Breathing Hearts

Nasima Selim is a Postdoctoral Research Associate of Anthropology at the University of Bayreuth. Nasima's work intersects medical anthropology, global health, public anthropology, and anthropology of Islam across Western Europe and South Asia. She is a breathworker, educator, researcher, and writer.

“It is a significant contribution to the field of Sufi studies as it documents some movements, such as the Tümata-Berlin, that are largely unknown to academic audiences … one of its most remarkable aspects is that it provides an interesting evaluation of Murshida’s work in Western Europe today, an interesting and largely understudied area within Sufi studies.” • Marta Domínguez Díaz, University of St. Gallen“Breathing Hearts is a "thoroughly researched ethnography in which the author practices what she calls a ‘double apprenticeship’ in which she has acquired an impressive array of skills and knowledge in both anthropology and the practices of Sufism... Selim has produced a work that felicitiously embraces socio-cultural complexity, a task that meets the challenges of social description in turbulent times. Her text, which is derived from the aforementioned dual apprenticeship and features a skillfully produced mix of narrative and analysis, introduces some important concepts... —affective pedagogy, conditions of possibility, structural limitations, embodied religious practices, learning how to learn, and living social life otherwise... I also found the embodied emphasis on “breathing” to be particularly noteworthy—something that takes the reader beyond this ‘ism’ or that ‘ism’ in the latest analytical toolkit.” • Paul Stoller, West Chester University

• IllustrationPrefaceAcknowledgementsNote on Transliteration and TranslationAbbreviationsIntroduction: “A Sufi is Someone Who Breathes Well” The Ways of the Breathing HeartsChapter 1. The Unseen Neighbors and a Dual Apprentice: Silsila, or Drawing the Lines of Transmitting BreathChapter 2. “Why Do I Suffer and What Should I Do?” The Desire Lines of Sufi Breathing-BecomingChapter 3. Techniques of Transformation: Subtle-Material Bodies in Dhikr and other (Breathing) PracticesChapter 4. “There Must be Something Else” The In-between World of Healing Secular and Religious SufferingChapter 5. Participation in the Real: The Healing Power of Breath, Words, and ThingsChapter 6. “The Right-Wing Attacks Our Mosques and Our Muslim Brothers Do Not Consider Us to Be Real Muslims!” the (Anti-)Politics of Breathing HeartsConclusion: Lessons from the Breathing Wayfaring HeartsEpilogue: Sufi Breathing in the Pandemic Ruins of (Anti-Muslim) RacismGlossaryBibliographyIndex