Abstract:

Studies on the conflict between Sunnis and Shi‘as in Pakistan tend to single out intellectual influences emerging from the Arab monarchies of the Gulf as the paradigm for how sectarian ideas have spread more broadly. Yet, Simon Fuchs shows that the focus on Saudi Arabia does not capture the important entanglement of further influences stemming from the Gulf with local dimensions of sectarianism in Pakistan. Local Sunni scholars, although connected to Saudi Arabia, built their own brand of anti-Shiism. After the 1979 Iranian revolution, sectarian arguments based on Salafi-Wahhabi doctrines and emphasizing the doctrinal incompatibility between “proper” Islam and Shiism gave way to more political arguments, as the new Islamic Republic was seen as threatening the identity and the nature of the Pakistani state.