A Concise History of Sunnis and Shi'is

by John McHugo

  Chapter Nine

  1. This is how they are described in the famous letter from the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, to Lord Rothschild of 2 November 1917 in which Britain promised to use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of ‘a national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine. It became known as the Balfour Declaration and was incorporated into the British Mandate over Palestine. It is hard to reconcile this with the ‘sacred trust of civilisation’ which Britain took upon itself to ensure the ‘well-being and development’ of the Palestinian people under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

  2. Khoury, p. 181.

  3. Nakash, p. 13.

  4. Allawi, p. 357.

  5. Quoted in Nakash, p. 64.

  6. Nakash, p. 64.

  7. Quoted in Nakash, p. 70.

  8. Allawi, Faisal I of Iraq, p. 379.

  9. Tripp, p. 45.

  10. Nakash, p. 114.

  11. Tripp, p. 76.

  12. Nakash, p. 125.

  13. Nakash, p. 127.

  14. Parsons, p. 119.

  15. Crawford, p. 118.

  16. T. Matthiesen, The Other Saudis, p. 10.

  17. Matthiesen, op. cit., p. 52.

  18. Matthiesen, op. cit., p. 33.

  19. Matthiesen, op. cit., p. 49.

  20. Matthiesen, op. cit., p. 51.

  21. Achcar, pp. 110–11.

  22. Hourani, Arabic Thought in The Liberal Age, 1789–1939, p. 244.

  23. Hourani, op. cit., p. 231.

  24. Nasr, The Shia Revival, p. 103.

  25. Hourani, p. 231.

  26. Covenant of the League of Nations, Article 22.

  27. Thompson, p. 157.

  28. Achcar, p. 110. Dreyfus was a French army officer who was Jewish. In 1894 he was wrongly convicted of high treason on trumped-up charges motivated by anti-Semitism. The affair split France down the middle at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Dreyfus was eventually exonerated.

  29. Achcar, pp. 111.

  30. Nasr, The Shia Revival, p. 106.

  31. This slogan, of course, is reminiscent of what the future Caliph Umar said to the Prophet when the latter lay on his deathbed.

  32. Thompson, p. 163.

  Chapter Ten

  1. Nakash, p. 133–34, referring to Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, Saqi, 2004.

  2. Tripp, p. 186.

  3. A. Baram, ‘Religious Extremism and Ecumenical Tendencies in modern Iraqi Shi‘ism’, in Bengio and Litvak, p. 105.

  4. Tripp, p. 200.

  5. Ibid., p. 209.

  6. Nakash, p. 137.

  7. H. Batatu, Syria’s Peasantry, the Descendants of its Lesser Rural Notables and their Politics, Princeton, NJ, 1999, p. 227.

  8. Pierret, Religion and State in Syria, p. 65.

  9. Matthiesen, pp. 82–83.

  10. On this, see Thomas Pierret, Religion and State in Syria.

  11. Quoted from a published translation modified by Elizabeth Thompson, Justice Interrupted, Harvard, NJ, 2013, p. 286.

  Chapter Eleven

  1. Axworthy, Revolutionary Iran, p. 112.

  2. Ibid., op. cit., pp. 121–22.

  3. Ibid., p. 134.

  4. Ibid., p. 134.

  5. Ibid., pp. 135-36.

  6. Quoted in Axworthy, p. 138.

  7. Axworthy, pp. 138–39.

  8. Algar, p. 21.

  9. Article 94.

  10. Algar, p. 19.

  11. Algar, p. 31.

  12. Articles 12–14.

  13. Tripp, A History of Iraq, p. 213.

  14. Tripp, op. cit., p. 214.

  15. A. Baram, ‘Religious Extremism and Ecumenical Tendencies’, in Bengio and Litvak, p. 111.

  16. For this, see Tripp, A History of Iraq, pp. 224–5.

  17. Contrast Axworthy, Revolutionary Iran, p. 188 with Karsh, The Iran-Iraq War, 1980–1988, pp. 12–14.

  18. Tripp, op. cit., p. 238.

  19. Axworthy, op. cit., p. 307.

  Chapter Twelve

  1. Matthiesen, The Other Saudis, p. 109.

  2. Quoted in Thompson, p. 283.

  3. Martin, pp. 189–91.

  4. Kepel, Jihad, pp. 131–32.

  5. Matthiesen, op. cit., p. 102.

  6. Al-Rasheed, p. 142.

  7. Matthiesen, op. cit., pp. 106–07.

  8. Ibid., op. cit., p. 103.

  9. M. Hatina, ‘Debating the “Awakening Shi‘a”: Sunni Perceptions of the Iranian Revolution’, in Bengio and Litvak, pp. 205–07.

