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.

This paper adds to the growing literature on transnational Shiʿism which has so far mostly focused on social history and political contestations. By tracing the thought, transnational legacy, and ultimate failure of the reformist Shiʿi 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 sharīʿa: 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.

This paper seeks to illuminate the intellectual impact of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 among Pakistani Shiʻas by focusing on Sayyid ʻArif Husain al-Husaini, the dominating Shiʻi leader of the 1980s. In particular, I am interested in exploring how al-Husaini adapted hallmark themes of the Iranian revolutionary message, such as Muslim unity or political leadership of the religious scholars (ʻulama), to the specific circumstances of Pakistan. Crucial for such processes of translation was not only pressure from the Pakistani state but rather internal challenges and divisions among the Shiʻi community. While al-Husaini could draw on a strong, indigenous tradition of political mobilisation, his revolutionary ʻthird waveʼ of Shiʻi thought sat uncomfortably between Lucknow-educated traditionalists and Najaf-trained reformers who shied away from getting entangled in these novel forms of politics. By drawing on biographical accounts and al-Husaini's speeches in Urdu, I trace how his revolutionary rhetoric had to accommodate thorny local issues such as sectarianism, South Asian mourning traditions or the lack of an established Shiʻi clerical hierarchy in Pakistan.

This article is an attempt to explore how ǧihādī authors make use of the Sunni tradition to bolster their case. Islamicists have rarely embarked on such a discussion, given the tendency to a priori chastise extremist authors for their untenable misrepresentation of Islam. Similarly, ǧihādī arguments are frequently tossed aside as an already familiar rehashing of an insignificant, isolated stream of thought that stretches directly from Ibn Taimīya via Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to Saiyid Quṭb. In revisiting this claim, I employ a close reading of the crucial ǧihādī manual al-ʿUmda fī iʿdād al-ʿudda li-l-ǧihād fī sabīl Allāh (The Essential Guide of Preparation for ǧihād on the Path of God), written in the mid-1980s in the context of Afghanistan by an influential ideologue who is widely known as Dr. Faḍl. After presenting and evaluating a selection of the religious sources and authorities on which the author draws, the article enters into a discussion of his political thought. I argue that Dr. Faḍl makes a convincing case for a political project in the camps that is deeply embedded within the Sunni tradition. Reading Ibn Taimīya faithfully, Dr. Fadl does not turn him in into a proponent of violence against the ruler. Rather, the author sticks to the profound quietism the Damascene scholar is known for, thereby questioning supposedly established, clear-cut paths of reception.


"Proper Signposts for the Camp" widmet sich der Frage, in welcher Weise jihadistische Autoren auf die sunnitische Tradition zurückgreifen, um ihrem Projekt Autorität zu verschaffen. Selbst innerhalb der Islamwissenschaft hat diese Problematik bisher zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit gefunden. Radikalen Autoren wird per se eine Verzerrung der Religion vorgeworfen, die Rezeptionsgeschichte wird verengt auf eine kanonische Abfolge fanatischer Außenseiter. Das vorliegende Buch stellt diese gängige Vorstellung in Frage durch die intensive Auseinandersetzung mit einem jihadistischen Schlüsseltext: "al-Umda fi Idad al-Udda" entstand im Kontext des afghanischen Jihad im Jahre 1988, verfasst von dem einflussreichen ägyptischen Ideologen Dr. Fadl. Sämtliche religiöse Quellen und Autoritäten, auf die sich Dr. Fadl stützt, werden mit einem besonderen Augenmerk auf Diskussionen um politische Autorität vorgestellt und analysiert. Dr. Fadl, so die Kernthese, gelingt es, sein anvisiertes politisches Gemeinwesen in den Trainingslagern überzeugend in der sunnitischen Tradition zu verankern. Bezeichnenderweise wird Ibn Taymiya bei ihm nicht zum Urvater jihadistischer Gewalt, sondern steht für politischen Quietismus, der so kennzeichnend für den Damaszener Gelehrten ist.