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.

'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