Pedagogies of Uncertainty
Navigating Doubts and Disputes in a Lebanese Shi‘i Seminary (hawza)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20377/rpb-324Keywords:
Doubt, Epistemology, Islam, Pedagogy, Hawzwa Seminaries, LebanonAbstract
This article pays ethnographic attention to the different pedagogies developed and mobilized by seminary (hawza) teachers to enable future generations of Shi‘i scholars to disclose the shari‘a. These pedagogies lead seminarians away from the search for certitudes, truths, or even consensuses that drives much of modern intellectual production. Instead, they stress the frailty and contingency of human knowledge. To support this argument, I examine the role that doubt plays in these pedagogies—the debates it triggers, the disagreements it authorizes, and the scholarly pursuits it makes possible. I emphasize the work of doubt also to show that the ability to perform ijtihad hinges not only on expert knowledge and reasoning operations learned in classical treatises. The intellectual aptitudes and agility required to confront the questions of our times through ijtihad are also made possible by certain pedagogical techniques and strategies that are best studied ethnographically.
References
Abisaab, Rula J. (1999). Shi‘ite Beginning and Scholastic Tradition in Jabal ‘Amil in Lebanon. The Muslim World, 89(1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.1999.tb03666.x
Abisaab, Rula J. (2006). The Cleric as Organic Intellectual: Revolutionary Shi'ism in the Lebanese Ḥawza. In Houchang E. Chehabi (Ed.), Distant Relations. Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years. I.B. Tauris.
Abisaab, Rula J. & Abisaab Malek (2014). The Shi’ites of Lebanon. Modernism, Communism, and Hizbullah’s Islamists. Syracuse University Press.
Adel, Gholamali H.; Elmi, Mohammad J. & Taromi-Rad, Hassan (2012). Ḥawza-yi ‘ilmiyya. Shi‘i Teaching Institution. EWI Press.
Amanat, Abbas (1998). In Between the Madrasa and the Marketplace: The Designation of Clerical Leadership in Modern Shi‘ism. In Saïd A. Arjomand (Ed.), Authority and Political Culture in Shi’iism. SUNY.
Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad-Ali & Jambet, Christian (2004). Qu’est-ce que le shî‘isme?. Fayard.
Benjamin, Walter (1996). The Task of the Translator. In Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Eds.), Selected Writings (Volume I) (1913-1926). Harvard University Press.
Berkey, Jonathan (1992). The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo. Princeton University Press.
Calder, Norman (1989). Doubt and Prerogative: The Emergence of an Imami Shi‘i Theory of Ijtihād. Studia Islamica, 70, 57-78. https://doi.org/10.2307/1595678
Calmard, Jean (1996). Les universités théologiques du shiisme imâmite. In Mohammad-Ali Amir-Moezzi (Ed.), Lieux d'islam. Cultes et cultures de l'Afrique à Java. Autrement.
Clarke, Morgan (2009). Islam and the New Kinship. Reproductive Technology and the Shariah in Lebanon. Oxford University Press.
Clarke, Morgan (2016). After the Ayatollah: Institutionalisation and Succession in the marja‘iyya of Say-yid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Faḍl Allāh. Die Welt des Islams, 56(2), 153-186. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700607-00562p02
Coulson, Noel J. (1964). A History of Islamic Law. Edinburgh University Press.
Deeb, Lara (2006). An Enchanted Modern. Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon. Princeton University Press.
Fadlallah, Mohammad (1979). Tafsīr min waḥy al-Qurʾān (6 volumes). Dar Al-Malak.
Fadlallah, Mohammad (2009). Fiqh al- Shari‘a (3 volumes). Dar Al-Malak.
Fadlallah, Mohammad (2011). Aḥkām al- Shari‘a. Dar Al-Malak.
Fischer, Michael (1980). Iran. From Religious Dispute to Revolution. The University of Wisconsin Press.
Fischer, Michael & Abedi, Mehdi (2002). Debating Muslims. Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tra-dition. The University of Wisconsin Press.
Gardet, Louis (1962). Toward a Renewal of Islamic Humanism. Islamic Studies, 1(4), 25-39.
Gleave, Robert (2000). Inevitable Doubt. Two Theories of Shi’i Jurisprudence. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004491960
Gleave, Robert (2007a). Conceptions of Authority in Iraqi Shi‘ism : Baqir al-Hakim, Ha‘iri and Sistani on Ijtihād, Taqlid and Marja’iyya. Theory, Culture & Society, 24(2), 59–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276407074996
Gleave, Robert (2007b). Scripturalist Islam: The History and Doctrines of the Akhbari Shi'i School. Brill.
Hallaq, Wael B. (1997). A History of Islamic Legal Theory. An Introduction to Sunni Usul el-Fiqh. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511801266
Hallaq, Wael B. (2009). Sharī‘a: Theory, Practice, Transformations. Cambridge University Press.
