Download Sunni and Shia

Sunni-Shia Relations: An Historical Perspective
Neal Robinson(서강대 종교학과 교수)
As a result of developments in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad three and a half
years ago, most people are now aware that the majority of the world’s Muslims are
Sunnis and that the rest are Shi‘ites. Because the two terms are heard daily in news
bulletins they have gained wide currency. However, recent surveys revealed that even
senior politicians in the USA and the UK were lamentably ignorant about the
distinction. Some actually thought that al-Qaeda was Shi‘ite. 1 A blunder of this
magnitude is inexcusable but it is attributable, at least in part, to the widespread
negative stereotyping of Shi‘ism, not least by pro-Western Arab heads of state. In
December 2004, King Abdullah of Jordan warned of the emergence of a radical Shia
crescent. 2 In April 2006, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, another Sunni,
reinforced this message when he asserted that Shi‘ites across the Middle East showed
greater loyalty to Iran than to their own countries.3 Ten months later, in the wake of a
further upsurge in sectarian violence in Iraq, The Economist published a brief article
entitled “Shias and Sunnis: The Widening Gulf”.4 It was accompanied by a cartoon
that depicted six rows of men prostrating themselves in serried ranks in front of an
onion-domed mosque. Three of the rows were facing towards the left of the picture
and three towards the right, leaving a large gap in the middle. The author of the article
mentioned that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had blamed Israel and the United States for
stirring conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims so as to plunder their oil wealth.
However, he was at pains to point out that the Iranian President was not alone: Mehdi
Akef, the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, a powerful trans-national Sunni
organisation, had similarly accused Israel and America of stoking Sunni fear of
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Shi‘ites in order to distract their attention from the Palestinian issue. In the hope of
dispelling some of the confusion caused by these discordant voices, I will endeavour
to put current Sunni-Shia relations into historical perspective by looking at key events
and developments in the past fourteen hundred years.
At first sight Islam appears more monolithic than other religions. The
differences between Sunnism and Shi‘ism are less obvious, for instance, than the
differences between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, or between Theravada
and Mahayana Buddhism. All Muslims cherish essentially the same Arabic text of the
Qur’an5 which they hold to be the Word of God revealed to Muhammad piecemeal
over a period of twenty-three years, initially in his native Mecca and then in Medina.
All Muslims subscribe to six basic tenets: belief in the unity of God, in a series of
prophets of whom Muhammad was the last, in a series of scriptures culminating in the
Qur’an, in God’s angels, in the coming Day of Judgement, and in divinely
predetermined destiny. All Muslims also acknowledge five obligatory acts of worship,
the so-called pillars of Islam: the testimony that there is no God but Allah and that
Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, ritual prayer, zakat or compulsory charity, the
fast of Ramadan and the pilgrimage. There are, to be sure, minor differences over
these tenets and practices. For example, Sunnis fold their arms in front of them when
standing to pray whereas Shi‘ites let their arms hang down by their sides; and in
prostration Sunnis touch the prayer mat with their foreheads whereas most Shi‘ites
place their foreheads on small tablets of compacted earth from Karbalā or Najaf.
However, such differences are unobtrusive. The cartoon in the Economist should not
be taken literally: Sunnis and Shi‘ites in any given locality may be relied on to pray in
exactly the same direction. 6 They all face the Kaaba, a cubed-shaped building in
Mecca which the Qur’an says was the first place of worship known to humanity. 7
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Moreover, because of a ruling by Ayatollah Khomeini, when Shi‘ites arrive in Mecca
on the pilgrimage many of them pray behind the Sunni imam.
Let us now turn to the more fundamental differences between Shi‘i and Sunni.
The Arabic word shi‘a simply means a ‘party’ or ‘faction’. In this context it is shorthand for Shi‘at ‘Alī, the party of Alī ibn abi Tālib, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin
and son-in-law. In itself, the term is not very informative because all Muslims hold
Ali in high esteem. Sunnis recognise for instance that Ali was extremely close to the
Prophet and that in 622, when Muhammad left Mecca for Medina because of
persecution, Ali acted as a decoy by sleeping in his bed. Sunnis also acknowledge that
Ali was a brave warrior and that the Prophet chose him as his standard bearer for the
key campaigns of Badr and Khaybar. Where they disagree with the Shi‘ites is over the
leadership of the Muslim community after the Prophet’s death. The Shi‘ites claim that
when returning from his final pilgrimage, Muhammad stopped at Ghadir Khumm to
preach a sermon and that he asked those present whether he had ‘more authority over’
the believers than they had over themselves (or whether he was ‘closer to’ them than
they were to themselves – the Arabic word awlā can be construed either way). Then,
when they replied in the affirmative, he took Ali by the hand and declared: ‘If anyone
acknowledges me as his mawla, Ali here is also his mawla’ (man kuntu mawlahu fa
hādha 'Aliyun mawlahu).8 Sunnis sometimes dismiss this story as a Shia forgery. 9 In
any case, as they are quick to point out, the word mawla may simply mean ‘friend’.
