Abstract
The American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 resulted in a major upheaval in the tortuous relationship between Sunnis and Shi’is, the two major religious communities of the Muslim world. The demise of the Sunni-dominated Ba‘th regime and the rise of the long-oppressed Shi‘i majority to political prominence in this pivotal country appeared to have changed the regional balance of power between the two sects and emboldened the Shi‘a. The consolidation of Iran as a regional power and the political developments in Lebanon created an impression of Shi‘i dynamism and increased the sense of vulnerability among the elites in Sunni countries.
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Notes
For an analysis on different types of leadership, see Hamid Dabashi, Authority in Islam: From the Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1989).
Fred Halliday, “Orientalism and Its Critics,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies vol. 20, no. 2 (1993), p. 153.
Said Amir Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shi‘ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Joanna De Groot, Religion, Culture and Politics in Iran: from the Qajars to Khomeini (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007); Mansoor Moaddel, “The Shi‘i Ulama and the State in Iran,” Theory and Society vol. 15, no. 4. (July 1986), pp. 519–556; Vanessa Martin, Islam and Modernism: the Iranian Revolution of 1906 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1989).
Farhad Daftary, The Isma‘ilis: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Graham E. Fuller and Rend Rahim Francke, The Arab Shi‘a: The Forgotten Muslims (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Fouad Ajami, The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998), chapter 3; Hasan al-‘Alawi, al-Shi‘a wal-dawla al-qawmiyya fi al-‘Iraq 1914–1990 (n.p., 1990).
Kathryn Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Rula Jurdi Abisaab, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004).
Yitzak Nakash, The Shi‘i of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Amatzia Baram, “Two Roads to Revolutionary Shi‘ite Fundamentalism in Iraq,”in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds.), Accounting for Fundamentalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 533–534; Chibli Mallat, The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr, Najaf and the Shi‘i International (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Faleh Abd al-Jabar, The Shi‘ite Movement in Iraq (London: Saqi, 2003). For Lebanon, see Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (London: I. B. Tauris, 1986); Majed Halawi, A Lebanon Defied: Musa al-Sadr and the Shi‘a Community (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992); Hani Fahs, al-Shi‘a wal-Dawla fi Lubnan: Malamih fi al-ru’ya wal-dhakira (Beirut: Dar al-Andalus, 1996).
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© 2011 Ofra Bengio and Meir Litvak
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Bengio, O., Litvak, M. (2011). Introduction. In: Bengio, O., Litvak, M. (eds) The Sunna and Shi’a in History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137495068_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137495068_1
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