Presenter
Kabir Rushnae - Department of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United StatesPanel
30 – South Asian Islam and the World: In Search for a New ParadigmAbstract
My paper challenges this dichotomy through a study of the Milād ritual (Prophet’s birthday celebrations) in South Asia. Looking at two popular Milād chapbooks, the Aslī Milād-i-Akbar (1920) and the Milād-i-Gauhar (n.d.), I illustrate that the themes and motifs of this popular ritual simultaneously emerge from and rework concepts from medieval Arabic narratives. Viewed thus, South Asian Islamic practices do not appear to as unorthodox deviation from the “normative,” but as an active translation and localisation of the global.
