The Other Islam

About the Book

The reputation of Shi’ism in the Islamic world, as elsewhere, has undergone many vicissitudes, but it is now higher than ever. In this new study, The author moves us toward an understanding of the social, intellectual, and theological crises that Prophet Muhammed and his cousin, Ali, together with some of the impoverished early Muslims (the precursors of Shi’ism) were struggling to solve. The issues were many: the idols, their social and economic embodiments in class, tribe, gender and ethnicity; the necessity of the revolutionary spirit, and its resumption in the Shi’i rebellious ethos; the question of the non-Arab converts to Islam; the exaggeration of the status of the imāms (Shi’i extremism); the extension of the Islamic idol-Breaking spirit to encompass and examine modern issues or novel contemporary phenomena. Al Da’mi brings to the discussion of these historically complicated questions the lively investigation that many readers of English are not expected to know and comprehend outside the context of the self-consuming sectarian conflicts which penetrate and segment the Islamic world.

About the Author

Muhammed Al Da’mi (born, 1955) is Professor of English and Orientalist Literature. His work in the academia exceeds twenty seven years in the universities of Baghdad, Aden, Irbid, Yarmouk and Arizona State (USA). He is author of a number of books and scholarly papers in Arabic and English. He contributes to the Arabic press weekly. Al Da’mi is a member in several Iraqi and Arabic cultural and specialized societies, including “The House of Wisdom”, Baghdad. He has been interviewed by several satellite channels both in Arabic and English. His latest books: Caught in a Dream (2012) and The Other Spiritualities of the Middle East (2013) bring several of the arguments of this book into focus on a meaningful of regional basis.