The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future by Vali Nasr

Review by: L. Carl Brown

Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 2006), p. 174
Published by: Council on Foreign Relations
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20032188 .
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 Recent Books
and eventual military mastery thatmarked Middle Easternpoliticsby concentrating
the critical year after Germany's invasion on radicalIslamneglected the long-lived
of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. intra-Islamicconfrontationbetween
Sunnis and Shiites? If so, this book offers
TheArmenians: From Kings andPriests to compellingcorrectivereading.Nasr pro
Merchants and Commissars.BY RAZMIK videsa succinctsummaryof Shiite religious
PANOSSIAN.
ColumbiaUniversity precepts and practices and of how Sunnism
Press, 2006, 492 pp. $40.00. differsfromShiism, theologicallyand
No single theory,Panossian contends in He identifiesand locates
sociologically.
navigation,can the differentShiite communitiesand
thisinspiredand thoughtfilU
account for a national identitywith roots as then, with a good mix of broad-brush
ancient as theArmenian, formed as itwas historyandanecdotaldetail,
interpretative
from such disparate experiences among a sketchesthehistoryof Sunni-Shiite
people.Thus, ratherthanchoose
scattered confrontationfromLebanon to South
betweenwarringschoolsof thought,espe Asia, making a strong case for the depth
cially those that treatnation and national of this divide. At the same time, he does
identity as primordial and those that see not suggest some sort of incipient Shiite
them as constructed, he seeks amiddle International-the importantdifferences
groundwhere diverse theoriesmerge among Shiite communities and the limits
Viewed thisway,Armenian
productively. of transnational
Shiite political loyalties
nationalidentityisamodern,post-seven are clear. Still, the thrust of this broad
teenth-centuryphenomenon,in itsvery ranginganddetailed,but stilleminently
essence subjectivebut rooted in historical readable, account is that the recent political
realities community,religion, gains of the Shiites may be ushering in a
of language,
and shared experience tracing back at least major, perhaps even tectonic, shift in the
to the tiird century BC.More than this, it largerMiddle Eastern political landscape.
has been the transcendent, joint project of
both Armenians on the land (historic east The Looming Tower:Al-Qaeda and the
ernArmenia) and the diasporic other half Road to 9/n1. BY LAWRENCE WRIGHT.
(largelyfromhistoricwestern,orOttoman, Knopf, 2006, 480 pp. $27.95.
Armenia), divided in Soviet times, com This is surely themost thorough account
mingling now with seminal effect. availableof"Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/i."
It is also themost readable, a remarkable
feat given that it presents awelter of
individualsand incidents.An appendix
identifyingthe"principal takes
characters"
Middle East up eight pages; another eight pages are
L. CARL BROWN needed to list the number of jihadists,
scholars,antiterroristofficials,andothers
TheShiaRevival:How Conflicts
Within Wright interviewed.The result is a splendid
IslamWill Shape theFuture. BY VALI example of what dogged historical recon
NASR. Norton, zoo6, 304 pp. $25.95. struction can achieve. An added bonus is
Have those seeking tomake sense of Wright's discussion of how he worked to

[174] FOREIGN AFFAIRS* Volume8sNo. 6

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