Although we have drawn from primary sources in Arabic and Persian...

Although we have drawn from primary sources in Arabic and Persian, presenting various legal and theological views with respect to issues like consensus [ ijmā' ], as well as traditional exegesis, both ancient and contemporary, it was not the objective of this book to expound exhaustively upon the views of every school of thought.

Our immediate and most pressing goal was to demonstrate that Shī‘ite Islām is a genuine, legal and spiritual expression of traditional Islām, both in orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

In the same way that Sunnī Islām is based in doctrine and practice on the basic principles of the Qur’ān and prophetic tradition, so is Shī’ite Islām, which, in its traditional form, has the added advantage of having been preserved and reaffirmed by a continuous and direct line of successors, the Holy Imāms, the natural heirs of the wilāyah , the Cycle of Prophecy.

The goal of this book, then, is to demonstrate that, far from being a heretical schismatic sect or fundamentalist form of Islām, as one hears over and over again, and which is more or less groundless, Shī‘ism is the living expression of original Muḥammadan Islām, perfectly preserved by his successors, the Holy Imāms from the Prophetic Household [ ahl al-bayt ].

It was for this reason, that we proposed, without any polemical or apologetic intent, to present the Shī‘ite point of view, with the highest possible degree of objectivity, without any concession to the prejudiced views of its detractors, be they Muslim or non-Muslim. We have presented Shī‘ite Islām from a Shī‘ite point of view. We made sure to put aside outside influences received during our academic formation for, as G.

Bachelard has pointed out, these can turn into real epistemological obstacles which impede objectivity. Readers should not be offended if, at given moments, they get the impression that they are reading a panegyric.

This impression is to be expected as this work does not contain the redundant repetition of pejorative postulations presented in Orientalist works which claim to present Islām and the Arab world “objectively.” Despite the overt contempt its secular ideologists manifest towards Islām, the West remains cynically passive. This attitude, however, can only be understood within its historical context.

Western animosity towards Islām forms part of a long history of cultural encounters through which the West attempted to impose its hegemony on the East.