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The Bazare-e-Bozorg, a covered market on the Meydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan (Image of the World Square), Isfahan, Iran, December 2003 |
The Revolutionary Shias
Dec 2011
New York Review of Books
by
Malise Ruthven
In 2004, anticipating the victory of the Shiite parties in the Iraqi parliamentary elections, King Abdullah of Jordan warned of a “Shiite crescent” stretching from Iran into Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon that would be dominated by Iran with its large majority of Shias and Shiite clerical leadership. The idea was picked up by the Saudi foreign minister, who described the US intervention in Iraq as a “handover of Iraq to Iran” since the US was supporting mainly Shiite groups there after overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s Sunni regime. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt claimed that Shias residing in Arab countries were more loyal to Iran than to their own governments. In an Op-Ed published in The Washington Post in November 2006, Nawaf Obaid, national security adviser to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, reflected on the urgent need to support Iraq’s Sunni minority, which had lost power after centuries of ruling over a Shiite majority comprising more than 65 percent of the Iraqi population...more
review of
Shiism: a religion of protest
Hamid Dabashi
Belknap Harvard, 2011
on order
You can't make sense of the news from the Middle East without some understanding of the ancient division between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Shi'ism: A Religion of Protest, by Hamid Dabashi, offers a comprehensive new history of Shi'ite theology, history, and politics, down to the current conflict in Iraq.
--Adam Kirsch (Barnes and Noble Review )