Shiite Activists in Iraq
The Changing Rhetorical Strategies of Shiite Activists in Iraq
(Notes on Chibli Mallat, "Religious Militancy in Contemporary Iraq," Third World Quarterly 10:2, April 1988)
Writing near the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the Lebanese historian Chibli Mallat asks why it had to start. He argues that in 1980, Saddam Hussein felt he had to defeat Iran if he was to eliminate the growing cleric-led Shiite opposition in Iraq. The emergence of a strong Shiite resistance movement in Iraq in the 1970s, opposing Saddam's repressive Sunni Baathist regime and interlinked with the struggle in Iran, led to important shifts in Shiite rhetorical strategies at this time. Reading this article, the differences between Sunni and Shiite world-views cease to be abstract and (possibly) forgettable. Mallat helps us see them at work dramatically and historically, from the perspective of the Shiites' changing political strategies. At times, Shiite leaders wish to speak as "Islam," together with all Muslims, against threatening Western political and cultural influences. So, in 1960 Ayatollah Baqir al-Sadr founded the Iraqi Shiite resistance movement called al-Dawa (the Call of Islam) in order to fend off the rival Communist movement as a threat to all believers, Sunnis as well as Shiites. A decade later, however, he and other leaders at Najaf had to emphasize their distinctively Shiite traditions, especially that of the spiritually guided imamate, to resist a Sunni Baathist regime committed to "purging" Iraq of the Shiite threat (stigmatized as "Iranian"). Mallat's historical commentary not only helps us understand the political uses of Shiite beliefs, it shows us that the issue of Iraqi Shiites' ties to Iran has always been a factor-- albeit an uncertain and changeable one-- in Iraqi politics.
Mallat's article provides a useful background for the current emergence of rival Shiite activist groups in Iraq. hoping at long last to play a major political role in the country. The U.S. complains of Iran's "interference." This was precisely Saddam Hussein's complaint in 1980, when he started a decade-long war. It's worth pausing to note that this complaint can be answered from either of two contrasting positions, depending on the particular Shiite group's history and goals.
I . Many Iraqi Shiite activists, including thousands who were forced into Iran by Saddam, consider themselves Arab Iraqis who are opposed to Iranian influence in Iraq. (At this time, no one can be sure about the relative strength of this element, any more than that of its rivals, either in numbers or percentages.) For this group, Baqir al-Sadr was "our" ayatollah, the only Arab among the handful of religious leaders at the top of the Shiite hierarchy. He was a martyr and a patriot, within the political context of an Iraqi Shiite struggle against Saddam. This "Iraq First" position is strengthened by the fact (surprising to many) that Iraqi Shiites fought hard for their nation during the terrible war of the 1980s. Finally, it's important to recognize that the leading cleric at Najaf, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has always opposed Khomeini's theory of clerical rule and is critical of Iran. He speaks for the traditionalists at Najaf, who are said to be in the majority.
2. On the other hand, the linkages between Iranian and Iraqi Shiites, ever since the revolutionary struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. appear to be deeply embedded. It's unusual to find a resistance group without a base in Tehran. Key factors here are the historical and ongoing interactions between the two great Shiite centers of learning at Najaf (Iraq) and Qom (Iran), and the politically motivated support and refuge Iran's ruling clerics have always extended to Iraqi Shiites. Moreover, the families of religious leaders have become dispersed between both countries during periods of struggle and exile.
With patience and a little re-reading, I believe people will find Mallat's discussion of the changing rhetorical strategies of Shiite activism quite useful. For example, a convenient citation of "particularist" or distinctively Shiite positions appears on p. 701, in the context of Shah Nadir's (failed) attempt to reconcile Sunnis and Shiites at the 1743 theological Congress in Najaf. For Sunnis, these are still issues that identify the Shiites as rebels and troublemakers. The offending Shiite tenets in 1743 were: 1. attacking the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar, via ages-old conventions of vilification (sahh) and denial (rafd); 2. rejecting the authority of most of the Prophet's companions as unbelievers; 3. defending the institution of mutes or temporary marriage; 4. rejecting the forms of Sunni prayers.
