Shi'ism: A Religion of Protest

448 Pages·2011·3.6 MB·English

by  Hamid Dabashi

SHI’ISM

S h i ’ iSm
A Religion of Protest
Hamid Dabashi
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, Eng land
2011
Copyright © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Dabashi, Hamid
Shi’ism : a religion of protest / Hamid Dabashi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-04945-1 (alk. paper)
1. Shi’ah—History. 2. Shi’ah—Doctrines—History. I. Title.
BP192.D33 2010
297.8′209—dc22 2010038963
For and from the serenity of my inner sanctum:
my wife Golbarg
and my children Kaveh, Pardis, Chelgis, and Golchin
(and of course for Bashu and Dazzle: our little strangers)
Shokr- e Izad keh beh eqbal- e kolah- gusheh- ye gol
Nekhvat-e bad- e dey- o showkat khar akher shod
Praised be the Lord that thanks to the blossoming tip of the rose’s hat
The arrogance of winter and the might of the thorn are ended at last
Hafez

CoNTeNTS
Prelude xi
Preface xv
Introduction 1
I
doctrinal foundation
1 Death of a Prophet 29
2 Birth of a Revolutionary Faith 47
3 The Karbala Complex 73
II
historical unfolding
4 In the Battlefields of History 103
5 In the Company of Kings, Caliphs,
and Conquerors 132
6 At the Dawn of Colonial Modernity 159
III
visual and performing arts
7 Shi’ism and the Crisis of Cultural Modernity 207
8 on Ressentiment and the Politics of Despair 228
9 An Aesthetic of emancipation 241
viii Contents
IV
contemporary contestations
10 The Un/Making of a Politics of Despair 263
11 Toward a New Syncretic Cosmopolitanism 277
12 Contemporary Sites of Contestation 296
Conclusion 309
Note on Transliteration 327
Arabic and Persian Glossary 328
Schools of Theology, Philosophy,
and Political Thought 338
Chronology 344
Notes 348
Further Reading 385
Acknowledgments 390
Index 393
Maps and illustrations follow p. 227
It is a little remarkable, that . . . an autobiographical
impulse should twice in my life have taken possession
of me, in addressing the public . . . The truth seems to
be, however, that when he casts his leaves forth upon
the wind, the author addresses, not the many who
will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the
few who will understand him better than most of his
schoolmates or lifemates . . . To this extent and within
these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobio-
graphical, without violating either the reader’s rights
or his own.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Custom House”:
Introductory to The Scarlet Letter, 1850