For Shi‘ites, however, this is one of several traditions which prove conclusively that
Ali was Muhammad’s divinely-designated successor. They interpret mawla as ‘lord’
or ‘master’ and claim that Muhammad’s action was prompted by a quranic revelation
O Messenger! Convey what has been revealed to you from your Lord. If you
do not do so, then [it will be as if] you have not conveyed His message [at all].
Allãh will protect you from the people." (Qur'ãn 5:67)
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Moreover they maintain that at Ghadir Khumm the Prophet announced his impending
death and charged the believers to remain attached to the Qur'ãn and to his
‘household’, a term which they insist denotes his daughter Fātima, her husband Ali
and their descendants.
Sunna is also a very ordinary Arabic word. It normally means a ‘path’ or
‘beaten track’ but in this context, where it is an abbreviation for sunnat al-nabī, ‘the
path of the Prophet’, it is used figuratively. The Sunna is the normative way of life
established by the teaching and example of the Prophet. Here too, the term itself is not
particularly informative. All Muslims, Sunni and Shia alike, seek to follow in the
Prophet’s footsteps and they all recognise that this entails relying on tradition. For
example, the Qur’an orders believers to perform the ritual prayer but Muslims would
not know how to fulfil this religious obligation without the detailed extra-quranic
accounts of how the Prophet prayed. Reports about this and countless other matters
are preserved in extensive written collections that were compiled in the ninth century.
The reports are accompanied by isnād-s. These are chains of guarantors that list the
names of those who allegedly transmitted them orally during the first two centuries of
Islam. Each report, together with its isnād, is known technically as a hadīth. The
Sunnis recognise several grades of hadīth, pride of place going to those that have one
or more unbroken isnād-s each ending with the name of a Companion of the Prophet.
The Shi‘ites study the Sunni Hadith collections but are not bound by them to the same
degree. In their view the authority of the Companions is questionable because they
erred in failing to accept Ali as Muhammad’s divinely-designated successor,
appointing first Abu Bakr, then Umar and then Uthman as Caliph, and relegating Ali
to the fourth place. Members of the principal branch of Shi‘ism, the Twelvers, believe
that Ali was the first of a series of twelve sinless Imāms who were the channels of
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divine guidance to the Muslim community. Ali’s elder son Hasan was the second
Imām and his younger son Husayn the third. The subsequent nine Imāms were all
direct descendants of Husayn. The Twelvers have their own Hadith collections in
which the traditions are supported by isnād-s which name the Imāms and their
disciples as guarantors.
When Alī was eventually elected Caliph in 656, thirty-four years after
Muhammad’s death, many Muslims still refused to acknowledge his authority. The
rebels included the Prophet’s widow A’isha, who accompanied her allies into battle
born aloft on a camel, which is one of the reasons why the Shia insist that the
Prophet’s wives should not be considered part of his ‘household’. After crushing the
rebellion and respectfully sending A’isha back to Medina, Ali moved his headquarters
to Kufa, a garrison town in Iraq, to prepare to engage with Mu‘awiyya, the governor
of Syria, who had likewise refused to swear allegiance to him. They fought a bloody
and inconclusive battle at Siffin in 661, which ended when Ali accepted arbitration.
This caused dissension among his troops. He succeeded in quelling the mutiny but
was assassinated a few days later. He is allegedly buried in Najaf, which subsequently
became one of the great centres of Shi‘ism.
The people of Iraq forthwith elected Hasan to succeed his father as Caliph but
he reached an agreement with Mu’awiyya and abdicated almost immediately, retiring
to Medina where he died ten years later. The Shia allege that his wife poisoned him at
Mu’awiyya’s instigation. With Hasan dead and buried, Mu’awiyya was free to
designate his own son Yazid to succeed him, thereby founding the Umayyad dynasty
which was in effect a hereditary monarchy. However, Husayn was less of a pragmatist
than his late brother and on Yazid’s accession in 680 he set out to challenge him.