Kassem, Ali (2016). The Social Sciences in the formation of Shia Scholars in Lebanon. American University of Beirut.
Kassem, Ali (2018). The Modernization of the Hawza? Lebanon as a Case Study. Contemporary Arab Affairs, 11(4), 83-110. https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2018.114005
Keddie, N. (1966). Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Iranian Tobacco Protest of 1891-1892. London: Frank Cass.
Khayyat, Munira (2023). A Landscape of War. Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon. University of California Press.
Künkler, Mirjam & Fazaeli, Roja (2012). The Life of Two Mujtahidahs: Female Religious Authority in Twentieth-Century Iran. In Masooda Bano & Hilary E. Kalmbach (Eds.), Women, Leadership, and Mosques. Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004209367_008
Landry, Jean-Michel (2016). The Practice of Shi’i Jurisprudence in Contemporary Lebanon. University of California.
Landry, Jean-Michel (2019). Dialectic of Ijtihād. Reforming Sharī‘a-Derived Family Law in Lebanon. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 39(3), 361-373. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-7885323
Landry, Jean-Michel (2023). Community fashioning. Political Ethics and Shi‘i Clerical Training in Leba-non. American Ethnologist, 50(2), 170–180. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13112
Litvak, Meir (1998). Shi’i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq: The ‘Ulama ’of Najaf and Karbala’. Cambridge University Press.
Makdisi, George (1981). The Rise of Colleges. Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh University Press.
Mervin, Sabrina (1995). La quête du savoir à Nagaf. Les études religieuses chez les chi'ites imâmites de la fin du XIXe siècle à 1960. Studia Islamica, 81, 165-185. https://doi.org/10.2307/1596024
Mervin, Sabrina (2000). Un réformisme chiite. Uléma et lettrés du Gabal ‘Amil (actuel Liban-Sud) de la la fin de l'Empire Ottoman à l'indépendance du Liban. Karthala - Cermoc - Ifead.
Mervin, Sabrina (2003). La ḥawza à l'épreuve du siècle : la réforme de l'enseignement religieux supérieur chiite de 1909 à nos jours. In Maher Al-Charif & Salam Kawakibi (Eds.), Le courant réformiste musul-man et sa réception dans les sociétés arabes. Institut français du Proche-Orient.
Momen, Moojan (1985). An Introduction to Shi’i Islam. Yale University Press.
Mottahedeh, Roy (1985). The Mantle of the Prophet. Religion and Politics in Iran. Oneworld Publications.
Mottahedeh, Roy (1995). Traditional Shi'ite Education in Qom. Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, 2(1), 89-98.
Mottahedeh, Roy (2016). The Najaf Ḥawzah Curriculum. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 26(1-2), 341-351. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186315000875
Nasrollah, Nejatbakhshe (2008). Devenir Ayatollah, guide spirituel chiite. Une recherche sur le système de l'enseignement dans les écoles religieuses de Qom et Najaf. L’Harmattan.
Newman, Andrew (1992). The Nature of The Akhbari/Usuli Dispute in Late Safavid Iran. Part 1. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 55(1), 21-51.
Odabaei, Milad (2019). Khārij (”Outside”) of the Tradition in the Aftermath of the Revolution: Carl Schmitt and Islamic Knowledge in Post-Revolutionary Iran. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 39(2), 296-311. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-7586808
Richard, Yann (1995). Shi’ite Islam. Winley.
Sakurai, Keiko (2011). Women’s empowerment and Iranian-style seminaries in Iran and Pakistan. In Keiko Sakurai & Fariba Adelkhah (Eds.), The Moral Economy of the Madrasa. Islam and Education Today. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203840788
Sankari, Jamal (2005). Fadlallah. The Making of a Radical Shi’ite Leader. Saqi.
Shaery-Eisenlohr, Roschanack (2008). Shi‘ite Lebanon. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/shae14426
Sindawi, Khalid (2007). Ḥawza Instruction and its role in shaping modern Sh(i)over-bar'ite identity: The hawzas of al-Najaf and Qumm as a case study. Middle Eastern Studies, 43(6), 831-856.
Tibawi, Abdul L. (1962). Origin and Character of ‘al-madrasah’. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and Af-rican Studies, 25(2), 225-238. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00063709
Walbridge, Linda S. (2014). The Thread of Mu‘awiya. The Making of a Marja ‘Taqlid. Ramsey Press.
Weber, Max (1958). Science as a Vocation. In Hans H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills (Eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (pp. 129-156). Oxford University Press.
Weiss, Max (2010). In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi’ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon. Harvard University Press.
Zubaida, Sami (2003). Law and Power in the Islamic World. I.B. Tauris. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755612208
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Jean-Michel Landry
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
