Iraqi Sunni vs. Shia Memories of the War with Iran

Sunnis associated growing Shia power with Iran. Sunni leaders, especially those with Ba’thist ties, even accused the Shia point-blank of being tools in a nefarious campaign to subjugate and control Iraq. Hazem Shaalan, who served as defense minister in the interim government of the secular Shia prime minister Iyad Allawi, called Iran Iraq’s enemy number [...]

On the State of Shia Civil Society

The Shia universe of discourse is now the site of the entire Muslim world’s most interesting and thorough debates about Islam’s relationship with democracy and economic growth, and indeed about Islam’s situation vis-à-vis modernity. In heavily Shia Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, popular political discourse and debate are far more concerned with modernity and democracy than [...]

The Saudi Global Counterrevolution

The cross-fertilization of ideas between Wahhabism and other brands of Islamic fundamentalism began in the 1960s as part of Saudi Arabia’s strategy of strengthening Islamic identity as a bulwark against secular Arab nationalism.
Thus bonds that had been forged to stop Nasser and the other Arab nationalists could be mobilized to thwart Khomeini. Far from lacking [...]

Khomeini as the Head and Face of Islam

For a while the Iranian revolution looked as if it would create a Shia “papacy.” The Shia religious establishment had always resembled the Catholic hierarchy. The only difference was that Shiism did not have a pope to enforce doctrine and define the hierarchy, and it was the congregation rather than the hierarchy that decided how [...]

Shia Diversity: Twelvers, Fivers, Seveners

As Shiism spread over time and space it became culturally diverse. This enriched Shia life and thought and added new dimensions to the faith’s historical development that went beyond its roots in the Arab heartland of Islam. The practice of the faith itself adapted to new cultures as its message spread eastward from the Arab [...]

New Directions in Reading after 11 September 2001

I was home sick on 11 September 2001, and my sister called to tell me to turn on the TV. It took me a longish while to absorb what was happening and to begin reprocessing the events of the decades leading up to that day. My background reading began to expand in new directions, starting [...]

Impressions of Persia, c. 1920

The years 1918–20 represented almost as close to a global apocalypse as the world had ever come. Most of the important monarchies of Europe and Asia, having provided stability for hundreds of years, suddenly ceased to exist. The khanates of Central Asia were distant backwaters, but Lev [Nussimbaum, aka Kurban Said] was deeply struck by [...]

Proving One’s Faith in Tehran Jails, 1980s

We exchanged stories as we walked that day. Nassrin told me more about her time in jail. The whole thing was an accident. I remember how young she had been, still in high school. You’re worried about our brutal thoughts against “them,” she said, but you know most of the stories you hear about the [...]

Restraining Rock Concerts in Tehran

I should put the word concert in quotation marks, because such cultural affairs were parodies of the real thing, performed in private homes or, more recently, at a cultural center built by the municipality in the south of Tehran. They were the focus of considerable controversy, because despite the many limitations set upon them, many [...]

Reading Said vs. Austen in Tehran

Olga was silent.
“Ah,” cried Vladimir, “Why can’t you love me as I love you.”
“I love my country,” she said.
“So do I,” he exclaimed.
“And there is something I love even more strongly,” Olga continued, disengaging herself from the young man’s embrace.
“And that is?” he queried.
Olga let her limpid blue eyes rest on him, and answered quickly: [...]