Powers of persuasion

The Emergence of Modern Shiism: Islamic Reform in Iraq and Iran. By Zackery Heern. Oneworld; 220 pages; $30 and £20.

WHENEVER the non-Islamic world has confronted the Muslim one, militant movements have arisen from within that impeded crusty regimes from seeing off the external threat. Under attack from Crusaders in the west and Mongols in the east in the early medieval period, jihadist groups and firebrand preachers turned on heterodoxy in the ranks. Saladin overthrew the Shia imamate in Cairo and set troops on the Crusaders. He also established law schools that reduced multiple legal interpretations into rigid codes. In the 13th century Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya, a Sunni scholar in Damascus, adopted the notion of takfir, denouncing as apostates Muslims whom he deemed wayward, a crime punishable by death.

Five centuries later, buffeted by Western colonial military and economic might, a crop of Muslim movements turned on their distant all-encompassing Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal overlords in much the same way. Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-92) sought to...

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