Chlkowski’s Notion of Shia Mourning Rituals A Critique of Chlkowski`s Notion in the Collection of ‘Shi’ism

The present paper is critique of the article “Popular Shi’i Mourning Rituals” (Article 44) from Shi’ism collection written by Dr. Chlkowski. Although his viewpoint upon Shi’i mourning rituals is written impartially, like the viewpoint of a lot of orientalists it has some deficiencies. With a descriptive statement, he explains the mourning rituals in different Shiite regions around the world. His basis to analyze these programs is founded on a symbolic view of an external viewer and without relying on the Shia sources and educations. One of the methods of recognizing the beliefs of a society is analyzing the present symbols of that environment from which the author has used to analyze the data. The present paper attempts to show that this kind of method could not be a correct statement of the Shiite rituals and educations and this method is accompanied with some problems and deficiencies. On two main points of deficiencies and advantages, the present study looks upon Chlkowski’s writing and analyzes the positive points of this article in the form and structure of a paper as well as the writer’s style and its deficiencies based on two content and methodological approaches.