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Healing in Contemporary Arab Twelver Shi‘ism
Abstract
Twelver Shi‘is in twentieth and twenty-first century Syria and Iraq have seen a great deal of turmoil and change and this is reflected in their theology. Prior to 2003, Twelver Shi‘is constituted a proverbial “underdog” in Iraq and in Syria they were, at best, a marginalized community. Barely two decades later, the situation has changed drastically and at least in Iraq, Shi‘is are now in power. The argument the proposed paper seeks to make is that changing political and socio-economic circumstances also influence the semantic fields and conceptual maps found in local theologies. Religious “healing” (or shifa’) is no exception. How is “religious healing” different from other forms of healing? It encompasses a broader field of meaning. It can include physical healing, psychological, social, economic, and political forms of restoration. Michel Foucault has argued in “Madness and Civilization” that in Western Europe mental health has been redefined over time such that during the Renaissance, madness was seen as a form of mysterious wisdom, during the Classical Period as moral failure, and as the inability to function efficiently as part of the economy during the Modern Period. In the Arab world, classical Sunni works on Prophetic medicine (tibb nabawi) have emphasized the connection between the spiritual and the physical realms. This connection is preserved in contemporary Twelver Shi‘i books on medicine and healing, however, there are additional aspects and this paper seeks to explore those as well. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Syria and Iraq between the years of 2003 and 2019, as well as popular pamphlets bought in Syria and Iraq on healing, this paper points out that Shi‘i notions of healing often include theurgic elements (i.e. falakiyya) in addition to physical and psychological approaches. Moreover, as indicated above, political events have shaped popular notions of restoration, such that eschatological deliverance became a focal point during the American war in Iraq following 2003. During that time, Shi‘is prayed for individual and communal healing by beseeching God for political and economic restoration. The emphasis shifted towards social justice and equity following the rise of Daesh in 2014 and then pivoted towards physical health during the global Covid-19 pandemic. In short, the proposed paper will trace changes in the meanings of “healing” among Twelver Shi‘is in Iraq and Syria by contextualizing hermeneutic shifts.
Discipline
Religious Studies/Theology
Geographic Area
Iraq
Sub Area
Islamic Studies