by Ed Husain
4
The Sunni–Shi‘a Schism
The word ‘Karbala’ evokes emotions in every erudite Muslim. Karbala, now a major city in central Iraq, is where early Muslims clashed over the future of the caliphate. The great Muslim poet and popular philosopher of today’s Pakistan, Allama (aka Muhammad) Iqbal (1877–1938), wrote that ‘Islam became alive after Karbala’. The battle that raged there – or rather the massacre there of the Prophet’s progeny in 680 AD – is a raw wound for most Muslims. Shi‘a and Sunni interpret moments of Islamic history completely differently. Where Shi‘a see the Prophet declaring that Ali was his successor, Sunnis see something else entirely.
The divergence between Shi‘a and Sunni was a direct result of the Prophet not declaring a successor. Nothing has created a more profound division among Muslims than this. How could he name a replacement? There were to be no prophets after him; Mohamed was the last of God’s messengers in the Abrahamic line of monotheism. Within a century of his passing, however, Muslims loyal to the Umayyad caliphate would kill the Prophet’s own grandson, Imam Husain, at Karbala, along with his seventy-two travelling companions.1
This 1,200-year-old split had its roots even before Karbala, however. Disagreements over who would succeed the Prophet sowed seeds of bitter division soon after his death. As Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, cousin and close friend, made the burial arrangements, Abu Bakr, Mohamed’s good friend and father-in-law, met with the Prophet’s companions to discuss who should lead the Muslims. Over three decades, during the reigns of Abu Bakr as first caliph (632–4), then Omar (634–44), and then Othman (644–56), ever-increasing numbers of Muslims would come to believe that Ali should be caliph. When the Prophet died, however, many thought that 28-year-old Ali was too young to lead. Others thought he was too pious and mystically minded for the dark arts of politics. Still, some Muslims insisted that Ali, not Abu Bakr, was the Prophet’s rightful first heir. Ali’s followers were known as Shi‘at Ali, or supporters of Ali. Indeed, the word Shi‘a means ‘community’ or ‘supporters’ in Arabic. After Ali, the Shi‘a backed his sons, the great imams Hasan and Husain, and then their children.
To this day, Shi‘a maintain loyalty to Ali’s bloodline, while Sunnis stress allegiance to the Prophet. Ali was married to Fatima, Mohamed’s beloved daughter. They were tied to the Prophet, as were their children. Shi‘a Muslims claim that to love the Prophet is to love his family. Their opponents, however, claimed that Islam concerned meritocracy, not lineage.
This is not an abstract theological and historical dispute: Muslims are still living through this unresolved quarrel. Lesley Hazleton’s powerful book After the Prophet captures this conflict accurately — I have drawn from her and my own teachers. Across the Islamic world, the Sunni–Shi‘a dynamic drives politics, protests and conflict, as is evident from just the past fifty years. Shi‘a symbolism, for instance, fuelled the 1979 revolution in Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini (1902–89), the figurehead of the mass opposition to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (1919–80), referred to the monarch as Yazid, the name of the caliph who killed Imam Husain. In the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, Karbala and Husain’s martyrdom took centre stage in propaganda efforts inside Iran. That Shi‘a ethos of sacrificing oneself in pursuit of justice gave birth to the first Shi‘a Muslim suicide bomber who drove a truck into a US base in Beirut in 1981.2
Saudi Arabia has made opposing the Shi’ism of Tehran a central plank of its foreign policy since 1979. The Saudi state was born in 1932, mired in blood spilled by its founder, Mohamed bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, who, under Sunni Salafi influences, killed Shi‘a Muslims in the eastern provinces of Arabia and sent Saudi forces to ransack the shrine of Imam Husain in Karbala. Hard-line reformist Sunnis, known also as Salafis, consider tombs an emblem of polytheism and consider the physical destruction of shrines to be a virtue. To date, 95 per cent of the oldest buildings in Mecca that stood for more than a thousand years have been demolished.3 Shi‘a Muslims make up the largest religious minority in Saudi Arabia, yet they are banned from gathering in the mosques of Mecca and Medina.
In January 2016, Saudi Arabia beheaded an influential Saudi Shi‘a cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, amid accusations that he had called for self-rule in the oil-rich Shi‘a-dominated Saudi eastern province. Iran and Saudi Arabia then severed diplomatic ties. Several Saudi allies followed suit, taking the side of the Sunni kingdom against the Shi‘a republic.
