Introduction

The world’s major religions and spiritual traditions are seldom homogeneous in their compilation of followers, and Islam is no exception (Faghfoory 2014; Ramadan 2017). When we consider sectarian divisions within Islam, we often think of the Sunni and Shia branches. Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim academic, philosopher, and writer, and author of Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (2003), provides a more detailed breakdown by using a five-point model, through which he defines the different tendencies in the thought, discourses, and engagement of Muslims around the world. The categories are as follows. First there is scholastic traditionalism, which is adhered to by Muslim communities in many parts of the world including the United States and the United Kingdom. It involves relying on both the Qur’an and the Sunnah (the life of the Prophet Muhammad), and scholarly opinions to guide their practice of Islam as Muslims. Sunni branches such as the Deobandi and Barelvi traditions, including the four schools of thought (Hannafi, Hanbali, Maliki, and Sha’fi’), fall within this category. Then there is Salafi literalism, which involves a rejection of scholarly interpretation of texts. Adherents refer to themselves as Salafs, symbolising their identification with the original companions of the Prophet Muhammad, who were known as the Salafs, and they interpret the Qur’an and Sunnah in a direct and literal way. Third is political literalist Salafism, described as having been born out of repression in the Muslim world, and joining up literalist interpretations of Islamic texts with a call for social political action (see also Hamid 2016). Muslims under this strand of Islam believe in establishing an Islamic state and caliphate through jihad, and receive the majority of public attention in the West. Liberal or rationalist reformist approaches consider Islam from a spiritual dimension rather than a practising one, which is demonstrated through their assimilation into Western society, which will involve bearing minimalist outward signs through clothing or physical markers of identity to demonstrate their Muslim identity. Muslims within this sphere support the complete separation of religion from public life.

Finally, Sufism is an Islamic tradition oriented towards spirituality and mysticism, and promotes closeness to God through zikr, a form of Islamic meditation in which phrases or prayers are repeatedly chanted, and understanding texts through Sufi teachings. Different Sufi orders prescribe a specific zikr, which is often accompanied by specific postures, breathing styles, and movements. Followers often decide to take bayah (initiation) with a particular Sufi order, of which there are many across the Islamic world, all of which have branches in the United Kingdom. Examples include the Naqshbandi, Shadhili, and Chishtiyya Sufi orders, each of which has a head shaykh who leads the order. Whereas the latter orders arose in parts of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, and have migrated to the West through increased technological and social media influence, more recent trends in Sufism have included Western-born hubs of Islamic education and spiritual engagement (see also Hamid 2016). Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s Zaytuna College in California is a prime example of a Western Sufi-oriented institution, founded by a convert to Islam. A parallel approach has been adopted by Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad, also a convert to Islam and professor of religion and theology at of Cambridge University. Hakim founded the Cambridge Muslim College, where leadership education together with Islamic education are offered for young British Muslims. A more recent example is the Yaqeen Institute in Texas, which was founded by Shayk Omar Suleiman, a Muslim American with Palestinian roots, which further underlines the hunger for modern Muslim leadership within diaspora communities in the West. Many of these shaykhs have risen to prominence via social media, particularly by providing online lectures and teachings, and publishing materials. Gen Z and Millennial Muslims have been attracted to such teachers and engagement platforms, partially due to work and education commitments, as a result of which young Muslims are unable to commit to formal Islamic education, which requires a significant commitment. This is coupled with the cultural leanings of Islamic practices by pioneer generations of migrant parents, especially those who migrated from Indo-Pakistani regions to Britain during the period after the Second World War (Ballard 1994). It was common, for example, for British Pakistani and Kashmiri children to attend after school mosque classes for an hour or two, during the weekdays.

Many of these teachers offer tailored guidance into dealing with issues young Muslims face in the West today. Yasmin Mogahed, a prominent female Muslim speaker, also rose to popularity among young Muslims in the West through her online lectures and social media presence. Her popularity soared on the publication of her book Reclaim Your Heart (Mogahed 2012), which addresses heartbreak in the modern world. Much of my own engagement with Islam and religious teachings has been rooted in such neo-Sufi teachers and shaykhs, who have broken down the complex and often overwhelming teachings of Islam into accessible and consumable compartments. Dr Yasir Qadhi’s books Lessons from Sūrah Yūsuf (Qadhi 2021) and Lessons from Sūrah al-Kahf (Qadhi 2020) are some of my favourite reads, and have illuminated and shaped my relationship with the Qur’an in recent years. Dr Qadhi’s approach involves both translating and explaining the meaning and significance of each verse, which brings the Qur’an to life. Given my professional commitments and constraints on my time, I value the way in which these books are concise, travel-friendly, and perfect for bedtime reading. As I am a practising Muslimah, these texts have enabled me to strengthen in my religious knowledge, and therefore feel an enriching of my connection with God. This is ever more important for me in an era of social media and technological revolution, when it is becoming increasingly easy to fall into the rabbit hole of screen time and endless scrolling. Such texts have therefore enabled me to nourish my soul not only from a religious perspective, but also from a work–life balance and social media detox perspective. With the turning of every page, I constantly experience sparks flying in my mind and the feeling of my heart being positively full.

