Abstract:

This chapter recentres South Asian actors and ideas at the heart of Islamist debates in the twentieth century. It shows how the Pakistani Jamaat-i Islami (JI), well-connected to the Middle East, claimed a leadership role for the idea of a global Islamic revolution. The fall of the Shah in Iran in 1979 constituted a source of pride for the party. At the same time, the JI was careful to highlight the Shiʿi clerics’ comprehensive ideological indebtedness. When Iran became increasingly less ecumenical in outlook throughout the 1980s, the JI moved away from the country and grasped the Russian defeat in Afghanistan as another opportunity to position itself a leading international Islamist actor and keeper of the true revolutionary flame.