Shi'a Islam: Difference between revisions
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The term Shi'a means "partisan" and is shorthand for Shi'at 'Ali, or "partisans of Ali." After 680, a line of descendants continued, and a movement to assert their leadership remained. The line of leaders of Muhammad's family was called the [[imam]]s. `Alī was the first imām, and the only one to be a caliph as well; Hasan was the second imām, and Ḥusayn the third. The supporters of the family were called the "party of `Alī," or "party" for short, which is shī in Arabic. Thus these people became the Shī'ah or Shiites. About fifteen percent of the Muslims today are Shiites, including ninety percent of the population of Iran and sixty percent of the population of Iraq. Shiites tend to view the imāms as individuals divinely empowered to interpret the Qur'ān; thus the interpretations traditionally attributed to the imams are supplemental to the Qur'ān. | The term Shi'a means "partisan" and is shorthand for Shi'at 'Ali, or "partisans of Ali." It refers to one of the two major branches of Islamic thought about the proper leadership of world Islam after [[Muhammad]]'s death in 622. After 680, a line of descendants continued, and a movement to assert their leadership remained. The line of leaders of Muhammad's family was called the [[imam]]s. `Alī was the first imām, and the only one to be a caliph as well; Hasan was the second imām, and Ḥusayn the third. The supporters of the family were called the "party of `Alī," or "party" for short, which is shī in Arabic. Thus these people became the Shī'ah or Shiites. About fifteen percent of the Muslims today are Shiites, including ninety percent of the population of Iran and sixty percent of the population of Iraq. Shiites tend to view the imāms as individuals divinely empowered to interpret the Qur'ān; thus the interpretations traditionally attributed to the imams are supplemental to the Qur'ān. | ||
There is a great deal of variation in the appellations used for this community. <ref name=Beeman>{{citation | There is a great deal of variation in the appellations used for this community. <ref name=Beeman>{{citation | ||
Revision as of 17:52, 18 December 2009
The term Shi'a means "partisan" and is shorthand for Shi'at 'Ali, or "partisans of Ali." It refers to one of the two major branches of Islamic thought about the proper leadership of world Islam after Muhammad's death in 622. After 680, a line of descendants continued, and a movement to assert their leadership remained. The line of leaders of Muhammad's family was called the imams. `Alī was the first imām, and the only one to be a caliph as well; Hasan was the second imām, and Ḥusayn the third. The supporters of the family were called the "party of `Alī," or "party" for short, which is shī in Arabic. Thus these people became the Shī'ah or Shiites. About fifteen percent of the Muslims today are Shiites, including ninety percent of the population of Iran and sixty percent of the population of Iraq. Shiites tend to view the imāms as individuals divinely empowered to interpret the Qur'ān; thus the interpretations traditionally attributed to the imams are supplemental to the Qur'ān.
There is a great deal of variation in the appellations used for this community. [1]Nakash uses Shi'ism as the term for the religious group, Shi'is as the term for adherents to the group, and Shi'i as an adjective, as in "Shi'i financial and intellectual institutions." [2] Juan Cole uses Shi'ism as the term for the religious group, Shi'ites as the term for the adherents and Shi'ite as an adjective as in "Shi'ite courts." [3] Other authors use all of these variations, as well as Shi'a as an adjective as in "Shi'a Muslims" or "the Shi'a." [4] The usages of Nakash and Fuller and Franke are closer to the original Arabic grammatical construction, but I have adopted Cole's slightly Anglicized usage in this paper adopting Shi'ite both as a noun and an adjective for simplicity's sake. Note that Nakash also modifies his usage in his 2003 article [5]
References
- ↑ William O. Beeman (May 2004), "The U.S.-Shi'ite Relationship in a New Iraq: Better than the British?", Strategic Insights III (5)
- ↑ Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi'is of Iraq (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 7., quoted in Beeman
- ↑ Juan Cole, Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi'ite Islam, 2002), p. 25, quoted in Beeman
- ↑ Graham Fuller and Rend Rahim Franke, The Arab Shi'a: The Forgotten Muslims (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999, quoted in Beeman
- ↑ Yitzhak Nakash, "The Shi'ites and the Future of Iraq," [[Foreign Affairs (journal)|Foreign Affairs 82 (July-August 2003): pp. 17-26, quoted in Beeman