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I'm searching the magazine rack of my campus bookstore, looking for the latest issue of Vanity Fair. I scan the shelves, overwhelmed by the vast number of magazines - displaying skinny models, beefy men and virginal brides. I am still unable to find Vanity Fair, so I ask a bookstore employee who disappears into the back, and returns with a stack of November 1997 issues. On the cover, Bill Clinton and Al Gore sit beneath the special issue title: The 65 Most Powerful People in the World. I flip through the pages, and sandwiched between Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama and Queen Elizabeth, I find His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV. In the photograph, a distinguished man with graying hair is pictured clutching a globe, and described as the leader of an international community of Ismaili Muslims. The caption explains that the photograph was taken at Aga Khan IV's residence in France.
When I show my mother the magazine she remarks that Hazar Imam (leader of the time), as we Ismailis call him, is looking old - probably from all the work he does on behalf of his followers. It has been forty years since he inherited the leadership of the Ismaili community from his grandfather, the late Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah, who was known as Aga Khan III. When his grandfather died, Prince Karim was not yet twenty-one. He was a handsome Harvard student, who took a year-long leave of absence to visit his followers around the world, before finishing his honors degree in Islamic History. The son of Prince Alykhan and Princess Joan, Karim was born in Switzerland in 1936, received his early education at Le Rosey private school, and represented Iran in the Winter Olympics as a downhill skier.1
I turn again to the magazine, and look closely at his image. This is a face that has been familiar to me for my whole life. It is true that he has aged much over the last few years, and I have watched his hair grow more gray, his hairline recede, and wrinkles settle in around his smile. Growing up in an Ismaili household, we had photographs of Hazar Imam in almost every room of our house. Some were portraits of him alone, and others included his then-wife and former model, Begum Salima, and their three children Princess Zahra, Prince Rahim and Prince Hussein. The majority of these photographs were in frames, but there were also fridge magnets and stickers for car dashboards. Raised in Calgary, Canada I went to jamatkhana (mosque) every Friday evening for services. I would often sit and stare at the huge portraits of Hazar Imam that were displayed on the walls. I used to fixate on these photographs, and sometimes I felt that they came to life. I would look at a photograph, look away quickly, and look back to see if his posture had changed. At times I was sure I could see a smile spreading across his face, or that his eyes had moved position. Of course these were the games of a child's imagination, but I never forgot the importance of Aga Khan IV to the religious identity of my community.
When I was in Kenya last summer - going back to my birth place to study the Ismaili Muslim community - I was again struck by the importance of the Imam's (leader) image. Due to reforms in the late 1980s, the majority of photographs of Aga Khan IV had been removed from Ismaili jamatkhanas, leaving only two remaining in each prayer hall - one on each side wall. In Kenya, I noticed that all the Ismaili-owned businesses had a photograph of the Imam mounted above the cash desk, usually next to the photograph of Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, which by law had to be displayed in every business and public building in the nation. In the public sphere, Ismailis display their identity through photographs of Aga Khan IV, and most Kenyans are able to link his image with the Ismaili community, and the Aga Khan schools and hospitals throughout East Africa.
Like many other Ismailis, my mother owns a small business in Calgary, and she also has a photograph of Hazar Imam on the wall behind her cash desk. In North America, few people recognize him. This makes me wonder why a mainstream American publication like Vanity Fair would choose Aga Khan IV as one of the most powerful people in the world. This is especially odd since he is described as the leader of "a diaspora of 15 million Shia Ismaili Muslims in 25 countries", a Muslim sect with which no one in the United States seems to be familiar.2 Perhaps it is because Aga Khan IV is both a strict Muslim who does not drink nor gamble, and one of the wealthiest businesspeople in the world.3 Or because he is a religious leader, but also the son of a European playboy, the late Prince Alykhan (who married Rita Hayworth). These seeming contradictions have intrigued me for many years, and have added to the popular mystique that surrounds this family. Aga Khan IV has a hybrid identity which incorporates a Muslim upbringing, an American education and a European lifestyle. His Persian grandfather, Aga Khan III, was born in what is now Pakistan, and moved to France as a youth, where he gained the respect of European aristocracy including the close friendship of Queen Victoria. The social position of the Aga Khans has had a significant impact on their ideas about modernity, religion and progress, and these views have been introduced to their followers, the vast majority of whom live in Central and South Asia.