The Sufi and neo-Sufi teachings of Islam are popular in the United Kingdom, with many of the aforementioned speakers, such as Yasmin Mogahed, regularly visiting to speak to audiences. The city of Birmingham is home to branches of a number of Sufi orders, as many of the youth within the city’s Muslim community – many of whom belong to the British Pakistani and Kashmiri communities – have developed an appetite for purist forms of Islamic teachings that are divorced from the Pakistani and Kashmiri cultures. Such sentiments have risen from greater Saudi influence among British Muslims, particularly through the Wahhabi movement, which advocates a literalist interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunnah. Many of the Sufi orders and their religious congregations in zawiyas remain largely unexplored within academic discourses, and the engagement of incoming migrants with these Sufi orders has also yet to receive academic enquiry. It is on this rich backdrop, born out of the intersection of Islamic traditions, migration, social media and technological advances, generational differences in religious and cultural practice, and resistance narratives, that the current chapter rests, and upon which migrant husband experiences are mapped. I particularly question whether, in the face of increased vulnerability and precarity upon marriage migration to the United Kingdom, Sufi orders play a role in migrant husband masculine (re)construction, and practices of resistance. Further, I question how the techniques employed in becoming a migrant husband prior to marriage migration fare against the techniques used in remaining a migrant husband upon marriage migration.

Transnational Sufi practices

Approximately three-quarters of the migrant husband cohort who participated in the research were engaged to some degree in Indo-Pak Sufi Islam, which typically involves pirs (Sufi holy men or leaders), darbaars (shrines), and talismans offered by pirs (see also Marsden 2005; Grewal 2014). As Mohammed Arkoun, an Algerian scholar and thinker, puts it, Sufism is Islam’s ‘mystic strain’, the ‘ultimate purpose’ of which is the ‘unifying encounter between the believer and his or her personal God’ (Arkoun 1994: 81), in which ‘shrine-centred worship’ and affiliation with Sufi ‘brotherhoods’ (tariqas) and ‘lodges’ (zawiyas) (Archer 2003: 49; Marsden 2005; Grewal 2014) are central. References to pirs and shrines were made in some of the songs of sorrow in the previous chapter, to whom families would seek guidance regarding a successful visa application to the United Kingdom, among other social causes, such as fertility issues, family rivalry and feuds, and illnesses. In south Asia, Sufi-oriented Islamic traditions have experienced severe criticism from Muslim reformers for the past two centuries. Muslim ‘purists’ have labeled Sufi Islam ‘illegal’ and as having been derived from Hinduism; as a result, it has been argued to be a distortion of the ‘correct’ form of Islamic doctrine and practice, which is seen to be based entirely on the Qur’an and the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) (Marsden 2005). Any practice outside the parameters of the Qur’an and Hadith is deemed to be bid’ah (innovation], alien in and to the religion (Birt 2005; Ramadan 2003). Nonetheless, Sufi Islam thrives in Pakistan, and other areas of south Asia and the world (Ewing 1983; Hoffman 1995; Subhan 1999; Howell 2001; Marsden 2005; Cornell 2010). Not only have a considerable proportion of the Pakistani and Kashmiri communities in Britain been Sufi followers for a number of generations, but they have also established mosques and sought tolerance for their religious identity, beliefs, and practices in Britain (Werbner 1990; Ballard 1994).

Migrant husbands who took part in my research often talked about their religious practices prior to marriage migration, particularly in relation to saints who lived many generations prior to them in different parts of Pakistan and Kashmir (see also Keddie 1972). Upon marriage migration, remembrance of these saints continued, but was also complemented with the introduction of local scholars, teachers, and religious leaders within the Birmingham Sufi-scape. Here, I borrow from Arjun Appadurai’s five scapes of globalisation (1990) to define the religious landscape in Birmingham as a ‘Sufi-scape’, since it is home to a diverse range of neo-Sufi religious hubs.

In 2018 some 301,000 Muslims were recorded to be living in Birmingham, making up 27 per cent of the overall population. To accommodate this large community there are over 167 mosques in the city, the majority of which are Sunni-Muslim inclined. Since 2010 a recent addition to the city’s religious landscape has been the rise of Sufi zawiyas and halaqas (religious gatherings) (see also Grewal 2014). This has in large part been influenced by a number of international religious leaders, such as Shaykh Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi, a Syrian Islamic scholar and direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad, and the leader of the Shadhili tareeqa (a Sufi religious order or group) (Shikhaliev 2009). Technological advancements and social media have enabled Islamic shaykhs to reach a global audience, gaining greater numbers of followers in the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America. Shaykh Muhammad has visited the Ghamkol Sharif Mosque in Small Heath, Birmingham, a number of times, garnering audiences in their tens of thousands. Some Muslim migrant husbands who participated in my research spoke in great detail about their engagement with Sufi brotherhoods such as the Shadhili tareeqa, as a result of which I was able to start mapping the broader Sufi-scape of Birmingham (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2).¹

Figure 4.1 A Google map indicating the number of mosques in Birmingham. Map data © Google.

Other tareeqas in the city include the Naqshbandi tareeqa, which was at the time of my PhD led by Shaykh Nazim Al-Haqqani, who has since passed away. The order has now been taken over by his son-in-law, Shaykh Muhammad, who regularly visited the United Kingdom during my research. Each Sufi brotherhood had a unique colour that dominates its attire, setting it apart from other Sufi brotherhoods. From the position of an observer-academic within the community who is also of the opposite gender, however, I am persuaded to believe that both the bold use of colour and unique clothing items such as turbans and scarves indicate that there is a uniform or dress code, which is an important avenue through which membership of the brotherhood is negotiated, achieved, and communicated. For example, members of Faizan-e-Madina, a Sunni Islamic organisation founded in 1980 by Dawat-e-Islami and based in Pakistan, don green turbans and white robes, whereas the followers of Jamiah Mohy-Ul-Islam Siddiqiua, founded by the Pir Siddiqui, don white hats that are laced with a thin green strip. The colour green is cited by both Sufi brotherhoods as being associated with the Prophet Muhammad, thereby justifying its incorporation in their dress code. On the other hand, followers of Kanzul-Huda, founded and led by Pir Saqib Shaami around 2010, and rooted in the Chishtiyya Sufi movement in modern-day India, wear orange scarves around the necks to signify their membership. The varying colours and clothing items are worn by some mureeds (disciples or followers) on a daily basis, while others wear them only when attending religious gatherings and events that take place weekly, which further indicates their status as a form of uniform. They also serve to set mureeds in different Sufi groups apart, and no doubt help them identify their almost ‘religious kinsmen’ within their Sufi order, from that of other Sufi orders in the city, and across the world.

