Translation of Living Shi’ism (Instances of Ritualisation Among Islamist Men in Contemporary Iran) With an Analytic Preface

The present book is a research about Shi’ism in contemporary Iran focusing on the religious life of men who belong to different classes of Iranian society. The main subject of the book is the meaning of religious life of a group of shi’ite men in contemporary Iran. The writer has chosen a mosque in Isfahan to find the religious meaning of worship for a group of shi’ite men in contemporary Iran and he visits this mosque four times during three years. The researcher finds this place to participate in different shi’ite rituals and become familiar with their religious actions and talk to them about the religious subjects. He decides to concentrate on the lives of five people to find the definition of religious life for a pious man in Shia Denomination.  David Thurfjell, the writer of this book, is a Swedish Christian who is active in the fields of study of religion, sociology and anthropology of religion. His main interest is to search in the field of contemporary Iran’s studies particularly Shia Islam and its role in people’s daily life. His method in this research is qualitative and by participant observation in the rituals and lives of shi’ite men in the contemporary Iran, he tries to find the meaning of their religious lives. Finally, the writer concludes that one cannot infer a similar meaning of the rituals in the contemporary Iran and there are different meanings to the rituals equal to the number of the performers of these rituals.