Metaphor and identity. The discursive personality -- Stuck in the middle with you -- A double edged sword -- Anxiety and discourse. Theology and duality -- Mediated deliverance -- Faith. Wheel within a wheel -- Faith as core and structure -- Silence fraught with meaning.

In Shi'i Reformation in Iran, 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. Drawing on the writings of Sangelaji, as well as interviews with his son, the book provides a 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.

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.

Interest in Shi'i Islam is running at unprecedented levels. International tensions over Iran, where the largest number of Shi'i Muslims live, as well as the political resurgence of the Shi'i in Iraq and Lebanon, have created an urgent need to understand the background, beliefs and motivations of this dynamic vision of Islam. Abbas Amanat is one of the leading scholars of Shi'ism. And in this powerful book, a showcase for some of his most influential writing in the field, he addresses the colourful and diverse history of Shi' Islam in both premodern and contemporary times.Focusing specifically on the importance of apocalypticism in the development of modern Shi'i theology, he shows how an immersion in messianic ideas has shaped the conservative character of much Shi'i thinking, and has prevented it from taking a more progressive course. Tracing the continuity of apocalyptic trends from the Middle Ages to the present, Amanat addresses such topics as the early influence on Shi'ism of Zoroastrianism; manifestations of apocalyptic ideology during the Iranian Revolution of 1979; and the rise of the Shi'i clerical establishment during the 19th and 20th centuries. His book will be an essential resource for students and scholars of both religious studies and Middle Eastern history.

Scores of books and articles have been published, addressing one or another aspect of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Missing from this body of scholarship, however, has been a comprehensive analysis of the intellectual and ideological cornerstones of one of the most dramatic revolutions in our time. In this remarkable volume, Hamid Dabashi brings together, in a sustained and engagingly written narrative, the leading revolutionaries who have shaped the ideological disposition of this cataclysmic event. Dabashi has spent over ten years studying the writings, in their original Persian and Arabic, of the most influential Iranian clerics and thinkers.Examining the revolutionary sentiments and ideas of such figures as Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Ali Sharicati, Morteza Motahhari, Sayyad Abolhasan Bani-Sadr, and finally the Ayatollah Khomeini, the work also analyzes the larger historical and theoretical implications of any construction of the Islamic Ideology. Carefully located in the social and intellectual context of the four decades preceding the 1979 revolution, Theology of Discontent is the definitive treatment of the ideological foundations of the Islamic Revolution, with particular attention to the larger, more enduring ramifications of this revolution for radical Islamic revivalism in the entire Muslim world.This volume will be of interest to Islamicists, Middle East historians and specialists, as well as scholars and students of liberation theologies, comparative religious revolutions, and mass collective behavior. Bruce Lawrence of Duke University calls this volume a superb and unprecedented study.... In brilliant figural strokes, he arrays EuroAmerican sociological theory as the crucial backdrop of a deeper understanding of contemporary Iranian history.

Focusing substantially on the relation between the concept of constitutionalism and Islamic Law in general and how such relation is specifically reflected in the Shiite jurisprudence, this volume explores the juristic origins of constitutionalism, especially in the context of 1905 Constitutional Revolution in Iran.

In Shi'i Reformation in Iran, 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. Drawing on the writings of Sangelaji, as well as interviews with his son, the book provides a 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.