Mohsen Kadivar
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474457576
- eISBN:
- 9781474495394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474457576.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
What is the situation of religious freedom in contemporary Islam? What are the positions of conservative and reformist Muslims on blasphemy, apostasy and heresy? Are there any substantive differences ...
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What is the situation of religious freedom in contemporary Islam? What are the positions of conservative and reformist Muslims on blasphemy, apostasy and heresy? Are there any substantive differences between Sunnis and Shi‘is on the main points of this subject? What is this book’s original contribution to scholarship?
Although the focus of this book is the critical analysis of religious freedom and the penalty sanctioned for the commission of blasphemy and apostasy from a Shi‘i perspective, this inquiry would be incomplete without a review of the general outline of Sunni Muslim positions on the same subjects. Thus, Section one of this Introduction explores the literature review on religious freedom, blasphemy and apostasy in contemporary Sunni Islam. Section two, which is more detailed, engages in a similar literature review, but from the perspective of contemporary Shi‘i Islam. These two sections allow a comparative study of Islam’s two major denominations, their exchanges, influences and effects.
Section three describes the story of how this book unfolded, analyses the genealogy of the author’s ideas in detail, introduces novel ideas applied by other Sunni and Shi‘i thinkers, and highlights the original contribution made by this book.Less
What is the situation of religious freedom in contemporary Islam? What are the positions of conservative and reformist Muslims on blasphemy, apostasy and heresy? Are there any substantive differences between Sunnis and Shi‘is on the main points of this subject? What is this book’s original contribution to scholarship?
Although the focus of this book is the critical analysis of religious freedom and the penalty sanctioned for the commission of blasphemy and apostasy from a Shi‘i perspective, this inquiry would be incomplete without a review of the general outline of Sunni Muslim positions on the same subjects. Thus, Section one of this Introduction explores the literature review on religious freedom, blasphemy and apostasy in contemporary Sunni Islam. Section two, which is more detailed, engages in a similar literature review, but from the perspective of contemporary Shi‘i Islam. These two sections allow a comparative study of Islam’s two major denominations, their exchanges, influences and effects.
Section three describes the story of how this book unfolded, analyses the genealogy of the author’s ideas in detail, introduces novel ideas applied by other Sunni and Shi‘i thinkers, and highlights the original contribution made by this book.
Nadejda K Marinova
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190623418
- eISBN:
- 9780190623432
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190623418.003.0011
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics, Comparative Politics
This chapter focuses on SCIRI (SAIRI), the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, created by Tehran, and the utilization by the Iranian government of SCIRI in 1982–2003, in the context of ...
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This chapter focuses on SCIRI (SAIRI), the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, created by Tehran, and the utilization by the Iranian government of SCIRI in 1982–2003, in the context of the Iran-Iraq war, and in the 1990s. Tehran utilized exiled Shi’i clerics, headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, in outreach with Iraqi prisoners of war and refugees; in matters of security and military operations against Iraq; in outreach and public relations; and in altogether advancing Iranian goals vis-à-vis Iraq. The status of al-Hakim and the reference to Ayatollah al-Sadr underscored religious veneration as a source of authority and influence over the Shi’i diaspora. This chapter also shows how the theoretical model applies in the political setting of a theocracy with elements of democracy, and how it is not limited to democratic regimes.Less
This chapter focuses on SCIRI (SAIRI), the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, created by Tehran, and the utilization by the Iranian government of SCIRI in 1982–2003, in the context of the Iran-Iraq war, and in the 1990s. Tehran utilized exiled Shi’i clerics, headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, in outreach with Iraqi prisoners of war and refugees; in matters of security and military operations against Iraq; in outreach and public relations; and in altogether advancing Iranian goals vis-à-vis Iraq. The status of al-Hakim and the reference to Ayatollah al-Sadr underscored religious veneration as a source of authority and influence over the Shi’i diaspora. This chapter also shows how the theoretical model applies in the political setting of a theocracy with elements of democracy, and how it is not limited to democratic regimes.
Morgan Clarke
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781526148902
- eISBN:
- 9781526166456
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526148919.00018
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter tackles common stereotypes of the Islamic sharia through a comparative approach, arguing that the history of Christian casuistry provides a rich source for an alternative conceptual ...