To which must be added the crucial issue of the Shiite imamate, which is central to Mallat's focus on the now legendary career of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. Shiite uprisings have almost always been led by ulama, who are felt to be successors of the (divinely inspired) prophets and the Imams, the representatives or deputies of the Hiddcn Imam. (By contrast, Sunni radical movements have rarely been led by ulama.) Since Shiite ulama are held to be spiritually inspired through their attachment to the Hidden Imam, who will someday return as the Mahdi, this has been used to authorize their role as activists as well as religious authorities. It was the Shiite ulama who organized the great 1920 uprising against the British in Iraq. (The Arab Nationalist "Sharifians" who were forced out of Damascus simply joined the ulamas' struggle. Later, ironically enough, they became the core of a Sunni ruling elite who oppressed the Shiites in the 1930s.) The 1979 Iranian revolution concretized Ayatollah Khomeini's theory of the wilayat e-faqih-- the guardianship of the jurisconsult. With this theory, the spiritual authority of the leading Shiite religious scholar suddenly became translatable into the highest matters of governing. In the 1960s and 1970s, while Khomeini was teaching at Najaf, Baqir al-Sadr was perhaps (as some historians argue) his colleague, although Baqir was the younger man. Mallat suggests that Sadr defended Khomeini's revolutionary theory, as well as playing a major role in drafting Iran's new constitution. The crucial historical point, however, is that the Shiites who planned the great clerical resistance movements from Najaf in the late 1960s and 1970s felt they had to push the Shiite tradition of the spiritually authorized ulama to its most extreme political conclusion. Khomeini and his colleagues could not have accomplished this apart from the hierarchic ranking system at Najaf and Qom-- where the mujtuhid ("one who has exerted himself so as to be able to frame an opinion") might dream of someday rising to the senior level of'scholars, or ayatollahs ("signs " or "proofs" of God) and beyond that to the six or seven Grand Ayatollahs at the top, which included both Khomeini and Baqir al-Sadr in the mid-1960s.
Mallat focuses on the year 1970 to mark the launching of the new Shiite activism, by describing a collection of emancipatory Shiite theological essays published at Najaf by future activist leaders. His point is that since 1968, the Baathist regime had established a hegemonically Sunni program (overtly anti-Shiite) led by Party members from Tikrit. This forced Baqir al-Sadr into an aggressive resistance campaign that intensified through the decade, culminating in the tremendous crises of 1980. Mallat uses a 1977 essay by Baqir al-Sadr ("On the Mahdi") to represent the seemingly inevitable triumph of Shiite "particularism" over the Islamic "universalism" of his earlier works in philosophy and economics, which were aimed against Communist influences upon all Muslims. Mallat's brief description summarizes the thrust of Baqir al-Sadr's later work and his political vision three years before his execution.
Sadr's "On the Mahdi" described the relation of the individual to the awaited Mahdi of the Shia tradition as an expression of the popular quest for justice that would be "impossible to materialize unless the Mahdi becomes really incarnate in a living contemporary human being. The realization of the Coming of the Mahdi, Sadr further explains, is "determined by the combination of human willingness and of independent objective conditions in a way similar to any operation of social change, such as the one led by Lenin in Russia." Never was the fusion of political appeal and Shiite references so explicit. Particularism had won the day. By 1978-79, the most significant challenge to Baath rule in Iraq was coming from Najaf, in the form of an appeal for the leadership to take power (p. 726).
The "popular quest for justice" might remind us of the little handout from the preface to Ayatollah Tabatabai's Shiite Islam: Shiites believe that justice is an essential aspect of the Divine, and that humans can recognize it. The crucial phrasing here is that "the Mahdi becomes really incarnate in a living human being." We are no longer thinking only of the traditional Shiite "deputy" of the Hidden Imam. The traditional spiritual authority of the Shiite ulama, which was assumed through his "attachment" to the Imamate, now emerges as a full-blown Khomeini-style political authority that claims to finally bring divine justice to the world. Baqir al-Sadr could write this in 1977, two years before the Iranian revolution, because Khomeni bad presented his theory long before, in his 1970 lectures at Najaf, where Baqir al-Sadr was also teaching-- and very probably working with him. This is surely on the minds of Shiite clerics today, as they "struggle"--using their term for it-- towards some version (probably different from Iran's) of an Islamic state in Iraq.
