Vliv šíitského duchovenstva na politiku a společnost

Shia clergymen in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon traditionally stood aloof from politics. However, the spread of communism and Marxism, accompa-nied by other secular tendencies, compelled even the high rank Shia clergy representatives to openly fight for the preservation of Islamic traditions and the improvement of the relative position of Shias within the state.The aim of this dissertation is to capture the most significant events since the outset of the political activism in the 1950s until the present time. It describes the inception and the course of the political and ideological Islamic movements of the main Iranian, Iraqi and Le-banese clergymen and mujtahids.This work utilizes Alexander Wendt's constructivism and Michel Foucault's post-structuralism to explain the primary power relationships between the clergy elite, the revolutio-nary clergymen and the leaders of the opposition, especially then the heads of the state. The representatives of Shia tradition employed va-rious strategies, determined by the ever-changing discourses, depen-dent on the unstable external circumstances. Lastly, this dissertation attempts to capture the transformations of the traditional Shia institu-tion of marjayat, and outlines its current and future relevance.