Reviews: Ethics of War and Peace in Iran and Shi'i Islam

Studies and debates often fall into two categories: at one end of a spectrum are studies that endeavor to explain Iran's foreign policy efforts in terms of rational self-interest, thus ignoring cultural or historical particularities that may influence these actions; at the other end are those which explain everything using reductionist notions of Islam or Shi'ism, which are usually treated ahistorically as unchanging and uninfluenced by context. [...]causal links between these cultural trends and more recent trends in Iran are not fully explored. [...]the focus was largely on fighting for justice and dying a martyr, either for the principle of the matter or in pursuit of soteriological goals.