5-16-03
(Notes on Chibli Mallat, "Religious Militancy in Contemporary Iraq," Third World Quarterly 10:2, April 1988)
Writing near the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the Lebanese historian Chibli Mallat asks why it had to start. He argues that in 1980, Saddam Hussein felt he had to defeat Iran if he was to eliminate the growing cleric-led Shiite opposition in Iraq. The emergence of a strong Shiite resistance movement in Iraq in the 1970s, opposing Saddam's repressive Sunni Baathist regime and interlinked with the struggle in Iran, led to important shifts in Shiite rhetorical strategies at this time. Reading this article, the differences between Sunni and Shiite world-views cease to be abstract and (possibly) forgettable. Mallat helps us see them at work dramatically and historically, from the perspective of the Shiites' changing political strategies. At times, Shiite leaders wish to speak as "Islam," together with all Muslims, against threatening Western political and cultural influences. So, in 1960 Ayatollah Baqir al-Sadr founded the Iraqi Shiite resistance movement called al-Dawa (the Call of Islam) in order to fend off the rival Communist movement as a threat to all believers, Sunnis as well as Shiites. A decade later, however, he and other leaders at Najaf had to emphasize their distinctively Shiite traditions, especially that of the spiritually guided imamate, to resist a Sunni Baathist regime committed to "purging" Iraq of the Shiite threat (stigmatized as "Iranian"). Mallat's historical commentary not only helps us understand the political uses of Shiite beliefs, it shows us that the issue of Iraqi Shiites' ties to Iran has always been a factor-- albeit an uncertain and changeable one-- in Iraqi politics.
Mallat's article provides a useful background for the current emergence of rival Shiite activist groups in Iraq. hoping at long last to play a major political role in the country. The U.S. complains of Iran's "interference." This was precisely Saddam Hussein's complaint in 1980, when he started a decade-long war. It's worth pausing to note that this complaint can be answered from either of two contrasting positions, depending on the particular Shiite group's history and goals.
I . Many Iraqi Shiite activists, including thousands who were forced into Iran by Saddam, consider themselves Arab Iraqis who are opposed to Iranian influence in Iraq. (At this time, no one can be sure about the relative strength of this element, any more than that of its rivals, either in numbers or percentages.) For this group, Baqir al-Sadr was "our" ayatollah, the only Arab among the handful of religious leaders at the top of the Shiite hierarchy. He was a martyr and a patriot, within the political context of an Iraqi Shiite struggle against Saddam. This "Iraq First" position is strengthened by the fact (surprising to many) that Iraqi Shiites fought hard for their nation during the terrible war of the 1980s. Finally, it's important to recognize that the leading cleric at Najaf, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has always opposed Khomeini's theory of clerical rule and is critical of Iran. He speaks for the traditionalists at Najaf, who are said to be in the majority.
2. On the other hand, the linkages between Iranian and Iraqi Shiites, ever since the revolutionary struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. appear to be deeply embedded. It's unusual to find a resistance group without a base in Tehran. Key factors here are the historical and ongoing interactions between the two great Shiite centers of learning at Najaf (Iraq) and Qom (Iran), and the politically motivated support and refuge Iran's ruling clerics have always extended to Iraqi Shiites. Moreover, the families of religious leaders have become dispersed between both countries during periods of struggle and exile.
With patience and a little re-reading, I believe people will find Mallat's discussion of the changing rhetorical strategies of Shiite activism quite useful. For example, a convenient citation of "particularist" or distinctively Shiite positions appears on p. 701, in the context of Shah Nadir's (failed) attempt to reconcile Sunnis and Shiites at the 1743 theological Congress in Najaf. For Sunnis, these are still issues that identify the Shiites as rebels and troublemakers. The offending Shiite tenets in 1743 were: 1. attacking the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar, via ages-old conventions of vilification (sahh) and denial (rafd); 2. rejecting the authority of most of the Prophet's companions as unbelievers; 3. defending the institution of mutes or temporary marriage; 4. rejecting the forms of Sunni prayers.
