A Concise History of Sunnis and Shi'is
Page 24
A petition signed by leading scholars in Karbala was organised by Mirza Muhammad Taqi Shirazi, the second most important Shi‘i mujtahid in Iraq. It stated:
We the people of Kerbala ... have decided to seek the protection of the Arab-Islamic banner and we have selected one of the sons of Sharif Husayn to be an Amir over us bound by an assembly elected by the people of Iraq [to] enact the rules approved by the clergymen of this nation and [to administer] its affairs.5
The Sharif Hussein was in the thirty-fourth generation of direct descendants from Hasan, the son of Ali and grandson of the Prophet. This would have appealed to Shi‘is, but could not alter the fact that the Sharif and his family were Sunni. The petitioners aimed for a national assembly and political system that would constrain the king’s actions and place him under the indirect control of the mujtahids.6 Sunnis could hardly have supported this role for the Shi‘i ‘clergymen of this nation’. Nevertheless, the question of which religious scholars would exercise strong influence over the new order emerging in Iraq could be left for consideration at a later stage. The immediate priority was to ensure that Iraq remained under Muslim, not Western and Christian, rule.
Leading Sunnis and Shi‘is thus joined together to call for the establishment of a Sharifian monarchy. Mirza Muhammad Taqi Shirazi – who became the pre-eminent Shi‘i religious authority in Iraq after the death of Karim Yazdi in April 1919 – was able to influence Sunni as well as Shi‘i opinion in this direction. At the same time, support for the Sharifian cause, and its non-religiously based but conservative Arab nationalism, spread among Shi‘is. News reached Iraq that, at a conference in May 1920, Britain and France had agreed a carve-up of the predominantly Arabic-speaking former Ottoman provinces, thus finalising the mandate system. Mass protest meetings took place in Baghdad. The organisers chose to alternate between Sunni and Shi‘i mosques so as to emphasise religious unity. That year, ta‘ziyas, the Shi‘i lamentations for the Imam Hussein, took place during Ramadan and on the feast of the Prophet’s birthday. These were occasions on which Shi‘is would not normally have considered such lamentations to be appropriate, and Sunnis might have felt alienated by them. The idea was to spread political awareness and encourage opposition to the British occupation. A nationalist fervour that transcended religious divides grew rapidly. As the nationalist poet Muhammad Habib al-‘Ubaydi (a Sunni) put it:
Do not talk of a Ja‘fari or Hanafi
do not talk of a Shafi‘i or Zaydi
For the Shari‘a of Muhammad has united us
and it rejects the Western mandate.7
A police report speculated whether such a phenomenon had ever occurred before in the history of Islam, and noted that the purpose of the ceremonies was to instil nationalist sentiment in the lower classes of society. These were the sections of the population which, as in Greater Syria, were new to such sentiment but for whom Islamic symbols resonated deeply. At the end of June 1920, a rebellion broke out among some of the tribes, especially along the Euphrates in parts of central and southern Iraq. It would take until October for the British forces to subdue it. The revolt drove home the realisation for Britain that controlling Iraq would be an expensive undertaking, unless local actors could be co-opted to share in the project. This was similar to the conclusion the French would reach in Syria after they quelled the 1925 uprising.
Prince Faisal (Faisal bin Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi, 1883–1933) had been driven from Syria by the French and repudiated by many Syrians for his attempts at compromise with France; in August 1921 Britain placed him on the throne of the new kingdom of Iraq. At this stage, the boundaries between Iraq and Turkey had not been agreed. Turkey still claimed Mosul, and assembled an army behind the border that might invade to claim the province – or even the whole of Iraq. To support its position, Turkey opportunistically made appeals to pan-Islamic sentiment, and called on Iraqis for support. By this stage, reaction against Faisal was increasing, since many Iraqis came to see him as a British stooge. The result was that Turkey now received support from both Sunni and Shi‘i religious scholars. On 12 April 1923, the Iraqi Shi‘i mujtahids nailed a fatwa to the gates of the shrine of Kazimayn in Baghdad, forbidding Muslims to resist a Turkish invasion. Three months later, over 400 prominent Iraqis went further and called on the caliph in Istanbul to deliver Iraq from foreign rule. The signatories included Shi‘is as well as Sunnis. The nailing of the fatwa took place only eleven months before the caliphate was formally abolished by the new Turkish republic of Kemal Ataturk (1881–1938), but it showed that the Shi‘i religious establishment could contemplate Sunni, Turkish rule – or even welcome it. The appeal to the caliph also demonstrated how, despite the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, his office could still carry force as a symbol of Muslim unity –including, to an extent, for Shi‘is as well as for Sunnis.
