Deconstructing Dabashi

In turning doctrine into metaphor, Dabashi replaces centuries of Shia thought with psycho-political impressions.

- Shujaat Hussain

For decades, Hamid Dabashi has cut a striking figure in academic and cultural circles.

An Iranian-American professor at Columbia University, he’s known for his wide-ranging commentaries on cinema, Islam, revolution, and exile.

His prose is lyrical, references layered, and style unapologetically bold.

Shi‘ism: A Religion of Protest, published in the wake of dashed hopes following the Iranian revolution, carries his familiar voice: part theorist, part memoirist, and always a provocateur.

But this time, Dabashi’s literary confidence comes at a cost.

His core claim, that Shi'ism is not a theological system but a cultural posture rooted in historical grief, raises eyebrows for reasons deeper than scholarly disagreement.

The book may be stirring, but it trades doctrinal accuracy for poetic mood, and collapses centuries of intellectual tradition into a metaphor of endless defiance.

In Dabashi’s hands, Shi‘ism becomes a ritualized resistance narrative.

From the martyrdom of Imam Hussain at Karbala to the chants of modern protestors, Dabashi reads the entire tradition as a theatre of dissent.

For him, power corrupts theology, while defeat preserves its soul.

This view, while emotionally charged, struggles to align with Shia sources or the tradition’s own self-understanding. Faith, in this telling, lives only in mourning. Once it governs, it dies.