  10. R. Brunner, ‘Egypt and Shi‘ism at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century’, in Bengio and Litvak, pp. 231–32.

  11. Norton, p. 19.

  12. Ibid., p. 16.

  13. Newsweek, 18 July 2006, quoted in Norton, p. 33.

  14. Axworthy, Revolutionary Iran, p. 222.

  15. Norton, p. 66.

  16. The information about the open letter, including the translated extracts from it, is taken from Norton, pp. 35–41.

  17. al-Intiqad, 14 March 2003, quoted in Norton, p. 119.

  18. Commins, p. 172.

  19. Ibid., p. 164.

  20. Al-Rasheed, p. 139.

  21. Commins, pp. 163–71.

  22. Kepel, Jihad, pp. 233–34.

  23. Commins, p. 174.

  24. Ibid., p. 175.

  25. Ibid., p. 187.

  26. The CIA Factbook gives Shi‘is as 10–15 per cent; Vali Nasr suggest they are more numerous – 15–25 per cent. See ‘Sectarianism in Pakistan, 1979–1988, in Sectarianization, ed. Hashemi and Postel, p. 78. The percentages I quote ignore the fact that there are 3–4 per cent who are not Muslim.

  27. V. Nasr, ‘International Politics, Domestic Imperatives and Identity Mobilisation: Sectarianism in Pakistan, 1979–1998’, in Sectarianization, ed. Hashemi and Postel, 2016, p. 80.

  28. Nasr, p. 45.

  29. Ibid., pp. 84–86.

  Chapter Thirteen

  1. Formerly the School of Oriental and African Studies.

  2. Tripp, A History of Iraq, pp. 277–78.

  3. A. Baram, ‘Religious Extremism and Ecumenical Tendencies’, in Bengio and Litvak, p. 112.

  4. Tripp, op. cit., p. 285.

  5. International Crisis Group Report, ‘The Next Iraqi War? Sectarianism and Civil Conflict’, 27 February 2006, p. 17.

  6. Kepel and Milelli, p. 243.

  7. Ibid., p. 249.

  8. The authenticity of this letter is not established beyond doubt, but Kepel and Milelli include it the anthology he edited, Al-Qaeda in its own Words. See pp. 248–50.

  9. Kepel and Milelli, pp. 253–54.

  10. Kepel and Milelli, p. 246, Emily Hunt, ‘Zarqawi’s “Total War” on Shiites Exposes a Divide Among Sunni Jihadists’, Policywatch 1049, The Washington Institute, 15 November 2005.

  11. A. Baram, ‘Religious Extremism and Ecumenical Tendencies’, p. 116, note 21.

  12. For the information contained in this paragraph, see Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, pp. 443–45.

  13. See M. Benraad, ‘Iraq’s Tribal Sahwa: its Rise and Fall’, Middle East Policy Council, Spring 2011, vol. XVIII, No.1.

  14. International Crisis Group, ‘Failing Oversight: Iraq’s Unchecked Government, 26 September 2011, p.2.

  15. Sham is the Arabic name for Greater Syria. It is sometimes translated into English as ‘the Levant’.

  16. Cockburn, p. xvii.

  17. Ibid., p. 77.

  18. Ibid., p. 64.

  19. I. Black, ‘Fear of a Shia Full Moon’, The Guardian, 26 January 2007.

  20. al-Rasheed, p. 256.

  21. See R. Brunner, ‘Interesting Times: Egypt and Shi‘ism at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century’, in Bengio and Litvak, pp. 223–35.

  22. Matthiesen, The Other Saudis, p. 165.

  23. Ibid., op. cit., p. 179.

  24. For some examples in 2008, see Al-Rasheed, p. 266.

  25. Mathiesen, op. cit., p. 184.

&n
bsp; 26. Ibid., op. cit., p. 186.

  27. Ibid., op. cit., p. 203.

  28. Amnesty International, 15 October 2014, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/10/saudi-arabia-appalling-death-sentence-against-shi-cleric-must-be-quashed/

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