After defining utopianism and the scope of the volume, the editors provide a comprehensive review of the relevant secondary literature as well as a synoptic survey of the history of utopianism in the modern Middle Eastern and North Africa. They argue that the role of utopias in the region varied widely throughout three main phases: from the 19^th century until the interwar period, utopias reflected the elite-centered, anti-despotic, and reform-oriented character of the liberal age’s politics. During the subsequent radical age, utopias were a key driver of contentious mobilization, as well as a major component of state policies wherever revolutionary forces took over, from Mustafa Kemal’s Turkish Republic to Khomeini’s Iran. Since the end of the Cold War, Middle Eastern politics has been permeated by utopian visions that were either characterized by limited transformative ambitions (neoliberalism, electoral Islamism) or put into practice rather than theorised ex ante, such as the attempts at self-organisation that ensued from the 2011 and 2019 revolts. Radical utopias were confined to peripheral conflict zones (e.g., Islamic State, Rojava), while techno-utopianism underwent a revival as part of the post-2013 authoritarian restoration.

This is the first systematic exploration of the diversity of utopian thought and practice in the modern Middle East and North Africa. Beyond intellectual debates, utopianism has infused the many ideologies that have shaped contentious politics and governance in the region, from state formation to revolutionary transformations, conflicts, and the recent authoritarian resurgence. Drawing on case studies from Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, contributors address a broad array of utopian visions pertaining to political ideologies such as liberalism, secularism, Islamic revivalism, and socialism, but also to fields of expertise and technologies such as urbanism, the atom, and artificial intelligence. Likewise, they acknowledge the diversity of players that partake in the production of utopias, including writers, ideologues, activists, statesmen, experts, artists, and social media users. Moreover, authors consider both imaginaries promoted by challengers to the incumbents, and visions that serve the consolidation of authoritarianism.

In this chapter, I make use of a batch of classified Iranian documents to revisit the question of how the Islamic Republic reached out to the Global South in the early 1980s. I argue that Iran’s export of the revolution in the form of several delegations traversing countries from Gabon to Malaysia was not only ad-hoc and improvised but also affected by the serious tension of navigating pan-Islamic solidarity and Third Worldism. At a time when leftist Iranian groups involved with the revolution of 1978–1979 had become marginalised and eliminated, the ‘travelling revolutionaries’ in Iran’s delegations still tried to play the card of international anti-imperialist solidarity. In 1983, however, they had come to feel much more at home in a specific Islamic idiom.

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.

 

The attacks of September 11, 2001 spurred an intense interest in “moderate Islam” in U.S. government circles. Some high-ranking officials, for example, saw “moderate Muslims” as necessary allies in the “War on Terror.” In this article, we examine how the United States went about making allies in the Muslim world after the attacks. The goal was supposedly straightforward: “moderate” Muslims were to be strengthened and empowered to act as an antidote to radical groups. Yet such plans ran into numerous problems. First was the notoriously difficult definition of “moderate Islam,” which ranged from a simple rejection of the primacy of jihad to the acceptance of basic democratic values. Second, in reaching out to the Muslim world, the United States could not solve its own dilemma of being torn between a preference for stability provided by autocrats and the commitment to promote “Islamic” forms of democracy. These tensions resurfaced in the deepened partnership with two countries that were touted as manifestations of moderate Islam’s new promise: Turkey and Pakistan. Given their past efforts in fighting communism, both countries were seen to be potentially equally reliable partners in fighting the new “radical Islamic menace.” As we show, however, these visions did not materialize as hoped. The U.S. government overestimated the room local actors had to maneuver while underestimating the political costs that came with being tied too closely to American interests.

