To aid research on 'From Fatwas to Finance: An Ethnography of Shari'a Compliant Banking in Pakistan'

SOHAIB KHAN, then a graduate student at Columbia University, New York, New York, was awarded funding in October 2015 to aid research on 'From Fatwas to Finance: An Ethnography of Shari'a Compliant Banking in Pakistan,' supervised by Dr. Brinkey Messik. A textual and ethnographic study of Muftis (jurisconsults) and finance professionals in the service of Pakistan's Islamic banking industry. The dissertation examines the codification of Islamic law into 'Shari'a Compliance' and its ethical consequences for commercial exchange within overlapping jurisdictions of religious and financial institutions. It traces the creation of a Shari'a-compliant product through collaborative labors of textual translation and financial engineering between Muftis and finance professionals. In tying financial instruments with theological imperatives of their faith, both experts strike a compromise between constraints of textual authenticity and demands of market profitability. How do Muftis and finance professionals grant discursive coherence to their project of financial hybridization? Moreover, how does Shari'a Compliance subject Muslims to modern financial discipline? Connecting discursive shifts in Shari'a interpretation with movements of religious texts/subjects from the Madrasa to the business corporation, the dissertation produces an ethnographic account of the Mufti's ethical transformation from a docile subject willfully submitting to the norms of tradition to a pragmatic calculating agent valued as human capital. Fieldwork was conducted at Jami'a Ashrafiyya and Meezan Bank Ltd. The research methodology combined literary-critical approaches to the study of textuality with empirical methods of network analysis in Actor Network Theory.