Figure 4.2 A map of Birmingham indicating the Sufi brotherhoods that migrant husbands engaged with, in location spots with black rings around. Map data © Google.

In addition to these Sufi orders, additional groups included the zawiya in the Ward End area of Birmingham that hosted both the Naqshbandiyah (Weismann 2007) and Shadhili (Shikhaliev 2009) tareeqas, and Ghamkol Sharif Mosque, which hosted mainly joint events between the many Sufi brotherhoods in Birmingham. I also learnt that these spaces were not restricted to men, as women had their own gatherings: mawlids (celebrations of Prophet Muhammad’s birth), tajweed (term for the pronunciation of Qur’anic Arabic) lessons, and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) lessons. As the research focus of this book is the masculinity of migrant husbands, women feature either as the patients of the spiritual healers or the wives of migrant husbands. I ought to point out, however, that there has in the past five years (at the time of writing this book) been a rapid increase in female Islamic scholarship (see also Grewal 2014) within Birmingham, with a number of ustadhas (female Muslim scholars) pioneering the way forwards. More broadly, mawlids have long been celebrated by some Muslim women in Birmingham, and female religious engagement and experience are seen to be acceptable and encouraged within the community. Migrant husbands who participated in these Sufi orders became heavily invested, a handful even going as far as donating a proportion of their monthly salaries to the operation of the Sufi orders, their gatherings, and to host the visits of the shaykhs. Across transnational planes, then, marriage migration introduced migrant husbands to new forms of Sufi practices.

Spiritual masculinity

A common theme that surfaced during my life history interviews with migrant husbands was the experience of religion as a way to reassert masculinity (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 121–122). Migrant husbands believed that they suffered emasculation as a result of precarity and vulnerability upon marriage migration, which departed from their aspirations for transnational patriarch identity. As a result, they were plunged into liminal masculinity, an in-between masculinity that could extend beyond the temporal to embodied experiences over longer periods of time. Among the different ways that religion was experienced, imagined, and reimagined, stories of hardships experienced by prophets² and saints – both past and present – featured heavily as techniques to reassert masculinity, as they provided an alternative masculine currency to that of the transnational patriarch.

After many years of abuse from his father-in-law and in a marriage rife with tensions, Imran had separated from his wife three years prior to our interview, and had found permanent employment at a Pakistani confectionary and sweet store. Imran, and other migrant husbands in similar situations to his, dealt with their personal turmoil by constructing a space in which they found refuge in and practised spirituality. This allowed them to become closer to God, draw on a well of inner strength, and – in Imran’s words – ‘not fall into the traps of the dunya [world]’. The construction of this spiritual space grew around practices of remembrance of prophets such as Muhammad, Musa (Moses), and Yusuf (Joseph), and Sufi saints such as Miah Muhammad Baksh, who lived in northern Pakistan in the early nineteenth century, and was known as a religious leader and poet in the region. Such learning and remembrance resonated with migrant husbands on an intimate level, prompting them to draw connections with their own hardships, trials, and tribulations, ultimately resulting in a feeling of closeness with God. These private and largely imagined spaces became a way for migrant husbands to weather the precarious and vulnerable circumstances they often found themselves in through their personal marriage migration journeys.

One of my interlocutors, Nasar, who was 32 years old at the time, talked about the role of the Sufi poetry of one particular saint, Miah Muhammad Baksh:

Nasar also talked about drawing strength from other prominent figures in Islam:

Ahmed also spoke about the trials of the Prophet Muhammad, which he constantly remembered:

Faris told me about the historical hardship faced by men who migrated in the past and how the trials they encountered helped him deal with his own struggles:

It was evident that Imran, Nasar, Ahmed, Faris, and other migrant husbands in similar situations drew on the historic and documented experiences of Muslim men to stand strong in the face of their own hardships experienced within multiple, and intersecting, patriarchal structures (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 127). This use of historical narrations detailing the life trajectories of prominent figures in Islamic history to construct a current space of agency in a transnational, diaspora context is unique to migrant husbands, at least as far as academic enquiry extends.³ Some migrant husbands who found themselves in difficult positions told me that they transcended these complex social barriers through spiritual practice. In some of their accounts, it transpired that this sense of solidarity and spirituality, through the remembrance of key Muslim male figures and the trials they faced, provided an arena in which they could experience an internal feeling of sukoon (peace), and through which they could experience a momentary break from their day-to-day anxieties. In this way, then, spiritual masculinity comprises an important part of the masculine ideal that migrant husbands aspired to during such difficult periods. At the same time, the remembrance of these life histories of men in Islam was telling of the ‘hope’ that migrant husbands possessed and cherished, that they would soon see better days and, at the very least, be recognised in the eyes of God as a reward, both of which became a technique used to reassert their masculinity internally, within themselves. This strikes a chord with the practices of sabr (patience) exercised by Pakistani women, who believed their silent sufferings would earn them greater reward from God (Qureshi 2013). The concept of sawaab (good deeds, or reward) formed a peg around which spaces of resistance and agency were constructed within the spiritual realm, wherein migrant husbands could, to various degrees, transact their own experiences, identities, and, ultimately, masculinities.

