Failing transnationally: Local intersections of science, medicine, and sectarianism in modernist Shi'i writings

This paper adds to the growing literature on transnational Shiism which has so far mostly focused on social history and political contestations. By tracing the thought, transnational legacy, and ultimate failure of the reformist Shii scholar, Muhammad al-Khalisi (d. 1963), I argue for the crucial importance of local contexts and ideas for the genesis of Islamic modernist projects. In his native Iraq, al-Khalisi not only distinguished himself as a guerrilla fighter and political activist but also was shaped by prevailing notions about the compatibility of Islam and science. Exiled to Iran for his opposition to the British from 1922 to 1949, he encountered there specific medicalizing discourses on modernity. This exposure and his experience as a practitioner of medicine in the Iranian countryside led al-Khalisi to identify medicine as the master key to unlocking the secrets of the divine law, the sharīa: his major work on Islamic law singles out human health as God's supreme concern. Back in Iraq during the 1950s, al-Khalisi's medical-scientific vision of modernity was finally complemented with an uncompromising call for intra-Muslim unity. This stance led to furious attacks against al-Khalisi which continue unabated in contemporary Pakistan where his name has become a term of abuse.