This book is a study of what it means to live a Muslim life in the Chitral region of northern Pakistan – a large Muslim populated area in one of the most turbulent regions of the Muslim world, yet virtually unknown in academic and popular literature. My fieldwork was conducted approximately fifty miles from the Afghan border, thirty miles from refugee camps where hundreds of Afghans lived during and after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a twelve-hour drive from madrasas (Islamic seminaries) and paramilitary training camps that are now widely known to have been connected with the emergence of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. The book's focus is on two localities in Chitral, a village and a small town. Its chief concern is with the commitment shown by many Chitral Muslims to the living of intellectually vibrant and emotionally significant lives in the region. By documenting this critical dimension of their everyday lives it seeks to illuminate aspects of Muslim life both within and beyond South Asia that are not fully accounted for in the otherwise sophisticated body of anthropological work on Islam and Muslim societies. Chitral people value verbal skill and emotional refinement to a very high degree. They are also people who think, react and question when they are called upon to change their ways or conform to new standards of spirituality and behaviour.