The Jamaat of Allah’s Friends: Maulana Allahyar’s Reformist Movement and Sacralising the Space of the Armed Forces of Pakistan

Abstract

Abstract: This article discusses a Sufi-inspired reformist movement which was set up in Chakrala (Pakistani Punjab) by Maulana Allahyar during the second half of the twentieth century. Attention is paid to the polemical religious context in which this movement arose, in part linked to the proselytising activities of local Shias and Ahmadis. Allahyar’s preaching in the town created sectarian divisions within Chakrala’s syncretic religious traditions. His reformist ideas also were articulated through a tablighi jamaat (missionary movement), which penetrated the armed forces of Pakistan during the military rule of Ayub Khan. Against this backdrop, the article also discusses the interface between Islam and the army, as this relationship played out in Indian prisoner-of-war camps holding captured Pakistani soldiers in the wake of the 1971 war, and so highlights ways in which the mutual performance of mystical practices by Allahyar’s Jamaat created a cohesive moral community.