The current Islamic context of Birmingham serves as a resource and a tool for some migrant husbands to reassert their masculinity, which they perceive as being broken or bruised. Around 16 Muslim migrant husbands told me they took bayah (religious membership) (see Grewal 2014) with Sunni Islamic brotherhoods in Birmingham. For instance, Asif shared his experience of taking bayah with Pir Siddiqui, leader of Noor TV, a satellite channel with its headquarters in Aston, Birmingham, that is viewed by Muslims across the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe. Asif told me that the group’s TV channel would be viewed by both his wife’s family and extended family relatives, which exposed him to participating in collective forms of prayer such as zikr and wird (supplications) that he subsequently wanted to take part in. He therefore took the decision to take bayah with the pir of the group in 2010. Upon being asked how he had felt taking bayah, Asif said: ‘I was happy. I had something other than my wife’s family. A group of men that I could be friends with but also remember Allah … I felt supported and I felt safe.’

Similarly, Zaid took bayah with the Dawat-e-Islami [literal translation: Invitation to Islam] group, which has a mosque in Birmingham called Faizan-e-Madina. Dawat-e-Islami is a Sunni Islamic organisation based in Pakistan and founded in the 1980s.The group also has a satellite TV channel, called Madani Channel, which is viewed by Muslims in the United Kingdom and across Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Their teachings promote love of the Prophet Muhammad as the final prophet of Islam. They believe that the Prophet Muhammad can intercede for Muslims in the presence of God, as a result of which they emphasise the practice of Milaad, a celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. Gatherings at which zikr supplications are chanted, collective storytelling of multiple Prophets’ struggles and teachings, and lectures on Islamic law are offered. Usually the group records these (often live) and streams them on its TV channel. My interlocutor, Zaid, a 36-year-old migrant husband who worked in a local supermarket after arriving in the United Kingdom in 2014, told me:

When asked to elaborate on shared values and beliefs, Zaid told me that these included a common understanding that men were breadwinners and providers for their families. He also told me, however, that many of his peers acknowledged that times had moved on, and that in the United Kingdom there is greater equality between the sexes, including women becoming employed. Notwithstanding this, Zaid and his peers believed that women were primary caregivers for children and ought to be good mothers and wives. Many of the sermons also referred to such gendered division of roles. Zaid’s interview indicates that the Sufi tradition he is affiliated with is patriarchal, which complements the male-centric structure of Sufi traditions that can pride themselves on the male lineage of shaykhs, which trace back to the Prophet Muhammad. I must add a caveat here; during my fieldwork I learnt that smaller circles and branches of women’s gatherings for each Sufi tradition also existed in Birmingham. The women’s gathering are less active, however, and are not as well known in comparison to the men’s branches. A key reason for this was that men’s branches were incorporated in the mosque’s structure and/or used the mosque or zawiya to host their weekly gatherings.

Zaid also explained that his affiliation with the Sufi group earnt him respect (see also Redclift and Rajina 2017: 408; Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 130) among his wife’s family, as it was suggestive of his loyalty towards his wife.

His interview demonstrated to me that religiosity was a source of socio-cultural capital (Bourdieu 2011; Kalra 2009; Bi 2019) employed by migrant husbands in a strategic way to navigate the complex transnational social context they had become entangled in upon marriage migration. Spiritual masculinity became an alternative socio-religious currency, which competes with the social currencies demonstrated and exhibited by hegemonic masculinities, such as that of fathers-in-law, the pioneer generation of migrants, and that of the transnational patriarch. Through this socio-religious currency, some migrant husbands were able to gain a degree of transacting powers over their lives as migrant husbands, and, ultimately, their masculine identities.

Migrant husbands spoke fondly of the uniforms they wore as part of their Sufi tareeqas, as it helped them feel they belonged somewhere, especially as they often experienced negativity and bad treatment at the hands of their wives and in-laws and had limited support networks. The various forms of external markers that indicated affiliation with certain Sufi brotherhoods resonated with the making of the migrant husband in the home country, through altering external appearances by way of haircuts, apparel, sunglasses, and jewellery to resemble British-born Pakistani men. The experiencing of hardships upon marriage and migration meant that the techniques employed in becoming a migrant husband were no longer relevant in remaining a migrant husband.

Yassir told me:

The Sufi brotherhoods in Birmingham were a space in which migrant husbands could experience belonging, community, and oneness (see also Archer 2003: 49), outside the family units they had joined upon marriage migration, and in the country that they had long envisaged settling in. Haider explained that he had taken bayah with the Chishti group in Birmingham, who don orange scarves as their distinct uniform. The colour orange signifies south Asian and Indian heritage, as the Chishtiyya Sufi tradition is rooted there. Given that orange is the colour of the Sikh flag and is also incorporated in the Indian flag, one could consider this as being a reason for an Islamic group to not claim this as part of their identity-making practices. I believe this in itself indicates how strongly each Sufi group desires to differentiate itself from other groups within Birmingham, transacting a unique religio-social identity. It also indicates in some ways the continuation of the politics of the Indian subcontinent since Partition, in terms of the human, cultural, and religious geographies of the British Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora communities.

Haider told me:

Haider’s narrative indicates that he was experiencing a growing sense of peace and support, demonstrating to me the importance of these brotherhoods for self-esteem, positive mental health, belonging, and identity.

