Shia
Doctrine and Sectarian Rivalry in the Muslim World Today
David
Pinault
Recent
events in Syria have highlighted the increasingly sectarian nature of politics
in today’s Middle East. A pair of
explicitly Shia entities—Iran’s Islamic Republic and the Lebanese
Hezbollah—support Bashar al-Assad’s regime,
which is dominated by Alawites, members of a sect that has its roots in
Shia history. Many of Assad’s most
ferocious opponents are militant Sunnis (some affiliated with al-Qaeda) who are
backed by sources in Saudi Arabia, a country whose Wahhabi Salafist ideology is
fervently anti-Shia.
To
gain perspective on this struggle, it’s helpful to know the historical origins
of Islamic sectarianism. Shiism arose in
the seventh century because of a political dispute over leadership of the ummah (the community of believers) after
the prophet Muhammad’s death in 632.
Most Muslims (those who ultimately became known as Sunnis) supported the
principle of election in selecting the caliph (the prophet’s successor). But a minority insisted that the caliphate
should be reserved for Ali ibn Abi Talib (Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law) and
for the offspring of Ali and his wife Fatima.
Such individuals were known as Shi‘at
Ali, “the adherents of Ali.” These
Shias resented those Muslim leaders who tried to block Ali’s bid for the
caliphate.
Ali
did manage to take power and rule as caliph for five years, only to be murdered
in the year 661. Further tragedy befell
his descendants. According to Shia
sources, Ali’s elder son Hasan was poisoned by order of the reigning
caliph. Thereupon the title of Imam
passed to Hasan’s younger brother, Husain ibn Ali.
The
term Imam is important for understanding doctrinal differences between Sunnis
and Shias. All Muslims use the term to
mean “prayer leader,” someone who leads a congregation in worship. But most Shias (especially those belonging to
the Ithna-‘Ashari or “Twelver”
denomination, which is by far the numerically largest form of Shiism, as well
as the state religion of the Iranian Islamic Republic) also use the term Imam
in a more restricted sense, to refer to the rightful spiritual leader of the
entire ummah. Twelver Shias insist the Imam must be from
the prophet’s immediate bloodline, and that he is both ma‘sum (sinless, perfect, and divinely protected from error) and mansus (chosen by Allah as leader,
thereby avoiding the vagaries of any human electoral process). The first such Imam, say Twelver Shias, was
Ali; the third was his younger son, Husain.
In
the year 680, at the urging of Shia partisans in Kufa, Husain (together with a
small group of family members and personal attendants) set out from Arabia to
Iraq to organize a rebellion against the reigning caliph, Yazid ibn
Mu‘awiyah. But Yazid’s soldiers
intercepted Husain near the river Euphrates at a site called Karbala (which
today is revered as Shiism’s foremost pilgrimage site). Not wanting Husain to become a martyr and a
rallying point for further Shia resistance, Yazid ordered his soldiers to force
Husain to surrender. So the soldiers
besieged Husain and his family, preventing them from reaching food or
water. Husain and his family suffered
torments of thirst under Iraq’s pitiless desert sun. Shia preachers recount these sufferings in
vivid detail during annual Muharram observances (Muharram is the Islamic month
in which the siege of Karbala occurred).
Finally,
Husain chose death rather than surrender.
On Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram, Husain died in combat against
Yazid’s forces. This effectively put an
end to Twelver Shia hopes for reclaiming the caliphate. But it was precisely
this political failure that generated the rise of Shiism as a distinctive
theological tradition within Islam. Shia
theologians argued that Husain had foreknowledge of what would happen at
Karbala but voluntarily sacrificed himself for the good of the ummah.
In exchange, Allah granted Husain the power of shafa‘ah (intercession on behalf of sinners). Preachers I encountered in Pakistan and India
recounted legends to the effect that Fatima continues to lament her martyred
son even while she resides in paradise; but she is comforted whenever mourners
gather here on earth to remember the Karbala Martyrs. Husain will exert his power of shafa‘ah on behalf of anyone who joins
his mother in mourning and sheds tears in remembrance of Karbala.
