During my fieldwork, I studied more than 50 incidents of blasphemy accusations closely and surveyed many others from a distance. One striking commonality between almost all the cases I came across was that they started within microlevel interpersonal relationships between people known to each other. While wider religious and nationalistic narratives that enable blasphemy accusations and punishments to take place are constructed and promulgated at structural and societal levels, it is within everyday interpersonal relationships that these narratives are acted out— relationships characterised by prior familiarity and hierarchical power relations, built on symbolic and conceptual boundaries. I focus on the everyday and the interpersonal to answer two interrelated questions: 1) what triggers blasphemy accusations; and 2) why are certain people targeted with these accusations? The discussion will show that accusations of blasphemy are often triggered by perceived transgressions of hierarchical symbolic boundaries and are made against expendable familiar others.
{"title":"Blasphemy accusations: Power, purity and the enemy within","authors":"S. Ashraf","doi":"10.22459/few.2021.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/few.2021.03","url":null,"abstract":"During my fieldwork, I studied more than 50 incidents of blasphemy accusations closely and surveyed many others from a distance. One striking commonality between almost all the cases I came across was that they started within microlevel interpersonal relationships between people known to each other. While wider religious and nationalistic narratives that enable blasphemy accusations and punishments to take place are constructed and promulgated at structural and societal levels, it is within everyday interpersonal relationships that these narratives are acted out— relationships characterised by prior familiarity and hierarchical power relations, built on symbolic and conceptual boundaries. I focus on the everyday and the interpersonal to answer two interrelated questions: 1) what triggers blasphemy accusations; and 2) why are certain people targeted with these accusations? The discussion will show that accusations of blasphemy are often triggered by perceived transgressions of hierarchical symbolic boundaries and are made against expendable familiar others.","PeriodicalId":281859,"journal":{"name":"Finding the Enemy Within: Blasphemy Accusations and Subsequent Violence in Pakistan","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126041304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"At the nexus of state and society: Continuities and discontinuities between the legal system and popular justice","authors":"S. Ashraf","doi":"10.22459/few.2021.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/few.2021.06","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":281859,"journal":{"name":"Finding the Enemy Within: Blasphemy Accusations and Subsequent Violence in Pakistan","volume":"121 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116036165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Legitimate punishment of blasphemy: Contestation between the legal system and popular justice","authors":"S. Ashraf","doi":"10.22459/few.2021.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/few.2021.05","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":281859,"journal":{"name":"Finding the Enemy Within: Blasphemy Accusations and Subsequent Violence in Pakistan","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131918211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Historical roots of anti-blasphemy violence in Pakistan: Formation of self, community and the state","authors":"S. Ashraf","doi":"10.22459/few.2021.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/few.2021.01","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":281859,"journal":{"name":"Finding the Enemy Within: Blasphemy Accusations and Subsequent Violence in Pakistan","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131537545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"iolence in the making: The politics of escalation from accusation to punishment","authors":"S. Ashraf","doi":"10.22459/few.2021.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/few.2021.04","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":281859,"journal":{"name":"Finding the Enemy Within: Blasphemy Accusations and Subsequent Violence in Pakistan","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116750606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Religious discourse concerning blasphemy: Politics of uncertainty and legitimacy","authors":"S. Ashraf","doi":"10.22459/few.2021.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/few.2021.02","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":281859,"journal":{"name":"Finding the Enemy Within: Blasphemy Accusations and Subsequent Violence in Pakistan","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131064222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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