Transnational Islam and Muslim Politics: Policies, Identities, and Ideologies

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DOI :10.26650/B/SS30AA25.2024.003.005   IUP :10.26650/B/SS30AA25.2024.003.005    Full Text (PDF)

Digital Ummah and Novel Ways of Belonging: The Case of the Paki̇stani̇ Diaspora Community in Athens, Greece

Inam Ullah Leghari

This article deals with Pakistani migrants in Greece. The Pakistani diaspora is one of the largest South Asian Muslim immigrant groups (excluding Albanians) to have settled recently in Greece. Drawing upon ethnographic field work in Athens, Greece and using qualitative research methods, this text tempts to explain the challenges faced by the Pakistani diaspora there. It also demonstrates the Pakistani migrants’ use of information and communication technologies ICTs) to theorize how mediascapes are linked to novel forms of community and ummah, cultural reproduction, religious identity, and transnationalism among the Punjabi Barelvi Sufis who’ve settled in Athens. More specifically this research paper shows how followers of the transnational Sufi Barelvi missionary movement known as Dawat-e-Islami [Invitation to Islam] use ICTs to construct a community and transnational ummah as an expression of transnational Sufism among the Pakistani diaspora in Athens.


Keywords: Pakistani diaspora, Greece, ICTs, digital rituals, digital Sufism, transnational ummah and transnational Islam, Dawat-e-Islami

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