Haunted by History, Grounded in Faith: Jinn Epistemologies and Decolonial Reimaginings in Ayesha Muzaffar’s The Bhabis of Lahore and Other Forbidden Tales of the City

Abstract

In Gothic studies, the supernatural has often been interpreted through Western psychological frameworks, marginalizing theological or mythic epistemologies. This paper argues that Ayesha Muzaffar’s The Bhabis of Lahore and Other Forbidden Tales of the City develops a decolonial Gothic rooted in Islamic cosmology, where haunting affirms the presence of nonhuman agents integral to the indigenous worldview rather than hinting towards repressed desires. Her short stories challenge the colonial ideals of enlightenment and rationality while offering an alternative worldview rooted in the indigenous episteme. Drawing on Walter Mignolo’s concept of epistemic delinking, Taylor’s theorization of re-enchantment, and Rebecca Duncan’s idea of decolonial Gothic, we perform close readings of selected stories that integrate Quranic jinn lore and oral narrative structures. The analysis reveals that Muzaffar redefines the Gothic as a communal negotiation with the unseen, challenging the privatized, symbolic hauntings of the Western canon. This reframing opens new possibilities for non-Western Gothic criticism, inviting readings that foreground the spiritual and the communal as vital sources of meaning beyond the secular boundaries of Western thought.