Twelver Shiism is the largest branch within Shiism – one of the two major sects within Islam. Shiism is the second-largest tradition within Islam overall, following the Sunni tradition. Iran is the ...

The hotel conference room was divided: men on the left, women on the right. The speaker, a compact, bearded man in a safari vest, had come to talk about current events and the Quran. In the weeks ...

Since 1979, the Iranian regime has invested heavily in molding the Shia political identity around Khomeinism, reaching Shias from Bahrain to the United States. Drawing from non-Twelver Shia sources, ...

Louer takes a close look inside Shiite international networks and the efforts to control them, a struggle that pits the official clergy against a group that Louer calls the effendi: lay leaders ...