Book: The Twelver Shiʻa as a Muslim Minority in India: Pulpit of Tears

This book considers the voice of an important Muslim minority through its sermons.

One of the most important current debates within and about Islam concerns its relation with power. Can Muslims be fundamentally content without power or as a minority? This book considers the voice of an important Muslim minority through its sermons. Indian Shi’i Muslims are a minority within a minority, constituting about ten to fifteen percent of the population as a whole, but comprising of about fifteen million people. Ten sermons are presented entirely and many more are quoted in order to analyze the preaching tradition in full. This book is the first survey to present the Indian mourning gathering and explain the history of this extraordinary phenomenon.

About the Author

Toby Howarth is currently Vice Principal of Crowther hall, at Selly Oak in Birmingham. A graduate of Yale University, Birmingham University and the Free University of Amsterdam, he has studied and worked in Birmingham, Oxford, Uganda, Egypt, Jerusalem, India, and the Netherlands. He speaks and writes widely in the field of Muslim-Christian relations.

Table of Contents

From Karbala to India: a history of Shiʻa preaching

The Shiʻa of Hyderabad and their mourning gatherings

The description of a complete mourning gathering (including the text of Sermon 1)

Sermons by male ‘lay’ preachers

Sermons by women

Sermons by religious scholars

What the sermons do and how they do it Indian Shiʻa preaching as the expression of a minority Islamic religious

Bibliographic Information

Title: The Twelver Shiʻa as a Muslim Minority in India: Pulpit of Tears

َAuthor: Toby Howarth

Publisher:  Routledge

Language: English

Length: 236 pages

ISBN:  978-0415664097

Pub. Date: April 16, 2011