This chapter explores the place of compromise in transitional justice. While all-pervasive in politics, compromise is a neglected topic, almost a non-topic, within the current transitional justice literature. The chapter is an attempt to reverse this tendency and rehabilitate the notion of compromise. If, as pluralists hold, we are often faced with cases of hard moral choices where, whatever we do, something of value is irreparably lost, then the best we can hope for is some kind of acceptable compromise between clashing goods. The question about the limits of compromise thus features centrally in this chapter. How far should transitional societies go in their willingness to compromise? When is a compromise acceptable, fair, guided by principle, and when is it rotten to the core, simply illegitimate? To what extent is it acceptable to compromise deeply held values such as justice and truth for the sake of other equally important values such as, say, civil peace and democracy? While doubtful that we can settle such issues once and for all, the chapter identifies a range of questions that should be part of the collective conversation about when a political compromise is acceptable and when it is not. The discussion begins, however, with a concrete historical figure, the communist leader Joe Slovo, who played a critical role in South Africa’s negotiated transition from apartheid to democracy. Slovo’s reflections on the nature and limits of compromise in the South African context serve as a central reference point for my discussion throughout this chapter.

This book has asked whether and why Sunni secondary cities in the Middle East have a higher propensity for unrest and ideological-political activism than capital cities. Taking Tripoli in northern Lebanon as a microcosm of the crisis of Sunnism in the broader Middle East, the book tells a story of urban violence in the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Throughout the Tripoli case study, this book identified a feature of secondary cities that I call city corporatism. The root of violence in secondary cities is that these cities often see themselves as united during national turmoil, as a base for one political faction, generally the opposition.

The book identifies four causal mechanisms that jointly explain why urban violence erupts in secondary cities: external meddling; the personal ambitions of local elites; local residents’ willingness to join the fighters; and the existence of competing, or hybrid, Lebanese sovereignties. Each mechanism helps explain why Tripoli has been prone to violence in recent decades.

Chapter 6 focuses on the electoral alliances that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) forms with violent sectarian actors in Punjab province. Using a combination of extensive fieldwork and data on party organization and electoral candidates, I demonstrate that the PML-N is an organizationally weak party lacking a captive support base in Punjab’s political landscape of shared sovereignty. Because it has limited presence at the local level, the PML-N must rely on pre-existing, influential patrons who manage microlevel clientelistic structures and can function effectively as electoral intermediaries between the party and potential voters. Historically, these patrons have been landed elites. The PML-N has allied with them, often giving them party tickets on which to contest elections, in exchange for their vote bank. In recent years, anti-Shia sectarian actors associated with violent nonstate armed groups have started to challenge the influence of these traditional elites in many electoral arenas. As these violent actors have gained local power, they have replaced traditional elites as patrons and electoral intermediaries for the PML-N. In exchange for their help getting local votes, the PML-N turns a “blind eye” to their violence, resulting in their further entrenchment and empowerment.

Pakistani Shi‘as have often been painted as blind followers of the Iranian state’s political project. This fifth and final chapter challenges this dominant narrative. The author draws on her fieldwork among Shi‘a ‘ulama, showcasing the diversity and vibrancy of Shi‘a theo-political thought. Her ethnography highlights that three distinct theo-political projects characterize her interlocutors’ discourses. These are: (1) a secular state, (2) a sectarianly unaligned Islamic state, and (3) a state in which the governance of the jurist (wilayat-i faqih) – the political model of the current Iranian state – is implemented. Despite their differences, I contend that all these theo-political projects are propelled by the same force – the specter of violence. I assert that while the threat of violence drives these distinct political theologies, narrative historiography serves as an indispensable legitimizer. The ‘ulama articulate Pakistani history in a manner that justifies their specific theo-political projects. Significantly, Shi‘a ‘ulama’s political projects are often formulated and articulated in private realms for fear of state reprisal. Consequently, the ethnographic focus of this chapter is vital in highlighting the range of Shi‘a thought.

This chapter offers a theoretical analysis of Shi‘a ‘ulama’s conceptions of and engagements with their state in the midst of sectarian violence. My close study of Shi‘a religious journals and fieldwork among the ‘ulama highlights that many clerics view the state as culpable for Shi‘a deaths, not simply despite the state’s claim to an Islamic identity, but in some instances, because of Pakistan’s Sunni Islamic leanings. The chapter then interrogates why the very ‘ulama who critique the state for its complicity in Shi‘a deaths also appeal to the state for protection. By way of answer, I argue that when viewing the state as a configuration of institutions whose negative effects they experience, the ‘ulama rebuke the state for its complicity in anti-Shi‘a violence. However, when viewing the state as an idea, fantasy or image, the ‘ulama understand it as a legitimate authoritative body transcending society and providing security. Drawing on philosophical and anthropological works on the state, I explain that the ‘ulama’s appeals for protection help constitute the state by reproducing the effect of the state idea or fantasy through discourses and bodily practices. I argue that the approach to the state adopted by this chapter can be fruitfully applied to study state–‘ulama relations across the Muslim world.