Shafiq told me about a holy man he had visited during a time of great distress in his marriage:

Shafiq attributed the progress in his marriage to the help provided to him by the holy man he had visited. Shafiq showed me an image of the talismans, which he continues to burn. He told me the holy man instructed him to light the talisman at the pointed tip, and to circulate it in anti-clockwise motions. Magnus Marsden (2005) also found the use of talismans being offered to patients by spiritual healers in Pashtun communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which indicates that such practices have long existed in the Pakistani community (see Figures 4.3 and 4.4).

Figure 4.3 Talismans. Photo © the author.

Figure 4.4 Inside a talisman. Photo © the author.

The unseen world was something that Shafiq went on to explain in more detail:

The importance of such external forms of intervention by shaykhs and pirs, including through talisman and supplications, was significant in the eyes of many migrant husbands I interviewed, as they told me that they believed that black magic had been performed on them. It was as a result of this black magic that they believed they experienced ill health, marital issues, and problems with their visas upon migration, and the support of shaykhs and pirs was an important way to help them break the black magic spells. They often believed that jealous relatives in their home countries who were unhappy that they had been lucky enough to marry a British girl who sponsored their visas to England had resorted to black magic. Sometimes these were relatives who had wanted the migrant husband’s wife to marry their own son and channelled frustration against the successful migrant through black magic rituals. Some migrant husbands felt that both their in-laws in England and relatives in Pakistan or Kashmir were performing black magic on them for various reasons, including long-standing familial disputes between the fathers-in-law or mothers-in-law on both sides, or jealousy over the shared wealth the migrant husband brought to his wife’s family. The imagery and stories of prophets, sufis, saints, and scholars played a key role in shaping a worldview that helped manage their pressing daily problems, and provided a roohani (spiritual) solution that transcended the helplessness that clung to many migrant husbands. In this way, then, visiting a holy man who claimed to possess unseen, otherworldly knowledge who could solve their problems was at times also an exercise of transacting their marital affairs, as well as reasserting masculinity. In other words, roohani taqat was employed to alleviate them from their disadvantaged, inferior, and vulnerable positions within this particular social matrix.

Collectively, these narratives not only provide insight into the importance of religious leaders and role models of both the past and present, to whom migrant husbands could either relate to in times of hardship or turn to for advice, but they also are indicative of the lack of state-led support systems for migrant husbands. Most migrant husbands referred to the absence of ‘official’ channels of support, whether through the National Health Service and hospitals, the police and social services, the courts,⁴ or solicitors. One of my interlocutors described an occasion when he was visiting his doctor and, while in the waiting room, he saw a poster relating to female victims of domestic violence. He told me that, although he understood the necessity of such posters, he felt there was a need for increased recognition of male victims of domestic violence (see also Hopkins 2006: 342). Certainly, in my own discussions with gate-keepers in the community when recruiting participants for both my undergraduate and doctorate research, I was struck by the number of people who simply laughed at the thought of migrant husbands, or men, experiencing domestic violence. When preparing a list of helpful organisations to provide to my migrant husband interlocutors so that they could access support, I found that there were only a handful of organisations and helplines that did exist to support male victims of domestic violence, and most were not equipped to deal with migrant husbands of south Asian heritage due to language barriers and resource constraints.

Practising sabr

By engaging with these religious resources, migrant husbands can be seen to be practising agency and sabr (see also Qureshi 2013), despite being suspended in time and space as a result of their liminal status. Agency and sabr are both distinct social phenomena, which I found to be interlinked. Whereas sabr is an Arabic term that translates to ‘patience’, it can be used colloquially to denote an existential engagement with suffering that has particular resonance for women, and be conceptualised both as an inner strength that is directed towards God and as a capacity that is granted by God (Qureshi 2013). Within British Pakistani and Kashmiri communities, it has traditionally been seen as a feminine capacity entangled with notions of self-sacrifice and silent suffering (Qureshi 2013; Wilson 2006). Sabr has also been described as a passive form of agency in situations such as the Partition of India, when patient acceptance and endurance were seen to be a form of agency (Das 1997). Women in Das’ (1997) study talked about how they ‘drank their pain’ so that it disappeared from the surface to the depths of their bodies. We therefore learn as to how agency can be manifested in how people move pain inside themselves, actively hiding and embodying it.

Perhaps the most notable work on sabr is that of Saba Mahmood (2005), who analyses moral practices of submission as a form of agency. Mahmood’s interlocutors, who were involved in the women’s mosque movement in Cairo, urged her to consider suffering in bad marriages as a trial in which they actively practised sabr. Mahmood argues that, by exercising sabr, the women in the mosque movement were exercising agency. She stresses that this agency is inherently rooted in the Islamic doctrine that gives them their rights, although it is the doctrine that is often (mis)understood to be subjugating them. The case of migrant husbands is then important in two ways. First, it challenges the notion that sabr is confined to the feminine domain; and, second, it challenges the notion of agency being rooted in the dynamics that subjugates migrant husbands. Put differently, the source of agency is constructed and exercised outside the remit of the transnational and uxorilocal household dynamic in Sufi-scapes, which have a unique dynamic that is different from that of the migrant husband’s resident household in the United Kingdom. Agency is then constructed outside the remit of the space within which the migrant husband’s oppression takes place, and is then brought into this space to alter his position in the household, and, ultimately, his masculinity.

