THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF SHIءI MODERNISM: MORALITY AND GENDER IN EARLY 20TH-CENTURY LEBANON

Extract

This article contributes to the history of Shiء Islam in Lebanon under the French Mandate by looking at Shiءi religious and cultural engagements with the problem of gender. In the first section, religious treatises written by ءulamaʿ in the context of a politicized “culture war” waged over the proposed reformation of ءAshuraʿ mourning practices during the 1920s and 1930s are analyzed to elucidate the relationship between idealised gender behavior and religious practice. In the second section the Shiءi modernist monthly journal al-ءIrfan is utilized to show how it advocated certain “proper” roles for men and women in an adequately pious Shiءi society. Finally, jokes and other materials published in al-ءIrfan are examined to demonstrate how multifaceted gender norms were in Shiءi Lebanon. These sources paint a rich historical portrait of Shiءi cultural politics by complicating conventional conceptualizations of Shiءi society under the Mandate and illustrating how Shiءi cultural identities have been produced and negotiated over time.