family. These prosperous occupational
niches, along with investments in real estate, have made many families economically
well-off. Over the years, criss-crossing life trajectories and family stories have resulted
in a village-like community spread out over the geographical area of Copenhagen and
its suburbs, where it is generally believed that ‘everyone knows everyone else’ (alle
kender alle). An important aspect of community life is the ongoing circulation of
gossip and mutual social control. The relative economic success of the Pakistanis
has generated an agonistic dynamic in which every aspect of life can be – and
usually is – turned into a competition (cf. Werbner 1990, xv). When the second gen-
eration entered the free Danish educational system in the 1980s and 1990s, school per-
formance and educational achievements became yet another arena of competition. As a
result, young Danish Pakistanis today distinguish themselves from other migrant
groups by having an educational level that is almost equivalent to their average
Danish peer group (cf. Rytter 2013, Chap. 2).
The settlement process and this successful upward social mobility challenge
common notions of relatedness and what it implies to be a family. I give four brief
examples:
(1) Authority. In the Pakistani villages where the majority of the elder migrants grew
up, the right to make crucial decisions in relation to the public sphere was often a pre-
rogative of the oldest male, while decisions in relation to the domestic sphere were
managed by the senior woman of the family. In Denmark, however, seniority does
not automatically lead to a privileged position. Many older Pakistanis today have
left, or are about to leave, the labour market. Some live on welfare benefits or pensions
due to unemployment or early retirement because of severe health problems such as
South Asian Diaspora 107
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diabetes, rheumatism or high blood pressure. Many elders – especially women who
took care of the household and raised the children – are not fluent in Danish and
often have to rely on their children as translators, which undermines their authority.
(2) Gender. Traditional gender roles are challenged by the upcoming generation.
Danish Pakistani women often prefer to have a career rather than become housewives
dedicated solely to taking care of their husbands, children and parents-in-law. Members
of the younger generation themselves attended day-care institutions (vuggestuer/børne-
haver), public schools (folkeskoler) and higher educational institutions, and joined
sport clubs or political and religious associations (foreninger). These institutions pro-
vided young people with numerous possibilities to interact with members of the oppo-
site sex outside the protected domestic sphere and controlling gaze of family members.
Currently, Pakistani families must re-negotiate gender roles and decide to what extent
and in which situations they will observe purdah, the code of gender segregation that
dominates in the rural areas from which the families originate.
(3) Marriage and divorce. Regardless of age, Danish Pakistanis seem to agree that
the institution of marriage is going through a radical and rather disturbing change. On
the one hand, immigration policies make it very difficult for young Danish Pakistanis to
get family reunification with spouses from Pakistan. A common solution is to move to
the Swedish city of Malmo¨, approximately 30 min from Copenhagen, where, as Danish
citizens, they can use European Union regulation to achieve family reunification with
their Pakistani spouses. In this respect, legal measures are breaking families up (Rytter
2012b). On the other hand, many Danish Pakistanis choose to marry spouses met in
Denmark. The current trend of local love marriages jeopardises the interests of the
parents and the extended transnational family (Rytter 2012a). Finally, the growing
number of divorces is seen as disturbing. The most recent figures on divorce date
from 1999 and show that 6–7% of Pakistanis in Denmark aged 30 –34 are divorced
(Schmidt and Jakobsen 2000, 132). However, interlocutors explain that current
divorce numbers are much higher than they were 10 years ago. Today, it is not uncom-
mon to file for divorce if a marriage fails to meet individual expectations. The growing
number of divorces is often interpreted within the migrant community as an indication
of the upcoming generation becoming Danish.
(4) Old age. Many older Pakistanis are concerned about their old age and whether or
not their offspring will take care of them in retirement (Mian 2007). In the virilocal
household, it is traditionally the duty and obligation of sons and in-married wives to
live with and take care of ageing parents, but many parents do not have living accom-
modation of sufficient size for their sons and daughters-in-law to live with them. Others
have to accept that their sons and daughters-in-laws simply do not want to live with
them, but prefer to have their own place. The available figures suggest that only
15% of Pakistanis in Denmark actually live in households consisting of a married
couple and one of the partner’s parents (Schmidt 2002, 66).
2
These four tendencies – authority, gender, marriage and ageing – contribute to the
experience of a family institution that has started to fall apart. The changes are generally
represented as a loss, but they also open up a range of possibilities where new configur-
ations of relatedness, identity and belonging can start to take shape. One way to cope
with the current crisis is by consulting a shaykh in Pakistan, to ask for help and gui-
dance and to seek redemption from the afflictions of everyday life. Before presenting
the three cases, I elaborate on the significance of religious teachers and charismatic
healers in South Asian Islam, and on how other studies have described the shaykh –
murid relationship in the Pakistani diaspora.
M. Rytter108
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