Along with all 72 of his companions, 18 of them members of his own family, he was
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butchered by Yazid’s troops on the plain of Karbala. To this day, Shi‘ites differ over
Husayn’s intentions. Moreover, as we shall see, the way in which they commemorate
this event has changed with the passage of time. It is also subject to considerable
regional variation. Nevertheless, the multi-faceted symbol of the martyrdom of
Husayn undoubtedly takes us to the very heart of Sh‘ite identity.
Before proceeding further we should admit that our knowledge of this early
period is very uncertain. The information is derived largely from documents compiled
after 750, the date when the Umayyads were supplanted by the Abbasids. It seems
likely, however, that most of those who rallied around Ali, Hasan and Husayn were
political Shi‘ites rather than theological Shi‘ites. That is to say they were convinced
that the leader of the Muslim community should be a member of the Prophet’s clan,
preference being given to Ali and his progeny, but they did not subscribe to the
doctrine of the imamate. There were in fact several abortive attempts to replace the
corrupt and worldly Umayyad Caliphs with relatives of the Prophet before the
Abbasid revolution eventually succeeded in doing this. Although the revolution had
Shia backing, the Abbasid Caliphs were not drawn from Ali’s line; they were
descendants of his uncle, Abbas, who was also the Prophet’s uncle.
With the exception of Spain, where the sole survivor of the Umayyad ruling
family fled to establish a rival Caliphate, the Abbasids inherited the whole of the
Muslim empire extending from Morocco to north-west India. Once they had
consolidated their position, they founded Baghdad which served as their capital for
the best part of the next five hundred years.
Despite the fact that the new capital was located in Iraq, the traditional
heartland of political Shi‘ism, the shift in the centre of Caliphal power did not bode
well for Ali’s descendants. The Abbasids, realising that they would never give them
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their full support, subjected them to intermittent persecution. The Imams for their part
tried to avoid confrontation by refraining from overt political activity and choosing to
live in relative seclusion in Medina. There was a brief rapprochement in 816 when
Caliph Ma’mūn suddenly and unexpectedly summoned the eighth Imam, Ali al-Ridā,
to Marv where he appointed him his successor, presumably because he wished to
enlist Shia support in the civil war that had split the empire. Two years later, and
equally suddenly, Ali al-Ridā died, perhaps poisoned by Ma’mūn. Be that as it may,
Ma’mūn was ostensibly well-disposed towards Ali al-Ridā’s son, the ninth Imam,
Muhammad al-Taqī, to whom he gave his own daughter in marriage. However the
persecution resumed in earnest with the Caliphate of al-Mutawakkil that began in 847.
He and his successor kept the tenth and eleventh Imams under house arrest in
Sāmarrā, allowing them only limited contact with their followers. For good measure,
al-Mutawakkil also destroyed the shrine over Husayn’s tomb, putting the plain of
Karbala to the plough.
When the eleventh Imam, Hasan al-Askarī, died in 874, it was widely thought
that he was heirless. To almost everyone’s surprise, a young boy who claimed to be
his son turned up at the funeral only to vanish after leading the prayers. Twelver
Shi‘ites believe that the boy, who bore the name Abu ’l-Qāsim Muhammad, was the
twelfth Imam. They further maintain that over the next sixty-seven years, during what
is known as the Lesser Occultation, he communicated with his followers through a
series of four agents. The final cessation of communication in 941 marked the
beginning of the Greater Occultation. Nevertheless, they insist that the Hidden Imam
is still alive. They regard him as the leader of the community and await his return as
the Mahdi, the rightly-guided one who will deliver Muslims from oppression shortly
before the Day of Judgement.
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By the middle of the tenth century, the doctrinal framework of Twelver
Shi‘ism was thus firmly in place. The key doctrine, the imamate, was of course of far
greater antiquity, but until then there had been no agreement about the number of
Imams or their identity. On the contrary, almost every time an Imam died, a dispute
over the succession led to a schism. Many of the splinter-groups were short-lived and
need not concern us but the schism that occurred in 765 on the demise of the sixth
Imam, Ja‘far al-Sādiq, was to have lasting significance. Ja‘far outlived his eldest son
Isma‘il, whom he had initially designated to succeed him. The Twelvers believe that
before dying he designated another son, Musa al-Kazim, as the seventh Imam.
However, the Isma‘ilis insist that the designation of Isma‘il could not be revoked and
that on Ja‘far’s death the imamate therefore passed to Isma‘il’s son. We shall see
shortly that the influence of the Isma‘ilis grew with the disappearance of Abu ’lQasim Muhammad, the child whom their rivals revere as the twelfth Imam. First,
however, I wish to say a few words about developments that had been taking place
within Sunni Islam.
