Related Posts

He doesn’t get it

The article starts out so very promising on the varieties of interpretation that we call shari’ah. Then it so quickly devolves into conflating constitutional law with religious law, without really explaining how such conflations take place. The article also talks about the religious Shi’ah and the secular Kurds and Sunnis. What about the secular Shi’ah and the religious Kurds and Sunnis? There are huge varieties of interpretation even within the traditions. Finally, page 2 is mostly about cultural practices that the author makes sound like shari’ah. This is a blog, I can say things and pre-suppose knowledge, and get into…

What is Shi’ism?

In the contemporary period Shi’ah is the standard short form for Shi’ah Ali, the Partisans of Ali. The Shi’ah have a history that goes back as far as the time of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and form one of the two main schools of thought in Islam; the other group being the Sunni, short for Ahl us-Sunnah wa Jama’ah, the People of Tradition and Consensus. The main division between these two groups relates to questions of religious authority, and who has that authority. In this post I want to give a brief outline of Shi’ah understandings of authority. Rather than cover…