Understanding political Islam in the contemporary world is one of the serious concerns in social and political sciences. What is political Islam? What are its internal components in terms of its different ideological, political, and historical dimensions and how has it formed the post-modern world? Dr Ahmad Naderi, head of the Anthropology Department in the University of Tehran, analyses the political Islam and one of his most neglected branches in the Western Islamic Studies, the Shia Islam. The Shia political Islam has turned to be a constructive player in international relations. Therefore the author gives not only a correct reading of Shia’s political culture and the phenomenon of Shiism. By inventing the concept of Shia State Rationality he also presents a model for understanding Iran’s foreign policy based on this ideology.
