This book is about the emergence of a stream of ideas in the 1930s and 1940s within Imamiyya Shiʿite context, focusing primarily on the thought of Shariʿat Sangelaji (1891–1944), who harshly criticized a number of basic theological beliefs within Imamiyya Shiʿa. Accusing them of polytheism and superstition on account of their ideas about shifaʿa intercession, and their pilgrimage to the graves of the Shiʿite imams, he also criticized the belief that the twelfth imam al-Mahdi  has been living in covertness since the 9th century, and that a number of historical figures will be...