The Scope of Marjiya: Different Schools of Thought

What it's all about

In the name of God, The Most beneficent, The Merciful

Introduction
Primarily in follow up of War in Iraq, some very basic questions arose regarding how the shiite religious leadership will react or proact in a particular circumstance? For example, no one knew exactly whether Ali Sistani will favour the american invasion, will oppose it, will oppose it with force or will just remain silent. It was all guess work!

Even subsquently, when americans proposed the idea of caucasus, they weren't expecting a veto from Syed Sistani, who forced them to arrange general elections.

But this un predictability of Marjiya isn't limited to this war-scenario alone. There are many other significant questions, both for the outsiders and for their followers, where it is not clear what is the marjiya's (or of a particular marjay's) stance. e.g

a. Role of religious leadership in Politics (The famous issue of vilayat-e-faqih)
b. Appointmnet of succssor
c. Role of Marjiya as community arbitrator.etc

These questions, my long time interest in understanding marjiya, inspirations from works like that of Yazak Naksh, Meit Litvak & Juan Cole, benefit of my existing knowledge of shiaism and significance of these questions for the general shiites, all motivated me to do some research work on these issues.

I am well aware that except the advantage of having an insight into the shiaism, I am at disadvantage in all the following respects to do this research:

1. No knowledge of arabic language.
2. No formal academic background in social sciences.
3. Having full time job responsibilities unrelated to this subject.
4. Meager financial resources to obtain books required to carry out the research.
5. No set-up/ precedent of any genuine social science research work in the country.
6. Bias about issues being a shiite myself.

However, willing to overcome these one by one to the extent possible, i still am committed to take up this research. It may take years to complete but I want it to be a worth reading work, so no compromise on quality!.

This blog, i intend, to use as a note book for this research. Findings to conclusions, i want to document the entire progress of this research task and God willing will keep posting my findings here regularly.

Need comments, support, encouragement and prays from all who read this.

posted by azeem @ 8:06 PM