Playing with numbers

Much of the discussion of traditional Sufi cults and orders in Pakistan has tended to assume that local Sufi orders are perpetuated through inherited traditional village and familial ties (see, for example, Lewis 1984: 12). ² So too, discussions of Pakistani labour migration to Britain have tended to stress the continued embeddedness of migrants in pre-migration village, family and biradari (caste cum kinship) ties. ³ Whether as migrants or Sufi followers, the assumption is thus that Pakistani settlers remain locked in traditional, pre-modern forms of sociality. A break from these implies either a modernist quest for individual spirituality in western oriented Sufi meditation circules, or a move to modernist, reformist and often politically activist Islamic groups. The present chapter suggests, contrary to these assumptions, that Sufism in Britain has created the potential for a myriad of local and translocal elective relations of intimacy between prior strangers. It thus opens up new worlds of association and trust within the modern nation-state, which are governed neither by the state nor by kin relations.