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Genealogies—representations of kinship and narratives of origin—are in the transnational Shi'ite world intimately connected to politics of piety, the production of nationalism, and struggles over authority. In this essay, I am concerned with certain inflections in the links between genealogy and piety that make these terms central to contests over notions of territoriality in contemporary Shi'ite politics. Nationalism replaces the sovereignty of God with the exclusive sovereignty of a "people" over a clearly demarcated territory, but religious language, identifications, and imagery often play prominent roles in how the imagined community of the nation is fashioned and delimited. Here I will show how, mediated through genealogy, religious leaders and pious movements with transnational ties produce religious authority, and create links to territory, to assert themselves as exemplary cultural citizens.

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Religious authority in the Shi'ite world is often claimed and justified by drawing on national ideologies. Examining the relations between the ruling religious elite in Iran and Lebanese Shi'ite party of Amal and followers of the Lebanese Shi'ite scholar Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, this article shows how the latter two actors seek to break official Iran's hegemonic claim to lead the Shi'ite world through parody and critical narratives about the history and society of Iran. This politics of religious authenticity is not limited to debates among Shi'ite scholars but also involves other actors such as political party members, students of religion, and pilgrims as they take part in shaping claims to seniority and authenticity in Shi'ite tradition.

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