Feeding and Fighting: Networks of Care and Reform in Relation to Armed Resistance in the Northwestern Frontier, 1831-1932.

This paper explores the relationship between practices of care, religious reform, and armed mobilization against the British colonial administration by a Qadiri tariqat in what is largely present day Khyber Pakhtunkwa. The first chapter describes the nature of religious reform and spiritual education as enacted through the Qadiri-Ghufuriyya network, explaining how religious schools and soup kitchens (langar) produced religious authority and opposed coloniality. The second chapter shows that the participation of Qadiri-Ghufuriyya pirs in armed mobilizations against colonizers was driven by the pirs themselves and a need to defend their religious institutions. These conclusions raise fascinating questions for an alleged state building project pursued by the order. For example, does a monopoly on social services and educational legitimacy within a prescribed territory constitute a state? An Islamic one?