Going back to the article, I was also struck by the use of the word "diaspora" by Vanity Fair, a sexy term which seems to have reached the trendy mainstream press from the academic world. While I doubt that the editors analyzed and interrogated the term as much as I do in this thesis, their use does point to the transnational scope of the Ismaili community. Having said that, the magazine's use of the term, to describe the physical migrations of Ismailis from their "homelands" to new lands, is deceptively simple. I know this because I made a similar assumption when I went into the field. I began my work in Nairobi with the idea that as an Asian group in East Africa, the Ismailis were part of the Indian "diaspora" in the traditional sense, and that they had a "homeland" towards which they held some nostalgic longing or secret wish to return. I quickly found this understanding of diaspora to be inaccurate and simplistic, and much of this thesis is concerned with re-thinking the notion of diaspora based on my fieldwork. Can diasporas be formed around multiracial religious communities? Can there be a "homeland" for the Ismailis? How can Aga Khan IV, who lives in France where there are few Ismailis, guide and control the community so closely? How does the Ismaili case reconfigure "diaspora" when the most important religious decisions affecting my informants in Nairobi are made in France.
This thesis traces Ismaili identities and identifications, Islamization reforms of the last few decades instituted by the Imams, and how these both affect the construction of global Ismailism in the age of globalization. The Khojah Ismailis are an Asian migrant group from the state of Gujarat in India, and have been settling in East Africa in large numbers since the late nineteenth century. As members of a minority group which has undergone further dispersal since the move to Africa, the Ismailis have an international community with large pockets of twice migrants in North America and Europe.4 They are known as Khojahs because of their conversion from Hinduism several centuries ago. Besides the Khojahs of South Asia, there are other people who follow the Ismaili branch of Islam, and they are concentrated in Central Asia and the Middle East. In this thesis, I use the Ismailis to disrupt dominant notions of diaspora and nation, and to highlight their fluid and ever-changing identities as a result of continuous social and religious reforms, especially the current movement towards a stronger Islamic orientation.
Insider/Outsider, "Halfie" and Ismaili Secrecy
I had imagined that going to Kenya to do research would be a homecoming - after twenty-one years I was excited to see Nairobi, the city where I was born. I was coming "home" to East Africa, where my family had lived for several generations after migrating from Gujarat. My parents had told me to expect the worst - to be ready for poverty, corruption and filth. When I arrived in the airport after a long flight from London, I was surprised to find a somewhat run-down, but fairly modern airport. After a long wait for my luggage, I tried to take the green-light path through customs. I was pulled out of this line and questioned. The woman asked about the purpose of my trip, and I explained that I was there to visit my aunt. She asked if this was my first trip to Kenya, and I told her that I was born in Nairobi, but had left when I was ten months old. She gave back my passport and with a big smile said "Welcome back." I was glad to have avoided a potential skirmish at customs (for bringing gifts for my relatives) and I entered the lounge and saw Rozy Auntie and Riyaz Uncle. We drove back in a shiny, white Nissan, and I remember looking at the blue sky and thinking that it looked the same as the sky in New Mexico, Greece and Costa Rica. That was always the one thing that stayed the same - no matter how unfamiliar and foreign the place I was visiting. After a bumpy ride through the center of town and then the suburb of Parklands, we drove through a gate which was opened by an askari (guard) and entered the compound where my family lived.
Although my family stayed in Parklands, a middle-class neighborhood with a high concentration of Asians, Ismailis lived in many communities all over the city of Nairobi and its suburbs. As a minority group, they did not have a defined ghetto or an exclusive residential location, though there were many Ismaili-only housing projects in several locations. This lack of a defined geographical space made it difficult to study the Ismailis because the parameters of the community were not pre-determined nor delineated by physical borders. While no physical community is ever distinct or isolated, studying a village in Papua New Guinea or Chinatown in New York City is easier because there is a clear relationship between culture and territory.
I was in Kenya during the summer before the 1997 national election. Due to rising political tension, which was often directed against the middle-class Asian minority, and being a foreigner who did not speak Swahili, I was unable to travel by public transportation or to walk safely on the streets of Parklands during the day. Much of my research consisted of interviews that took place in my informants' homes, so each household provided a different setting and experience. There is no single site I can describe - there are many distinct ones. The only place where I spent a significant amount of time was in the center of Nairobi, a dangerous area to be in if you are Asian because you are visible and easily targeted. In town I was usually at Khojah Mosque, an imposing building which houses the largest Ismaili prayer hall in the city. The mosque was built in the 1920s and is a three-story, dirty sandstone building that looks out-of-place among the dilapidated, modern architecture in the area. I came to Khojah Mosque to do research in the archives, and conduct interviews with Ismaili leaders and social scientists. The inside of the mosque has a covered courtyard and is tranquil and safe. But what I remember most clearly is standing outside the front door, next to the askari, waiting for my ride home.