Shiʿis are not a marginal group in Pakistan. They comprise about 15–20 percent of a population of more than 210 million people, which means that they form the second-largest Shiʿi community in the world after Iran. Shiʿi objects of devotion in the form of banners, images, and flags dot urban residential quarters as well as the countryside. Their processions are highly visible in major cities such as Karachi, Lahore, or Islamabad. Shiʿis are also well represented in the political elite and the business community, thus continuing a legacy of Shiʿi princely states, Sufi leaders, and large landowners in the region. At the same time, however, Shiʿi activists complain bitterly about their marginal status in Pakistan, a state they helped create and that was supposed to embody an ecumenical Islamic spirit as a homeland for all Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. According to this narrative, Shiʿis have been targeted since the early decades of the state’s inception and have even been subjected to a deliberate and outright Shiʿi “genocide” since the 1980s, when sectarian tensions rose sharply in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. As a reaction, Shiʿis have mobilized politically and have also tried to present themselves as “pure” and acceptable orthodox Muslims. Yet this focus on sectarian violence glosses over the equally important internal tensions among Pakistan’s Shiʿis. Unlike in other countries with a sizable Shiʿi population, such as Iraq, Lebanon, or Iran, the religious scholars (ulama) cannot claim to be exclusively in charge of Shiʿi forms of piety in Pakistan. Instead, they compete for leadership with popular and often esoteric preachers as well as with (heterodox) Sufis who display certain Shiʿi leanings. This also means that Shiʿi interpretations that embrace the Iranian model of governance, known as “guardianship of the jurisprudent” (vilayat-i faqih), are fiercely contested by many Shiʿis who are skeptical of the clerics’ claims to represent the Hidden Imam during the time of his Occultation (ghayba).

This article explores the engagement of the Pakistani Jamaʿat-i Islami (JI) with the Iranian Revolution. I argue that the Islamist JI was drawn to the events because it reflected a core concern and signature idea of Abu ’l-Aʿla Maududi, namely to establish the sovereignty of God (hakimiyya) on earth. My analysis of various travelogues and JI publications from the 1980s demonstrates that JI observers were deeply familiar with internal revolutionary dynamics and Iran's Shiʿi identity. The prospect of seeing a proper Islamic system in action, with potentially global consequences for their cause, initially crowded out any sectarian concerns for the JI. At the same time, certain JI leaders began to voice criticism of what they perceived as rash revolutionary policies that differed from Maududi's careful, irenic understanding of a proper Islamic revolution. They also took note of sectarian messages that damaged Iran's ecumenical outreach. It was, however, the more general geopolitical climate in the Middle East and South Asia which forced the JI to publicly downplay its ties with Iran. By the late 1980s, being accused of harbouring affinities for the ‘deviant Islam’ of Shiʿism was a charge that had to be avoided at all costs in Pakistan and beyond.

Shiʿis constitute a highly visible but woefully underexplored minority in both India and Pakistan today. This chapter focuses on three major – and largely external – shocks that the community has experienced since the nineteenth century. They had significant impacts on Shiʿi religious authority and the interpretation of the faith. The revolt (also known as the “Mutiny”) of 1857 against British rule brought an end to the Shiʿi state of Awadh, a wealthy and powerful patron of Shi’i institutions, scholarship, and art. As a consequence, Shiʿi communal life began to coalesce around voluntary associations and other models of leadership throughout northern India. The next major turning point constituted the Partition of the Subcontinent in 1947. While leading scholars stayed behind in what became India, many esoteric preachers migrated to Pakistan, trying to carve out new Shiʿi spaces in the state that was supposed to form a Muslim homeland. These voices were eventually challenged after a new generation of reformist-minded ʿulama returned from their studies in Najaf, Iraq to Pakistan. A final turning point is the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which caused significant internal cleavages in both India and Pakistan. Politicized scholars who embraced Iran’s revolutionary ideology became pitted against those who rejected such readings of the faith.

