Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  • Cited by 2
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
October 2020
Print publication year:
2020
Online ISBN:
9781108885034

Book description

In this book, Mashal Saif explores how contemporary 'ulama, the guardians of religious knowledge and law, engage with the world's most populated Islamic nation-state: Pakistan. In mapping these engagements, she weds rigorous textual analysis with fieldwork and offers insight into some of the most significant and politically charged issues in recent Pakistani history. These include debates over the rights of women; the country's notorious blasphemy laws; the legitimacy of religiously mandated insurrection against the state; sectarian violence; and the place of Shi'as within the Sunni majority nation. These diverse case studies are knit together by the project's most significant contribution: a theoretical framework that understands the 'ulama's complex engagements with their state as a process of both contestation and cultivation of the Islamic Republic by citizen-subjects. This framework provides a new way of assessing state - 'ulama relations not only in contemporary Pakistan but also across the Muslim world.

Reviews

'The book overall is well-organised and a timely addition. It provides a new perspective on the 'ulamāʾ ’s evolving authority in the nation-state system, in general, and state- 'ulamāʾ relations in Pakistan, in particular.'

Jaffer Abbas Mirza Source: Journal of Shi‘a Islamic Studies

‘Saif has produced a stimulating and fascinating work, which gives vast and enriching access of the ulema’s political thinking, without which any understanding of Pakistan remains deficient … Everyone interested in studying Pakistan must engage with this treatise.’

Muneeb Yousuf Source: South Asia Research

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
×

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.