Shiʿite Islam and Politics

Compared to Sunnism, Shiʿism has a much more defined, hierarchical system of religious authority, a system in which Shiʿite religious scholars (ʿulama) play an influential role. In the political arena, this is most apparent within Twelver Shiʿism, which has been at the forefront of most Shiʿite Islamist mobilizations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with the major exception of the Zaydi Shiʿite al-Houthi family in Yemen. In 1979, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile and he and his supporters succeeded in taking over the country’s popular mass revolution, founding a revolutionary “Islamic republic” in place of the collapsed Pahlavi monarchy. The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) throughout its history has backed Twelver Shiʿite Islamists in other countries and has sought to win supporters for Khomeini’s central governing concept of “wilayat al-faqih / Velayat-e faqih” (“guardianship of the jurisconsult”), a theory positing a supreme role for a Shiʿite jurist in supervising government. Political mobilization of Shiʿite communities, however, long predates the 1979 Iranian Revolution, both inside and outside Iran. In 1890–1891 during Iran’s Tobacco Protest and during Iran’s Constitutional Revolution (1906–1911), Shiʿite ʿulama and jurists (fuqaha) played a major societal role. Outside of Iran, before 1979 Twelver Shiʿite communities in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries became more involved and more influential in their nations’ politics. While not downplaying the role of religion, it is important to note that “Shiʿite politics”—like all politics—draws upon multiple identities of those individuals and groups involved, of which religious identity is only one. Research on Shiʿite Islam and politics in the modern period initially focused heavily on Iran because it was the country where Shiʿite Islamists were able to take full control of the state. However, publications documenting the political trajectory of Shiʿite sociopolitical actors in other countries have significantly expanded since the late 1980s and in the early twenty-first century and now include a growing number of in-depth studies on Shiʿite communities, political movements and organizations, and political thought in countries across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. There are also a growing number of publications examining the myriad of influences that shaped the political thought of different Shiʿite political theorists and organizations. The expansion of the literature on Shiʿite Islam and politics parallels the expansion of the field of Shiʿite studies more broadly over the past several decades. This bibliography provides a survey of the existing literature on Shiʿite Islam and politics, including studies on specific political theorists, organizations, and social movements.