Shia Islam places great importance on the guidance of clergy, and each branch of Shi'ism maintains its own clerical structure.
[citation needed] They believe that the process of finding God's laws from the available Islamic literature will facilitate dealing with any circumstance.
After completing this, those who wanted to be members of the ulama attended madrasa (religious college, "collectively referred to as hawza", plural hawzat)[6] situated in big cities.
Instead, the number of talib thins out at each level of promotion, with the drop-outs going on to less demanding and prestigious, but still respected religious roles.
Below these are those who drop out of madrasa "consider themselves members of the ulama" although they make their livelihood in some non-religious occupation (merchant, craftsman, etc.).
[1] Other occupations often filled by drop outs -- though they "need not have attended a madrasa" to be one are In addition there are those who earned an ijaza but did not become "recognized", because they lacked the patronage of an eminent mujtahid, the prestige among other students, family connections, or talent for preaching and communicating.
[11][12][13] According to Michael M. J. Fischer, the Iranian revolution led to "rapid inflation of religious titles", and almost every senior cleric was called an Ayatollah.
[13] The Shia clerics in this period were closely tied with the bazaars that were in turn strongly linked with the artisans and farmers that together formed traditional socioeconomic communities and centers of associational life with Islamic occasions and functions tying them to clerics who interpreted Islamic laws to settle commercial disputes and taxed the well-to-do to provide welfare for devout poorer followers.
But since the 1970s, the Shah of Iran aroused the defense and oppositions of the bazaar by attempts at bring under control their autonomous councils and marginalizing the clergy by taking over their educational and welfare activities.
[15] The Imamate in Nizārī Ismā'īlī doctrine (Arabic: إمامة) is a concept in Nizari Isma'ilism which defines the political, religious and spiritual dimensions of authority concerning Islamic leadership over the nation of believers.
In Ismā'īlī Islām, the term dāʻī has been used to refer to important religious leaders other than the hereditary Imāms and the Daʻwa or "Mission" is a clerical-style organization.