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This chapter tackles common stereotypes of the Islamic sharia through a comparative approach, arguing that the history of Christian casuistry provides a rich source for an alternative conceptual vocabulary for describing such rule-dense ethics. In contrast to stereotypes of sharia as ‘strict’, Christian casuistry fell into disrepute as being too lax. This was especially in the form of the doctrine of ‘probabilism’, which allowed the following of any learned opinion, even if not the most widely attested. This was to ameliorate the effects of ‘tutiorism’ – always taking the safest path to salvation. These concepts for discussing the uses of rules are put to work to help understand how contemporary Shi’i Muslims cope with the dilemmas of life in the UK. In questions such as when to break one’s Ramadan fast when a British summer day might last more than twenty hours, or whether one can shake hands with someone of the opposite sex, the rules developed by scholars in the Middle East may not sit well with the realities of life in Britain. Ethnographic fieldwork shows how people take up a variety of tactics in response, whether it be playing it ‘safe’, following a more liberal opinion or using one’s ‘common sense’. Most importantly, rules are neither necessarily rigid nor strict. Rather, legalistic forms of ethics offer a variety of ways to facilitate good conscience, even when faced with the seemingly irreconcilable demands of religious ideals and life in a non-Muslim society.Less
This chapter tackles common stereotypes of the Islamic sharia through a comparative approach, arguing that the history of Christian casuistry provides a rich source for an alternative conceptual vocabulary for describing such rule-dense ethics. In contrast to stereotypes of sharia as ‘strict’, Christian casuistry fell into disrepute as being too lax. This was especially in the form of the doctrine of ‘probabilism’, which allowed the following of any learned opinion, even if not the most widely attested. This was to ameliorate the effects of ‘tutiorism’ – always taking the safest path to salvation. These concepts for discussing the uses of rules are put to work to help understand how contemporary Shi’i Muslims cope with the dilemmas of life in the UK. In questions such as when to break one’s Ramadan fast when a British summer day might last more than twenty hours, or whether one can shake hands with someone of the opposite sex, the rules developed by scholars in the Middle East may not sit well with the realities of life in Britain. Ethnographic fieldwork shows how people take up a variety of tactics in response, whether it be playing it ‘safe’, following a more liberal opinion or using one’s ‘common sense’. Most importantly, rules are neither necessarily rigid nor strict. Rather, legalistic forms of ethics offer a variety of ways to facilitate good conscience, even when faced with the seemingly irreconcilable demands of religious ideals and life in a non-Muslim society.
Jonah Steinberg
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807834077
- eISBN:
- 9781469603728
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807899458_steinberg
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
The Isma'ili Muslims, a major sect of Shi'i Islam, form a community that is intriguing in its deterritorialized social organization. Informed by the richness of Isma'ili history, theories of ...
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The Isma'ili Muslims, a major sect of Shi'i Islam, form a community that is intriguing in its deterritorialized social organization. Informed by the richness of Isma'ili history, theories of transnationalism and globalization, and first-hand ethnographic fieldwork in the Himalayan regions of Tajikistan and Pakistan as well as in Europe, this book investigates Isma'ili Muslims and the development of their remarkable and expansive twenty-first-century global structures. Led by a charismatic European-based hereditary Imam, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, global Isma'ili organizations make available an astonishing array of services—social, economic, political, and religious—to some three to five million subjects stretching from Afghanistan to England, from Pakistan to Tanzania. The book argues that this intricate and highly integrated network enables a new kind of shared identity and citizenship, one that goes well beyond the sense of community maintained by other diasporic populations. Of note in this process is the rapid assimilation in the postcolonial period of once-isolated societies into the intensively centralized Isma'ili structure. Also remarkable is the Isma'ilis' self-presentation, contrary to common characterizations of Islam in the mass media, as a Muslim society that is broadly sympathetic to capitalist systems, opposed to fundamentalism, and distinctly modern in orientation.Less
The Isma'ili Muslims, a major sect of Shi'i Islam, form a community that is intriguing in its deterritorialized social organization. Informed by the richness of Isma'ili history, theories of transnationalism and globalization, and first-hand ethnographic fieldwork in the Himalayan regions of Tajikistan and Pakistan as well as in Europe, this book investigates Isma'ili Muslims and the development of their remarkable and expansive twenty-first-century global structures. Led by a charismatic European-based hereditary Imam, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, global Isma'ili organizations make available an astonishing array of services—social, economic, political, and religious—to some three to five million subjects stretching from Afghanistan to England, from Pakistan to Tanzania. The book argues that this intricate and highly integrated network enables a new kind of shared identity and citizenship, one that goes well beyond the sense of community maintained by other diasporic populations. Of note in this process is the rapid assimilation in the postcolonial period of once-isolated societies into the intensively centralized Isma'ili structure. Also remarkable is the Isma'ilis' self-presentation, contrary to common characterizations of Islam in the mass media, as a Muslim society that is broadly sympathetic to capitalist systems, opposed to fundamentalism, and distinctly modern in orientation.
