Shahkaar Research Hub

Shahkaar Research Hub situates itself at the intersections between two genealogies of Muslim scholarship, aesthetic inquiry, and critical pedagogy, rooted in the tradition of Sufi Tariqat. This lineage establishes the transmission of knowledge through a Sacred Chain, enshrined in the spiritual tradition of Sufi Silsilas, directly traced to the Heart of the Prophet Muhammad pbuh. In the Sufi tradition knowledge is experientially attained through initiation, integrative vision and contemplative praxis. Located within the framework of Sufi Tariqat, SRH fosters an undifferentiated unitary field of intersubjective entanglement, enabling a critical pedagogy that envisions the quotidian within the Sacred. The term Shahkaar, derived from Persian, denotes the epitome of artistic mastery. It synthesises the concepts of ‘Shah’, symbolic of regal authority, and ‘kaar’ signifying creative labour, hence, denoting ‘the work of the sovereign’. Its usage is deeply embedded in the cultural vernacular of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Northern India.  Shahkaar Research Hub, situated within the tradition of Sufi Tariqat, bears witness to the omnipotence of Divinity by maintaining an epistemological position and an ontological perspective that accords profound significance to the Quran as the quintessential embodiment of Shahkaar. Located within the Sacred Tradition of Sufi Silsilas - Naqshbandiyya, Quadriyya, Chishtiyya, and Suhrawardiyya, SRH fosters interstitial perspectives, dialogical spaces, transdisciplinary aesthetics and alternative therapeutics. Through its work, SRH seeks to address epistimicide, complex, developmental, and intergenerational trauma and structural racism across zones of epistemic violence and systemic conflict. Interrogating the dissonance between the conception of an atemporal genealogy affirming Divinity and an archive built on contingencies unpacked in duration, SRH adopts a dialectical view of the cumulative human experience, foregrounding aesthetic inquiry as the reparative possibility in addressing Promethean disjunctures across opposing registers. This approach extends to multiple forms of expression, including literature, visual art, poetry, traditional craft, Sacred music, and devotional performance. To this end, SRH reconstructs social historiographies and intergenerational histories to re-examine the intersections between Sacred time, memory, coloniality and futurist aesthetics, enabling in its wake a reclamation of agency as the capacity to elicit the appropriate questions and the requisite actions in building a compassionate albeit conflicting view of an intersubjective world. Durrani and Nadeem Mohiuddin Ahmed established the Shahkaar Research Hub, where Durrani implements a transdisciplinary methodology, drawing from her experience as an artist, artisan, and jewellery maker nurtured by mentors in contemporary art and craft such as Ted Ramsay, Al Weber, David Watkins and Hiroko Pijanawski and with a lifetime apprenticeship under her mother, fashion designer, textile artist, pioneer and entrepreneur, Tahira Arshad, honing her proficiency in North Indian traditional embroidery. Durrani draws on her spiritual initiation in the four Sufi Orders since 1989 and her emancipatory praxis as a decolonial thinker, informed by her resistance to epistemic violence. Durrani’s dissenting political ontology is shaped by her experiences as a Muslim researcher at the Australian Academy and her role in academic and higher executive positions in Pakistan’s public and corporate sectors in higher education. Durrani asserts her intellectual autonomy as an anarchist scholar-activist with a neo-marxist, decolonial perspective. In contrast, Ahmed's contributions stem from his diverse expertise in the fields of Banking, Finance and Research. Ahmed holds a Masters in Research Studies - Pathway to PhD from Western Sydney University. His research focuses on The Adverse Effects of Aggressive Selling of Financial Products. Ahmed holds a Masters in Economics from the University of Karachi and an MBA in Marketing from Preston University. Ahmed’s creative inputs extend to his extensive knowledge as a vocalist trained in the North Indian Classical Music tradition of the Rampur Gharana, concentrating on the genres of Ghazal, Semi-classical, and Thumri. SRH is rooted in the ancestral heritage of its founders, Durrani and Ahmed. Durrani's lineage can be traced to her grandfather, scholar and poet, Shams ul Ulema, Baleegh ul Mulk, Allama Tajwar Najibabadi. It continues through her father, Arshad Durrani, an accomplished thespian and playwright, and her mother, Tahira Arshad Durrani, a pioneering designer-entrepreneur,  who established Ideal Fashions Ltd in 1950, the first fashion House in Pakistan. Tahira Arshad’s design philosophy was informed by her deep affinity with traditional North Indian embroidery, Benarsi textiles and haute couture. Durrani's legacy intersects with Ahmed, her spouse and son of her Shaikh the revered Sufi Master Qibla Hazrat Faqir Naaseruddin Ahmed RA. Qibla Hazrat Naaseruddin Ahmed (1924-1992) was born into a life of privilege. He was the grandson of Khan Sahab (title conferred by the British Empire) Moulvi Muhammad Hayat, intellectual and politician, and Sir Moulvi Rafiuddin, Barrister-at-Law, tutor to Queen Victoria and Her Majesty's special envoy to the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Sir Moulvi Rafiuddin served as the Minister of Education in the Bombay Presidency till 1934 during the British Raj. The two brothers belonged to an eminent literary family of Poona that traces its descent to Hazrat Abu Ayub Ansari RA the companion of the Prophet Muhammad pbuh. Shahkaar Research Hub embodies an enduring intellectual legacy that upholds the principles of social equity, cultural heterogeneity, interdisciplinarity and interfaith dialogue, drawing upon the intersections of Muslim and Western scholarship. This trajectory traces its origins to the migration of Prophet Muhammad pbuh to Medina and the subsequent dissemination of his message beyond the Arabian Peninsula through his companions including Hazrat Abu Ayub Ansari RA reaching the borders of Constantinople. It further extends to the Indian invasion led by Ahmed Shah Durrani at the behest of Shah Waliullah, and the subsequent centuries of the British Raj, to be renewed and affirmed in Durrani’s installations, performances, writings and works across three continents from 2012-2024. During this reflective, albeit forced retreat, Durrani navigates the entrenched structures of the Western canon and the White Cube and reformulates equitable terms of reference across the vast network of cultural bureaucracies, institutional hegemonies, repressive apparatuses and Metropolitan discourse that impinge upon her critical inquiry. The ‘body keeps the score’ of Durrani’s critical resistance to subalternization and ableist machinations, signalled by her prolonged illnesses, subjection to surgical interventions, and chronic pain extended over a decade. Undeterred Durrani reimagines the diasporic space, and advocates for equitable representation, amidst the rising discomfort of the Australian Academy surrounding Islam, its Sacred text, and her own identity as a Muslim artist, rejecting acquiescence to the compulsion of conforming to prescriptive categories of the obedient docile subject under a definitive settler colonialist gaze. Durrani unmasks what she perceives as fictions, resists the valorisation of religious Kitsch in contemporary art, and confronts the naturalisation of plagiarism as a hegemonic practice in tandem with a culture of complicity and capitalist gain that reverberates through the fissures in Metropolitan scholarship, ever-present in Durrani’s trajectory. As a consequence, Durrani faces formidable challenges in her pursuit to effect meaningful change.