Migrant husbands often spoke about making themselves mazboot (strong) in order to deal with their trials and tribulations. Their inner strength would be drawn from the remembrance of God, recalling the inspirational stories of prominent men in Islamic history who defeated their enemies and remained steadfast in their faith. Yassir told me:

Inner strength was a key strand of sabr, which was built over time, but, for some migrant husbands, inner strength had to be drawn on after they felt betrayed and hurt by those they trusted. For example, Yassir, who was married to his cousin, told me:

Migrant husbands described inner strength in different ways. Saleem, for instance, told me:

In this way, inner strength was drawn and built from practising Islam against the backdrop of Sufi-scapes in Birmingham, helping to strengthen the migrant husbands’ hearts through images of iron, ice, concrete, and stone, to prevent them from feeling pain. Sabr for the migrant husbands was thus a way to numb, mute, and silence the pain inside them, in order to be able to continue their day-to-day lives. Inner strength was a way to transcend the pain of the body, into a space where migrant husbands could address what was causing their pain. Mahmood’s (2005) contention that agency is rooted in that which subjugates is partially echoed here, and yet, to begin to address what was causing the pain, I found that migrant husbands first numbed that pain. Their employment of sabr is, therefore, not too dissimilar to the techniques Pakistani women employ in Qureshi’s study (2013), or to the ‘swallowing’, ‘embodying’, and ‘ingesting’ of pain described by Egyptian women in Mahmood’s (2001) work. The nature of suffering and the sabr deployed show that Pakistani and Kashmiri men and women may exercise sabr in similar ways, and that the gender divide is not as significant as we may think when it comes to these forms of resistance and agency.

This is further shown through the importance of suffering in silence. Although some migrant husbands found different mechanisms, such as taking bayah with religious brotherhoods in Birmingham, to reassert their masculinity, many initially started out suffering in silence for fear of being ridiculed. This fear stemmed from the social stigma perpetuated by the wife and/or her family, about ‘disloyal’ migrant husbands who abandon their wives after acquiring British citizenship. Silent suffering seemed to be the virtuous strand of sabr that migrant husbands practised (see also Qureshi 2013). At the same time, however, it demanded to be recognised at the very least in the religious realm through reward from God. Shafiq, the migrant husband who told me about using a talisman to ease his marital tensions, explained:

Here, Shafiq was employing his silent suffering in a strategic way in the hope that his wife would realise the qualities of her husband – loyal, patient, tolerant – and recognise the wrongdoing of her parents towards her husband. Shafiq’s silent suffering demanded to be heard, seen, and felt by those around him and went a long way in resolving his marital tensions, as his wife eventually moved out with him from her parents’ home, to a separate residence. Silent suffering was thus a way to suppress the pain one felt, but some migrant husbands seemed be able to control how much of the silent suffering came to the surface as a resource in and of itself, in order to influence those around them to treat them better. In this way, then, migrant husbands employed the notion of sabr and silent suffering to transact better treatment from their wives and in-laws, and reassert their masculinity. Such techniques helped build an alternative social currency in which they could perform their desired form of masculinity.

In addition to sabr and silent suffering, migrant husbands described their trials as zehar peena (drinking poison), or like swallowing a sip of hot milk, which indicated a significant use of the body to internalise, process, and store hardships (see also Mahmood 2001; Qureshi 2013). The effect of the poison would be debilitating and potentially life-threatening. The metaphor of swallowing hot milk – though less severe compared to drinking poison – connotes painful self-inflicted burns to the mouth and the throat. Such descriptions pave a way to considering not only what agency and sabr mean but their relationship to one another. Further, to voluntarily ingest poison and allow it to affect the body is, in the metaphorical sense, a choice the migrant husband is making, which would require superhuman sacrifice to overcome its effects on his mind and body. Embedded within this choice is the hope that things will get better. Sabr and agency are thus tied together intimately through the concept of umeed (hope) that things will get better. Expressing this sentiment in his own words, Faisal said: ‘Umeed kadhi vi na choro [Never leave hope].’

The hope that their situations will improve was, I found, tied to the aspirations and visions of what life as a transnational patriarch would entail. The act of sabr, then, through drawing inner strength, silent suffering, and images of drinking poison, was an attempt to mould circumstances to fit the social imaginary of the envisaged migrant life that some migrant husbands had carried as socially shaping narratives for many years. As a result, practising sabr led back to a reassertion of masculinity for migrant husbands, as it provided an alternative entry point into becoming a transnational patriarch, or transcending this masculine ideal completely. Gender was not immediately performable for migrant husbands, as is assumed in Butler’s (1990) work; rather, it requires labour to position oneself on the plane of gender performativity in order for the performativity to then begin.

Building support systems

Haider, who took bayah with the Chishti Sufi brotherhood led by Pir Saqib Shaami, shared with me how he had been able to make friends outside his family network. This was of particular importance to Haider, as he felt that most of his family network were supportive of his father-in-law due to his status in the community, and thus building a support system for himself independent of his father-in-law – or, as he called it, ‘his own people’ – was important to Haider. The Sufi brotherhood then became an integral part of Haider’s experience as a migrant husband.

For Akbar, building a community of his own required him to break through tough stereotypes about migrant husbands within the community.