Yet the crisis soon passed. Prince Faisal was accepted as king without any great enthusiasm. His coronation took place on 23 August 1921, a date he chose because it was the anniversary of Ghadir Khumm in the Muslim calendar, an anniversary celebrated by Shi‘is as the occasion when Muhammad endorsed Ali as his successor. This was a sign of how Faisal I wished to reach out to the majority Shi‘i community.8His only firm supporters were the Sharifian officers, former Ottoman army officers who came predominantly from Mosul and Baghdad and had switched sides to join the Arab revolt against the Turks. Many of them were soon placed in prominent positions. Like the notables, the upper class families that had provided the Ottomans with senior bureaucrats and religious scholars, they were overwhelmingly Sunni. But Faisal’s position as king enabled him to establish patronage networks of his own, especially through the distribution of state land. (The term ‘patronage’ will necessarily be used extensively in the remainer of this book, and in this context refers to the doling out of political appointments and privileges, as well as financial subsidies and land.) Baghdad became the centre, drawing in the most significant political actors, who formed a new power elite. Ideally, they lived in Baghdad; if they did not, they would move there. The exceptions were important tribal leaders among the Kurds of the north and Shi‘i Arabs of the south, as well as those mujtahids who remained in Najaf and Karbala. In order to maintain their political influence, they appointed agents to represent them in Baghdad. The patronage that came from government became the glue that kept the new Iraq together.
Sunni Arabs received the lion’s share of this patronage, but it was also directed at all other groups. There were few Shi‘is with the necessary qualifications to take up administrative positions, and the revolt of 1920 made both the British and the Sunni elite suspicious of them.9 But patronage could be used both to co-opt and to divide, while the new Iraqi parliament gave Shi‘is a potential vehicle for the advancement of their interests.
In the summer of 1922, two political parties were established in which prominent Shi‘i individuals figured. But the mujtahids opposed elections, fearing that they would lead to a Sunni-dominated state. They therefore issued fatwas calling on the Shi‘i faithful to boycott them. King Faisal exiled a prominent Shi‘i cleric, Ayatollah Mehdi al-Khalissi, in response. Others followed him to Iran. Yet this did not lead to nationwide expressions of support and demonstrations by Shi‘is. Patronage had been successfully used to seduce the tribes of the Euphrates valley, reducing the strength of their link with the shrine cities. At the same time, the Shi‘i politicians in Baghdad felt embarrassed by the actions of their clerics. The last thing they wanted was for other Iraqis to see the Shi‘is as clients of Iran, which would lead to the permanent marginalisation of their community, even though it constituted a majority of the population. The result was a decline in the political influence of the Shi‘i clergy over their flocks. Henceforth, the most influential political leaders in the Shi‘i community would be laymen.
Yet Shi‘i discontent simmered, while the Sunni elite continued to run Iraq just as it had done in the days of the Ottomans. An incident in 1927 showed the underlying risk of sectarian discord. A Sy
rian teacher working in a leading secondary school in Baghdad published a book on the Umayyad state in Greater Syria. It harked on about the glories of the Umayyad Caliphate – something that was, of course, offensive to Shi‘is. The narrative of Arab history espoused by most Sunni pan-Arabists was deeply problematic for Shi‘is. As a result, there were Shi‘i protests against the recruitment of Syrian teachers by the government for Iraqi schools. Pan-Arabism also cut against the calls for Islamic unity made by Shi‘i mujtahids.10
Despite this, ideas of a secular Arab identity that rose above religious differences gained currency. Simultaneously, class politics steadily gained in importance. In the early 1930s, the dangers of (predominantly Sunni) landowners holding a stranglehold over politics was shown when new laws increased the powers of landlords at the expense of their tenants. As tenants found themselves having to bear the financial cost of crop failures and consequently facing destitution, there was an increasing drift to the cities – above all to Baghdad – and the growth of an urban proletariat. Questions of class cut across sectarian lines. At a popular level, urban politics moved steadily in the direction of movements such as socialism.