To which must be added the crucial issue of the Shiite imamate, which is central to Mallat's focus on the now legendary career of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. Shiite uprisings have almost always been led by ulama, who are felt to be successors of the (divinely inspired) prophets and the Imams, the representatives or deputies of the Hiddcn Imam. (By contrast, Sunni radical movements have rarely been led by ulama.) Since Shiite ulama are held to be spiritually inspired through their attachment to the Hidden Imam, who will someday return as the Mahdi, this has been used to authorize their role as activists as well as religious authorities. It was the Shiite ulama who organized the great 1920 uprising against the British in Iraq. (The Arab Nationalist "Sharifians" who were forced out of Damascus simply joined the ulamas' struggle. Later, ironically enough, they became the core of a Sunni ruling elite who oppressed the Shiites in the 1930s.) The 1979 Iranian revolution concretized Ayatollah Khomeini's theory of the wilayat e-faqih-- the guardianship of the jurisconsult. With this theory, the spiritual authority of the leading Shiite religious scholar suddenly became translatable into the highest matters of governing. In the 1960s and 1970s, while Khomeini was teaching at Najaf, Baqir al-Sadr was perhaps (as some historians argue) his colleague, although Baqir was the younger man. Mallat suggests that Sadr defended Khomeini's revolutionary theory, as well as playing a major role in drafting Iran's new constitution. The crucial historical point, however, is that the Shiites who planned the great clerical resistance movements from Najaf in the late 1960s and 1970s felt they had to push the Shiite tradition of the spiritually authorized ulama to its most extreme political conclusion. Khomeini and his colleagues could not have accomplished this apart from the hierarchic ranking system at Najaf and Qom-- where the mujtuhid ("one who has exerted himself so as to be able to frame an opinion") might dream of someday rising to the senior level of'scholars, or ayatollahs ("signs " or "proofs" of God) and beyond that to the six or seven Grand Ayatollahs at the top, which included both Khomeini and Baqir al-Sadr in the mid-1960s.
Mallat focuses on the year 1970 to mark the launching of the new Shiite activism, by describing a collection of emancipatory Shiite theological essays published at Najaf by future activist leaders. His point is that since 1968, the Baathist regime had established a hegemonically Sunni program (overtly anti-Shiite) led by Party members from Tikrit. This forced Baqir al-Sadr into an aggressive resistance campaign that intensified through the decade, culminating in the tremendous crises of 1980. Mallat uses a 1977 essay by Baqir al-Sadr ("On the Mahdi") to represent the seemingly inevitable triumph of Shiite "particularism" over the Islamic "universalism" of his earlier works in philosophy and economics, which were aimed against Communist influences upon all Muslims. Mallat's brief description summarizes the thrust of Baqir al-Sadr's later work and his political vision three years before his execution.
Sadr's "On the Mahdi" described the relation of the individual to the awaited Mahdi of the Shia tradition as an expression of the popular quest for justice that would be "impossible to materialize unless the Mahdi becomes really incarnate in a living contemporary human being. The realization of the Coming of the Mahdi, Sadr further explains, is "determined by the combination of human willingness and of independent objective conditions in a way similar to any operation of social change, such as the one led by Lenin in Russia." Never was the fusion of political appeal and Shiite references so explicit. Particularism had won the day. By 1978-79, the most significant challenge to Baath rule in Iraq was coming from Najaf, in the form of an appeal for the leadership to take power (p. 726).
The "popular quest for justice" might remind us of the little handout from the preface to Ayatollah Tabatabai's Shiite Islam: Shiites believe that justice is an essential aspect of the Divine, and that humans can recognize it. The crucial phrasing here is that "the Mahdi becomes really incarnate in a living human being." We are no longer thinking only of the traditional Shiite "deputy" of the Hidden Imam. The traditional spiritual authority of the Shiite ulama, which was assumed through his "attachment" to the Imamate, now emerges as a full-blown Khomeini-style political authority that claims to finally bring divine justice to the world. Baqir al-Sadr could write this in 1977, two years before the Iranian revolution, because Khomeni bad presented his theory long before, in his 1970 lectures at Najaf, where Baqir al-Sadr was also teaching-- and very probably working with him. This is surely on the minds of Shiite clerics today, as they "struggle"--using their term for it-- towards some version (probably different from Iran's) of an Islamic state in Iraq.
5-16-03
