The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future

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The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future

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A New York Times Bestseller

"Historically incisive, geographically broad-reaching, and brimming with illuminating anecdotes."—Max Rodenbeck, New York Review of Books

Iranian-born scholar Vali Nasr has become one of America's leading commentators on current events in the Middle East, admired and welcomed by both media and government for his "concise and coherent" analysis (Wall Street Journal, front-page profile). In this "remarkable work" (Anderson Cooper), Nasr brilliantly dissects the political and theological antagonisms within Islam, providing a unique and objective understanding of the 1,400-year bitter struggle between Shias and Sunnis and shedding crucial light on its modern-day consequences.

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ISBN-13:	9780393066401
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/17/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	741 KB

About the Author

Vali Nasr is Dean and Professor of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

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Editorial Reviews

Provocative.— Thomas L. Friedman

Brilliant and very readable.— Trudy Rubin

[A] must-read for those who find themselves perplexed about the sectarian violence in Iraq, the unpredictable politics of Iran, and the suddenly resurgent Hezbollah in Lebanon.— Robert Hunt

Smart, clear and timely.— Warren Bass

Fast moving, engaging and ultimately unnerving.... The Shia Revival is at its most provocative when exposing how the Sunni-Shiite power imbalance seeps out of classrooms and infects life on the ground.— Irshad Manji

This book offers compelling corrective reading.... Broad-ranging and detailed, but still eminently readable.— L. Carl Brown

From the Publisher

Americans may be paying more attention to Muslim conflicts now. They had better. In The Shia Revival, a fast-moving, engaging and ultimately unnerving book, Vali Nasr writes that wars within Islam “will shape the future.” A professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and an occasional adviser to the American government, Nasr argues that Operation Iraqi Freedom has tilled the soil for a “new” Middle East — one fueled less by the ideal of democracy than by an age-old animosity between Islam’s two major sects, the majority Sunnis and minority Shiites.
— The New York Times

Irshad Manji

A conflict of civilizations may be raging between Islam and the West, but a sectarian battle within Islam itself could turn out to be the main event. When American politicos boasted not so long ago of bringing the light of freedom to the Arab world, writes political scientist Nasr, "it was in effect the old Sunni-dominated Middle East that they were talking about democratizing." The question of whether those Sunnis want democracy in the first place notwithstanding, Sunnis do control the most powerful nations in the Arab world, particularly ultraconservative Saudi Arabia. Nasr likens the Sunnis to Protestants (perhaps hardshell Baptists), with their faith in documents and direct experience, whereas the Shia, like Catholics, place more value on the authority of clerics and textual interpreters. Sunnis outnumber Shias ten to one in the Islamic world generally but are roughly even in number in some parts of the Middle East, while Shias predominate around the Persian Gulf-and have now attained power, if tenuously, in Iraq, where they were formerly excluded. Much of the violence now taking place in that country, writes Nasr, is directed against Shias, and the anti-American insurgency there is predicated on what its leader, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, calls "a difficult, fierce battle with a crafty enemy who wears the garb of a friend." Interestingly, Nasr shows, other political events in the Muslim world can be explained in sectarian terms: In 1977, for instance, a coup to overthrow Bhutto-a Shia-was led by Sunni fundamentalists whose draconian campaigns inspired the fledgling Taliban in next-door Afghanistan. Much blood has been spilled over the doctrinal dispute between the two factions, a gap thatcontinues to widen. Nasr's book is a helpful footnote to the headlines, now that "war on America is war on Shi'ism, and war on Shi'ism is war on America."

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