Alleging Jewish Life in the Islamic Republic of PakistanAn ethnography of the secret.

Abstract

Where are Pakistan’s Jews today? This question has fascinated numerous writers, journalists, and, more recently, digital content producers in Pakistan. While some believe that all Jews have left the Islamic Republic, others claim that a small (and possibly influential) group still lives in hiding in Pakistan today. The arrival of social media has further proliferated reports of allegedly hidden and influential Jewish life in Pakistan, exacerbating the passions surrounding crypto-Judaism in the Islamic Republic. The origin of this fascination is twofold. On the one hand, it can be linked to religious and political discourses in Pakistan, frequently infused with antizionist and antisemitic tropes. On the other hand, it is connected to notions of secret Jewish power found in popular culture and often directly elevated from the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In this paper, I reflect on the intense, ambivalent, and contagious affects produced by the secrecy surrounding the trope of hidden Jewish presence in the Islamic Republic. I show how this widely circulated trope not only provided my interlocuters with potentialities but also caused me to become a part of the very secret I came to unravel.