As mentioned above, on gaining power the Abbasids turned against the Shia.
However, they were not guilty of a total volte-face: they continued to vilify the
Umayyads and to deplore the massacre of Karbala. As a result, the mainstream Sunni
Islam that gradually took shape under their patronage was sufficiently broad to absorb
many people who were Shia sympathisers. Take for instance, the four extant Sunni
law-schools. Abu Hanifa (d. 767), the founder of the Hanafi school was at one stage a
pupil of the sixth Imam, Ja‘far al-Sadiq;10 Malik b. Anas (d. 795), the founder of the
Maliki school, must also have been close to al-Sadiq because he transmitted traditions
from him;11 Muhammad b. Idris al-Shafi‘i (d. 820), the founder of the Shafi‘i school,
wrote elegies in which he lavished praise on the martyrs of Karbala; 12 and Ahmad b.
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Hanbal (d. 855), the founder of the Hanbali school, included the tradition of Ghadir
Khumm in his collection of hadiths.13 The six collections of hadiths now regarded as
canonical by all four schools were compiled later but they were completed well before
the Greater Occultation. To be sure, these collections contain many traditions in
which the Prophet allegedly praised the piety and valour of Abu Bakr, Umar and
Uthman, who subsequently succeeded him as the first three Caliphs, along with other
traditions which single out Abu Bakr’s daughter A’isha as the Prophet’s favourite
wife. However, the same collections also contain traditions that heap praise on Ali
and Fatima, stress the Prophet’s great affection for his grandsons Hasan and Husayn,
and highlight the importance of his household. In the light of this, it is not surprising
that in the course of the twentieth century some Sunni authorities came belatedly to
accept Twelver Shi‘ism as a fifth law school.14
Let us now return to the Isma‘ilis. Shi‘ites of all persuasions believe that the
Imams are the final links in an unbroken chain of divinely-appointed guides that
reaches back to the time of Adam and will continue until the Day of Judgement.
When some Shi‘i theologians began declaring that Abu ’l-Qasim Muhammad had
gone into occultation, many ordinary believers suspected that they were merely trying
to conceal the embarrassing fact that he was dead. This lent weight to the claim made
by the Isma‘ilis that on the death of Ja‘far al-Sadiq the imamate had in fact passed to
Isma‘il’s son. The Isma‘ilis therefore seized their opportunity and dispatched
missionaries far and wide declaring that a certain Saïd ibn Husayn was the living
Imam. In 910, taking advantage of Abbasid weakness, Saïd established the rival
Fatimid dynasty in North Africa and adopted the throne name Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi
Billah. The Fatimids subsequently conquered Egypt, founding Cairo as their new
capital in 969. At its zenith their empire extended from Morocco to Syria with vassal
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states as far afield as north-west India. However in the 1040s it began to disintegrate,
finally ceasing to exist in 1171. Today there are several sects of Isma‘ilis. All of them
acknowledge living Imams who claim descent from the Fatimid Caliphs. The largest
group are the followers of the Aga Khan, known throughout the world for their
educational and philanthropic works.
The Fatimids were not the only Shi‘ite dynasty to profit from the decline of
the Abbasid Caliphate. In 945, the Buyids gained control of Western Iran and Iraq
where they remained in power for a century. To begin with they were probably
Zaydis, Shias who accepted only the first four Imams of the Twelver line, although
they subsequently became Twelvers. Despite their Shi‘ite proclivities, they paid
allegiance to the Sunni Caliphs who in return invested them with full temporal power.
The Buyid rulers promoted public mourning rituals for Husayn in order to strengthen
the sense of Shi‘ite identity in and around Baghdad. A Sunni historian records that on
10 Muharram 963, the anniversary of Husayn’s death, the markets were closed and
unveiled women with dishevelled hair went around wailing and beating their faces.
He adds that the Sunnis could not prevent this spectacle because of the numerical
strength of the Shia and their enjoyment of official patronage.15
Fast-forward by approximately three hundred years. In 1258 the Mongols,
who had already lain waste much of Asia, sacked Baghdad and murdered the last
Abbasid Caliph. Some Sunnis, notably the eminent jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328),
blamed the Shia for what happened, regarding them as the enemy within who had
prepared the ground by dividing the Muslim community. Ibn Taymiyya sanctioned
violence against Shi‘ites. He even defended the reputation of the Umayyad Caliphs on
the grounds that they had been stronger and hence better equipped to rule than Ali and
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his sons.16 It is no exaggeration to say that the recent massacres of Shi‘ites by Sunni
extremists are part of Ibn Taymiyya’s legacy.