In Pakistan, suicide blasts and other attacks have targeted innocent Shi‘a in a major sectarian surge over the last ten years. Pakistan was founded by Muslims from Shi‘a backgrounds, including Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the country’s founder, an Ismaili Shi‘a, yet anti-Shi‘a rhetoric in the media, mosques and schools has fed an increase in Sunni extremist violence. Thousands of Shi‘a have been killed in the past decade. Millions of Shi‘a Pakistanis live in fear.
In parts of Iraq and Syria, a civil war is under way between Sunni and Shi‘a, abetted by countries and organisations that identify as Shi‘a and support Bashar al-Assad on one side, and regional Sunni backers supporting rebels on the other. The Damascus regime is led by the Alawi Shi‘a sect, which is named after Ali. Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah provide money and manpower to bolster Syria’s government, as well as preparing thousands for martyrdom in that fight. They are also invested in protecting shrines in Syria sacred to Shi‘a.4
In contrast, Sunni Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the most extreme of the world’s Salafi-jihadi fighters support insurgents who claim to represent Syria’s Sunni majority. This war was not sparked by the Sunni–Shi‘a schism, yet the conflict has taken on the dynamics of the divide. As regional powers chose their sides in Syria, identity, faith and history made their inevitable appearance.
The removal from power in 2003 of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, a Sunni dictator in a Shi‘a-majority country, led to Iran growing closer to Iraq’s new Shi‘a government. The rise of ISIS and al-Qaeda’s Sunni extremists inside Iraq, as well as their attacks on Shi‘a shrines and prominent Shi‘a figures, is driven by a sectarianism that few in the West or outside Muslim-majority countries truly understand or feel.
Sunni Muslims mostly live in blissful ignorance of Shi‘a attitudes towards those the former venerate. No figure epitomises this divide more than the Prophet’s youngest wife, the Lady Ayesha. Sunni Muslims universally revere her for several reasons. She was the daughter of Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s best friend. From Ayesha we know of the Prophet’s private habits as a husband and lover. Muslim men for generations have tried to emulate the Prophet based on Ayesha’s teachings. The Prophet loved her dearly. Her strong personality, wit and beauty made her his favourite. It was in her chamber, resting his head on her thighs, that he breathed his last breath. Sunnis know her as Umm al-Mumineen, mother of the believers.
A verse of the Quran provided Ayesha with that epithet. But it was not easily attained. Ayesha travelled with the Prophet often, and joined his expeditions. One day, on one of these excursions, she left the caravan to attend a call of nature in the desert. Then Ayesha lost her necklace, a gift from Mohamed, beside a bush and went to retrieve it. Unaware that she had yet to return to her camel-top carriage, the convoy continued home to Medina. As Ayesha waited for the convoy to return for her, a young companion of the Prophet, Safwan, passed by and took the mother of the believers back to Medina on his camel. The people of the city started spreading rumours that she was having an affair with Safwan. The Prophet himself was in some sadness as Medina murmured, and he avoided spending time with his beloved wife. Months went by. Ali encouraged the Prophet to leave Ayesha and end his troubles. She never forgave Ali for this unwanted counsel.
Soon, God absolved Ayesha of any wrongdoing. Gabriel came from the highest heavens proclaiming her innocence. The Quran declares her mubarra’a, or blameless. For Sunni Muslims, she could do no wrong. God was her ultimate guarantor of purity and fidelity to the Prophet. Her love of the Prophet, and his dedication to her, returning to his Lord while resting on her, gives her an unr
ivalled status in Sunni Muslim hearts and minds.
Ayesha would go on to battle Ali, riding at the head of 10,000 soldiers to contest Ali’s claims to the caliphate. For this and her general dislike of Ali, the Shi‘a have constantly cursed Ayesha and her father Abu Bakr. At the mausoleum of the Prophet in Medina, Muslims visit Ayesha’s chamber, where the Prophet died and was buried. There, beside his resting place, are the tombs of Abu Bakr and Omar. Sunni Muslims hail the Prophet, and the first caliphs Abu Bakr and Omar. Many Shi‘a Muslims greet the Prophet with prayers of peace and curse the latter two.
