Mystics, Spirits and Muslim Women: Worldliness of Spiritual Healing in Old Delhi Neighbourhood
Sociology of Islam August 14, 2026 DOI: 10.1163/22131418-bja10020 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Women in low-income settings of Old Delhi |
| Key findings | Argues that Islamic healing practices in Old Delhi intertwine medical theodicies, ritualized parchment inscriptions, and the spiritual healer's authority, constituting a 'worldliness of cure' for women. Proposes an eschatological mooring of healing that emphasizes immanent transcendence of the soul without prescriptive truths. |
Abstract
This paper is an ethnographic and a critical philosophical cosmology on the Islamic healing practices which is intertwined with medical theodicies, ritualization of healing practices and mystical authority of the spiritual healer. It also discloses the therapeutic modalities, generalized precariousness of the life, convalescence of soul and constituting temporal structure of experience in the anthropological sculpting of the worldliness of cure for women in low-income settings of Old Delhi. The rouhani ilaz is discursively described through poetics of bearing witness to the local moral world of ritualization of the parchment inscription, ‘gathering-motif’ of the spiritual healer’s hand, worldliness of touch and the conviviality of spiritual transcendence through the philosophical grammar of affliction. Furthermore, this paper describes the parchment inscription as bodily archive through metaphysical mystical-pad of divine remembrance and illuminating the living present with the retention(al) traces of the ethical intertwining with the Other. Importantly, this paper gives an eschatological mooring of the Islamic religious healing without the prescriptive and hypostatic truths, presences or meaning in the immanent transcendence of the soul.