Fortunately, however, other forces were also at work. The period from 1200 to
1500 was the golden age of Sufism, the broad movement within Islam that
emphasizes the importance of cultivating the spiritual life. Most of the Sufi orders
founded by Sunni Muslims have chains of spiritual transmission reaching back to
Muhammad via Ali, which adds another dimension to the Prophet’s commendation of
Ali at Ghadir Khumm. Moreover, as many of the early Sufis were ascetics who
believed that the decadence of the Umayyad court was nothing less than a betrayal of
Islam, it is not surprising that Karbala subsequently became an important motif in Sufi
poetry. In one famous example Muinuddin Chisti (d. 1236), whose shrine at Ajmer in
North India is a major centre of pilgrimage, describes Husayn as a ‘king’ and
‘emperor’ who gave his head to the Umayyad Caliph Yazid rather than offer his hand
in allegiance. He asserts that Husayn is the very foundation of the Islamic testimony
of faith, epitomising as he does the refusal to acknowledge any power other than that
of God.17 Add to this the fact that Sufi speculation about the role of the saints in the
divine dispensation furnishes numerous parallels to Shi‘ite speculation about the
Imams, and you will realise that the demarcation line between Sunnism and Shi‘ism
was often blurred. Take for example the great mosque of Gulbarga, one-time capital
of the Bahmanid Sultanate in southern India. It was built during in the second half of
the fourteenth century. The central inscription below the large dome in the prayer hall
reads ‘Allah, Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan, Husayn’ – a sure sign, one might think,
that the Bahmanids were Shi‘ites. But to the right and left of this, and only slightly
lower down, are the names of Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, revered by Sunnis as
the first four Caliphs.18
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Fast-forward again to the founding of Safavid Iran in 1501. This was another
major turning point in the history of Islam. The Safavids were leaders of a Sunni Sufi
order that had drifted towards Shi‘ism. The first Safavid monarch, Shah Isma‘il I,
made Twelver Shi‘ism the state religion. Sunni religious scholars were persecuted and
their Shi‘i counterparts were imported to instruct the people in the faith. The public
cursing of the first three Caliphs became commonplace and gatherings were instituted
in which specially trained preachers moved their audiences to tears with detailed
accounts of the massacre at Karbala. These developments had grave consequences for
Shi‘ites in the Ottoman Empire where they were viewed with increasing suspicion not
least because the Safavids had designs on Iraq. After a series of protracted battles and
two brief periods of Safavid hegemony (1508-33 and 1622-38) the Ottomans finally
gained the upper hand. From 1638 onwards, the Iraqi Shi‘ites were consequently
marginalised. Iraq’s Sunni Arabs on the contrary acquired extensive administrative
experience that equipped them to become the sole rulers of the country after the brief
period of the British mandate following the demise of the Ottoman Empire. By that
time, however, there had been three further developments that continue to affect
Sunni-Shia relations.
First, in Iran the Muharram observances had evolved to include lavish
theatrical re-enactments of Karbala. These ta‘ziyas, as they were called, were not
simply passion plays but had a strong political undercurrent. Initially, they were a
public expression of the Shi‘ite community’s vehement rejection of the age-old Sunni
monopoly of power. In this interpretation, the villain of the piece, the Umayyad
Caliph Yazid, stood for all subsequent Caliphs including the Ottomans. Through
lavish patronage of ta‘ziyas, the Qajars, who ruled Iran from 1794, were thus able to
gain a measure of legitimacy in the eyes of the Shi‘ite masses. By the same token, the
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Pahlavis, who succeeded them in 1925, undermined their own position through
disparagement of the Muharram rituals. They thereby played into the hands of their
opponents who eventually commandeered the Karbala paradigm, stigmatising
Muhammad Reza Shah as the new Yazid and casting themselves in the role of
Husayn’s loyal supporters.19 This was a radical new departure, for the Shah was not a
Sunni but a nominal Shi‘ite and those who challenged his right to rule were
determined to overthrow him.
The second development has several components, which makes it more
difficult to summarise. From a strict Twelver perspective, the Hidden Imam alone has
the right to rule the Muslim community. Under the Safavids, the senior religious
scholars therefore began to claim that they were the Imam’s representatives in
religious matters and hence to exert pressure on the Shah to enforce Islamic law. At
that time, there were two schools of jurisprudence: the Akhbaris and the Usulis. The
Akhbaris relied heavily on the Hadith whereas the Usulis laid greater stress on
rationality and considered it incumbent on every believer to obey the decrees of a
marja‘ al-taqlid, an accredited legal authority of his choice. In the course of the
nineteenth century, the Akhbaris were virtually eclipsed by the Usulis. This was in
large measure due to the role the Usulis played in resisting European encroachment.