Making friends within the religious arena was seen to be more acceptable by some migrant husbands’ families, endowing them with a socio-symbolic capital to overcome some of the stigmas attached to being a migrant husband. This echoes McDowell’s (2003: 225), Hopkins’ (2006: 340), and Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera’s (2008: 123) scholarship, in which the notion of domestic conformity is put forward. The direction that community-making practices may take among migrant husbands, and how these are interpreted by wives and in-laws, show how patriarchy operates on vulnerable men as well as women (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 127). The father-in-law serves as a male gate-keeper who sets the boundaries of what counts as permissible behaviour for those in his family network. The seeking of solace and advice from a strong religious male figure points, perhaps, to the entrenchment of patriarchy across different segments of the community. Some scholars and teachers within Sufi orders in Birmingham played a paternal and pastoral role in the lives of migrant husbands, who were not only missing their families in Pakistan but also experiencing vulnerable and unstable situations upon marriage migration. One of my interlocutors, Faisal, told me about visiting his pir for religious guidance and to acquire talismans for spiritual remedy. He elaborated on the role of his pir in particular:

Asif took bayah (spiritual affiliation) with Pir Siddiqi, and spoke about the way in which his spiritual affiliation paved a way for him to develop a support network at the mosque with other migrant husbands and second- and third-generation British Pakistanis. He explained that he felt more supported and was able to approach his network of co-spiritual affiliates with problems he was experiencing (see also Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 258–259). When I asked him if he could provide an example of a problem that he had approached his affiliates with, he told me about speaking to two affiliates regarding the mistreatment he was being subjected to by his wife.

Asif’s co-spiritual affiliates became a source of marital counselling, which reinforced ideas of masculinity entrenched in patriarchy and conservatism, as well as gendered notions of the home and marital relations. In this way, then, reasserting masculinity through the religious arena can involve being able to transact greater control over women. In other words, the reasserting of masculinity can at times involve an effort to (re)direct and (re)visit hegemonic forms of masculinity, in which men are superior to women. Thus, the resistance of migrant husbands can in some ways and in some cases be traced to undoing the changes in gender power dynamics brought on by transnationality.

As mentioned previously, religiosity can become a form of social-cultural capital (Bourdieu 2011) that migrant husbands can employ in a strategic way to reassert and recreate their masculinity. I was able to see this at work in a more nuanced way by interviewing and observing a spiritual healer, Hanif, who one of my interlocutors was actively seeking guidance from at the time I was conducting fieldwork. Hanif provided him with taweez (amulets) and wazifas (supplications) to perform in order to alleviate the marital tensions he was experiencing (see also Marsden 2005; Hoque 2019: 82). I learnt that Hanif himself was a migrant husband who had arrived in the United Kingdom in 1991 after marrying his cousin (father’s younger brother’s daughter).

Hanif shared the ways in which he navigated life as a migrant husband, leveraging his Islamic knowledge to create an alternative space in which he could reassert his masculinity. When Hanif first arrived in the United Kingdom he worked in various jobs, including as a butcher, as an assistant to his uncle, who had his own construction company, and as a taxi driver. Hanif had received an extensive Islamic education in Pakistan, including memorizing the Qur’an and Hadith, which he wished to retain. He told me his jobs would make it difficult to pray, but he had managed to find a balance while working with his uncle, since he allowed him to take prayer breaks. Due to Hanif’s religiosity in keeping up with his prayers and it widely being known that he was a hafiz (person who had memorised the Qur’an), family members, friends of his family, neighbours, and community members began to approach him for spiritual guidance for their problems. Over time he began to be seen as the local spiritual healer. Today, he told me, people with afflictions and problems visit him from cities as far north as Bradford and Glasgow, and as far south as London and Portsmouth, for solutions to their problems.

When asked about the different solutions he provides to his ‘patients’, Hanif told me:

There was a particular method that Hanif often employed in his healing sessions to understand the problem his patients were suffering.

I asked Hanif if I might be able to sit in on one of his spiritual healing sessions, and he agreed. I was given strict instructions to follow to ensure that I was not negatively affected by bad spirits through the removal of the black magic that patients were potentially afflicted with. These instructions included not to be menstruating, to wear clean clothing, and to perform wudu (ablution) before attending the healing session.

When I arrived at Hanif’s house, I stood outside his front door. A lady opened the door – his wife, I was later told – and she told me that I needed to enter the side door. I knocked on the side door of an extended section of the house, possibly what may have previously been a garage or driveway. A young boy opened the door for me, and I saw a man in the corner, sitting on a cushion, with prayer beads in his hands, who seemed to be engaged in reciting something to himself. He nodded to acknowledge my arrival and indicated that I should come in and take a seat on the right-hand side of the room. I removed my shoes near the door, and took a seat on a cushion on the floor. A healing session was currently in progress. A middle-aged woman, her two daughters, and her grandson were seated across on the left-hand side. The room was a small space, perhaps three metres in width and four or five metres in length. Islamic scriptures and motifs hung on the walls and straw woven mats carpeted the floor. Hanif was leaning against a wooden chest of draws, which I later saw him access for talismans and supplications. He had printed these in bulk to dispense to his patients during healing sessions.

The session I had been able to observe was focused on issuing spiritual healing for the better health of the middle-aged woman’s husband, who had suffered a stroke a few days previously. There seemed to be a hierarchy of medical healing in the Pakistani and Kashmiri community, who sought spiritual holy men to administer medical advice and healing in parallel to National Health Service (NHS) professionals. During the two hours spent in the healing session I also witnessed a migrant husband turn up, who came with his older brother to seek a remedy for his wife’s lack of love towards him. Hanif informed him that his wife had had a boyfriend prior to marrying him, and she continued relations with him after marriage. Hanif provided the migrant husband talismans to burn every day for a month, and a supplication to read every morning to break the relationship between the wife and her boyfriend. I also witnessed a woman who attended with her sister, who had been unable to conceive for five years. Hanif saw in the ink that there were a number of family members who had performed black magic on her so that she could not bear children to her husband, who was the only son and therefore inheritor of his father’s wealth and land. She was instructed to read a number of supplications at different times (between now and her next ovulation cycle and before intercourse with her husband), and to burn talismans for 14 days to break the asr (effect) of the black magic that had been performed on her.

