Women, Politics and Islamism in Northern Pakistan

Abstract This paper explores the responses of women living in a small town in the Chitral region of northern Pakistan to the Islamizing policies of the Muttahida Majlis-e Amal, a coalition of Islamist parties elected to provincial government in the North West Frontier Province in October 2002. Its focus is on women in the region who vocally and publicly criticize Chitral's politically active madrasa -educated ‘men of piety’. Documenting the ways in which these women and the region's ‘men of piety’ debate with one another on matters concerning personal morality, comportment and self-presentation illuminates dimensions of small-town Muslim life that are rarely considered important in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. In particular, by exploring these complex and multi-dimensional debates, I seek to emphasize the inherently unfinished nature of Chitralis’ responses to ongoing Islamizing processes, a growing and pervasive sense of disenchantment amongst many of the region's Muslims with the authenticity of public expressions of personal piety, and, in this context, the continuing emergence of new ways of being Muslim, modes of self-presentation and categories of Islamic public opinion forming figures.