For instance, in 1890 the Shah granted a tobacco monopoly to a British consortium.
However, the following year the most senior marja‘ declared the use of tobacco
unlawful. His decree was universally obeyed and the concession became worthless.20
There are currently about forty marja‘s. Although the majority live in Iran or Iraq
they preside over powerful international networks. As well as enjoying immense
prestige, they have vast financial resources because the faithful not only entrust them
to disburse their zakat but also pay them an additional ten percent of their disposable
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income in khums, a specifically Shi‘ite religious tax. 21 On the eve of the Islamic
Revolution of 1978-79, Ayatollah Khomeini was one of the six most senior marja‘s.
Eight years earlier, while exiled in Iraq, he had published a book in which he argued
that there was no place for kings or other temporal rulers and that government should
be entrusted to the supreme expert in Islamic law who would have the same authority
as the Imam.22 As the father of the revolution, Khomeini assumed that role and his
doctrine of Vilāyat-i Faqīh, ‘guardianship of the jurist’, was written into the
constitution. However, some of his contemporaries had serious reservations about this
doctrine. They included Grand Ayatollah Khu’i, Khomeini’s rival in Najaf, who
denounced it as a deviation from Shi’ism.23
The third key development occurred in the Sunni camp. In 1744, Muhammad
b. Saud, a minor tribal leader in Central Arabia, forged an alliance with Muhammad b.
Abd al-Wahhab, a fanatical religious reformer who was inspired by the writings of
Ibn Taymiyya, the fourteenth century scholar who blamed the Shi‘ites for
precipitating the fall of Baghdad. Abd al-Wahhab believed that the veneration of holy
men and their tombs seriously compromised Islam’s strict monotheism. He therefore
authorised Ibn Saud to wage jihad against his Arab Muslim neighbours on the
condition that he established the ‘true’ Islam in the territories conquered. Those
targeted included Shi‘ites as well as Sufis and other Sunnis who engaged in
‘idolatrous’ practices. In 1801, a Wahhabi army sacked Karbala, killing several
thousand inhabitants, and damaging the shrine of Imam Husayn. In 1925, the
Wahhabi troops of Abdul Aziz b. Saud, who subsequently became the first King of
Saudi Arabia, destroyed the cemetery in Medina, where the Prophet’s daughter
Fatima and four of the first six Imams were buried. To this day, the Saudi royal family
derives its legitimacy from promoting the Wahhabi brand of Islam, and members of
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the Saudi religious establishment still occasionally issue fatwas condemning
Shi‘ism.24
There is, however, a strange twist to this story. Before the Iranian Revolution,
secular Arab nationalism posed more of a threat to the Saudis than Shi‘ism. They
therefore lavished their favours on the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation that
sought to overthrow Nasser and his successors in Egypt and the Baathist regime in
Syria. Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Brotherhood, was no Shi‘ite but his
methods were in some respects strikingly similar to those of the Fatimids, the
erstwhile Isma‘ili rulers of his native Egypt. Like them, he sent preachers out to the
villages to spread his message. Like them, he made jihad one of the pillars of Islam.
Like them too, many of his activities were shrouded in secrecy. Moreover, there are
grounds for thinking that he sanctioned high-profile political assassinations for which
a precedent had been set by Hasan al-Saba, the leader of another mediaeval Isma‘ili
sect.
The aim of the Brotherhood and the Jamaat-e Islami, its South-Asian sister
organisation, which is likewise a beneficiary of Saudi largesse, is to establish an
Islamic state and impose Sharia law. The revolutionary Shi‘ites who overthrew the
Shah had essentially the same objectives, which is why they took a great interest in
these Sunni movements. A few examples must suffice. The first organisation in
modern times to call for an Islamic state in Iran was Feda’iyan Eslam (Devotees of
Islam) founded in 1946 by Navab Safavi, and modelled on the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 1953 Safavi went to Egypt as a guest of the Brothers. He was executed in 1957
after the Feda’iyyan had assassinated several Iranian intellectuals and two prime
ministers but a number of his followers survived to play key roles in the Iranian
Revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini read the works of Mawdudi, the founder of the
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Jamaat, and of Sayyid Qutb, the radical Brotherhood ideologue. Khomeini’s
successor, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, translated Qutb’s works into Farsi.
