If the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 has provided a boost for Iranian Studies as well as an impetus within the Study of Islam which increasingly acknowledges the relevance of research in contemporary issues; the recent war in Iraq and related religio-political developments in the Muslim world appears to have caused a flood of publications on contemporary aspects of Shiism. Many in this fast turnover of new titles however, seem to have been motivated more by the prospect of massive sales rather than by sustained academic value, which in turn, causes some prejudiced suspicion of any new publication in this field. The responsibility of authors and/or editors would therefore be to ensure a depth of analysis and presentation that can make their own publications stand out of the broad mass of rather mediocre.

The work under review had the potential to do exactly this, namely by providing a thorough historical discussion of the issue of militancy in various Shīʿī denominations, and its relationship to the historically developed dominant non-violent and more theologically charged understanding of Shīʿa Islam. Such an edition could then well place contemporary political and militant manifestations of Shiism in a kind of longue durée of appropriation of, and dissociation from violence as a defining element of Shīʿa Islam. The structure of the volume, edited by Assaf Moghadam, currently of the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Israeli Herzliya, suggests that indeed a decent effort in this direction has been made: while the second part contains seven regional case studies, the 46 pages of the first part aimed at providing the reader with the “Historical, doctrinal, and religious context”. However, a closer look reveals very soon that unfortunately, the emphasis in this section is solely on Iran and, moreover, goes hardly back beyond the middle of the twentieth century. In the first chapter, Babak Rahimi discusses “the rise of Shii ideology in pre-revolutionary Iran” (pp. 25–48) by taking the reader on a journey back to the reign of Riżā Shāh Pahlavī and his inglorious son Muḥammad Riżā between 1941 and 1979, with the occasional excursion into the Constitutional period in the first half of the twentieth century. While he certainly succeeds in tracing the roots of contemporary Shīʿī Islamist thought and organisation in Iran to the militant Fadāʾiyān-i islām (established in 1943), it would have significantly increased the relevance of this contribution if the author had embedded these observations not only in a discussion of political and socio-economic developments in Iran, but in a wider context of religiously grounded arguments pro and counter violence in Shīʿa Islam throughout Muslim history. The same could be said about the second chapter in that section by David Menashri (pp. 49–69), which revolves around the doctrine of the “trusteeship of the jurist” (vilāyat-i faqīh) that had gained extraordinary importance in the political thought of the Āyatullāh Rūḥullāh Khumaynī. By focusing almost exclusively on the career of the doctrine in the evolution of Khumaynī's thought and testing its viability on the degree of implementation in post-revolutionary Iran, the author fuels the somewhat misleading conception that religiously substantiated political thought in Shīʿa Islam — at least in its Twelver variety — is tied almost exclusively to Khumaynī. While precursors of the sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries are mentioned in passing (p. 50), their important contribution to the development of a clergy-centred political model are not discussed any further.

The belief in the pre-eminence of Iran in the development of militant Shīʿī Islamism is further perpetuated in the seven regional studies that make up the second part of the volume, entitled “Trends and patterns in the Shii heartland and beyond”: after all, even though the notion of “Shii heartland” is not substantiated any further, the sequence of the regional entries suggests that at least the editor considers it to be constituted by Iran (Sanam Vakil, pp. 73–94) and Iraq (Reidar Visser, pp. 95–111). While such a notion appears distorted already for the Twelver Shīʿa, it clearly ignores the importance of other Shīʿī denominations, first and foremost the Ismāʿīliyya and the Zaydiyya. Both distinct branches of Shīʿa Islam, very much prevalent in South Asia and Yemen, respectively, have contributed substantially to the development of political, and even militant political thought in Shīʿa Islam in general and would have merited at least some acknowledgement. This, however, has not even been the case in the chapter on Pakistan by Hassan Abbas (pp. 155–180) who, by stressing that “Pakistan is home of the second-largest Shii community in the world” (p. 150), helps at least to rectify the notion of a “Shii heartland” in the Middle East. However, besides a rather laconic footnote that “the term “Shiis” in this article refers primarily to the Ithna Ashariya, or Twelver Shiis” (p. 175 n.1), even Abbas ignores the 2% Ismāʿīlis among Pakistani Muslims who, with the Āghā Khān, possess a living Imām as infallible religio-political leader.

The remaining regional case studies by Benedetta Berti on Lebanon (pp. 112–134), Toby Jones on Saudi Arabia (pp. 135–154), Brian Glys Williams on Afghanistan (pp. 182–200) and Uzi Rabi on Kuwait and Bahrain (pp. 201–216) perpetuate the Iran- and Twelver Shīʿa-centred view. All four contributors affirm the overwhelming importance of Khumaynī's thought and post-revolutionary Iran for the politically activist expressions of the Shīʿī communities in Lebanon, the Gulf States including Saudi Arabia, and even of the Hazara community in Afghanistan; moreover, in most cases the development of such expressions is discussed against the background of evolving Sunnī militancy, or at least open anti-Shīʿī sentiments in these countries, often on the instigation of the respective governments.

While in the concluding chapter on “trends, types, and drivers of militancy among the Shiis” (pp. 217–236) the editor highlights various inevitable shortcomings that any edited volume of this kind will have, none of the critical points raised here are found among them. Instead, Moghadam would wish for little else than a more exhaustive list of Shīʿī organisations across the globe positively inclined to politically motivated violence, and for further regional case studies (see pp. 217f), and then go on to systematise the findings from the nine chapters of this volume. However, such consent with the many obvious gaps in the analysis of the matters at hand and the particular style of presentation can be explained quite easily, first and foremost with the professional background of most of the contributors in Security Studies and policy counselling. Four contributors, including the editor himself, are involved in policy analysis and security assessment in Israel, which, after all, is a declared arch-enemy of the religio-political establishment in Iran and prime target of a possible military attack, meanwhile even of a nuclear strike. Moreover, in his introduction (pp. 1–21) as well as in his conclusion Moghadam makes the unequivocally clear that the “ambitious aim” of the volume, somewhat disguised by its much broader title, was to “assess trends in militancy and political violence in the Shii community after 1979” (p. 217) and, ultimately, to provide a research-based input to especially U.S. policy making (see pp. 232–235). Such an aim is in itself not reprehensible, but should be clearly expressed in the title of this volume, in order to not raise any false hopes in what readers can expect. With the general title that was chosen, and which most probably is owed rather to the publisher's marketing strategy than to the intention of editor and authors, however, many academic readers will be thoroughly disappointed and perhaps regret having spent the impressive amount of £80.00 on this book. As such, I am afraid I will not be able to see Moghadam's edition stand out from the mass of similar policy- and market-oriented rush jobs on the matter.