Articles

One of the most controversial Shiʻi texts today is a sermon in Nahj al-Balaghah (an early eleventh century collection of materials attributed to ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib) describing women as deficient in faith and intellect. This is only one of several passages in Nahj al-Balaghah which come across as...

The story of the birth of Jesus is so eloquently and passionately described in Chapter Nineteen (Surah Maryam) of the holy Quran that it brings one to tears. There are approximately ninety Ayaat spread across fifteen Surahs of the...

The present chapter introduces two Iranian female mujtahidahs, Nuṣrat Amīn (1886 - 1983) and Zuhrah Ṣifātī (1948 - ), who represent like few other contemporaries the status of female religious authority in 20th century Iran, divided by the...

Throughout Shiʿi history, scholars (ʿulamāʾ) have been trying to answer the following question: in the absence of the Prophet and the Imams, how is sure knowledge (ʿilm) derived?...

In 2014-2015, 150 individuals (mean age: 19.82 years; 101 (67.3%) females; 100 (67%) Muslim converts) were followed-up prospectively by the Centre de Prévention contre les Dérives Sectaires liées à l’Islam (CPDSI) until...

In the United States, at least a quarter of the Muslims are thought to be converts. Nevertheless, conversion to Islam in North America only received substantial media and  academic attention after the September 11th  attacks. Little research has been done on Western women who convert to Shi‘i Islam. To fill …

Rites enjoy an important role in Islam. Their injunctions represent an important part of jurisprudence and a worshipping conduct which formulates a noticeable phenomenon in the....

In this essay, the writer examines one area of substantive law (furū' al-flqh) which figured prominently in the Akhbārī-Uṣūlī dispute in Shī̒̒'ī legal history: the legality of the marriage of one man to two women descended from the daughter of the...

The article "Cultural Adoption through Online Practices across Social Media Platforms: The Case of Saudi Women" reports ongoing qualitative research into Saudi women’s online practices across...

When Islam first came into the United States, it surely comprised various ethnicities and minorities. It would be naïve to imagine Islam entered a land and it expressed no ethnic and...