• Complain

Vali Nasr - The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future

Here you can read online Vali Nasr - The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2007, publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, genre: Romance novel. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover
  • Book:
    The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    W. W. Norton & Company
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2007
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Historically incisive, geographically broad-reaching, and brimming with illuminating anecdotes.Max Rodenbeck, New York Review of Books

Iranian-born scholar Vali Nasr has become one of Americas leading commentators on current events in the Middle East, admired and welcomed by both media and government for his concise and coherent analysis (Wall Street Journal, front-page profile). In this remarkable work (Anderson Cooper), Nasr brilliantly dissects the political and theological antagonisms within Islam, providing a unique and objective understanding of the 1,400-year bitter struggle between Shias and Sunnis and shedding crucial light on its modern-day consequences.

Vali Nasr: author's other books


Who wrote The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
THE SHIA REVIVAL
ALSO BY VALI NASR

Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty

(coauthored with Ali Gheissari)

The Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power

Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism

The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jamaat-i Islami of Pakistan

Expectation of the Millennium: Shiism in History

(coedited with Hamid Dabashi and Seyyed Hossein Nasr)

Shiism: Doctrines, Thought, and Spirituality

(coedited with Hamid Dabashi and Seyyed Hossein Nasr)

VALI NASR
THE SHIA REVIVAL

How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future

Picture 1

W. W. Norton & Company

New York London

Copyright 2006 by Vali Nasr

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza, 1960
The Shia revival: how conflicts within Islam will shape the future / Vali Nasr.1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-0-393-32968-1
1. ShPicture 2ahPolitical aspectsMiddle East. 2. Islam and politicsMiddle EastHistory20th century. 3. Middle EastPolitics and government1979. 4. ShPicture 3ahRelationsSunnites. 5. SunnitesRelationsShPicture 4ah. I. Title.

BP194.185.N37 2006

297.8'209045dc22

2006012361

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

FOR

AMIR, HOSSEIN, AND DONIA

CONTENTS
AUTHORS NOTE

This book is not a work of historical scholarship. Its contribution is in the new ideas and arguments that it brings to an understanding of the Islamic world and Middle East history and politics. I have written this book with a general audience in mind, and I have therefore avoided the usual method of transliteration or citation of notes seen in scholarly works. In referring to foreign names or terms, I have used a simplified phonetic pattern closer to the Arabic, Persian, or Urdu pronunciation, depending on the context of the discussion. The notes are meant for the most part to provide references for a striking piece of information or a quotation. Finally, all translations are mine unless otherwise stated.

Heed not the blind eye, the echoing ear, nor yet the tongue, but
bring to this great debate the test of reason.

Parmenides

THE SHIA REVIVAL INTRODUCTION I n early 2003 right around the start of - photo 5

THE SHIA REVIVAL INTRODUCTION I n early 2003 right around the start of - photo 6

THE SHIA REVIVAL
INTRODUCTION

I n early 2003, right around the start of the war in Iraq, I was visiting an old Shia friend in Pakistan. We talked about the changes that were beginning to sweep the Middle East. For my friend there was a twist of irony to all the talk of Shias and Sunnis that was beginning to fill the airwaves, clearly confusing those in the West who thought that all that mattered in Iraq and the Middle East was the fight for democracy. It made him think of an exchange he had had with a high-ranking U.S. official.

My friend had been a senior Pakistani government official in the 1980s, the liaison with the Pentagon in managing the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He reminisced that back in those days, when Iran and Hezbollah were waging an active terror war against the United States and the Afghan mujahideen were the good guys, his American counterpart, a senior official at the Pentagon, often teased him by saying that Shias were bloodthirsty, baby-eating monsters. My friend would retort that Americans had got it wrong. Just wait and see, he would tell his colleague from the States. The real problem will be the Sunnis. They are the bullies; the Shias are the under-dogs. Time passed, and my friend retired from government service. One sleepy afternoon in the fall of 2001, after September 11, his slumber was disturbed by the noise of sirens as a caravan of black SUVs descended on his house in Islamabad. His old American friend, now an important man in Washington, had come back to Pakistan to manage another war in Afghanistan, and he had decided to drop by. The American asked my friend, Do you remember our discussions all those years ago about Shias and Sunnis? I want you to explain to me what you meant when you said that the Sunnis would be the real problem. So my friend explained the difference between the two sects of Islam, and who had dominated whom and when and why, and what all that would mean today.

What my friend told his American visitor took on greater importance as the Iraq war added a layer of complexity to the already difficult problems facing the United States after 9/11. There were now also the implications of the Shia-Sunni conflict to consider as American leaders looked for ways to contain the threat of Islamic extremism, grapple with the challenges of Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and bring reform to the Middle East.

I was on a research trip in Pakistan in April 2003 when two million Shias gathered in the Iraqi city of Karbala to mark the Arbaeen, the commemoration of the fortieth day after the martyrdom of the Shia saint Imam Husayn at Karbala in 680 C.E. Saddam Hussein had banned such gatherings for years. The last thing he wanted was that many Shias together in one place, in a state of high religious excitement, venerating a hero of their faith who was a close relative of the Prophet Muhammad himself and whoso the Shia believehad died resisting tyranny to the last.

On that particular fortieth day, so soon after the one on which U.S. Marines and jubilant Iraqis had pulled down Saddams hollow image in Baghdads Firdous Square, I happened to be on the outskirts of Lahore, visiting the headquarters of a Sunni fundamentalist political group known as the Jamaat-e Islami (Islamic Party). The office television set was tuned to CNN, as everyone was following news from Iraq. The coverage turned to scenes of young Shia men standing densely packed in the shadow of the golden dome of Imam Husayns shrine at Karbala. They all wore black shirts and had scarves of green (the universal color of Islam) wrapped around their heads. They chanted a threnody in Arabic for their beloved saint as they raised their empty hands as if in prayer toward heaven and in unison brought them down to thump on their chests in a rhythmic gesture of mourning, solidarity, and mortification. The image was magnetic, at once jubilant and defiant. The Shia were in the streets, and they were holding their faith and their identity high for all to see. We stared at the television screen. My Sunni hosts were aghast at what they were seeing. A pall descended on the room.

Iraq had not seen such scenes in a generation or more, and now the world was bearing witness to the Shia awakening. The CNN commentator was gleefully boasting that Iraqis were free at lastthey were performing a ritual that the audience in the West did not understand but that had been forbidden to the Shia for decades. What Americans saw as Iraqi freedom, my hosts saw as the blatant display of heretical rites that are anathema to orthodox Sunnis. Iraqis were freefree to be Shias, free to challenge Sunni power and the Sunni conception of what it means to be a true Muslim; free to reclaim their millennium-old faith. These actions are not right, said one of my hosts. Iraqisby which he meant the Shiado not know the proper practice of Islam. The Shia-Sunni debates over the truth of the Islamic message and how to practice it would continue, he added, not just peacefully and symbolically but with bombs and bullets. He was talking not about Iraq but about Pakistan.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future»

Look at similar books to The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future»

Discussion, reviews of the book The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.