ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Shiite Islam: Orthodoxy or Heterodoxy? Chapter 5: Mukhtār al-Thaqāfī, the Enlightened Messianic Activist: The Shī‘ite Insurrection as Political Reaction, Reparation and Revenge In order to explain the transformation that Islām went through since the rise of Shī'ism, Muslim and non-Muslim historians point to two factors derived from the same cause: the political struggle for the Caliphate.

The first factor was the political influence of the oligarchy which transformed itself into a timocratic power, a state in which political power increases with the amount of property one owns, through the support of the triumphant majority. The second factor was the political will of a marginalized minority which became a medium of resistance. Depending on the personal inclinations of previous researchers, they argue in favor of one of these two factors.

For us, both factors are two aspects of the same cause. For Western research scholars, it is not always easy to accept the idea that in Islām, the relationship between the religion and politics is much closer than it is in the West between the Church and State.

It is even more difficult for them to accept that, in Shī'ism, religion and politics are two aspects of the orthodox development of the same doctrine, rather than parallel or separate tendencies that revolve around the same sphere but without any effective connection between them.

”Recent studies,” says Bausani, “distinguish more between a political Shī'ism, which included the purely political partisans of 'Alī and his family…, a religious Shī'ism, which included activists impregnated with Gnostic ideas, who were based mostly in Kūfah, in Mesopotamia, and whose main representative … was the politico-religious agitator al-Mukhtār who took over Kūfah in 685-686.

He preached Messianic doctrines and started some very interesting customs like the cult of the vacant throne and so forth” (112-113). As a result of these events, some Orientalists attempted to establish a clear distinction between an “extremist” political Shī'ism, a “moderate” religious Shī'ism, and an “intermediate” Shī'ism. This latter, which shares both political and religious aspects, is at times “extremist” and at others “moderate” according to Bausani's definition of Twelver Shī'ism.