Consuming Islam: media, ritual, and identity in the making of a brotherhood

ABSTRACT Research on Islam and consumption focuses mostly on commercialisation of Islam. This article studies Islam-consumption interaction in the context of religious competition within Islam. It discusses the role of religious consumption in Pakistan where Islamic organisations belonging to different Sunni denominations seek to expand while maintaining ideological boundaries. Through an ethnographic study of Dawat-e-Islami, which belongs to the Barelvi denomination within Sunni Islam, it argues that religious consumption within the media and ritual settings of the organisation help to reify a subcultural, denominational identity. Capitalising on the cultural repertoires at its disposal, Dawat-e-Islami has commodified its call to Madina into artefacts, signs, symbols, and names and offered them for consumption to its followers through its media and ritual settings. Collective and expressive acts of consumption, enabled as such, serve to construct a unique, subcultural collective identity within Sunnism – the Madani Brotherhood. This brotherhood contributes to the expansion of DI’s Madani mission while guarding ideological boundaries. In the context of competing visions of Sunni Islam, collective and expressive acts of religious consumption reinforce symbolic and ideological boundaries.