Guest post at Aziz Poonawalla’s City of Brass
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 forAhl 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 the issues in great detail, I want to summarize some of the key issues and point to references that people who are interested can refer to. Of course, Wikipedia’s entry is always a good starting point. However, like most histories of Muslims, it often treats the majority Sunni perspective, as normative and reads back into the past, rather than taking the history on its own terms. This is a short piece that really wants to look at Shi’ah history as much on its own terms as I can.
Read at the source: http://blog.beliefnet.com/cityofbrass
Hussein Rashid is a proud Muslim and native New Yorker. He is currently a faculty member at Hofstra University and Associate Editor at Religion Dispatches. He is a contributor to Talk Islam and AltMuslimah; his work has appeared at City of Brass and Goat Milk. He has appeared on CBS Evening News, Russia Today, Channel 4 (UK), State of Belief – Air America Radio, and Iqra TV (Saudi Arabia). As a Nizari Ismaili Muslim, he believes his faith guides him to do good in this world, to leave the world in a better state than he found for his, and others’, children.
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