"Salman Rushdie once described Pakistan as a 'poorly imagined country'. Indeed, Pakistan has meant different things to different people since its birth seventy years ago. Armed with nuclear weapons and dominated by the military and militants, it is variously described around the…
Argues that the decline of Pakistan is deeply entrenched -- with roots in its original national foundations.
Introduction -- 1. The Clerics and the Council: Contesting Religious Authority -- 2. Sovereignty between God and the State: Debating Muhammad's Honor and Blasphemy -- 3. Questioning State Identity and Legitimacy: A Case for Religiously Mandated Insurrection -- 4. Seeking Securit…
"In this book, Mashal Saif explores how contemporary 'ulama, the guardians of religious knowledge and law, engage with the world's first and most populated Islamic nation-state: Pakistan. In mapping these engagements, she weds rich ethnography with rigorous textual analysis and …
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 int…
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 int…
"In this book, Mashal Saif explores how contemporary 'ulama, the guardians of religious knowledge and law, engage with the world's first and most populated Islamic nation-state: Pakistan. In mapping these engagements, she weds rich ethnography with rigorous textual analysis and …
"In this book, Mashal Saif explores how contemporary 'ulama, the guardians of religious knowledge and law, engage with the world's first and most populated Islamic nation-state: Pakistan. In mapping these engagements, she weds rich ethnography with rigorous textual analysis and …
Introduction: Rethinking desecularization -- Colonial genealogy of Muslim politics -- Democratic exclusions, authoritarian inclusions -- Politics of minoritization -- The nation-state and its heretics -- Courts and the minority question -- Conclusion: After secularization.
The movement away from secularist practices and toward political Islam is a prominent trend across Muslim polities. Yet this shift remains under-theorized. Why do modern Muslim polities adopt policies that explicitly cater to religious sensibilities? How are these encoded in law…