Machine summary:
Reviewing Ali’s se- verely contested but lastingly influential intellectual attack on Akhbarism, Su- fism, Sunnism, and philosophy, all expressed in the context of rising Shi‘i power in late eighteenth-century Awadh, Rizvi aptly highlights the importance of seriously considering major developments in the late pre-colonial period in order to more fully understand the actual and supposed transformations that South Asian Shi‘ism underwent during and beyond colonial rule.
Mukherjee’s contribution, a study of building community through social service and activism among the Isma‘ili Khojas of East Africa, fully brings the transnational and diasporic perspective into focus.
Modern transnational dynamics are also the focus of Mirza’s comparative chapter on diverging conceptions of Twelver Shi‘i reform, represented by the Khoja-led World Islamic Network and the Tanzeem group of Hyderabad.
Just as this represents an inversion of sorts, due to the fact that the Isma‘ili Shi‘is are commonly rather regarded as subjects of persecution rather than the other way around, the following contribution by Kamran and Shahid serves to complicate our perspective on a major South Asian Islamic tradition: the Chishtiyyah Sufi ṭarīqah.
All in all, this volume represents major advances in the study of Shi‘ism in South Asia and its links to the Middle East, East Africa and, to a lesser de- gree, the Americas.
143), something that, if factually true, would require at least some comment to non- specialist readers, but also paints an unduly unidirectional picture of a print- based Shi‘i public sphere that links communities in various parts of South Asia and Africa “via funds from the Middle East.