The Sunna and Shi'a in History Division and Ecumenism in the Muslim Middle East

Sunni-Shi'i relations have undergone significant transformations in recent decades. The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran had a major spill-over effect on the entire Middle East, and the 2003 war in Iraq transformed the Shi'is into the dominant force in Iraq. The emergence of Iran as a regional power following Saddam Husayn's removal, along with the weakness of the Arab state system, raised the specter of the "Shi'i Crescent" threatening Sunni-Arab domination in the region.

The present volume demonstrates the complexity of Sunni-Shi'i relations by analyzing political, ideological, and social encounters between the two communities from early Islamic history to the present. While analyzing specific case studies in various Middle Eastern regions, the book provides a panoramic picture ranging from hostility to efforts of cooperation and ecumenism.

Meir Litvak is Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, Israel.
 
Ofra Bengio is a Senior Research Fellow at The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and a Professor in Middle East History at Tel Aviv University.

PART I: SUNNA AND SHI'A IN THE AGE OF MUSLIM EMPIRES
1. Responses to Unwanted Authority in Early Islam: Models for Current Shi'i and Sunni Activists; J.Lassner
2. Early Hanbalism and the Shi'a; N.Hurvitz
3. The Confrontation Between Sunni and Shi`i Empires: Ottoman-Safavid Relations Between the Fourteenth and the Seventeenth Century; M.Scherberger
4. Encounters between Shi'i and Sunni 'ulama' in Ottoman Iraq; M.Litvak
5. The Ottoman Dilemma in Handling the Shi'i Challenge in Nineteenth-Century Iraq; I.S.Üstün
PART II: SUNNIS AND SHI'IS AND THE MODERN STATES
6. Religious Extremism and Ecumenical Tendencies in Modern Iraqi Shi'ism; A.Baram
7. Quietists Turned Activists: the Shi'i Revolution in Iraq; O.Bengio
8. The Sunni-Shi'i Struggle over Lebanon: a New Chapter in the History of Lebanon; E.Zisser
9. The Wahhabiya and Shi'ism, from 1744/45 to 2008; G.Steinberg
10. Unity or Hegemony? Iranian Attitudes to the Sunni-Shi'i Divide; Z.Maghen
11. Debating the 'awakening shi'a': Sunni Perceptions of the Iranian Revolution; M.Hatina
12. Interesting Times: Egypt and Shi'ism at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century; R.Brunner
13. Epilogue: The Sunni-Shi'i Paradox