Where Sunni Muslims venerate Ayesha, the Shi‘a tell a very different story. For them, Ayesha aimed to secure the caliphate and power for her father, Abu Bakr. To do so, she administered poison and killed the Prophet. For a thousand years, this stunning Shi‘a claim, capable of sparking serious conflict, has been written in books and taught by Shi‘a clerics. Most Sunni Muslims have turned a blind eye for the sake of communal coexistence, but in the age of Twitter and free-flowing information, this accusation, heinous to Sunnis, is being revived by Shi‘a leaders, who depict Ayesha, her father Abu Bakr, and others as murderers. ‘The greatest pain is the loss of our Holy Prophet. Equally painful is the fact that he was murdered, yet we can’t publicly discuss it,’5 says one tweet by a well-known Shi‘a scholar. It is only a matter of time before a populist Sunni cleric highlights such Shi‘a beliefs, which are deeply offensive to Sunni Muslims. The fire of Sunni–Shi‘a fighting still risks spreading, and spreading further yet.
What exactly happened in Karbala? Why are Sunni and Shi‘a still fighting?
The Prophet’s two grandsons, Hasan and Husain, were loved and popular in Mecca and Medina, Islam’s home cities. Sons of the Prophet’s pious daughter, the Lady Fatima, and the gallant Imam Ali, they were born a year apart, in 625 and 626 respectively. The companions of the Prophet often saw the five relatives together. Collectively, the Prophet and the believers called them Ahl al-Bait, or ‘People of the House’. The Quran refers to the Prophet’s family as being purified by God, meaning that they were not as prone as others to sinning and fallibility. The Prophet would cover them under his shawl to pray together. In the mosque, Hasan and Husain would jump on their grandfather’s shoulders as he stood in prayer. He would kiss and hold them tightly, as though he knew that calamity lay ahead for his grandsons.
In March 632, the Prophet stood before a vast crowd of Muslims on Mount Arafat near Mecca and delivered what we now know as his farewell sermon or final address. ‘Lend me an attentive ear,’ he began. ‘I know not if after this year I shall ever be among you again.’ Addressing the believers, numbering tens of thousands, he warned against racism and said that no Arab was superior to a non-Arab. Piety, not skin colour, was the only thing that marked one man as superior to another, he told the crowds. In Islam, social ascendance is based on faith and devotion. He called on the Muslims to treat women well, reminding them that women had rights over their men. He reaffirmed in his speech that the life and property of a believer were sacred, and not to be violated by force or vigilante groups, as was the practice of pre-Islamic tribal Arabs. After him, he reminded the Muslims, there would be no other Prophet. And he said that he was leaving two touchstones as guides for Muslims, the Quran and the Ahl al-Bait. He then lifted his blessed face to the heavens and asked: ‘Allahumma hal ballaght?’, meaning: ‘My Lord, have I conveyed your message?’ The Prophet’s heart, mind and soul connected the worldly and the divine. He was a vessel for transmitting the transcendental, not for ordaining who was to lead the Muslims after his death.
The Prophet had named no successor at the sermon, for nobody could assume his office. But that is not how the Shi‘a recall history.
On his journey back to Medina, at a well in the desert called Ghadir Khumm where he and his companions were resting, the Prophet pointed to Ali. ‘To whomever I was a master, Ali is their master,’ he said. Was the Prophet now naming a successor? If so, why do this in front of a smaller crowd, and not before the vast crowds in Mecca? The word he used was mawla, which is also Arabic for tribal protector, overlord, friend or patron.6
Within the year, the Prophet fell ill with flu and the Muslim community was concerned about his well-being. One day, he left his wife Ayesha’s room, where he was resting, and headed for the prayer niche where he usually led worshippers. Abu Bakr, the imam in that evening’s prayer, began to step back when he saw the Prophet. Mohamed smiled and insisted that Abu Bakr continue. In this key point of Muslim life, the Prophet wanted Abu Bakr to lead. Sunni Muslims see this as the Prophet choosing Abu Bakr as his successor.
Ali was only twenty-eight years old when the Prophet died. Abu Bakr was a seasoned, wise and widely respected 61-year-old man. Ali’s supporters might have felt snubbed, but Abu Bakr lasted only two years as the first caliph of Islam, ruling from 632 to 634, when he died naturally. After him, Omar was selected as second caliph by a group Abu Bakr had nominated to choose who would follow him. Omar ruled for ten years, from 634 to 644, until a Persian servant angered by the Muslim conquest of Persia assassinated him. After him, the elderly and aristocratic Othman ruled for twelve years, from 644 to 656, until rebels opposed to his policies killed him. And then, finally, Medina’s elite chose the great Imam Ali as caliph. He ruled from 656 until 661. He was killed by the Kharijites, the first extremist sect within Islam opposed to Ali’s arbitrations and peacemaking between warring factions of Muslims. These four caliphs came to be known as the Rashidun, or the rightly guided, among Muslims. After Ali, it was widely accepted – and expected – that the mantle of leadership had returned to the Ahl al-Bait, and that Imam Hasan would govern after his father.
