The Social Life of Islam addresses these questions through an ethnography of Sufi shrines in Pakistan’s second largest metropolitan center, Lahore. It argues that Sufi shrines’ position as a vital hub of metropolitan public life is critical to their capacity to serve as a conduit for Islam. Connecting urban studies with the study of religion, this book explores the minutiae of social interactions in everyday life that constitute Sufi shrines as a key social, political and religious space for the mediation, contestation and reproduction of social relations in the city and for producing a distinct embodiment of Islam. (Religion & Societies)