South Asian Islam is frequently described in normative religious discourse as egalitarian. Sociological and historical evidence, however, documents a durable stratification system among Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, commonly glossed as the Ashraf-Ajlaf-Arzal hierarchy. This paper synthesizes historical, anthropological, and sociological scholarship to examine how this hierarchy emerged, how it was reproduced through institutions such as waqf, madrasa networks, Sufi silsilas, and marriage practices, and how it persists in contemporary South Asian and diaspora Muslim communities. The analysis is offered as a descriptive and analytical contribution, not a normative judgment.
Reza Armani (Independent Researcher) (Sun,) studied this question.