Framing Religion in a Transnational Space

Abstract

: This chapter examines the role of religion in a transnational space, shaped mainly by migrant and development actors between the region of Baltistan, in north-eastern Pakistan, and Kuwait. Migration from Baltistan to the Gulf, and to Kuwait in particular, is strongly connected to a specific socio-economic context determined by the existence of the Kashmir dispute, but also to a shared religious belonging to the Twelver Shia faith of Islam. Development aid from Kuwait in north-eastern Pakistan is framed in socio-economic terms and in terms of the religious duty in Islam to share and distribute wealth, although this charity activity does not require that the recipients follow the same faith. By addressing the understanding of the religious among actors involved in this transnational space, such as migrants, employees, and donors of economic aid, the chapter discusses the interrelations between the religious and the political (as the realm of the public sphere) in the context of this transnational space. While noting that religion helps to structure specific collectives beyond existing sovereign borders and therefore has an ordering character that amounts to a political dimension, the understanding of the religious in transnational spaces cannot be divorced from existing power hierarchies in which religion is inscribed. There are no differences. Some of them are more open than others. Iran is a developed state (…). In Baltistan some mullahs are very educated such as Sheikh Mohsin, Sheikh Jaf-fari [present imam of the Skardu great mosque, the capital and main city in Baltistan]; they have studied many years abroad in Iran and Iraq and they have seen the world. They are open-minded and they support female education. Other mullahs have no education and they do not know the world. These mullahs, I call them chhote mullah [small mul-lahs], studied a few years but they did not finish their studies. They just wear turbans but there is nothing in their heads. They are constantly saying to people, ‘do not do this’, ‘do not do that’.