Between the Ideal and the Real

Shiite Purism and the Dilemma of Modernity in Iraq

Akeel Abbas (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

264 Seiten

2024
Rowman & Littlefield (Verlag)
9781538192924 (ISBN)

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This book deals with the Islamic Shia version of purism as the cornerstone of its faith, showing how this purism manifested itself in the story of Iraq as a state and Shias as a group of people by complicating the process of integrating the latter into the former.

Between the Ideal and the Real describes why Iraq state-building and democratic transformation failed by offering a very new, and unusual, perspective, away from the usual blame assigned to the US that has become part of the “conventional wisdom” about Iraq and the Middle East. Although the book acknowledges US failings in Iraq, the main argument it presents is that the main causes of failure lie in a problematic alliance between Iraqi Shiite Islamist parties and the clerical establishment in Najaf, led by Ayatollah Sistani. To appreciate this new perspective, the book takes you into the history of Iraqi Shiism both as a set of doctrinal and theological beliefs about the world and a lived experience by ordinary Iraqi Shias. The book argues that this understanding hindered Shias from embracing many products of modernity such as nationalism, individualism, humanism, and democratic rule, by consolidating a primordial group identity that ties people to the past, a particular kind of past based on doctrinal supremacy and historical victimhood. Combined, the two have the negative effect of depriving ordinary Iraqi Shias of a personal sense of agency and contributing to a general spirit skeptical of difference. The book also documents people’s push back against this restrictive approach to reality in a variety of contexts. Based on extensive historical and doctrinal research into the distant past of Shiism, the book links the past to the present by examining the unfortunate consequences that grow out of the insistence to allow pre-modern values determine the modern experience of life.

Akeel Abbas, PhD, a DC-based Middle East specialist, taught for years in several American universities inside and outside the US. His research interests include national and religious identities and modernity and democratization in the Middle East. Abbas regularly writes journalistic pieces in Arabic and English about the Middle East and Iraq.

Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Purity as a Guarantee of Epistemological Certitude: A Shiite Theory of
Knowledge
Chapter 2: The “Mind” as a Purist Moment: The Conflict between the Real and the Ideal within Shiism
Chapter 3: Modernity as a Challenge to the Purist Network of Shiism
Chapter 4: Husseini Mourning Folk Poetry as a Purist Register: A Mirror for the Transformation of Identity
Chapter 5: Componentialism: Iraqi Shiite Purism Put to the Test after 2003
Glossary
Bibliography
About the Author
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	04.07.2024
Zusatzinfo	3 BW Photos
Sprache	englisch
Maße	158 x 237 mm
Gewicht	490 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Islam
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Staat / Verwaltung
ISBN-13	9781538192924 / 9781538192924
Zustand	Neuware