From this brief and deliberately selective historical survey, it should be clear
that there is considerable diversity within both Sunni and Shi‘i Islam. Moreover
despite their doctrinal differences, Sunnis and Shi‘ites sometimes find themselves
drawn closer to each other. This happens when individuals or groups are fired by a
common commitment to the spiritual and ethical dimensions of Islam. Paradoxically,
it can also occur when the urge to gain political power in the name of Islam is the
overarching priority.
To throw light on the current sectarian violence one would need to supplement
the historical survey with an up-to-date analysis of the shifting geopolitical situation.
This is beyond the scope of the present lecture but a few comments are in order. The
forty-six countries with Muslim majorities form a broad band extending from the
Atlantic coast of Africa to Indonesia. In this vast and extremely diverse region, Sunnis
outnumber Shi‘ites by roughly nine to one as they do in the world as a whole.
However, the Shi‘ites are not evenly distributed. They are concentrated mainly in the
Middle East and South Asia. Iran is the only Muslim country with an overwhelming
Shi‘ite majority but Shi‘ites also outnumber Sunnis in Iraq, the Lebanon and Bahrain,
and make up a significant proportion of the population in Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. In other words, as one might expect,
Shi‘ites tend to gravitate towards those parts of the Muslim world that are seeped in
their own sacred history and the blood of their martyrs. Nevertheless, although
communal memory of past strife can sometimes be a source of violence there are two
other major factors that should not be overlooked: oil and the Cold War.
Approximately 23% of the world’s oil reserves are located in Saudi Arabia, 11% in
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Iran and 10% in Iraq. Moreover, most of the oil wells in Saudi Arabia and Iraq are
situated in areas inhabited by Shi‘ites, who have for far too long been treated as
second class citizens in both countries. Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth enables it to
propagate its peculiar state-sponsored brand of Sunni Islam throughout the world.
Similarly Iran uses part of its revenue to disseminate its own version of revolutionary
Shi‘ism. Saudi Arabia, however, was a staunch ally of the West throughout the Cold
War. As a result the proliferation of Wahhabism went largely unchecked. During the
ten-year Soviet-Afghan conflict it served as a useful tool for recruiting and motivating
resistance fighters to oust the Communists. An unforeseen consequence was the
growth of Sunni militancy. Whereas everyone is aware of the havoc that this is now
causing in many parts of the globe, few realise how disastrous it has been for the
Shi‘ite minorities living in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan.25
Harnden, T., “Democrat flunks his first intelligence test” The Telegraph, 14 December 2006,
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/13/wreyes13.xml and Chittenden, M. and
Baird, T. “MPs don’t know their Sunnis from Shi’ites” The Sunday Times, 7 January 2007,
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/newspapers/sunday_times/britain/article1290289.ece
2
Hardball with Chris Matthews, “King Abdullah II of Jordan” MSNBC, 8 December 2004, video and
transcript www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6679774.
3
AP, “Mubarak Questions Loyalty of Iraq Shiites”, CBS News, 10 April 2006
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/10/ap/world/mainD8GSS9M83.shtml
4
Simonds, D., ‘Shias and Sunnis: The Widening Gulf’, The Economist, 1 February 2007
www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8633250
5
The consonantal text is fixed but there are several traditional systems of vocalisation. Printed editions
used by the Shia conform to the recitation of ‘Asim of Kufa transmitted by Hafs, which is the system
favoured by most Sunni Muslims except in North Africa. There is, however, evidence that the early
Shia did not accept the standard text. See Brunner, R., Die Schia und die Koranfälschung (Würzburg:
Ergon, 2003) and Momen, .M., An Introduction to Sh‘i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver
Shi‘ism (Newhaven: Yale University Press, 1985) 172-3.
6
This holds true for Sunnis and Twelver Shi‘ites. The Ismailis do not attach the same importance to the
direction of prayer although their prayer halls are often orientated towards Mecca.
7
Qur’an 3.96, where ‘Becca’ is generally understood to be Mecca.
8
Ibn Hanbal, Musnad Vol. 4, 281
1
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9
Its inclusion in the Musnad carries little weight with them because although the compiler was a Sunni
this collection contains much material whose authenticity is disputed.
10
Momen op. cit. 38
11
Ibid.
