Katherine Pratt Ewing - Modern Sufis and the State (Religion, Culture, and Public Life)

1. KATHERINE PRATT EWING
2. ROSEMARY R. CORBETT
3. VERENA MEYER
4. MARCIA HERMANSEN
5. CARL W. ERNST
6. BRANNON D. INGRAM
7. USHA SANYAL
8. BRIAN E. BOND
9. MUHAMMAD QASIM ZAMAN
10. SARAH ANSARI
11. ALIX PHILIPPON
12. NOOR ZAIDI
13. SHERALI TAREEN
14. CARLA BELLAMY
15. HELENE BASU
16. RACHANA RAO UMASHANKAR
17. BRUCE B. LAWRENCE
18. ROSEMARY R. CORBETT

T his book would not exist without the people who animate the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL) at Columbia University. Not long after editor Katherine Ewings arrival at Columbia University, Karen Barkey, who was then director of IRCPL, was organizing a series of conferences and workshops on Sufism as part of a larger project on Religious Toleration and Plural Democracies. She encouraged Katherine to organize the 2015 conference Rethinking Islam, Democracy and Identity in Pakistan and India: The Role of Sufism, out of which this volume has emerged. Editor Rosemary Corbett was originally brought onboard as a postdoctoral fellow to help coordinate the overall project, which was generously funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, with the enthusiastic guidance of Toby Volkman. We would like to thank Jessica Lillien and Zachary Hendrickson for helping out at various stages of the project, and especially Walid Hammam for being there at every step of the way. He was an invaluable partner as Katherine took over the directorship of IRCPL. Bill Carrick of the South Asia Institute has also contributed in countless ways.

In addition to the contributors included in the present volume, the conference was enriched by the presence and contributions of Pnina Werbner, Thomas Gugler, Jamal Malik, Akbar Zaidi, Anand Taneja, Zahid Hussain, Rob Rozehnal, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, and Mamadou Diouf. Bruce Lawrence gave a keynote address. We would like to thank them all. Contributors to an early planning workshop entitled Pluralism: Sufi Thought and Practices included Cheikh Babou, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Carl Ernst, Katharina Ivanyi, Karen Barkey, Mamadou Diouf, and Leonardo Villalon. Thanks also to Columbia Religion Department PhD students Quinn Clark, Ilona Gerbakher, Zehra Mehdi, and Ebadur Rahman, who have been great conversation partners as their own research projects on related themes have developed along the way. Colleagues Gil Anidjar, Rachel McDermott, Jack Hawley, Courtney Bender, Brinkley Messick, and Gauri Visvanathan are among those who have made Columbia University a rich intellectual environment for the pursuit of this project.

We thank Taha Poonawala and Fidahussain Yamani for their hard work on making transliterations across several languages as consistent as possible. We also thank Wendy Lochner of Columbia University Press for overseeing publication of the book, and we thank the anonymous reviewers whose detailed and thoughtful comments have made this a better book.

Katherine appreciates the steadfast support of her husband and intellectual companion, Thomas DiPrete, three loving daughters, the wonderful young men they have brought into the family, and Charlotte, who is the promise of the future. In the time between the convening of the conference from which this volume evolved and the books publication, Rosemary added another child to her family and also navigated the illness of her partner. There are simply too many people to thank for the tremendous support received during those years, but eternal gratitude will always be due David Kaiser for his unflagging faith, endless encouragement, and abiding love.

W ords found in Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary are considered part of English lexicon and do not contain any markers/diacritics.

When transliterating names of living people, we use the preferred or popular spelling. For names of the deceased, we either transliterate or use spelling as used by them self-referentially as found in their works.