The Shiite as the Heretic Other? The Nuanced Discourse of Shiite Islam as a Variant of Central European Orientalism

Abstract

The general autonomy of Central European authors from a Western power agenda as postulated by the mainstream critique of Orientalism is well known. At the same time, scholars have paid much less attention to the attitude of the modern Hungarian, Czech, Polish, and Slovenian corpus vis-à-vis Shi’ism,a narrow branch of the subject of Orientalism. This study argues that a certain bias in this context can be identified on the part of regional academics of the twentieth century, which might be explained by personal preferences for Sunni Orthodoxy. Simultaneously, this paper seeks to explore the reasons for such a tendency within the context of specific historical development at the frontiers. To this end, it presents case studies that juxtapose the relevant experiences with the classic Orientalist criticism of Western intellectual life introduced by scholars such as Edward Said, Talal Asad, Joseph Massad, and Mahmood Mamdani.

Keywords

• : islam
• orientalism
• historiography
• shi’ism