War updates

Robert Dreyfuss writes in Iraq: Pulled Out Or Pushed Out TomPaine.com 03/09/07:

Tremendous obstacles stand in the way of pro-peace forces both in Congress and in Iraq’s parliament, but if I had to guess, I’d bet that the Iraqis will ask the United States to get out of Iraq long before Congress can force the issue.

Dreyfuss speaks to a serious disconnect in the American discussions about the Iraq War, in which both the still-dwidling number of war supporters as well as war critics assume that when US troops leave primarily depends on American decisions. That's not an entirely sound assumption.

Dreyfuss points out the central dilemma for the antiwar movement in the United States right now. The public has turned overwhelmingly against the war and confidence in the Cheney-Bush administration is down to the most hardcore Republican base voters. But Cheney and Bush are committed to the war and even if they wanted to pull out American forces, that is a complex process that its doubtful in the extreme if they could pull it off successfully. And with the Senate Republicans still committed to the administration's war policies, at least enough to filibuster any major restrictions proposed, the prospects for Congress forcing a withdrawal are not good right now. But, he writes, political shifts in the Iraqi parliament right now could result in some kind of majority there demanding a US timetable for withdrawal:

The emerging new Iraqi coalition is fragile, and it could easily fall apart or fall victim to intensified sectarian warfare. Many obstacles lie in its way, including the attitude of the Kurds, the opposition of the powerful Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and other factors—including, of course, the machinations of the United States and its ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad. But it’s at least possible that by the summer a new government could start taking shape in Baghdad, one that could (among other things) assert its nationalist credentials by demanding a timetable for a U.S. pullout.

President Bush, of course, would do everything he could to prevent the emergence of such a new coalition in Iraq, including possibly the use of military force against its leaders. Unlike with Nancy Pelosi’s legislation, however, at least the White House can’t veto something that the Iraqi parliament passes.

Via Juan Cole, this article looks at the notion of Sunni-Shi'a conflicts becoming central in the Middle East, The Shia-Sunni divide: myths and reality by Omayma Abdel-Latif Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo) Mar 1-7, 2007. He uses the example of Hizbullah in Lebanon to illustrate why trying to force events in the Middle East into a simple Sunni-Shi'a split can be misleading:

A number of Lebanese Shia thinkers and academics refute such arguments. The most important fault lines, they insist, are, and will remain, political, not sectarian: the tendency to frame conflict and politics in the Middle East within an exclusively sectarian frame is no more than a rehash of the colonial attempt to reduce the region to a serious of tribes, sects and communal groups rather than viable states.

One of the recurrent themes in the speeches of Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is his insistence that the Shia "cannot be lumped together in one basket". Nasrallah's assertion is commonly interpreted as an attempt to distance the resistance movement from Shia political groups elsewhere, particularly in Iraq, where they maintain an intimate relationship with their occupiers.

In one of his Ashoura speeches last month, Nasrallah fell just short denouncing Iraq's current rulers as a liability. He was nonetheless keen on emphasising the need to understand political developments in Iraq within an Iraqi context. Such a discourse, coming from the leader of one of the biggest socio-political Shia movements in the Arab and Muslim world, exposes the fallacy of supposing the Shia's rise to power in Iraq as part of some grand Shia design.

It was military success against Israel in Lebanon and not the rise to power of a corrupt ruling elite in Iraq, says one Shia thinker close to Hizbullah, that has empowered the Shia, just as has the Sunnis. What is happening in Iraq, he continues, is not something from which strength can be drawn; rather, the opposite is true, and the Iraqi situation weakens political Shiism.

This seems to be the general consensus among Hizbullah's leaders about the Iraqi situation, complicated as it is by Iranian involvement, the operation of death squads and the ambivalent relationship between occupiers and occupied. (my emphasis)

We can't assume that the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims overrides other shared goals among various states, he argues. Despite suspicion of Persian, Shi'a Iran among Sunni Arab countries, Iran's foreign policy shares some major goals with Sunni states. As he puts it here, Iran also pursues some "Sunni foreign policy goals":

A recent Zogby International poll found that close to 80 per cent of Arabs consider Israel and the United States to be the biggest external threats to their security whereas only six per cent cited Iran. ...

The popular view is a result, says Ali Fayad, head of the Consultative Centre for Strategic and Documentation Studies, a Hizbullah think tank, of Iran's pursuit of Sunni foreign policy goals.

"At the heart of Iran's foreign policy are two key issues; the Palestinian cause and confronting Washington's hegemonic schemes in the region," says Fayad. "There is nothing particularly Shia about the two issues. Indeed both have been presented as the causes for the majority Sunni Arabs. In this sense Iran's foreign policy is Sunni. One can say that the Islamic Republic has transcended the sectarian issue in its foreign policy." (my emphasis)

Tags: iraq, iraq war, robert dreyfuss, shi'a, sunni

The Rightly Guided Caliphs: ‛Ali

The ascension of ‛Alī ibn abī Tālib to the caliphate in 656 had much to do with the political manuevering among the clans and families of Mecca and Medina. The core Muslim elite had been that of Medina. But the Meccan elite had gained much greater influence, particularly under ‛Uthmān. The Medinan elite backed ‛Alī for the caliphate, hoping to capture more influence and appointments.

