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Deeply Rooted
By: Annasir Thabit
Published date: 31/8/2003
By Annasir Thabit
Bulletin Political Correspondent
Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series on Shia politics. The first part will deal with the his"torical divisions within Iraqi Shia and the second will discuss how they are being played out contemporarily.
NAJAF –– In the old Arabic language “Al-Shia” means “Ali’s Group,” referring to those who believed that Ali was the best choice to succeed the Prophet Mohamed after his death. In fact Ali is one of the great Islamic personalities.
He was famous for his good conduct and bravery in addition to being the cousin of the Prophet and husband of Mohamed’s favorite daughter, Fatima, and the father of his only two grandsons, Al-Hassan and Al-Hussein. All this had given him great renown, especially as the Prophet had no sons of his own. In spite of these reasons the majority of Muslims for many reasons didn’t accept his authority after Muhammad’s death in 632 AD.
Ali only attained a position of power in 657 as the forth Caliph, or king, of the Muslims. The short period of his rule - four years - was distinguished by a period of bloody civil war against those who felt that his ideology endangered their interests. His rule was also notable for transferring the capital from the Arab Peninsular to Iraq in Kufa (near modern Najaf) where he was murdered in Al-Kufa Mosque by an Islamic
leftist and extremist group.
His elder son Al Hassan was obliged to make peace with Muaawiya, the enemies of his father, in order to become Crown Prince. Later he was assassinated in order to allow Muaawiya’s Yazeed to succeed to the throne in spite of the latter’s inability and bad manners This made the younger son of Ali, Hussein, announce a revolution against Yazeed. The revolt failed and ended in a bloody massacre of Hussein and his family in Kerbala, Iraq, where they are now buried.
Since then many groups have appeared claiming the authority of Ali and his descendants. One of these Jafaar founded the Shia sect as we know it today. Thus many people call this sect ‘al-Jafaariya’ after its founder. His teachings differed from those of the Sunnis in many important aspects.
Shias deny the legitimacy of all those (apart from Ali of course) who succeeded the Prophet upon his death in 632. Instead they follow an Imam chosen by God who is to lead the Islamic Nation after the death of the Prophet. The Shia believe that there would be only 12 Imams, and that the final one Al-Mehdi did not die. Instead they believe that he will reappear at a time when the world seems irredeemably sunk in misery and injustice and that he will lead a revolution to restore peace and justice to all people. His eventual victory will signal the end of the world.
The Shias traditionally concluded from this that it is impossible for men to establish a just Shia state before the return of al-Mehdi.
Consequently they did not even try. Khomeini’s Iran finally broke this trend by attempting to establish a Utopian Shia state where oppression and inequality would be minimized.
Iraq has historically been a battleground between the Iranian Shias and the predominantly Sunni Arab world.
In modern times the invasion of Turkish-ruled Iraq by Britain during the First World War and its eventually colonization caused the Shia and Sunnis of Iraq to make common cause in their struggle for freedom. In 1920 a revolt by the Shia tribes of Southern Iraq led directly to the establishment of the modern Iraq state in 1921. However Sunnis rapidly became the dominant political force in the new Iraq.
In protest the Shia refused to participate in the government and boycotted elections. The source for political Shia movements in Iraq has always been in Najaf where it’s ‘hawza’ or religious school is one of the most important in the Shia world.
Ayatollah Khomeini himself spent over a decade in Najaf after being out of Iran by the Shah, an American-backed dictator. However in 1975 he was forced to flee Najaf to France after the Baath Party took power in Iraq. When Khomeini led a successful revolution in Iran his new Islamic Republic was promptly attacked by Iraq, by this stage also ruled by an American-backed dictator, Saddam Hussein. This attack led to the eight year Iran-Iraq War in which an estimated one million people were killed.
By the end of the war Khomeini had put into practice his radical re-working of traditional Shia doctrine. This was his theory of Veleyat-e-Faqih.
Khomeini argued that Shias could not afford to reject political power and
simply sit back and wait for al-Mahdi to reappear. Instead he said that a popularly-elected religious leader should govern an Shia Islamic State in a government which would unite this Supreme Leader’s religious learning with popular democratization. By this he hoped to create a system that would combine the most moral and just elements of Islamic teaching with modern Western practices.
It was hoped that democracy would vindicate the decisions of the religious elite. However in the event Khomeini and his supporters found it difficult to accept that such democratization would produce people who opposed and critcized their rule.
In Najaf and in other Shia areas of Iraq Khomeini’s ideas were an attractive alternative to Saddam’s rule. Mohamed Bakr al-Sadr attempted to lead a similar Islamic Revolution. It failed and al-Sadr was hanged. The Shia staged another revolt after the 1991 Gulf War which failed after America broke its promises to support the rebels.
Shortly after this revolt the Iranian cleric al-Sebizwary took over the presidency of the al-Hawza School in Najaf. During this period al-Hawza split into a reformist faction led by Mohamed Sadiq al-Sadr and a traditionalist faction, led the Iranian Abdul Ali al-Sistani.
Sadiq Al-Sadr’s charismatic leadership and personal intelligence and courage won great support for his reformist agenda. At the peak of his success in trying to reshape Iraqi Shiism as a nationalist movement he was assassinated.
Fundamentalist Shias backed by Iran were blamed for his murder. In particular Mohamed Bakr al-Hakeem’s Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) was believed to be behind the act. The Baath Party was also suspected as Sadr’s popularity started to threaten Saddam Hussein’s position.
The assassination left Iraqi Shias without a clear leader. Al-Sistani is for many the official leader but he is old and uninterested in politics.
Into this vacuum has stepped the young firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr is the youngest son of the murdered al-Sadr. It remains to be seen if in time he will emerge as the political heir to his father.
In the aftermath of the American conquest of Iraq a range of Shia parties have emerged.
Al-Dawa Islamic Party is one of the most prominent and under its leader Al-Jafaari is represented on the Governing Council. It’s main opponent is the Iraqi Islamic Dawa Party whose leader is Muqtada al-Sadr which is emphatically NOT on the Governing Council.
Other parties are the Islamic Action Party led by al-Modderrisi and the Islamic Wifak Party led by Al-Sherazi.
So far few of these parties have issued concrete policy programs. It remains to be seen how they plan to deal with potentially explosive issues such as the doctrine of Veleyat-e-Faqih (unacceptable to America) and the issues of the Kurdish and Sunni minorities.
Published date: 31/8/2003
Author: Annasir Thabit
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