Shi 'ism caught the attention of the world as Iran experienced her revolution in 1979 and was subsequently cast in the mold of a monolithic discourse of radical political Islam. The spokespersons of Shi'i Islam, in or out of power, have not been the sole representatives of the faith. Nonconformist and uncompromising, the Shi’i jurist and reformist Shari’at Sangelaji (1891-1944) challenged certain popular Shi’i beliefs and the mainstream clerical establishment, guarding and propagating it. In Shi'i Reformation in Iran, Ali Rahnema offers a fresh understanding of Sangelaji’s reformist discourse from a theological standpoint, and takes readers into the heart of the key religious debates in Iran in the 1940s. Exploring Sangelaji’s life, theological position and disputations, Rahnema demonstrates that far from being change resistant, debates around why and how to reform the faith have long been at the heart of Shi’i Islam. Drawing on the writings and sermons of Sangelaji, as well as interviews with his son, the book provides a detailed and comprehensive introduction to the reformist’s ideas. As such it offers scholars of religion and Middle Eastern politics alike a penetrating insight into the impact that these ideas have had on Shi’ism - an impact which is still felt today.

This book takes a fresh look at the foundations of modern Islam. Scholars often locate the origins of the modern Islamic world in European colonialism or Islamic reactions to European modernity. However, this study focuses on the rise of Islamic movements indigenous to the Middle East, which developed in direct response to the collapse and decentralization of the Islamic gunpowder empires. In other words, the book argues that the Usuli movement as well as Wahhabism and neo-Sufism emerged in reaction to the disintegration and political decentralization of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal empires. The book specifically highlights the emergence of Usuli Shi‘ism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The long-term impact of the Usuli revival was that Shi‘i clerics gained unprecedented social, political, and economic power in Iran and southern Iraq. Usuli clerics claimed authority to issue binding legal judgments, which, they argue, must be observed by all Shi‘is. By the early nineteenth century, Usulism emerged as a popular, fiercely independent, transnational Islamic movement. The Usuli clerics have often operated at the heart of social and political developments in modern Iraq and Iran and today dominate the politics of the region.

In today's world all eyes are on Iran, which has grappled with an experiment that has had a massive global impact. For some, the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 was the triumph of a modern, political Islam, heralding Muslim justice and economic prosperity. Others, including many of the original revolutionaries, saw religious fanatics attempting to roll back time by creating a despotic theocracy. Either way, the Iranian Revolution changed the Muslim world. It not only inspired the Muslim masses but also reinvigorated intellectual debates on the nature and possibilities of an Islamic state. The new 'Islamic Republic of Iran' combined not just religion and the state, but theocracy and democracy. Yet the revolution's heirs were soon engaged in a protracted struggle over its legacy. Dissident thinkers, from within an Islamic framework, sought a rights-based political order that could accept dissent, tolerance, pluralism, women's rights and civil liberties. Their ideas led directly to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami and, despite their political failure, they did leave a permanent legacy by demystifying Iranian religious politics, and condemning the use of the Shariah to justify autocratic rule. This book tells the story of the reformist movement through the world of Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari. An active supporter of the revolution who became one of the most outspoken critics of theocracy, Eshkevari developed ideas of 'Islamic democratic government', which have attracted considerable attention in Iran and elsewhere. In presenting a selection of Eshkevari's writings, this book reveals the intellectual and political trajectory of a Muslim thinker and his attempts to reconcile Islam with reform and democracy. As such it makes a highly original contribution to our understanding of the difficult social and political issues confronting the Islamic world today.

This book is a theoretical inquiry on the relation of the body politic with the religious movements in the time between the Constitutional Revolution and the Islamic Revolution in Iran; it illustrates speculative and historical analyses on the relationship of state, religion, and socio-political status in the late Qajar dynasty (1905-1925) and the whole Pahlavi monarchy. Particularly, it examines the applicability of “liberal conservatism” to the era of the last Shah of Iran. The thesis defines the term political conservatism in accord with Edmund Burke’s philosophy. It deals next with the definition of religious reformation, the peculiar characteristics of Islam, the Shi'ite political theology, and the contradictory usages of “Islamic reformation” in the literature. The text gives an overview of the two antagonist sides of nationalism. It provides also an analysis of the Islamic Republic as a new political phenomenon in Iranian history and the transformation of all concepts after 1979. Ayatollahi aims to assess the Iranian conservatism, the possibility of conciliation between politics and religion before the collapse of the Pahlavi, and “the conditions of possibility” for any restoration of the monarchy.

Based on archival and primary sources in Persian, Hebrew, Judeo-Persian, Arabic, and European languages, Between Foreigners and Shi'is examines the Jews' religious, social, and political status in nineteenth-century Iran. This book, which focuses on Nasir al-Din Shah's reign (1848-1896), is the first comprehensive scholarly attempt to weave all these threads into a single tapestry. This case study of the Jewish minority illuminates broader processes pertaining to other religious minorities and Iranian society in general, and the interaction among intervening foreigners, the Shi'i majority, and local Jews helps us understand Iranian dilemmas that have persisted well beyond the second half of the nineteenth century.

“Riveting . . . a side of Iran that is often misrepresented by the world’s media—[an] insightful, captivating book.” —San Francisco Chronicle Taking the reader inside Iran’s key institutions, Geneive Abdo and Jonathan Lyons argue that the 1979 Iranian revolution, long viewed in the West as the pursuit of an imagined medieval Utopia, was in fact a political movement designed to modernize Islam. Twenty years later, a power struggle between conservative and reform elements provoked a clash that has destabilized the country and limited Iran’s ability to integrate with the world community. Answering Only to God challenges the prevailing Western belief that the Islamic world is an undifferentiated mass of disaffected and dangerous fanatics or that a Western-style democracy will soon transform this ancient land of Shi’ite and Sufi tradition. Instead, the authors explore the controversial view that beyond their quarrel with the West, stemming from decades of exploitive foreign policies, the real struggle in Iran is between reformers and conservative mullahs.