Such
mourning rituals are referred to by the term matam. During Muharram,
preachers recount the sufferings of the martyrs, with the express purpose of
moving their congregations to tears and loud wailing. Each year, in the days leading up to Ashura,
Twelver Shias hold processions in which they chant nauhajat (lamentation-poems in honor of Husain and the other
Karbala Martyrs) and mark time by rhythmically slapping their chests. In countries such as Pakistan and India, many
matami guruhan (Shia lamentation
associations) go further, arranging public processions in which hundreds of men
perform zanjiri-matam
(self-flagellation involving knives, flails or chains).
This
ritual bloodshed is both controversial and popular. Theologically, matam earns practitioners intercession; but from a sociological
perspective, it’s worth noting that, wherever possible, Shias tend to perform
such rituals publicly. One gains access
to Husain’s favor by having the courage to stand up and be identified as a Shia
via conspicuously distinctive rituals.
(Under Saddam Hussein’s secularist-Baathist regime, public Muharram
processions were prohibited; but since his fall from power, Iraqi Shias have
fervently embraced the public performance of self-scourging.)
Nevertheless
the bloody forms of matam generate
widespread revulsion. Spurting blood is
normally classed in Islamic law as najis
(ritually polluting), and the extravagant weeping and displays of grief
associated with matam offend Islamic
notions of decorum and self-restraint.
Of course it is precisely this offensive quality of matam that makes such rituals socially useful, as a means of
defining and demarcating a minority community and safeguarding it from being
absorbed by a dominant majority.
One
other distinctive Ithna-‘Ashari practice should be noted in this context:
veneration for the twelfth Imam.
Ithna-‘Ashari Shias believe that in the ninth century, Muhammad
al-Muntazar, the twelfth Imam, was on the point of being murdered by the
reigning Sunni caliph. Allah intervened,
however, and protected the Imam by causing him to enter al-ghaybah (occultation): he became invisible and hidden from his
persecutors. The twelfth Imam is still
alive but will return as al-Mahdi (“the one who is divinely guided”) to usher
in Judgment Day, fill the earth with justice, and execute intiqam (vengeance, retribution) against all those who have made
Shias suffer.
The
history and rituals noted above are worth knowing because they figure in the
increasingly fierce sectarian polemics linked to the Iranian Islamic Republic’s
bid for leadership of global Islam. The
regime in Teheran, fully aware of the widespread hostility to Shiism among
Sunni populations, has pursued a policy—dating back to the reign of Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini—of downplaying its Shia identity in international
pronouncements directed to the general Muslim public. Hence Iran’s support for the militant group
Hamas; hence Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s frequent televised appearances featuring
maps of Palestine and photos of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock. Support for Palestinian militancy constitutes
an attempt to gain popularity among Sunni Arabs by focusing on shared objects
of revulsion: Israel; Zionism; America.
Saudi-based
Wahhabi Salafists, eager to derail Iran’s drive for leadership, have been
reminding Sunnis of precisely those sectarian differences that are most likely
to keep anti-Shia sentiment alive. The
first of these (and one that Sunni informants referred to angrily, in
interviews I conducted in Yemen and Pakistan) involves the centuries-old Shia
practice called sabb al-sahabah
(“reviling the Companions”). Shias to
this day fault those companions of Muhammad who blocked Ali ibn Abi Talib from
the caliphate; particular blame is focused on the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr
and Umar. Since Sunnis revere these two
figures as “rightly guided” Muslim leaders, this is a particularly sore
point. Partly because of this issue,
Shias are sometimes derided with the term Rafidi
(rejectionist, renegade), a pejorative that recurs in present-day anti-Shia
polemics.
Sectarian
polemics have also arisen in intra-Palestinian politics (despite the fact that
almost all Palestinian Muslims are Sunni).
Members of Fatah have taken to taunting their rivals in Hamas by calling
them “Shia”—a derogatory reminder of the support given Hamas by Teheran.
