Tarikh Islam

Ethan Kleberg is a contemporary orientalist and Zionist Shiite scholar active in the field of Shiite studies. He tries to explain the meaning of the term and its background in two studies on the term Rafidah. Kleberg examines the idiomatic meaning of the term and the semantic burden of the term by using early Shiite and Sunni sources. He insists that the term Rafida, which initially had a negative meaning, has been turned into a positive and honorable term by the Shiite Imams. It also follows the history of the term Rafida from the time of Idris the Prophet and later to the history of Islam. His view was interpreted and the gaps in this view were identified in terminology and background knowledge in his critique of qualitative content analysis. The findings of study show that Kleberg first did not distinguish between lexical and idiomatic meaning and neglected lexical semantics; For this reason, in the background, he has confused between two meanings, Secondly, he ultimately failed to prove his claim that the responsibility for proof has a positive meaning for the term Rafidah, and provided a compelling reason, but rather numerous historical and hadith reasons to the contrary. Also, he has not reached a clear conclusion in his articles and has only stated the probabilities, and in the classification of propositions and probabilities, he does not observe the coherence of method and logical order.