against civilian and military targets began to be
used by radical Shii groups at this time, which
legitimated this tactic in terms of the Shii con-
cept of martyrdom. The removal of the Baathist
regime of saddam hUsayn in Iraq in 2003 by the
United States and Great Britain inadvertently gave
political Shiism more power in Iraq and the wider
Middle East, leading some observers to speak of
a modern “Shia revival” that will significantly
reshape the region for years to come.
See also aga khan; akhbari school; alaWi;
assassins; batin; bohra; daa wa; fitna; gUlF Wars;
heresy; holidays; UsUli school.
Further reading: Kamran Scot Aghaie, ed., The Women
of Karbala: Ritual Performance and Symbolic Discourses
in Modern Shii Islam (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2005); William C. Chittick, ed., A Shiite Anthology
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981); Far-
had Daftary, A Short History of the Ismailis (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1998); Heinz Halm, Shia
Islam: From Religion to Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Mar-
cus Wiener Publishers, 1997); S. H. M. Jafri, The Origins
and Early Development of Shia Islam (London: Long-
man, 1979); Etan Kohlberg, ed., Shiism (Burlington,
Vt.: Ashgate, 2003); Reinhold Loeffler, Islam in Prac-
tice: Religious Beliefs in a Persian Village (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1988); Moojan Momen,
An Introduction to Shii Islam: The History and Doctrines
of Twelver Shiism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1985); Matti Moosa, Extremist Shiites: The Ghulat
Sects (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1988);
Sayyed Hossein Nasr, Hamid Dabashi, and Seyyed Vali
Reza Nasr, eds., Shiism: Doctrines, Thought, and Spiritual-
ity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988);
Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam
Will Shape the Future (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007).
shirk
Shirk is the heretical act of accepting other deities
in addition to God. Shirk is the worst form of dis-
belief in islam because the shahada, which is the
most important statement of belief (i.e., “There is
no God but God, and mUhammad is the messenger
of God”), affirms the Muslim notion of the one
and only God. The talbiya, recited typically during
the haJJ, reinforces this idea, “You have no associ-
ate.” The qUran contains five occurrences of shirk
and, in only two of these cases, the word is used in
terms of forbidding people to ascribe partners to
God (Quran 31:13 and 35:14). In the other three
(Quran 34:22; 35:40; 46:4), the Quran rejects the
belief that any other deities were God’s partners
during creation.
Two types of people to whom the quranic proc-
lamations on shirk were directed were polytheists
(primarily those living in the Arabian Peninsula
during the seventh century) and Christians. The
pre-Islamic polytheists may have worshipped hun-
dreds of deities arranged around the kaaba and,
according to Muslims, they were one group toward
which Islam’s message of God’s unity and universal
sovereignty was directed. On the surface, it would
seem that the Quran’s antipolytheistic message may
have also been directed toward Christians, although
this case is more ambiguous. For instance, accord-
ing to the Quran there are disbelievers who say
God is the “third of three” (5:73) and that “God
is the Christ, son of Mary” (5:72), while these dis-
believers worship JesUs and mary as two deities in
addition to God (5:116). Yet, the Quran identifies
Christians as one of the people oF the book who
received God’s message before Muhammad, and, as
such, Muslims recognize Christians as monothe-
ists, whose worldview teeters dangerously close
to polytheism. Finally, members of the Wahhabi
movement, Islamists with roots in the worldviews
of mUhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab (1703–92),
expanded the notion of shirk to include as heretics
Sufis, the Shia, those who supported Western inter-
ests, and virtually anyone else who disagreed with
the Wahhabi’s interpretation of Islam. Shirk and
related notions of God’s oneness continue to be
central in Islamic belief and practice.
See also christianity and islam; idolatry;
Jahiliyya; sUFism; Wahabbism.
Jon ArmajaniFurther reading: David Adams Leeming, Jealous Gods
and Chosen People: The Mythology of the Middle East (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2004); G. R. Hawting, Theshirk 627 J