This paper describes the role of Shia female authority in post-revolutionary Iran, and their political discourses since the rise of reformists in 1997. By focusing on Azam Taleqani, the paper argues that female Shia authority has carved out a counter-discursive space wherein new ideas of self and reality, justice and mobility are articulated and debated. The paper finally shows how Shia political theology should be understood in terms of an agonistic mode of interaction, rather than a set of male-dominated authorial Hawza spaces in Qom or Najaf.
Religious Studies/Theology