But the cunning governor of Damascus, Mu‘awiya, who was appointed by Othman and controlled vast wealth and armies of men, kept Hasan from his rightful place. Hasan was cajoled into conceding any claims to the caliphate. To prevent bloodshed and further discord after the killing of three of the first four caliphs of Islam, Hasan agreed to live a life of scholarship and prayer in Medina, on condition that after Caliph Mu‘awiya, Islamic rule would return to the Prophet’s family. His brother, Imam Husain, would become the sixth caliph of Islam and he would govern from Medina, the city of the Prophet.
From his new and famously lavish home in Damascus, Caliph Mu‘awiya agreed to Hasan’s concessions and vowed to honour Husain as the leader of the believers. Muslims assumed that Mu‘awiya was preparing to hand the reins back to the much-loved Husain, but he maintained control of the Islamic empire for twenty years. In the meantime, Mu‘awiya’s son Yazid was gaining a reputation for corruption and cruelty. The normally reticent Syrian historian Ibn Katheer (d. 1301) confirmed what people around the soon-to-be caliph Yazid said: that he was frequently drunk. He liked keeping the company of young boys, a euphemism for paedophilia. He held bear fights. He kept several monkeys as pets, which he blindfolded and mounted on horses to see what havoc they would wreak. He did not seem like a believer in the faith of the Prophet Mohamed.
What Islam was this? the Muslims asked.
Mu‘awiya was taken ill in the year 680. Rather than honour his word that Imam Husain would become caliph, he wrote letters to his regional governors, ordering them to pledge allegiance to his son, Yazid. They followed the order. In April 680, Yazid was proclaimed caliph from Damascus.
The news reached Husain in Medina. His supporters in several cities in what is now Iraq sent him saddlebags full of letters pledging allegiance to him, not to Caliph Yazid. What was Husain to do? Yazid’s governor in Medina was ordered to arrest him. Husain gathered his family members and headed for Mecca, his ancestral city, to meet more allies, friends and supporters. Letters and delegations from Iraq, at that time the second home of Islam after Syria, kept pouring in. From Iraqi cities, large armies of Muslims urged him to come and lead them. In Mecca, Husain’s supporters rejected Yazid, but the new caliph sent word: ‘If Husain was tied to the walls of the Ka’bah, he is not safe – we will kill him.’
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sp; Not wishing to bring more war and death to the sacred city that had persecuted his grandfather a generation earlier, Husain left Mecca in September 680 and headed for Iraq, where thousands had written to him pledging support. ‘Hurry to us, O Husain,’ they pleaded. ‘The people are waiting for you, and are committed to none but you. Take your rightful place as the true heir of the Prophet, his grandson, his flesh and blood through Fatima, your mother. Bring back power to where it belongs, to Iraq. We will drive out the Syrians under your banner. We will reclaim the soul of Islam.’ Husain sent his own delegation to Iraq, and they confirmed that an army of 12,000 men was ready. For twenty years, since his father Caliph Ali’s murder, he had waited patiently.
Since his grandfather’s death when he was an infant, Husain had lived his entire life in the shadow of caliphs. Now in his mid-fifties, he and his household were the custodians of his grandfather’s faith. He left Medina accompanied by his own family. Eighteen of the women and children were his and his brother’s immediate family members. Husain’s instinct was not to trust Caliph Yazid, not to leave behind the great-great-grandchildren of the Prophet.
As he left Medina for Mecca, and then Mecca for Iraq, Husain kept saying: ‘I do not seek harm, or corruption of this nation, but I seek justice. We must do what is right and end what is evil. I want the message of Islam, granted by my grandfather, to proceed.’ This was Husain at his best. It was also a manifestation of an ideal Islam, pursuing justice and freedom from tyranny against all odds. The days ahead would be full of sacrifice, pain and tears. In the darkness of night, Husain turned to his seventy-two travelling companions and gave them permission to leave. ‘It is night and you can leave me without embarrassment of being seen to be leaving my family and me. None shall know; and I forgive you. So please leave without discomfort.’