In response, a new Patriotic Brotherhood Party was launched in 1931. This was a merger of two other parties. One of these had significant urban Shi‘i representation, as well as connections with another predominantly Shi‘i party enjoying a following in the shrine cities and among the Euphrates tribes. The Patriotic Brotherhood Party also cultivated trade unions. A power struggle took place. Strikes and demonstrations were used to bring pressure on the government, but they were successfully repressed, even though at one point some tribal disturbances broke out in the mid-Euphrates region.
The end of the mandate came in 1932, when, largely as a result of King Faisal’s successful manoeuvring, Iraq became a full member of the League of Nations – though its independence was, for the time being, only partial. Faisal died in 1933, and was succeeded by his son Ghazi, who was then only twenty-one and would be killed in a car crash in 1939. Ghazi lacked his father’s political acumen. During his reign the Sunni power elite would continue to dominate Iraq, despite simmering discontent among many Shi‘is and the poor. His reign also saw the entry of the military into Iraqi politics. This was the first time this happened in a modern Arab state.
During the ten years from 1932, the army became an increasingly important national institution and grew from 12,000 to 43,000 men.11 This was achieved through conscription, which was finally introduced in 1934. Its introduction was opposed by Shi‘is and Kurds. It led to the resignation of two Shi‘i cabinet ministers when funds intended for a dam project, which would have benefited farmers in a largely Shi‘i area, were earmarked for the army instead. The army crushed rebellious groups in the provinces, beginning with the Syriac Christian community, which rose in revolt in 1933 after its hopes of autonomy were turned down. The threat it posed to the integrity of the Iraqi state was grossly exaggerated, but the officer who suppressed the rebellion, Colonel Bakr Sidqi, was treated as a national hero. He went on to put down revolts by some Shi‘i tribes in the Euphrates valley in 1935.
The movements for reform in Iraq during the 1930s were motivated by resentment at how an elite, whose members were disproportionately Sunni, exercised huge influence through patronage and excluded others from power. Yet despite the power of this elite, by the mid-1930s Shi‘i officials were coming to dominate the Ministry of Education. This enabled them to push for the spread of schools in rural areas, from the academic year 1933–34 onwards.12 Those Shi‘is who had the chance welcomed the opportunity for their children to acquire a modern, secular education. Education spread slowly but steadily across the rural communities of southern Iraq over the next twenty years. Yet although Shi‘i representation at all levels of government steadily increased, the Shi‘is were never able to acquire the dominance that reflected their numbers. Sunnis still dominated, especially in key ministries.13
Two nationalistic trends were appearing in Iraq. The first was pan-Arabism. This saw Iraq as the leader of the other Arab territories in the Fertile Crescent. The other was what became known as ‘Iraq first’ nationalism. Iraq was a predominantly Arab country, yet it was a unique society with major interests and concerns that did not affect other Arabs. Although Iraq’s Shi‘is were overwhelmingly Arabic speakers, the way in which they were often marginalised by the Sunni establishment, who were almost all pan-Arabists, made them receptive to the ‘Iraq first’ form of nationalism. However, it would be wrong to see the pan-Arab/‘Iraq first’ divide as identical to that between Sunnis and Shi‘is. When a contingent of Iraqi volunteers was recruited to assist the Palestinian rebellion against the British Mandate in 1936, many of those who joined up were Shi‘is.14
As the years leading up to the Second World War slipped away, high, nationalist ideals were preached even if they contained contradictions. The Iraqi state was strongly held together by coercion and patronage, two adhesives that can glue a state together but which are antithetical to democracy – and therefore ultimately antithetical to stability. The unity Sunnis and Shi‘is showed in their opposition to the British Mandate did not lead to healing the divide once the new, fragile Iraq settled down to the politics of parliament and patronage. There was a disdain for Shi‘is among the Sunni elite and a corresponding mistrust of pan-Arab nationalism among Shi‘is. The split was still very much there.
