Shi'a
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Recent papers in Shi'a
Ahmad al-Katib is an Iraqi Shiʿi dissident intellectual and an interesting voice in the religious, intellectual, social and political discourse of the Shiʿite world today. He is a fairly well-known figure in Shiʿite circles but is... more
In the mid-90s, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and the Iranian Ayatollah Khamene’i both banned bloody forms of self-flagellation such as tatbir (cutting the forehead with a sword), calling them backward and un-Islamic. They argued that... more
Black Banners from the East tells the story of the first revolution in Islam which caused not merely the change of dynasties, but the end of the formative period of Islamic civilization. It is the story of a messianic movement striving... more
According to Giorgio Agamben, a “state of exception” is established by the sovereign's decision to suspend the law, and the archetypical state of exception is the Nazi concentration camp. At the same time, Agamben notes that boundaries... more
In Syria, there are two dominant scholarly opinions on ritual self-flagellation, which rest on different understandings of health and healing, and which form the topic of the first part of this chapter. The second examines miracle stories... more
From the early 1970s until 2011, the Syrian shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab flourished as a minor centre of Shiʿi learning. It predominantly served Iraqi Shiʿi refugees, but also temporary visitors from Iran and the Gulf countries. The... more
Dans le shiʿisme duodécimain iranien, deux catégories de traditions populaires (comprenant rituels, pratiques et croyances) ont pris forme au cours du temps autour de la question du mal, précisément des souffrances et de la mort subies... more