The Just Ruler (al-sultan al-adil) in Shiite Islam
The Comprehensive Authority of the Jurist in Imamite Jurisprudence

by Abdulaziz Abdulhussein Sachedina
New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. 281 pp. $29.95

Reviewed by Daniel Pipes
Choice
April 1989

http://www.danielpipes.org/1075/the-just-ruler-al-sultan-al-adil-in-shiite-islam

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The Iranian revolution of 1978-79 spurred great interest generally in the Shi`i branch of Islam, specifically in the distinctive Shi`i approach to politics. Of the many studies that have appeared in the 1980s, Sachedina's inquiry into the nature of leadership stands of out for its profound grounding in the scholarship of the Shi`i theologians themselves. This distinguished it most sharply from Said Amir Arjomand's The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam (CH, Apr ‘85) and gives this volume its very great value. At the same time, the extreme density of Sachedina's prose, the multiplicity of references unfamiliar even to those versed in Islam, and the author's inability to show the importance of his subject make this a book suitable for the specialist alone.

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