Theocracy in Shia Islam and Judaism: Studies in Legal Theology

• Main Author: Tzfadya, Ezra David
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2022
• Subjects: Biblical studies; Epistemology; Exegesis & hermeneutics; Guardians; Islamic Studies; Judaic studies; Judaism; Ontology; Philosophy; Religion; Sovereignty; Theology
• ISBN: 9798383065013

The dissertation, “Theocracy in Judaism and Shia Islam: Studies in Legal Theology” concerns the conceptual underpinnings of modern theocratic thought in both traditions. It also examines attempts by modern thinkers in both traditions to theologically problematize and unwind those monopolistic theocratic-epistemic syntheses that meld mysticism, law, philosophy and politics by engaging with pre-modern sources with an explicit openness to responding to the contemporary imperative of autonomy. It explores the ideas of thinkers in the Jewish tradition such as Judah Halevi, Rav Kook, Leo Strauss, Franz Rosenzweig and Menachem Lorberbaum, along with figures inspired by the Shia tradition that include Ayatollah Khomeini, Ahmad Narāqī, Mohammed Shabestari, Reza Hajatpour and Fazlur Rahman. The dissertation utilizes the core Shia theological concept of “guardianship” (wilāya) as a philosophical window for comparatively examining the theocratic idea in both Judaism and Shia Islam given the philologically demonstrated fashion with which the canonical medieval Jewish thinker Judah Halevi intimately and creatively appropriates the concept via the figure of the walī (the “guardian”) for his legal theology in his magnum opus, the Kuzari. It pays particular attention to the status of “the Esoteric” in the establishment of theocratic epistemic monopoly under the banner of guardianship.Indeed, the studies comprising this dissertation aim to transcend the discrete Shia legal, theological and philosophical apparatuses within which the concept has been articulated. It articulates a wilaya that operates tacitly in Judaism, fashioning the religion's relationship with theocracy as both an epistemological-political concept operating across the breadth of the tradition and an argument articulated against the backdrop of the epistemic powers of the modern State. The engagement with Halevi's "Shia" theocratic horizons also provides avenues for assessing the continuity of Halevi's thought with Rabbinic theology based on how contemporary scholars of Rabbinic literature have conceived the relative theocratic character of the Talmud while speaking to philosophic audiences interested in the subdiscipline of political theology. A comprehensive analysis of Halevi's hagiographic depiction of the Second Temple Era/Mishnaic Rabbis in Book 3 of the Kuzari where the term walī is deployed will be filtered through such discussions. This analysis also allows for a substantive new critique of Leo Strauss influential study, "The Concept of Reason in Judah Halevi's Kuzari." The dissertation proceeds to take those insights about the spiritually theocratic bounds of a legal nomos and the role of a guardian as a "cultural hero" and makes a theoretical intervention into debates by historians whether the thrust of 19th century Shia political theology and its most audacious thinker, Ahmad Narāqī, anticipates the theocratic legal theology of the Islamic Revolution, or offers a quietist anti-theocratic vision. We end up claiming that Naraqi sets up a theocratic model of nomocratic sovereignty in which a "cultural hero" can achieve divine inspiration while temporally leading the nomos.This study argues that the fulcrum of a theocratic idea and an anti-theocratic corollary in Shia Islam and Judaism lies in the textual construction or deconstruction of epistemic monopoly by scholars, clerics, and/or intellectuals. Our philosophic meditation upon particularly salient instantiation of theological transfer between medieval Shia and Jewish political theology, Judah Halevi's Kuzari, will allow us to claim that these Shia and Jewish figures are operating within a mutually intelligible framework of wilāya.