A Shiite Clerical View of Other Religions and the Lebanese Nation‐State: Muḥammad Jawād Maghniyah (1904‐1979)

• Published in: The Muslim world (Hartford) Vol. 110; no. 2; pp. 176 - 194
• Main Author: Clarke, Lynda
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hartford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-06-2020
• Subjects: 20th century; Islam; Law; Muslims; Quran; Religion; Shia Islam; Lebanon
• ISSN: 0027-4909; 1478-1913
• DOI: 10.1111/muwo.12326

This paper presents the discourse about the religious Other of an influential cleric of the twentieth century, Muhammad Jawad Maghniyah. Born to a scholarly family in the Shiite-populated region of southern Lebanon known as Jabal 'Åmil, Maghniyah completed a decade of study in the seminary town of Najaf in Iraq and began his career as a village priest after his return to Lebanon in 1936. He subsequently rose to the position of chief judge in the Shiite courts, while becoming an unusually prolific writer. Maghniyah's writings include not only learned books in a traditional style on law and Quranic exegesis, but also numerous shorter works in a more popular style aimed at a wider audience, along with opinion pieces contributed to journals, newspapers and magazines. Maghniyah was a reformist; he believed passionately that Islam, and particularly Shiite Islam, was meant to keep pace with modernity and deliver social justice.