Graduate Student Colloquium Abstracts 2007-2008
Robert Riggs, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
"Activist vs. Quietist Ayatullahs? Correcting Misrepresentations by a Comparative Textual Analysis of ‘Ali al-Sistani and Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah"
The appearance of the Islamic Republic has given rise to a plethora of academic studies on the Shi‘a of Iran, but there is a dearth of scholarship on the Shi‘i communities of the Arabic-speaking world. Arab Shi‘ism has, in fact, followed distinct trajectories, not least because the rulers in the regions that now constitute Iraq and Lebanon have historically been Sunni Muslims, with the result that the ayatullah maintained independence from the “secular” authority of the state, while at the same time influencing his Shi‘i constituencies from above through the use of his special role as the spiritual successor of the Imam. The ayatullah has also maintained financial autonomy through the collection of the religious tax (khums) from the Shi‘i believers. The situation is now rapidly changing for the simple reason that since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Shi‘i communities of Iraq and Lebanon may be poised to take political power for the first time in their respective histories. The new role that Shi‘i religious leaders in these countries will fill, through their influence over large Shi‘i constituencies, makes their writings more inherently political. While these recent events have given impetus to a variety of articles and books that draw broad comparisons between the Shi‘a of Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran, they pay little attention to the historical role of the Shi‘i ayatullahs in Arab societies as both religious and political leaders of their respective communities. Due primarily to their historical disempowerment, the Arab Shi‘i communities in Iraq and Lebanon developed a reputation as apolitical and concerned with explicitly religious matters. However, recent scholarship on the intertwining nature of religion and politics calls this view of Shi‘i authority structures into serious question.
Historians of modern Shi‘a Islam have often divided the ayatullahs into two camps, describing some as “activists” and others as “quietists.” This portrayal sets up a potentially misleading dichotomy with the underlying assumption of a secular-religious divide in Shi‘i clerical hierarchies that may not exist. This study will call into question the usefulness of an activist-quietist dichotomy as a tool for analyzing Shi‘i leadership structures by analyzing the literary output of two grand ayatullahs, Sayyid ‘Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani and Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. By comparing their actions and writings, one can develop a more accurate definition of the methods of control utilized by ayatullahs in heterogeneous states.
Ludmila Zamah, Department of Religious Studies
"Narrative Meets Legal Exegesis: The Hermeneutical Principles of
Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Qurtubi (d. 671/1272)"
The introduction to the encyclopedic tafsir written by Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Qurtubi (d. 671/1272) informs many questions about the nature of quranic exegesis in the Andalusian tradition. In this paper, I will first identify the exegetical principles and the parameters of tafsir as a genre as reflected in the introduction to al-Jami' li-ahkam al-Qur'an. In this part of the paper, I will discuss questions such as the difference between tafsir and ta'wil and the controversial division of tafsir into tafsir bi-al-ma'thur and tafsir
bi-al-ra'y. In the second part of the paper, I will more closely examine Qurtubi's commentary on a few quranic verses which relate the stories of pre-Muhammadan prophets. It seems unusual that Qurtubi should provide complete narratives of the qisas al-anbiya, because they seem contrary to his goal of extracting legal rulings from the
Qur'an. I argue that his reliance on Isra'iliyat and his focus on the details of the lives of pre-Muhammadan prophets are in fact not contrary to his interest in the ahkam of the Qur'an, but rather, help Qurtubi to derive a system of rules for proper behavior based on the sunna of Muhammad and the sunan of the prophets that preceded him.