These were very uncomfortable moments - I would be standing rigidly against the outside wall, having hidden my watch, rings and money in my shoulder bag which I clutched tightly in front of me. What I remember most was the way people would look at me, look directly into my eyes as they walked by. And it would not be a smile or a happy expression I would see, but a look of contempt, hatred or resentment. In Kenya, the Asians were the ones with economic power, and although elite Africans did have some economic and much political power, the majority of them were exceedingly poor. These people that walked by me wore business clothes, but looked nothing like the high-power office workers of San Francisco. Their clothes were old and ragged, and I know they looked at me, and formed an opinion of who I was (as I did of them).
I felt very unsafe because of the sheer numbers of people passing by - so many that they spilled off the sidewalk onto the streets, continuing to move in a hurried manner. I saw people in work clothes, old ladies carrying produce in bags hanging from their foreheads, and young children begging and stealing. And they were all African - I rarely saw an Asian or European as they would never walk on the street for fear of being attacked. Battered cars bumped along the pothole-filled streets, not stopping for pedestrians. The road was dirty, strewn with litter - paper, fruit, wrappers and glass. And there was a distinct odor in downtown Nairobi - of rotting - not something specific that I can name, but I had a general awareness that something did not smell right, that something was wrong is this city which had once been the jewel of the British colonies in Africa.
I would stand against the mosque, clutching my bag tightly to my chest, looking down to avoid angry glares, and feeling guilty about our history in this country which my ancestors had helped to colonize and pacify. I would look for my uncle's driver, and feel a sense of relief as he drove up and I darted into the car. Looking up as I closed the door, I would see a soiled child with an outstretched hand. The driver would shoo the beggar away and we would proceed into the noisy, chaotic traffic.
Growing up as a multiple minority in North America was, at times, complicated. While I have always felt reasonably comfortable in Canada, I was often frustrated by the need to explain and translate myself. Most of the people I met expected me to be a Hindu Indian who speaks Hindi. I was forever having to provide a narrative about my ancestors coming from India to East Africa to Canada, and explaining that I was Muslim but also a minority within Islam. I suppose I looked to Kenya as a place where I might not have to explain - where people knew about Ismailism, Aga Khan IV and what a jamatkhana was.
My stay in Kenya was eye-opening. It was an important time for me to learn more about where my family and community had come from. I was better able to understand my parents, especially their ideas about race, class and success. Understanding the situation of Ismailis in Kenya gave me further insight on the Ismaili community I had grown up with in Calgary. Much of the present had been shaped by the past, and in Kenya I was able to make these connections across continents. I had expected Kenya to be a place of emotional connection, and when the woman at customs had said "Welcome back," I thought that maybe as an Asian I could belong here. The rest of my trip would convince me otherwise. I was finally able to see why there was so little interaction between Asians and Africans. So much mistrust had been built up, that even those people willing to work between and across communities would face a monumental task. In Kenya, not only did I feel foreign, but this was compounded by a feeling of dislocation. My family had been in East Africa for five generations, and this made the feeling of not-belonging all the more painful.
Although the Ismailis are a transnational community, they cannot be assumed to be homogenous. The Ismailis are transnational because the structure and lived reality of their communities exists within and across national boundaries and imaginaries. While there are significant connections between Ismailis in different physical locations, these links are neither rigid nor uniform. There are differences between Ismaili communities based on differences in local cultural, economic and political milieus, both between nations and within them. This reality poses interesting problems for a researcher in a community which is increasingly interested in standardizing religious and cultural practice worldwide. In Kenya I often felt compelled to conform to local standards of religious practice and faith, which many of my informants assumed to be my standards as well. In addition my position within the Ismaili community in Calgary, where I grew up, is itself tenuous because of personal beliefs which are not congruent with those of my family and community. This tension was further exacerbated by going to Kenya where in some ways the people I interacted with were more strongly linked to the Ismaili community and to its norms of behavior and belief, than the Ismailis in Calgary.
