Centering Pakistan in a story of transnational Islam stretching
from South Asia to the Middle East, Simon Wolfgang Fuchs offers the
first in-depth ethnographic history of the intellectual production
of Shi'is and their religious competitors in this "Land of the
Pure." The notion of Pakistan as the pinnacle of modern global
Muslim aspiration forms a crucial component of this story. It has
empowered Shi'is, who form about twenty percent of the country's
population, to advance alternative conceptions of their religious
hierarchy while claiming the support of towering grand ayatollahs
in Iran and Iraq.
Fuchs shows how popular Pakistani preachers and scholars have
boldly tapped into the esoteric potential of Shi'ism, occupying a
creative and at times disruptive role as brokers, translators, and
self-confident pioneers of contemporary Islamic thought. They
have indigenized the Iranian Revolution and formulated their own
ideas for fulfilling the original promise of Pakistan. Challenging
typical views of Pakistan as a mere Shi'i backwater, Fuchs argues
that its complex religious landscape represents how a local, South
Asian Islam may open up space for new intellectual contributions to
global Islam. Yet religious ideology has also turned Pakistan into
a deadly battlefield: sectarian groups since the 1980s have been
bent on excluding Shi'is as harmful to their own vision of an
exemplary Islamic state.