Religious Authority and Political Thought in Twelver Shi‘ism

Abstract

Utilizing a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, Hamid Mavaniexamines the locus of religious authority and its contemporary expression inTwelver Shi‘ism. Starting with the time of the Prophet, he provides a comprehensiveand nuanced analysis of the doctrine of the Imamate and Shi‘i religiousand political authority from traditional, rational, theological, andpolitical perspectives.The first part of the book, comprising three chapters, focuses on the doctrineof the Imamate and contains some of the material that has already beencovered by scholars like Amir Moezzi, Wilferd Madelung, Mousawi, and MariaMassi Dakake. Here, Mavani examines the authority of the Imams and that ofthe jurists during the Twelfth Imam’s occultation. He stresses the Imams’ spiritualand religious-political authority as well as the ensuing doctrines of taqlīdand ijtihād during this period. Citing Shi‘i sacred sources, he provides a Shi‘iself-understanding of the concepts underpinning the Imamate, namely, thoseof wilāyah and walāyah (the Imams’ moral-spiritual authority).Mavani argues, convincingly, that Khomeini’s model of governance(wilāyat al-faqīh) has received a disproportionate amount of attention in recenttimes. His theory was only one among others that have been proposed by suchscholars as Montazeri, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Fadlallah, and Mahdi Shamsal-Din. Other Shi‘i theories of governance have been largely ignored. His discussionand critique of this model is both incisive and erudite, for not only doeshe examine the views of its proponents and opponents, but he also provides adetailed and nuanced discussion of other possible forms of government andthe dangers involved in Iran’s currently centralized form of leadership.The last three chapters cover material that has been largely neglected bywestern scholarship on contemporary Islam. This is where Mavani’s majorcontribution lies: his criticism of traditional ijtihād as being deficient and ineffectiveas regards meeting contemporary challenges (pp. 226-27) and someof the discriminatory rulings that are based upon it, many of which are casuistic,arbitrary, and often based on the principle of secondary rulings.Most works on religious authority in Shi‘ism focus on the authority ofthe Imams and the jurists during the Twelfth Imam’s occultation. Mavani proposesother state models to the one practiced in contemporary Iran ...