The reputation of Shi'ism in the Islamic world, as elsewhere, has undergone many vicissitudes, but it is now higher than ever. In this new study, The author moves us toward an understanding of the social, intellectual, and theological crises that Prophet Muhammed and his cousin, Ali, together with some of the impoverished early Muslims (the precursors of Shi'ism) were struggling to solve. The issues were many: the idols, their social and economic embodiments in class, tribe, gender and ethnicity; the necessity of the revolutionary spirit, and its resumption in the Shi'i rebellious ethos; the...

This book utilizes the gender polemics of neo-Islam's selective employment of a historical narrative which dwells disproportionately on the militant Islam of the post-immigration (hijra) period when the sword substituted the word for the spread of a spiritual faith. Given the fact that such neo-Islamists, like very many unlettered Muslims, mistake religion for history and vice versa, Al Da'mi justifiably hypothesizes that neo-Islam is not Islam. It is not the Islam of the God-fearing and virtuous mosque-goers as it propagates a cult of conflict, violence and hatred, rather than the faith of...