III
In the 1920s and 1930s, Arabic speakers in the mandated territories were faced with a major question to which there was no simple answer. Should their national sentiment be bound up primarily with the wider Arab nation? Or should it be focused on the political units into which Britain and France had arbitrarily parcelled up the Arabic-speaking areas of the old Ottoman Empire? The wish among Syrians and Palestinians in the early 1920s to reunify Greater Syria, and the choice for Iraqis between an ‘Iraq-first’ ideal and pan-Arabism, posed complicated dilemmas to which there was no simple answer. Nevertheless, it is clear that nationalism was the ideology framing debate during this period. This was so even if religion could be a hallmark of identity. Pan-Muslim solidarity often crossed sectarian divides between Sunnis and Shi‘is and was a sufficiently strong force for nationalists to manipulate. There were, however, some developments during this period that would lead in time to the resurgence of religious-based identity politics. One of these was the expansion of the Wahhabi emirate in central Arabia into the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which was formally proclaimed in 1932.
After the destruction of the al-Saud family’s emirate in 1818 by an Egyptian army, Wahhabism seemed initially to become more intent on surviving and preserving its identity than spreading its doctrine abroad.15 Another Wahhabi emirate under the political leadership of the al-Saud family appeared in the nineteenth century, and is sometimes referred to as the Second Saudi State. This was based on Riyadh in the heart of Najd. When it tried to reconquer the province of Hasa in eastern Arabia, it came up against the Ottomans at a time when they were extending their reach in that area. When the Wahhabis took control of Shi‘i areas, they demonstrated their hostility to the sect by destroying Shi‘i places of worship. Nevertheless, this attempt at expansion was unsuccessful, and the Second Saudi State collapsed into civil war in the 1870s.
It was displaced by a tribal confederation led by their rivals, the Al-Rashid. But in 1902, the al-Sauds bounced back when the young prince Abdul Aziz ibn Abdul-Rahman ibn Saud (known simply as Ibn Saud), retook Riyadh and re-established his family’s emirate. He took control of eastern Arabia from the Ottomans, and persuaded them to appoint him their governor. After the First World War he proclaimed himself the independent sultan of Nejd, adding the Al-Rashid’s territories to his own in 1921, before conquering the Hejaz in 1924–25. When the Wahhabi soldiers took Medina, they went to the Baqi‘ cemetery and destroyed the tombs of the four Shi‘i imams who were buried there: Hasan, Ali Zayn al-Abidin, Muhammad al-Baqir and Ja‘far al-Sadiq. They saw them as places of idolatry.
The kingdom’s inhabitants included Sunni Muslims from the Malaki, Hanafi and Shafi‘i doctrinal law schools, as well as the Hanbalis of Nejd, who dominated, and from whom the new state’s Wahhabi religious establishment was drawn. The Hijaz, now its western province, had a cosmopolitanism very different from the inward-looking tribal society of Nejd. This was the legacy of centuries of pilgrimage traffic to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Some of the villages along the mountainous spine that ran southwards from Mecca to Yemen had African inhabitants, some of whom still observed the customs and traditions of their old homelands. The women in some of these villages continued to be unselfconsciously bare breasted in public into the 1970s, when tarmac roads reached into the mountains for the first time. Apart from the eastern province where Twelver Shi‘is were the majority, there was also a small Shi‘i community in Medina and a substantial Ismaili community around Najran (a relic of Fatimid influence), just north of the Yemeni border.
The Wahhabi scholars saw the Shi‘is as their main opponents. This would lead to an ‘othering’ of the Shi‘i minority in the new state. The king and the royal family would modify this to a certain extent as part of the pragmatism that enabled them to hold the kingdom together, but this would never be in an even-handed way. When it came to it, the Wahhabis were far more important in the political order, even if the Shi‘is may have been 10–15 per cent of the kingdom’s population. As of 2015, no Shi‘i has ever been made a minister in Saudi Arabia, and only one Shi‘i has represented the kingdom abroad as an ambassador.16Although Ibn Saud made many dynastic marriages to help cement his influence across the country, he never married a Shi‘i woman.17