The Charismatic Community examines the rise and development of Shiite religious identity in early Islamic history, analyzing the complex historical and intellectual processes that shaped the sense of ...individual and communal religious vocation. The book reveals the profound and continually evolving connection between the spiritual ideals of the Shiite movement and the practical processes of community formation. Author Maria Massi Dakake traces the Quranic origins and early religious connotations of the concept of walayah and the role it played in shaping the sense of communal solidarity among followers of the first Shiite Imam, Ali b. Abi Talib. Dakake argues that walayah pertains not only to the charisma of the Shiite leadership and devotion to them, but also to solidarity and loyalty among the members of the community itself. She also looks at the ways in which doctrinal developments reflected and served the practical needs of the Shiite community, the establishment of identifiable boundaries and minimum requirements of communal membership, the meaning of women's affiliation and identification with the Shiite movement, and Shiite efforts to engender a more normative and less confrontational attitude toward the non-Shiite Muslim community.
Much feminist scholarship has viewed Catholicism and Shi'i Islam as two religious traditions that, historically, have greeted feminist claims with skepticism or outright hostility.Creative ...Conformitydemonstrates how certain liberal secular assumptions about these religious traditions are only partly correct and, more importantly, misleading. In this highly original study, Elizabeth Bucar compares the feminist politics of eleven US Catholic and Iranian Shi'i women and explores how these women contest and affirm clerical mandates in order to expand their roles within their religious communities and national politics. Using scriptural analysis and personal interviews,Creative Conformitydemonstrates how women contribute to the production of ethical knowledge within both religious communities in order to expand what counts as feminist action, and to explain how religious authority creates an unintended diversity of moral belief and action. Bucar finds that the practices of Catholic and Shi'a women are not only determined by but also contribute to the ethical and political landscape in their respective religious communities. She challenges the orthodoxies of liberal feminist politics and, ultimately, strengthens feminism as a scholarly endeavor.
This paper is a new study of a metal bucket made of brass, preserved in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. This bucket is published for the first time. The artistic characteristics of this bucket ...indicate that it belongs to the Mamluk period (648-923 AH / 1250-1517 AD). Although it contains an inscription that could be related, in terms of content, to the inscriptions of Shiite origin, this is uncommon; among Mamluk objects, which raises many arguments about this object and its importance. Firstly, the study aimed to date this bucket and determine its provenance; by analyzing its artistic stylistic features, primarily, the decorations and the type of script used for the inscription. It has been proved that this bucket was made during the Mamluk period (the first half of the 8th AH / 14th AD century) in the Levant. Then, the study discussed the content of the inscription on the bucket and explained the reason for not recording the part which contains explicit Shiite expressions; through analysis and induction of historical sources; to find out about contemporary events. The study showed the extent of the impact of those events on the content of the inscription on this bucket.
This book explores the evolution of a Shia Ismaili identity and crucial aspects of the historical forces that conditioned the development of the Muslim modern in late colonial South Asia. It traces ...the legal process that, since the 1860s, recast a Shia Imami identity for the Ismailis, and explicates the public career of Imam Aga Khan III amid heightened religious internationalism since the late-nineteenth century, the age of 'religious internationals'. It sheds light and elaborates on the enduring legacies of questions such as the Aga's understanding of colonial modernity, his ideas of India, restructured modalities of community governance and the evolution of Imamate-sponsored institutions, key strands in scholarship that characterized the development of the Muslim and Shia Ismaili modern, and Muslim universality vis-à-vis denominational particularities that often transcended the remits of the modular nation and state structure.
This book analyses the response of the Indonesian state to violence against Ahmadiyah and Shi’a minority communities by foregrounding the close connections between state officials and vigilante ...groups, which influenced the way the post-Soeharto democratic Indonesian governments addressed the problem of violence against religious minorities.
Arguing that the violence stemmed in part from the state officials’ close connection with vigilante groups, and a general tendency for the authorities to forge mutual and material interests with such groups, the author demonstrates that vigilante groups were able to perpetrate violence against the minority congregations with a significant degree of impunity. While the Indonesian state has become far more democratic, accountable, and decentralized since 1998, the violence against Ahmadiyah and Shi’a communities shows a state that is still unwilling in assisting or allowing minority groups to practice their religion. The research undertaken for this book draws upon a lengthy period of ethnographic fieldwork in the communities of West Java and East Java. Research material includes in-depth interviews with community and religious leaders, state officials and security forces, and other prominent politicians.
A novel approach to the problem of Islam, violence, and the state in Indonesia, the book will be of interest to researchers studying Southeast Asian Politics, Islam and Politics, Conflict Resolution, State and Violence, and Terrorism and Political Violence.
