Call for MESA Panelists - Social Approaches to Lebanese Shi'i History

Call for Panelists: Social Approaches to Lebanese Shi'i History
Middle East Studies Association 2014 Annual Meeting

Abstract Deadline: February 5, 2014

November 22-25, 2014   |   Washington, DC

Organizers:
Pascal Abidor, PhD Candidate, McGill University
Robert Riggs, Asstistant Professor, University of Bridgeport

We are seeking abstracts for a panel on Social Approaches to Lebanese Shi'i History. Please send an abstract and CV to pascal.abidor@mail.mcgill.ca no later than February 5th. Authors will be notified by February 8th and have until February 15th to submit their abstract to the MESA annual meeting website. MESA membership is required at the time of submission.

*Panel Summary*

Approaches to the history of Shi‘ism in Lebanon have tended be circumscribed in their analyses. Only recently have studies looked beyond Musa al-Sadr, Shi‘i militant movements, and Fadlallah to include early 20th century figures such as Muhsin al-Amin and 'Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din. Despite these advances, works on Lebanese Shi‘ism, like the study of Shi‘ism generally, assume a passive role of Shi‘i lay-believers as simply the followers of the ulama. This can be ascribed to a combination of uncritically taking Shi‘i doctrines on clerical-lay relations as practical fact rather than theoretical, of extrapolating the Iranian experience as reflecting the telos of Shi‘ism, and of assuming a subordinate role for non-Iranian Shi‘i communities to the will of Iran and its institution of vilayat-e faqih. Such misconceptions fail to recognize the constructive role of Shi‘i lay-believers (muqallidun) in the authority of the ulama. Moreover, they fail to understand the dialectical relationship between the collective will to piety that demands the leadership of the ulama and the content, scope, and force of that very leadership. The papers in this panel situate the Shi‘i ulama within their local milieu using a social historical lens and attempt to insert the muqallidun into the history of Lebanese Shi‘ism as active agents alongside their ulama.

Successful authors must complete on-line submissions on the MESA site by February 15.

For full conference details, please see: http://www.mesa.arizona.edu/annual-meeting/.