Abstract :
Barack Obama’s message to the Iranian people and government on the
occasion of Nowruz 1388 (2009) and the appointment of Vali Nasr earlier the
same year as Senior Advisor to the US Special Representative for Afghanistan
and Pakistan arguably marked a turning point in the US foreign policy vis-àvis
the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Shi‘as at large; indicating an enhanced
role for Shi‘i Studies in shaping American foreign policy.. However, a number
of European and American historians of Islam have endeavored for quite
some time to inform both the Western governments and the general public
that there is the necessity to distinguish between Islam as an “object” of study
within the framework of the history of religions and Islam as a political
phenomenon – and therefore as an object of study for the political scientist.
The present article, drawing on the writer’s understanding of some
implications of a recent work of synthesis about the history of the academic
historiography concerning Shi‘i Islam by the Italian Shi‘itologist/historian
Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti (November 2010), addresses the implications of
the post-1979 re-interpretation of Shi‘i history in political terms. It argues that
in the crisis in the relations between the West and Muslim societies two
alternative approaches are conceivable. Either it is assumed that Islam as a
religion has little to do with the crisis and that this is the result of geo-politics,
political interests, and economic competition among states (Graham 2010), or
alternatively, that Islam is in fact the relevant issue at stake, in which case it
calls for a serious, scholarly discussion of Islam, primarily as a religion, and
hence, a matter of theology and history.
