| Summary/Abstract |
Lebanon’s Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah (d.2010) enjoyed in his later years a high profile as a ‘source of emulation’ (marjaʿ al-taqlīd) for Twelver Shiʿa in Lebanon and beyond. That high profile stemmed in part from his close association with the Shiʿi Lebanese resistance to Israeli occupation, and Hizballah in particular, but also from his avowedly ‘open-minded’ (munfatiḥ) and frequently controversial Islamic legal positions. His supporters claimed that his independent, Beirut-based marjaʿiyya could be more relevant to the contemporary, cosmopolitan world than those of the traditional scholarly centres of Najaf and Qom. His detractors, however, challenged the scholarly credentials of a man who had left the seminary (ḥawza) at a relatively young age. In the context of the interest of this special issue in ‘de-centring’ our approaches to Shiʿi Islam, he thus represents a valuable case study of how knowledge and authority can be constituted at the margins by one who seeks to challenge the tradition’s status quo, and in particular the hold of the contemporary ḥawza establishment as represented by the schools of Najaf and Qom. In this article I concentrate on his attempts to legitimize his scholarly authority in particular, vital to his claim to the marjaʿiyya.
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