Through these observations, it became apparent that Hanif had access to the most intimate arenas of his patients’ lives, and had space annexed to his home that was dedicated to these spiritual healing sessions. He was a trusted healer within the Pakistani and Kashmiri Muslim community in Birmingham, and the United Kingdom more widely. Between March 2018 and August 2018 I observed five spiritual healing sessions. I asked Hanif how being a spiritual healer impacted his life as a migrant husband. He told me that being a spiritual healer earnt him respect within the community (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 130), without which he felt that his treatment at the hands of his in-laws would have been worse. He described how his father-in-law was strict when he had first arrived in England, but, as people began to seek spiritual advice from him, his father-in-law changed his ways and became kinder. It was evident that Hanif’s spiritual healing abilities afforded him greater currency in transacting his life as a migrant husband in the United Kingdom.

This insight from Hanif, together with those from migrant husbands such as Zaid and Yassir, whose in-laws approved of the religious social space as an acceptable space which they could visit and participate in, demonstrates that religious participation in Sufi-scapes within Birmingham is a form of religious social capital employed by migrant husbands. For Hanif in particular, religion – or religiosity, as I better describe it, as it encompasses the degree of religious practice demonstrated – was associated with ‘positive’ characteristics, such as loyalty, that enabled him to build a network that depended on him, and within which he had a role. This dependence enabled him to administer his skills and expertise, which generate a continuous currency of respect and honour, within both the community and his family.

Performativity

In this chapter so far, I have focused on the activities of migrant husbands: their ability to draw on religion within the Sufi-scape of Birmingham as a resource to reassert masculinity. I have posited that the reassertion of masculinity involves creating alternative social currencies, which compete with the social currencies demonstrated and exhibited by hegemonic masculinities, such as that of the transnational patriarch. Through engaging with and recalling the stories of prophets, Sufi leaders and teachers, and saints, of both the past and present, migrant husbands are able to practise sabr, build support systems, and acquire religious social capital, which enable them to exercise agency in different ways (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008). In particular, I have demonstrated the micro-processes, which can be missed at first glance, of the ways migrant husbands navigate often vulnerable and unstable social circumstances. Migrant husbands have frequently found new ways to be migrant husbands, discovering avenues such as joining Sufi brotherhoods and visiting Muslim spiritual healers to gain transacting powers over their masculinity, (re)assert their masculinity, and in some cases even maintain their masculinity. Masculinity, then, for some migrant husbands, is worked and reworked in and through religious spaces such as that of the weekly Sufi gatherings, spiritual healing sessions, and solitary remembrance of Allah, and key prominent male figures in Islam who they weave into their (re)makings of their masculinity. As a result, prophetic or spiritual masculinity is a significant way in which migrant husbands can make sense of and navigate their situation in the United Kingdom, and thus, the past, present, and future become amalgamated and employed as a tool to exercise agency, to realise the ideal migrant husband experience of the ‘transnational patriarch’.

This chapter has presented evidence contrary to the conventional understandings that sabr (patience) is a feminine practice, that women are practitioners of silent suffering, and the broader assumption that men are lesser emotional beings (Montes 2013). I have demonstrated here, rather, that, at the nexus of migration, marriage, and masculinity, migrant husbands practise sabr, that they suffer in silence which can in turn be strategically and creatively cultivated to achieve a desired outcome in the assertion of masculinity, and that migrant husbands express a range of emotion. I have also demonstrated that agency for migrant husbands is not rooted in that which subjugates them (Mahmood 2005) but, instead, is rooted first and foremost in themselves through the delicate control and conceptualisation of their bodies, particularly in relation to emotional pain (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 127). This chapter also challenges assumptions that migration is a single action rather than a process. Rather, migrants can have changing motivations and altered circumstances that require modified decision-making (de Haas 2011). As a result, migrant husbands are seen to seek out creative approaches in their aspirations to become respected men and husbands, which is embodied by the ‘transnational patriarchal’ ideal.

The life histories of migrant husbands also point to new possibilities and innovative routes for ‘escape’ from certain subjectivities, but they ought not be over-romanticised (see also Constable 2003: 176), as these routes of escape can play out within hegemonic masculinity and patriarchal discourses. We learn that migrant husbands are creatively manoeuvring across transnational terrains in order to realise, reclaim, and retransact a ‘respectable’ marital, migrant, and masculine status, and in doing so point to migrant husbands being able to exercise agency. Some cases, however, are punctuated with a tendency to gravitate towards acquiring ‘respectable’ forms of marriage, migration, and masculinity that lean towards traditional forms of masculinity that resonate with patriarchy (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 130). Overall, the case of migrant husbands in the British Pakistani and Kashmiri communities demonstrates that transmigration can rupture traditional structures that uphold societal ideals of gender performances, and lead men to experience the heavy emotional costs (Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 127) of migration, which they navigate through diverse social tools, including some conventionally associated with femininity. The case of migrant husbands thus demonstrates that there is a plurality of masculinities and that silence, invisibility, and suffering can invoke traits such as patience and prayer in men, which they can use as tools to transact their own masculine identities. Butler’s (1990) work on performing gender is nuanced through this ethnography, as I show that labour is carried out to arrive at an ideal position from which an ideal gender can then be performed. Performing gender can be a gated phenomenon, the barbed wires of multiple power complexes preventing trespassing. In order to cross the gates into the land of opportunity that is performing gender, it is shown that migrant husbands turn to accruing socio-religious capital through membership of Sufi brotherhoods, which helps create spaces in which they can reorient and redefine the ways in which masculinity can be performed (see also Archer 2003).