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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
131785
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper adds to the growing literature on transnational Shi?ism which has so far mostly focused on social history and political contestations. By tracing the thought, transnational legacy, and ultimate failure of the reformist Shi?i scholar, Muhammad al-Khalisi (d. 1963), I argue for the crucial importance of local contexts and ideas for the genesis of Islamic modernist projects. In his native Iraq, al-Khalisi not only distinguished himself as a guerrilla fighter and political activist but also was shaped by prevailing notions about the compatibility of Islam and science. Exiled to Iran for his opposition to the British from 1922 to 1949, he encountered there specific medicalizing discourses on modernity. This exposure and his experience as a practitioner of medicine in the Iranian countryside led al-Khalisi to identify medicine as the master key to unlocking the secrets of the divine law, the shari?a: his major work on Islamic law singles out human health as God's supreme concern. Back in Iraq during the 1950s, al-Khalisi's medical-scientific vision of modernity was finally complemented with an uncompromising call for intra-Muslim unity. This stance led to furious attacks against al-Khalisi which continue unabated in contemporary Pakistan where his name has become a term of abuse.
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| 2 |
ID:
170475
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At first glance, Christians and Shi‘is occupy starkly differing socio-economic and religious positions in Pakistani society. Yet, this article argues that both communities share some remarkable similarities in their engagement with the seemingly hostile Pakistani state. Both Christians and Shi‘is have not given up on claiming their stakes as full citizens of the nation despite repeated attempts by parts of the majority population to ostracise and exclude them. I show how they continue to re-read the early history of Pakistan, attempt to prove their unwavering loyalty to the state, try to build bridges with the majority community and, finally, portray themselves as being a spiritual elite that still guarantees the initial promise of Pakistan.
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| 3 |
ID:
170472
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| Summary/Abstract |
This introduction to the special section of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, titled ‘Religious Minorities in Pakistan’, reviews the existing scholarship on this topic, points out gaps in the research, and discusses problematic notions and assumptions in both popular and academic discourses on minorities. Furthermore, it attempts a definition of the term ‘religious minority’, demonstrates its extensive entanglement with the question of caste—a characteristic specific to the South Asian case—and situates this discourse within broader debates about post-colonial state-building, the history of sectarianism in the region, contestations over religious authority, and the striving for a coherent political and cultural identity in Pakistan, the second-largest Muslim nation in the world.
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