Jul 8, 2018
Malamati piety inevitably leads to behaviour censured by the norms and prescriptions of the legal discourse. Acting against legal norms serves a deeply Islamic purpose for qalandars. Qalandars openly display disregard for prescribed ritual worship, violate public norms of decency by adopting minimal clothing or wearing black woolen cloaks (signifying social withdrawal), and use hashish religiously. As an active rejection of established social customs and norms, qalandars seek the effacement of the individual or self, which forms the constitutive unit of modern society.
Hammad Khan, 'Hashish, Sufism and modernity', Dawn