An Analysis on Louis Massignon's Perspectives and Methodologies In His Shia Studies

Louis Massignon was a French Orientalist who is regarded among the prominent researchers in Shi'a studies. He applied scientific methodologies in his works and his valuable perspectives. The raised question of the present paper is, "What were the methodologies and perspectives that Louis Massignon applied in Shi'a studies?” Although some of his viewpoints contains scientific mistakes, his studies were all based on scientific methodologies. Louis Massignon's viewpoints, methodologies and sympathetic introspection with Muslims are analyzed in the present paper by means of a descriptive – analytical approach in order to assess his judgments and their relations with scientific methodologies of his work. Louis Massignon had tendencies toward Zionism in his early scientific works, however later on when Zionists' criminality came to the light, he started opposing them severely. Even he stood against his own country's government to support oppressed Muslims of Algeria. Massignon's works suffer from some deficiencies and mistakes on several subjects such as succession of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), the Hadith of Ghadir and the definition of the term 'Mawla', brotherhood between Imam 'Ali (AS) and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Imamate in Zaydism and Isma'ilism. Moreover, other mistakes in some of his works included not mentioning the references and selective reading, which was because of having an extreme mystic-Sufi attitude. It seems that such viewpoints of Massignon were similar to those of his phenomenology approach. In fact, the methodology he applied was rather sympathetic introspection; he did not believe in supporting Islam and Shi'ism.