Studying my "own" community was a difficult, revealing, and often painful process. In addition to the already difficult task of adjusting to a new environment, which is necessary for anthropological field research, there are other issues which made my study of the Ismaili Muslim community in Kenya very complicated on an academic as well as personal level. Lila Abu-Lughod (1991) describes this insider/outsider position as "halfie," and while this is useful in expressing a sentiment of divided loyalties and beliefs, it does not fully express my complex and contradictory feelings while conducting fieldwork in Nairobi.5 Further, it reinforces the idea that cultures are static and separate, and overlooks the fluidity and blurring of cultural boundaries.6
"Halfie" suggests a pull between two cultures, and implies that these cultures are in themselves distinct or separate. This is problematic when applied to the Ismaili culture which encompasses Hindu, Muslim, Western, African and colonial elements. Cultures cannot be thought of as "pure" or "authentic," especially in light of the modern powers of media, commerce, colonialism and travel in (often hegemonic) cultural interaction and pollination. The other "half" culture which I would be assumed to be a part of, namely Canadian/Western, cannot be marked as distinct from the Ismaili culture because of how Western ideas have had an impact on the community, especially during British colonialism in East Africa. These influences can be seen in the social reforms of the last two Imams, immigration and friend/kin relations with those that have left East Africa, and via the Western-dominated media.
As a "native" anthropologist, I am expected to be "authentic," and act as a voice of truth for the Ismailis (cf. Narayan 1993; Appadurai 1988). The drawbacks of "insider" status are balanced out by significant benefits which I was privy to. The Ismailis are very private - some would say secretive - for historical and cultural reasons. By the tenth century, Ismailis had established the powerful Fatimid Caliphate which ruled the Islamic world for two centuries. They established the city of Cairo, where they built Al-Azhar, the world's first university. In the following century, there was an internal conflict which speeded up the dissolution of the Caliphate. A split was created over the succession of Imams, and the Nizari branch is the one which is now known as Ismailism. By the eleventh century, Ismailis were the only branch of Islam that believed in a living and present leader. For this, they have been faced with centuries of criticism and persecution for their beliefs:
This led to secrecy among Ismaili communities in Persia - an attitude which was inherited by Hindu converts in Gujarat, who were themselves minorities within the Indo-Muslim minority and in the larger context of a Hindu majority. Unlike other Muslim communities, Ismailis do not allow non-Ismailis to attend jamatkhana during prayer services. Because of their unique religious practices, which do not conform to Islam as it exists in the Middle East, Ismailism is often criticized for containing significant Hindu elements which have perpetuated since conversion (Salvadori 1989:233-4). This historical legacy makes an open prayer hall less desirable and safe for Ismailis. Given this context, I respect Ismaili wishes for privacy without sacrificing intellectual integrity.
I believe that secrecy is also maintained to prevent criticism from other Muslims. This sentiment extends past the jamatkhana to the entire Ismaili secular and religious structure. Several Ismaili scholars and community leaders would only speak to me on condition of anonymity, which helps to explain the dearth of research on Ismaili ritual, belief and practice. Some people that have done previous research on the Ismailis have been met with resistance, especially those interested in cultural issues. One scholar who studied the Ismailis in Kenya explained that the "highest echelons confirm the sect's reputation for exclusiveness and secrecy" and that the leaders "refuse[d] to open any door" to her (Salvadori 1989: 226). Another scholar, Paul Kaiser, who studied the transnational Aga Khan social service initiatives explains:
In fact, the handful of scholars that have written critically on the Khojah Ismaili community from a cultural perspective are Ismailis themselves, since they have access that is not available to non-Ismailis. Membership to a society provides access, which is difficult for social scientists to gain with any community - particularly for one so closed. As an Ismaili myself I believe that I had much more access to my informants than either Salvadori or Kaiser. Honest and insightful responses from my informants have been crucial in shaping this thesis and the ideas I present. While the term "halfie" is important in pointing to the specific issues surrounding research on a culture which one is somehow personally connected to, Abu-Lughod's initial insight must be extended to account for the complexity of belonging/not belonging, and to be sensitive to the different instances and ways in which one is an insider/outsider.