12
Hyder, Syed Akbar, Reliving Karbala: Martyrdom in South Asian Memory (Oxford: OUP, 2006) 21;
Ayoub, M., Redemptive Suffering in Islam: A Study of the Devotional Aspects of ‘Ashura in Twelver
Shi ‘ism (New York: Mouton, 1978) 153
13
Ibn Hanbal, Musnad Vol. 4, 281
14
The formal recognition occurred in February 1959, when following ecumenical initiatives by
Shi‘ites, Mahmud Shaltut, Rector of al-Azhar, the world’s most prestigious Sunni university based in
Cairo, issued a fatwa recognising Twelver Shi‘ism as a fifth law school. However, in July 1960,
President Nasser responded to the Shah’s de facto recognition of Israel by breaking off diplomatic
relations with Iran. Shaltut then called on all Muslims to wage jihad on the Shah. This put pay to any
further Sunni-Shia rapprochement.
15
Ibn al-Kathir, cited by Michael Mazzoui, “Shi‘ism and Ashura in South Lebanon” in Ta‘ziyeh: Ritual
and Drama in Iran, ed. Peter Chelkowski (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 231.
16
For a more detailed summary of Ibn Taymiyya’s views see Nasr, Vali, The Shia Revival: How
Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future (New York: Norton, 2006) 94-96.
17
Cited in Hyder op. cit. 105.
18
Hollister, J. N., The Shi’a of India 2nd (New Delhi: Oriental Books reprint Corporation, 1979) 106.
This suggests that Muhamad Shah was a Sunni but that he accepted the doctrine of tafdīliyyah (belief
in the superiority of Ali and the subsequent imams to the first three Caliphs). See Ahmad, A., An
Intellectual History of Islam in India (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1969) 17.
19
For a detailed discussion of continuity and change in Muharram rituals in Iran see Aghaie, Kamran
Scott, The Martyrs of Karbala: Shi‘i Symbols and Rituals in Modern Iran (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2004).
20
Keddi, Nikki, Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Tobacco Protest of 1891-1892 (London: Frank
Cass, 1966)
21
Qur’an 8:41 stipulates that a fifth (Arabic khums) of what is gained is for God, the Messenger (i.e.
the Prophet Muhammad), close relatives, orphans, the needy and travellers. Sunnis understand this
verse as referring exclusively to gains in battle. The Shia, on the contrary, interpret it as instituting an
annual tax on net income. Half of the khums is considered the share of Imam, being the Imam’s
inheritance from the Prophet. It is this that the believer pays to the marja‘.
22
The book, based on lectures given in January and February 1970, was published under three different
titles the following year to deceive the censors and smuggled into Iran. For an English translation see
Algar, Hamid (translator and editor), Islam and Revolution: Writing and Declarations of Imam
Khomeini (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981 ) 27-167.
23
Nasr op. cit. 125-6
24
In October 1991, Sheikh Abdullah Ibn Jibrin, a member of the Senior Ulema Council, issued a fatwa
labelling the Shi‘is apostates and calling for their death. See al-Jazira al-Arabiyya, issue no. 11,
December 1992 p. 15. Two years later, however, King Fahd issued a royal pardon permitting Shi’i
opponents of the regime to return from exile. He also met a delegation of Shi’is and listened to their
grievances. Undeterred, Ibn Jibrin responded by issuing a further fatwa condemning Shi’is as
polytheists. See Ibrahim, Fouad, The Shi‘is of Saudi Arabia (London: Saqi, 2006) 184-199. Although
Ibn Jibrin has since retired he is still active: in July 2006 he issued a fatwa declaring it unlawful to
support, join or pray for Hezbollah. As Hezbollah is a Shi’i organisation funded by Iran this was hardly
surprising. However, Ibn Jibrin’s declaration was enthusiastically reported by Western journalists who
naively assumed that it stemmed from opposition to terrorist operations against Israel.
25
Shi‘ites in Pakistan were the first to be affected. Within months of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan of December 1979, a Deobandi scholar, Maulana Saleemullah Khan, founded Sawad-e
Azam Ahl-e Sunnat (Greater Unity of the Sunnis). Khan demanded that Pakistan be declared a Sunni
state and that the Shi’a be declared non-Muslims. As a result, Sunni attacks on Shia and to Shia
reprisals became commonplace. For estimated figures see “Sectarian Violence in Pakistan,”
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/pakistan/database/sect-killing.htm. The Taliban were
trained in Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan. Between 1998 and 2000 they carried out a number of
massacres against the Hazara, Afghanistan’s racially distinct Shi‘ite minority. See for example Human
Rights Watch Asia Division “Afghanistan: The Massacre in Mazar-i Sharif” Human Rights Watch,
November 1998 Vol. 10, No. 7 (C) www.hrw.org/hrw/reports98/afghan
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