Categories : Field-specific (academic)

Shia Muslim Studies – Centre for Islamic Shia Studies CISS

The 3rd issue of the Shi’a Studies Journal is available at:
http://shiastudies.org/docs/pdfs/shia-studies-e-journal-issue-3–27-june-2016.pdf?Status=Master&sfvrsn=2

CISS look forward to all feedback as we endeavor to make future editions enriched with thought provoking articles written by our future academic researchers. Graduate students, researchers and academics are invited to submit essays, book reviews and articles on Shi‘a Studies.

Arabia Saudí ante sus desafíos

Spanish-language VANGUARDIA Dossier on Saudi Arabia (No. 61, July-September 2016).

Contributors: Paul Aarts, W. Lippman, Andrew Hammond, David Commins, Toby Matthiesen, Mansoor Moaddel, Madawi Al-Rasheed, Jean-Francois Seznec, Caroline Montagu, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Rodger Shanahan, Kenneth Weisbrode, and Rami Khoury.

http://www.lavanguardia.com/vanguardia-dossier/20160615/402521191134/vanguardia-dossier-arabia-saudi-desafios.html

Deconstructing Minorities/Majorities in Parliamentary Gulf States (Kuwait and Bahrain)

Contested modernity: divided rule and the birth of sectarianism, nationalism, and absolutism in Bahrain

Journal of Shi’a Islamic Studies new issue: Vol IX – Issue 1

‘Sunni-Shi’i Rapprochement:
Internal Contradictions’

Hamid Mavani

Abstract
Ecumenical initiatives to promote Sunni-Shi’i reconciliation and
mutual respect have failed to take root because they do not tackle
the incendiary issues that prompt each branch to view the other with
disdain, if not as outright apostates or unbelievers. I argue that this
will not change until the main fault lines in their worldviews, communal
self-understanding, sacred narratives, history, theology, and
philosophy are confronted head-on.

If this cannot be done, then all proclamations of Muslim unity and
brotherhood/sisterhood under one ummah will remain hollow and
lack substance, because each side’s internal discourse would remain
unchanged. Any type of mutual tolerance and coexistence prompted
by expediency and power dynamics cannot be expected to be deeprooted
and long-lasting. The United States, along with such other
local and foreign players as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, and
Syria, have instrumentalized Sunni-Shi’i sectarianism to promote
their own myopic vested interests. The result is clear for all to see:
an exponential increase in Sunni-Shi’i antagonism.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 (2016), 133-47

Iremam – Journées d’étude IREMAM/WAFAW/LABEXMED

Zahir Bhalloo, “Judging the judge: Judicial competence in 19th century Iran”, Bulletin d’études orientales, 63 (2014), pp.275-293.

Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of the dominant Imāmī Šīʻī Uṣūlī doctrinal model in nineteenth century Iran of the jurist (muǧtahid) as arbiter (qāḍī al‑taḥkīm) on judicial practice. By drawing on a “litigant archive” from this period, I discuss one problem that emerged from the dominant doctrinal model. It became possible for litigants to challenge the binding force of a ḥukm by claiming they did not recognize the scholar who issued the ḥukm to be a muǧtahid and hence judicially competent. This ultimately forced Uṣūlī writers to come up with a juridical framework where one recognized muǧtahid would have to confirm the emergence of another one in cases where a scholar’s juristic qualifications (iǧtihād) were challenged. In practice, as I demonstrate, even if a scholar’s judicial competence as a muǧtahid was confirmed by another recognized muǧtahid, it was still no guarantee that the scholar’s ḥukm would be enforced.

Keywords
decentralization, judicial competence, qaḍāʼ, Uṣūlī, muǧtahid, judgement, Qājār, Iran.

Contested modernity: divided rule and the birth of sectarianism, nationalism, and absolutism in Bahrain