Field Methods
My mother lived in Nairobi from the mid 1960s to mid 1970s. One of the first things my informants did was ask me who my parents and grandparents were so they could "place" me within the Ismaili community. In this patrilineal society, they would ask me who my father was, and I would give them the name, but most people did not know him since his family was from Tanzania. Many of my informants, however, knew my Nanima (maternal grandmother) and aunts, and must have formed some opinions about me based on where I fit into the Ismaili social, economic and status hierarchies. Because the East African Ismaili community is so small, there are clear interconnections, and it is easy to situate people within a web of relations. This serves both to foster familiarity, as well as to ascertain what kind of person someone is.
There is no "objective" anthropology. All knowledge is positioned and all perspectives are partial (cf. Clifford 1986; Rosaldo 1989), and so it is important to read this thesis with knowledge of my subjectivity and location. Since my mother's family was prominent in Kenya, especially my maternal great grandfather who was one of the pioneers from Gujarat, I was assumed to be of a certain class status. This may have opened doors with upper class informants, but could also have been detrimental when I spoke to middle and lower class people. Since this was several generations back it is also possible that it did not make a difference. However, I was introduced to most of my informants through Riyaz Uncle (my mother's youngest sister's husband), who had many leadership roles in the community, and again this relationship may have affected how candid and open people were with me. All of these factors including my class, kin network, education, gender and citizenship may have distanced me from my informants, and must have had an effect not only on what people told me, but what I was able to see (Narayan 1993: 677).
The politics of space is frequently an important issue for minority and immigrant groups, which often craft and claim spaces in their new environments. "Immersion" in the Ismaili culture is impossible because it is mediated through their position within the city of Nairobi and involves relations with other Asians as well as Africans and Europeans. Many accounts of minority groups tend to focus around the ghetto or neighborhood as a site of minority culture, and emphasize residential segregation and concentration in inner cities (Bhachu 1985: 8). While Ismailis are clustered in certain areas of the city, what seems to be a more important site of the community is the jamatkhana, which serves the purpose of a place of worship as well as a venue for social and cultural activities and interaction. In light of this, it was difficult for me to follow the paradigm of anthropological research where one is physically immersed in a new community. Rather, my interactions with Ismailis were largely through formal interviews or informal interactions at jamatkhana after prayers.
Since the jamatkhana is the most significant place where the community comes together, it becomes the site where wealth and status are displayed - people wear their best clothes and drive their most expensive cars to establish their status. Even which jamatkhana you attend in Nairobi affects your standing within the community because it often reflects the part of the city in which you live, or where you place yourself in the community hierarchy. Several informants compared Friday night services to a fashion show, with the queue to perform certain rituals likened to a fashion show catwalk. The jamatkhana I attended was the most wealthy in Nairobi and was jokingly referred to as "Khanevore" (a word-play on Nairobi's most popular nightclub Carnivore). The strong emphasis on appearance as an index of class standing is something taken very seriously by the Ismailis. The situation in Nairobi was very similar to the one I grew up with in Calgary - where the jamatkhana was a place of status performance. I assume it is similar in most Khojah congregations.
I interviewed twenty Ismailis in Nairobi and limited my research to families that had been in East Africa for several generations. All my informants have been identified by first name pseudonyms, and all identifying features have been changed or omitted. I tried to interview two members from each family, but this proved difficult. I attempted to conduct all my interviews in private, and was successful in most cases. The interviews took place in my informants' homes, and roughly followed a set of questions I wanted to ask. I had initially planned to take life histories in open-ended interviews, but I found that my informants became impatient with this strategy as they did not know what I wanted to know about specifically. Since my time and movement in Nairobi was limited, I decided to be more structured. I ended up speaking to members of eleven families, and was interested in analyzing the differences in identities between generations. I began each interview by asking the age of my informant, and categorized them as young (under 25), middle age (40-60) and elderly (over 60).
I made strong efforts to speak to people from a broad range of socioeconomic classes and was able to interview wealthy, middle class, working class and poor Ismaili families. Since I met most of my informants in their homes, I was able to determine their class status - in most cases it was very clear. My uncle, who introduced me to many of these people, was also able to provide additional information. I defined my informants as lower class (unemployed, service jobs, manual labor), middle class (professionals, small business owners, office workers) and upper class (large business owners, family money, transnational business). The broad class range provided interesting insights on intra-Ismaili dynamics and helped to explain some of the class differences I had observed more generally within the East African Ismaili community. I interviewed roughly equal numbers of men and women, but found young women fairly inaccessible. Many adults were unsure of what I was doing and usually suggested I interview their sons. Being a young man definitely made it difficult to gain access to young women. By chance, the majority of the people I spoke to had more sons than daughters. All but one of my informants were fluent in English. I am sure that my lack of proficiency in Kutchi influenced what people told me, and prevented me from interviewing certain people - especially those who were working class, elderly and uneducated.
