Islam as Power: Shi?i Revivalism in the Oeuvre of Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah

Providing an in-depth and extensive analysis of the concept of power as articulatedby Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah (1935–2010), this case study analyses thesystemic conceptualisation of power and his argumentation of sacralisingIslamised power. The volume also offers a quick overview of how the concept wasunderstood and articulated by other Shi‛ite jurists such as Ayatollah Khomeini.Examining Fadlallah’s oeuvre, in particular his seminal book Islam and theLogic of Power [ al-Islam wa-mantiq al-quwwa ], this book focuses on the narrativeitself, which played a central role in the radical transformation that occurred in theShi‛te concept of empowerment and its recognition as a necessity. The analysisof Fadlallah’s conceptualisation and argumentation illustrates the mechanismof sacralising righteous power as well as the means of gaining it. Fadlallahreinterpreted Shi‛sm as a project of empowerment to initiate and sustain an“impulse of power” amongst the Lebanese Shi‛tes in the most critical moment ofmodern Lebanese history.Dealing with the concept of power in Shi‛te political thought from a theoreticalperspective, the study has an innovative approach that offers an insight intohow the transformative narrative is constructed and what makes it convincing.Shedding light on the content and logical structure of Fadlallah’s argumentation,this volume will be of interest to scholars and students researching contemporarypolitics, Islam, and the Middle East.

About the Author

Bianka Speidl is a senior lecturer and researcher at the Pázmány Péter Catholic

University, Hungary. She earned her PhD from the Institute of Arab and Islamic

Studies at the University of Exeter. She spent academic years in Tunisia, Syria,

Italy, and Lebanon. Between 2013–2019 she was a research fellow in the Research

Group of Contemporary Religious Culture pertaining to the Hungarian Academy

of Sciences and the University of Szeged, Hungary.