Shiʿis constitute a highly visible but woefully underexplored minority in both India and Pakistan today. This chapter focuses on three major – and largely external – shocks that the community has experienced since the nineteenth century. They had significant impacts on Shiʿi religious authority and the interpretation of the faith. The revolt (also known as the “Mutiny”) of 1857 against British rule brought an end to the Shiʿi state of Awadh, a wealthy and powerful patron of Shi’i institutions, scholarship, and art. As a consequence, Shiʿi communal life began to coalesce around voluntary associations and other models of leadership throughout northern India. The next major turning point constituted the Partition of the Subcontinent in 1947. While leading scholars stayed behind in what became India, many esoteric preachers migrated to Pakistan, trying to carve out new Shiʿi spaces in the state that was supposed to form a Muslim homeland. These voices were eventually challenged after a new generation of reformist-minded ʿulama returned from their studies in Najaf, Iraq to Pakistan. A final turning point is the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which caused significant internal cleavages in both India and Pakistan. Politicized scholars who embraced Iran’s revolutionary ideology became pitted against those who rejected such readings of the faith.

This article draws on a wide range of Shiʽi periodicals and monographs from the 1950s until the present day to investigate debates on the status of Sayyids in Pakistan. I argue that the discussion by reformist and traditionalist Shiʽi scholars (ʽulama) and popular preachers has remained remarkably stable over this time period. Both ‘camps’ have avoided talking about any theological or miracle-working role of the Prophet's kin. This phenomenon is remarkable, given the fact that Sayyids share their pedigree with the Shiʽi Imams, who are credited with superhuman qualities. Instead, Shiʽi reformists and traditionalists have discussed Sayyids predominantly as a specific legal category. They are merely entitled to a distinct treatment as far as their claims to charity, patterns of marriage, and deference in daily life is concerned. I hold that this reductionist and largely legalising reading of Sayyids has to do with the intense competition over religious authority in post-Partition Pakistan. For both traditionalist and reformist Shiʽi authors, ʽulama, and preachers, there was no room to acknowledge Sayyids as potential further competitors in their efforts to convince the Shiʽi public about the proper ‘orthodoxy’ of their specific views.

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.

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.

This article questions the often-assumed centrality of Saudi Arabia for the development of anti-Shi‘i sectarianism in Pakistan. I argue that those groups and individuals who have been most vocal about the Shi‘i ‘threat’ since the 1980s lacked (and continue to lack) any strong lineages with the Kingdom. Instead, their local polemics in Urdu foregrounded Pakistan as a political idea and global promise for Islam. This status of Pakistan’s self-view was acutely threatened by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent establishment of a religious state under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini. Consequently, Pakistani sectarian scholars transcended earlier Salafi-inspired arguments and tried to render Sunni Islam ‘fit’ to compete with powerful Shi‘i symbols. In doing so, they displayed a remarkable willingness to appropriate and rework Shi‘i concepts, something that is far from the mind of Saudi clerics.

The outcome of the Sawr Revolution of April 1978 and the Soviet invasion that
it triggered marked the onset of Afghanistan’s ongoing decades of war. During the jihad years, Islamist ideologues came increasingly to prominence as the authentic and indigenous alternative to godless foreign invaders, whether of Soviet or, subsequently, NATO provenance. The role of the U.S., Pakistani, and British secret services in channeling weapons and funds to the mujahidin is well documented and well known. What has received remarkably little attention is the ideological content of Islamist thought as revealed in the multilingual publications that circulated among Afghans in exile and eventually inside the country itself. Using previously unstudied transnational pamphlets in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, the chapter maps the shifting and divergent conceptions of Islam that were promoted through the jihad of the 1980s and early 1990s. Seeking an overview of this Islamist flood of ideas, Fuchs examines the multilingual magazines, pamphlets, and monographs that were produced by the Sufis, Salafis, and Deobandis of Afghan, Arab, and Pakistani origin who competed for control of the jihad. Rather than subsume their variegated Islamic visions under the catchall rubric of a generic holy war, Fuchs’s chapter reveals the increasing religious fragmentation that continues to tear Afghanistan apart today.

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.