Because of the short duration of my fieldwork, most of my contacts were procured through my uncle who helped me to locate people from a broad range of backgrounds. While there seemed to be diversity of class, gender and opinion, I did feel that my informants may have been selected from a pool of people who regularly attended the jamatkhana (daily or twice daily). I may not have accessed those Ismailis who come to jamatkhana irregularly or rarely, but I also feel that Ismailis in Nairobi in general came to jamatkhana much more often that Ismailis in the West. Further, in the short time that I was there, it would have been difficult to meet Ismailis who I did not meet at jamatkhana, as this was the major venue for socialization.
Certain Ismailis were not very willing to speak to me. Some of them were busy and must have decided they did not have time to spend talking to me. However, I feel that some informants were reserved for other reasons. I wonder if they felt that I had come from Canada to "study them," to use them in some way. Were they intimidated by my academic approach? When I told informants or possible informants that I wanted to ask them about Ismaili culture (which, in retrospect, may not have been the ideal approach) they tried to redirect me to local leaders, assuming I was interested in the official history of the community. I often had to explain to people that I was not interested in these "expert" opinions but wanted to know what "ordinary" people thought. It seems that some of my informants may have been unsure about their ability to speak authoritatively about Ismaili culture, for which they thought I was looking.
Due to the privacy that surrounds religious practice, some people may have been uncomfortable about speaking (even anonymously) with me, especially concerning the Islamic reforms and role of the Imams. As is often the case, Ismaili leaders answer such questions, which may explain why I was directed to them. There is also the possibility that they did not trust me to be confidential, or were concerned specifically about me revealing my thoughts to my relatives. For the most part, however, I felt that I was able to get some honest views and insight into the changes that have been occurring in the Kenyan Ismaili community. While certain informants were reserved or detached, the majority were very willing to speak to me, and as the discussion progressed, even to reveal certain things which would have been near impossible for an outsider (non-Ismaili) to access. Given this situation, there are certain issues which I do not discuss in this thesis, especially the details of prayer and worship in the jamatkhanas and the personal lives of the Aga Khans. I only discuss religious ceremonies to the extent that they have been written about by previous scholars. I use Cynthia Salvadori's discussion of Ismailis in her book, Through Open Doors, as my primary guide. Thesis Outline
This thesis is divided into six chapters. Chapter One is the introduction. Chapter Two gives a brief background on the Asian, and specifically Ismaili, migrations to East Africa. I provide a review of the recent literature on "diasporas". I also present the Ismailis as a case study to challenge the notion of a "homeland" as currently defined, and call for a move away from the teleology of origin/return, towards de-centering of the homeland, and its incorporation as one of the sites in a diaspora. In Chapter Three I show how Ismailis challenge the traditional notion of a diaspora, because of their tenuous connection to their "homeland" in South Asia. By analyzing the discourse surrounding recent immigrants from India and Pakistan, I reveal what East African Ismailis think of South Asia. Since the Ismailis do not identify as Indians, I talk about the multiple identifications they make as Ismailis, Asians, Kenyans and Muslims.
In Chapter Four I discuss the Islamization reforms of the last half-century, and focus on three specific changes. I posit that pressure from other Muslims, as well as the need to construct a global pan-Ismaili community to incorporate Khojah and non-Khojah Ismailis, has motivated a slow move towards the dominant practice of Islam. I argue that this reform movement is top-down, but also show grassroots conformity and resistance to changes. I emphasize the idea of modernity among my informants and how this both plays into and challenges dominant notions of Islam. I show how youth have taken the lead in moving towards Islam. I explore ideas about Ismaili exceptionalism, and attempt to link this Muslim revitalization movement to others around the world. In the fifth chapter I synthesize my research to think about global Ismailism, and I show how Ismailis, because of their lack of a homeland, leadership of the Imam, and the physical migration of some, have all been displaced. Here I present a theory of the Ismailis as a deterritorialized, multiracial, transnational community, and look at how the example of Ismailis can help us to re-think diaspora, nation and religion. The sixth and final chapter is the conclusion.