ABSTRACT
From the closing decades of the 20th century, governmental shīʿism has to a considerable degree monopolised the attention of scholars and the media alike to the detriment of the other shīʿī discourses and traditions. This chapter suggests that any effort to provide a fair and accurate overview of shīʿī political theology should first consider not only the extant diversity of doctrinal and practical politics within the shīʿī world but also the transformations that various schools of thought have undergone. This chapter also suggests that discourse analysis can account for the prevailing methodological orientation to provide a comprehensive picture of the existing trends within today’s shīʿī world.