Sectarian
battlelines are also evident in Syria, where the government (as noted above) is
dominated by Alawites, who are also known by the unflattering name “Nusairis.” This
name is derived from Muhammad ibn Nusair, a ninth-century preacher who
(according to Muslim hagiographers) claimed divine status for the Imam Ali and
the rank of prophet for himself. Thus
the Nusairis constitute one of a number of ghulat
(“doctrinal extremists”), Muslims
whose veneration of the first Imam is so heterodox that they have been spurned
as heretics. Nusairis today prefer the
title “Alawite” to emphasize their devotion to Ali (a figure revered by all
Muslims) rather than their historical derivation from a doctrinally suspect
medieval preacher.
Nusairi-Alawite
teachings reflect a mix of Muslim, pagan, and possibly Christian
influences. Their belief in tanasukh (transmigration of souls) is
linked to a moral system of reward and punishment: the evil are reincarnated as
dogs and snakes; the souls of the righteous are lifted up to the heavens and
granted a place among the stars. Syrian
Alawites I met in Tartous and Hosn Suleiman years ago described Allah as
“unknowable and invisible, a great secret.”
They added that “Ali is the means by which God manifests Himself to
us.” My informants acknowledged that
their liturgies include the ritual drinking of wine (which has led orthodox
Muslim critics to condemn this sect for its alleged influence by Christian
practice).
Despised
for centuries by Sunnis and mainstream Twelver Shias alike, the Alawites
remained an impoverished minority at the margins of Syrian society, taking
refuge in the rugged hill country known as the Jebel Ansariyah. This began to change during France’s dominion
of the region in the twentieth century, when many Alawites enrolled in the
French colonial forces. In the
post-colonial period, it was precisely the Alawite-dominated military that took
power and allowed the Assad family to assert its control.
It
is understandable that the Assads, as members of a sect rejected by other
Muslims, embraced Baathist ideology, with its emphasis on pan-Arab secularism
rather than Islamic identity as a means of achieving national and regional
unity. Nevertheless Alawites remain
keenly aware of the stigma of ghuluww
(doctrinal extremism) that still adheres to their sect. Hence in 1973 Hafez al-Assad (Bashar’s
father) cultivated a relationship with Musa al-Sadr, a prestigious Twelver Shia
mullah and the head of Lebanon’s Higher Shia Council. Assad succeeded in getting from al-Sadr a
fatwa (religious decree) to the effect that the Alawites do in fact constitute
an orthodox community within Shia Islam.
This hasn’t prevented Sunnis from continuing to loathe them as heretics;
but it does testify to the Alawites’ desire to be accepted as members of the
Islamic ummah.
Competition
between Sunnis and Shias has also become manifest recently in the realm of
religious conversion from one denomination to another within Islam. A current arena for such competition is
Yemen. The target: a segment of Yemen’s
population known as the Zaydis. Zaydi
religious teachings, although historically derived from Shiism, occupy a
doctrinal position that shares features of both Sunnism and Shiism. Zaydis I interviewed in Sanaa (Yemen’s
capital) a few years ago acknowledged that since the abolition of Yemen’s Zaydi
Imamate in 1962 and the subsequent diminishment of Zaydi political power, many
young Zaydis are ideologically adrift and uncertain of their own communal
identity.
Saudi-funded
missionaries have succeeded in converting some Zaydis to Wahhabi
puritanism. Other Zaydis, however, are
drawn to Iran’s Khomeinist propaganda.
Government sources in Yemen accuse Iran of funding the Houthi rebels in
northern Yemen’s Saada province, along the Saudi border (the Houthis are
militant Zaydis whose leadership comes from the family of Badr al-Din
al-Houthi). The Houthis deny that they
are funded by Teheran, and they repudiate the claim made by many Yemeni Sunnis
that Houthis have secretly converted to the Twelver Shiism that is Iran’s state
religion.
But
Zaydis I met in Sanaa told me that Houthis take inspiration from Iran and
Hezbollah and that they like the feeling of joining a worldwide movement, a
universal struggle against what are perceived as satanic forces at loose in the
world.
This
movement alarms anti-Shia ideologues. A
Sunni mosque-leader I met in Sanaa referred angrily to what he called Teheran’s
use of Yemeni “pawns” as part of an Iranian “conspiracy to rule our country
from afar.”
Yemen,
it seems, offers a storm-warning of what is to come: increasingly polemicized
competition between Sunni and Shia ideologues for the leadership of global Islam.
Courtesy: POPOLI
