Grants and residencies

Research

Formations of heresy: Ahmadiyyat and exclusion in modern Islam

Application summary

This research project develops the first-ever theoretical framework for analyzing modern religious heresy and applies it to study the Ahmadi community, which has been declared heretical in modern Islam globally. The project builds on my unique and extensive experience in sociological study of heresy, particularly of Ahmadis around the world. My application seeks individual funding for one year to allow me to take research leave from my teaching and administrative responsibilities in the University of Tampere and publish this research. The project will result in a book published by a world-class academic press in USA or UK. In this book I analyze what made this hereticization of Ahmadiyyat in Pakistan possible and what that hereticization means for understanding Islam today. Centered on Pakistan, where Ahmadiyyat has been declared heretical by constitutional amendment, the book includes analyses of Finland, Canada, and South Africa to show how modern heresy is global. The analysis builds on the new theory of epistemic governance being developed in Tampere, combined with a genealogy to assess the conditions of possibility that led to the formation of the Ahmadis as “heretical.” The book probes sociological, political, psychological, global, religious, and legal conditions of possibility for this declaration of heresy. The concluding chapter explores how the framework can be used to undertake a similar approach to heresy in other domains, including in the sciences.

This research project developed a theoretical framework to analyze modern heresy by studying the Ahmadi community, which has been declared heretical in modern Islam globally. The community was declared heretical by most Muslims since its founding in late 19th century British India by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who claimed to be a reformer and a “prophet” of Islam. The community moved to Pakistan when the country was established in 1947 but has faced extreme discrimination and violence since then. In 1974, Ahmadis were declared heretical by constitutional amendment in Pakistan and have faced growing persecution globally since. The project sought to explain this extreme label of “heresy” and the unprecedented discrimination that has taken place over more than a century. Building on previous fieldwork and empirical research, the project brought together desk-based research on the amendment and persecution following hereticization. It explains the label of heresy by unpacking the theological, legal, political, global, and psychological conditions of possibility for such a symbolic and discriminatory action against a single community. The research shows that while the content of hereticization is Islamic, the specific, extreme form it took has always been modern, expressed as colonial modernity in British India, then postcolonial modernity in Pakistan, and then globally. This framework is useful not only for explaining the ongoing persecution of Ahmadis worldwide, but also the forms that similar exclusions of religious and other groups take.

The lockdown conditions drastically affected the project’s ability to collect any further data as planned, and time was spent in reorienting the project to conduct further desk-based research and conceptualization. As intended, the project has resulted in a manuscript that is all but completed, again with a significant delay caused due to unusual work conditions in the pandemic. The project secured a contract to publish the research as a book with one of the world’s leading publishers on the study of Islam: Brill.

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