Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy: Caste, Labor, and Islam in India written by P.C. Saidalavi

What is it about?

The review of the book titled "Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy: Caste, Labor, and Islam in India" examines how hierarchy, piety, caste, and labor intersect in the everyday lives of Muslims in Malabar, Kerala. Saidalavi's extensive ethnographic research among Muslim barbers contests the notion that Islam's egalitarian principles eliminate social inequality. Instead, he shows how Muslim social life is organized through multiple values, especially piety (taqwa), lineage, and wealth, which together shape status and belonging. While piety is upheld as the divine criterion of distinction, inherited occupations and family background continue to structure social relations. The book highlights how barbers mobilize Islamic ethics and prophetic traditions to contest marginalization, not by rejecting hierarchy itself, but by advocating an “egalitarian hierarchy” grounded in moral virtue rather than birth. By foregrounding values as “conceptions of the desirable,” Saidalavi demonstrates the elasticity of hierarchy and offers a nuanced account of how religious ideals, social practices, and power relations are continually negotiated in Muslim everyday life.

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Photo by Abhidev Vaishnav on Unsplash

Photo by Abhidev Vaishnav on Unsplash