Graduate Student Nabil HageAli presents paper at Oxford

Graduate student Nabil HageAli presented a paper at a conference on Arab Shiʿa and Shiʿism vs. Wilāyat al-Faqīh, held at the Centre for Lebanese Studies, St Anthony’s College, Oxford University, in partnership with the Fares Center of Tufts University.

Nabil’s paper was titled: “Was ‘Alī Sharī‘atī a Proponent of Iranian Shī‘ism? Positioning the Founders of Twentieth-Century Political Shī‘ism in the Field of Debate on Iranian Shī‘ism and Arab Shī‘ism.” The paper answers a major question: “Outside the sphere of anti-Iranian hegemony in the field of politics, is there an Arab Shī‘ism that is discernible from an Iranian Shī‘ism on the levels of religious discourse?” Responding to emerging public discourses that classify Shī‘ī though according to the geographical location or language of Shī‘ī intellectual, this paper seeks to define major areas of controversy, such as wilāyat al-faqīh, which proponents of the category Arab Shī‘ism often employ in their arguments against what they refer to as Iranian Shī‘ism.