Large numbers of urban Pakistani women are adopting sartorial and behavioral markers associated with the global Islamic revival and are participating in Islamic revivalist movements. Many Pakistanis find this increase troubling, and feel that it betokens an increase in "extremism" in Pakistan. Women's participation in these movements is controversial, and results in conflicts with their families, friends, and social networks. As they participate in revivalist movements, women are introduced to Islamic sacred texts (the Qur'an and Hadith), which movement leadership interpret in ways that support the reformist mission of their particular movement. Revivalist leaders draw on Islamic sacred texts to promote visions of a pure Islamic society, and call on women to restrict their spending and socialization habits, and to reject many aspects of Pakistani society as "un-Islamic." This dissertation examines women's participation in Islamic revivalism in Pakistan through a focus on women's participation in the Tablighi Jama'at and the Al-Huda Welfare Trust. The relative gendered composition of these movements makes a comparative approach particularly instructive; the Tablighi Jama'at is a male-led movement which incorporates women as accessories, while Al-Huda is female-led and was founded exclusively for women. These movements, and Pakistani reactions to them, illustrate Pakistani beliefs regarding gender, purified religion, and ideas of culture. A study of these movements speaks to theoretical concerns regarding the Islamic revival as a global movement, and to the role of the religious resurgence in Pakistan. I explore these movements through the following guiding questions: (1) Are women's experiences in women-led movements different from those that are strongly male-centered?; (2) how do the differences among revivalist movements impact women's learning experience and utilization of sacred texts within and outside revivalist settings?; (3) to what extent do women contribute to the revivalist theology and ideology that guides their lives? Is this process different based on the movement a woman joins?; and (4) how does revivalism impact the social landscape of urban Pakistan? Two unifying analytical themes run through this dissertation and provide a framework through which I answer my research questions. The first is an examination of the contestations and discourses surrounding gendered piety, and the ways in which these confrontations delineate the urban Pakistani discursive field. The second theme concerns meaning-making within the Tablighi Jama'at and Al-Huda, and interrogates the processes through which revivalist knowledges are created and maintained. My dissertation traces the processes through which revivalist subjects emerge, with a focus on the ways in which revivalist women contribute to the discourses which form their subjecthood and subjectivities. I argue that women's agency is not limited to their self-creation as subjects, but extends to their participation in the creation of the discourses to which they subject themselves. My research reveals that female members of the Tablighi Jama'at and Al-Huda create movement structures and messages through their participation in these movements, actively contributing to revivalist ideology and meaning. The mechanisms of women's contributions are similar across movements, and women in both movements contribute significantly to the revivalist discourse, rhetoric, and theology they adopt.
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