Shiʿa Ritual in Karachi: Religious Life in an Urban City

Thousands of Shiʿas gather annually for the Ashura procession in the megacity of Karachi, putting a multitude of languages, practices, and communities on public display whilst signaling power through unity. Karachi’s Ashura procession reflects the complicated entanglements of urbanization, violence, religious and ethnic identities, as well as constantly-changing spatial dynamics in the city. Claiming public space, asserting identity, and operating within a complicated politics of visibility are tied with a major act of religious devotion. The yearly tensions around Karachi’s Ashura procession distill a broader set of contemporary issues about public space, urban religion, and the place of religious minorities in this majority-Sunni postcolonial nation. My dissertation considers the question of minority religion practices in public space amidst a complex context. Centering the Muharram procession as a key element of the city’s urbanization process, I argue that Karachi’s Shiʿas negotiate the relationship between public presence (visibility) and silence (invisibility) as a means to understand and negotiate their positioning in the city and within a larger discussion of what constitutes a “Pakistani Muslim.”