South Asia, the Middle East, and Muslim Transnationalism

The conclusion revisits the extent to which Pakistani Shi‘is have been increasingly drawn into the circuits of the Shi‘i international in the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. It argues that both Sunni and Shi‘i scholars have not been satisfied with merely being relegated to peripheral positions. Rather, Pakistani Muslim thinkers have been actively carving out spaces of influence for themselves. They continue to insist on the historical intellectual contributions of the Indian subcontinent and at times even claim hermeneutical hegemony for the region. The conclusion also takes a comparative look at India, where Shi‘i intellectual life was significantly less disrupted than in Pakistan. The conclusion calls for a new research paradigm that would take seriously the importance of bidirectional flows of thought between South Asia and the Middle East. Such a novel perspective has the potential to fundamentally reshape existing understandings of present-day phenomena such as Islamism.

Alternative Centers of Shiʿi Islam

The introduction discusses the fundamental transformations of Shi‘i thought and conceptions of religious authority that occurred in tandem with the expansion of Shi‘i religious education in colonial India and Pakistan throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. In particular, this section introduces the reader to the three key analytical lenses of the book, namely the evolving nature of sectarianism, the salience of transnational connections, and the creative potential of local religious authority when engaging with the Shi‘i scholarly tradition. The introduction adopts a model of “impetus” and “response” to elucidate the travel of ideas between the Middle East and South Asia, while also paying attention to their translation from Arabic and Persian into Urdu.

All-Indian Shiʿism, Colonial Modernity, And The Challenge Of Pakistan

This chapter explores the late colonial milieu with its opposing discourses of communalism and nationalism that left a deep impact on Shi‘i community formation. In the first half of the 20th century, India’s Shi‘is portrayed themselves as being on a higher spiritual level in contrast to the common (Sunni) Muslims. Yet, once the Muslim League (ML) adopted the creation of Pakistan as its goal, influential Shi‘i voices expressed deep and increasing skepticism toward the founding of a state that claimed to form an inclusive homeland for all Muslims of the subcontinent. This chapter further demonstrates the substantial links that connected South Asian Shi‘is to major events in the Middle East. Finally, the chapter shows that Lucknow’s religious scholars were far from secure in their leadership position of the Shi‘i community. The modernist-minded All India Shi‘a Conference (AISC) viewed these mujtahids as hopelessly out of touch with the challenges of the time and regarded the AISC as a more appropriate vehicle of communal leadership.

Longing for the State

This chapter studies the changing discourses of sectarianism since the 1970s. During this decade, anti-Shi‘i rhetoric was the prerogative of Ahl-i Hadis scholars with close ties to Saudi Arabia. The polemics of the famous agitator Ihsan Ilahi Zahir (d. 1987) were centered on doctrinal points. The chapter contends, however, that for the ‘ulama of Pakistan’s most virulent anti-Shi‘i group, the Sipah-i Sahabah-i Pakistan (Army of the Companions of the Prophet; SSP), the Iranian Revolution constituted a threatening attempt at world domination and subversion of the fundamentals of Islamic politics. Even though these Deobandi scholars—in the vein of Zahir—still highlighted doctrinal incompatibilities between “real” and Shi‘i Islam, the Shi‘is were now primarily framed as a political problem: they blocked Pakistan from being molded into its true form: namely, that of a Sunni state with aspirations to global leadership. In formulating their answer to Khomeini, these sectarian Sunni ‘ulama attempted to reclaim the caliphate as a divinely sanctioned office that strikingly resembled and transcended Iran’s model of government.

Khomeini’s Perplexed Pakistani Men

This chapter argues that during the early months and years after the Iranian Revolution, Pakistani Shi‘i ‘ulama remained primarily occupied with domestic events. Even ardent supporters of Khomeini were not sure what his authority should mean for them outside of Iran. Additionally, Pakistan’s Shi‘is at that time were engaged in their own political mobilization against the military dictator Zia ul-Haq (d. 1988). A second step in the reception can be discerned with the rise of the young cleric Sayyid ‘Arif Husayn al-Husayni (d. 1988) to the helm of Pakistan’s most influential Shi‘i organization at the time, the Movement for the Implementation of Ja‘fari Law (TNFJ), in 1984. Husayni clearly and consistently drew on the hallmark themes of the Iranian Revolution. In doing so, however, he was often forced to bend aspects of the revolutionary message, like Muslim unity or the leadership of the clerics (vilayat-i faqih), to his Pakistani context. The chapter also pays attention to the unprecedented embrace of Iranian ideas that is anchored in contemporary Lahore.

Theology, Sectarianism, and the Limits of Reform

This chapter investigates the first decades after the founding of Pakistan in 1947. Shi‘i immigrants from North India became pitted against a local Punjabi trend of reformist Shi‘i teaching that maintained close ties with the leading seminaries in Iraq. Young scholars accused the immigrants of being wolves in ‘ulama clothes who held dangerous “extremist” views. The traditionalists defended a transcendent vision of God that implied a radically contrasting conception of religious authority. This chapter pays attention to local and transnational dimensions of these theological debates because both sides attempted to marshal positions held by Iranian and Iraqi scholars in support of their particular views. Ayatollah Khomeini’s writings play a particularly important role in this regard. The chapter also argues that both reformist agendas and their traditionalist refutations were driven by the hope of reaching a rapprochement with the Sunnis. While reformist ‘ulama suggested discontinuing “offensive” Shi‘i rituals and rethinking the events of Karbala as a political struggle, traditionalist scholars propagated a Sufi-Shi‘i synthesis and universal access to the Hidden Imam.

Projections and Receptions of Religious Authority

This chapter investigates the arguments exchanged about a lay believer’s obligation to emulate a high-ranking scholar (marji‘) in his daily conduct (taqlid). The findings question the view of Pakistan as a mere Shi‘i “backwater.” Instead, the chapter argues that the country should be understood as a veritable center of religious vitality in its own right. Local Shi‘i ‘ulama in the “periphery” displayed remarkable creativity when arguing about the “centers”, using a variety of strategies to bolster their own authority. This chapter explores how the leading grand ayatollahs, residing mostly in Najaf and Qum, attempted to influence the debate about who should be recognized in Pakistan as the preeminent global scholar and how these claims to authority were received and reinterpreted. The discussion illuminates the crucial moments of succession after the death of one widely accepted and revered marji‘, the Iraqi scholar Sayyid Muhsin al-Hakim (d. 1970). His demise played into the hands of the decidedly internationally minded Iranian jurist Sayyid Muhammad Kazim Shari‘atmadari (d. 1986) who had acquired the largest following of any marji‘ in Pakistan by the mid-1970s.