But, as Hans Küng says in Der Islam (2004), ‛Alī's selection had a "deadly problem" from the start. "He had already discredited himself in the eyes of many because, instead of arresting ‛Uthmān's murderers and punishing them, he allowed himself to be elected caliph with their support." As we saw in discussing ‛Uthmān, his administration had particularly favored the Umayyad family of Mecca. Now, the Umayyad governor of Syria, Mu‛āwiya ibn abī Sufyān, became the leader of those seeking blood vengeance against ‛Uthmān's killers.

The first Muslim civil war

‛Alī's caliphate (656-661) is almost synonymous with what is known as "the first Muslim civil war." In 656, ‛Alī achieved an important victory at the Battle of the Camel at Basra, a city that has become somewhat more familiar to Americans the last couple of years. The Prophet's most influential widow, ‛Ā'iša, the daughter of the first caliph Abū Bakr, was a prominent and important opponent of ‛Alī, perhaps in part because ‛Alī had been reluctant to recognize her father as the legitimate caliph. Küng observes, "She would remain for a long time the last Muslim woman who would be able to exert that kind of influence on public affairs."

After a stalemate at the battle of Siffīn in 657, Mu‛āwiya persuaded ‛Alī to accept an arbitration to determine whether ‛Alī had been selected caliph through an appropriate process of consulation among the leaders of the ummah (Muslim community). In 659, the arbitrators decided that ‛Alī's selection as caliph in 656 had been improper and ordered a new selection. Although Mu‛āwiya formally became caliph in 660, his authority was not fully recognized until after ‛Alī's death.

‛Alī was assassinated in 661 by a Khāriğite, one of a group of embittered former supporter of ‛Alī. Beginning a century after his death, the city of al-Najaf, where ‛Alī's grand shrine is located, became an important spiritual center for "the partisans of ‛Alī," the Shia Muslims, and remains so today. Another city whose name has recetnly become more familiar to Americans.

The first Muslim civil war, of which the legitimacy of ‛Alī's caliphate was the central issue, gave rise to three major division within the ummah.

The Khāriğites were furious that ‛Alī had agreed to allow a council to decide on the legitimacy of his caliphate. In their view, ‛Alī had thereby made the things of God - the legitimate successor to the Prophet as leader, in this case - subject to human whim. The Khāriğites argued that the central criteria for selecting a caliph should not depend on dynastic relationships, but rather the best Muslim shold be selected for caliph, no matter who that might be.

Küng notes that the Khāriğite trend, having long since lost most of its militant edge, persists today among the Berbers of North Africa, in Zanzibar and most of all in Oman. Perhaps 500,000 Muslims in the world today would fall into this category.

It is sometimes said that contemporary jihadists like Osama bin Laden are Khāriğites. But that description seems as vague as to have little real meaning. It looks more like yet another bad historical analogy that manages to mystify more than clarify. Whatever ripples of historical influence may extend from 7th-century Khāriğites to 21st-century global jihadist groups is far overshadowed by more proximate influences. Prominent among them would be the 20th-century Islamist thinkers Pakistani Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi and the Egyptian Sayyid Kutb, the theory and practice of the Muslim Brotherhood (especially in Egypt) and above all the toxic brew of violence and religious fanaticism spawned by the guerrilla war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

The Shi'a tendency among Muslims also emerged from the first Muslim civil war. This trend still persists today, with about 10% of the world's Muslims being Shia. The Shia were the "partisans of ‛Alī." They believe that ‛Alī was the legitimate successor to the Prophet, and that the caliphates of Abū Bakr, ‛Umar and ‛Uthmān were illegitimate. It's worth noting that for centuries to come, the Shia would be intermixed in the same communities as the majority Sunni. The present-day geogrpahical concentrations of Shia in Iran and certain areas of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon was a later development.

The Khāriğites' rejection of both major sides in the civil war had a more clear theological basis than that of the Shia. The Khāriğites rejected the dynastic principle in favor a religious one. The Shia were the partisans of a dynasty based on ‛Alī's line. It would probably be misleading to say that the Shia/Sunni split was political rather than religious. The Shia did believe that ‛Alī carried a divine legitimacy that the first three caliphs did not. The issues were not theological as such at the beginning, though Shia theology would later develop in different directions than the Sunni.

The Sunni majority saw themselves as staying true to the Islamic "sunna," or tradition. They accepted all the first four caliphs, ‛Alī included, as legitimate and came to see them as the Rightly Guided Caliphs. (In other words, though the Shia were the "partisans of ‛Alī," the Sunni can't be seen as the "partisans of anti-‛Alī.) The conduct of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs, together with the Prophet's revelations and the traditions surrounding his life, are seen as akind of golden age of the religion. Just as religious Jews may look to the actions of Abraham or David for religious lessons, or Christians at Jesus or Paul, Sunni Muslims look to Muhammad and the Right Guided Caliphs as models.

So, even though the Shia are the "partisans of ‛Alī," it's not the case that the majority Sunni reject ‛Alī's legitimacy. It is rather that the Shia do not recognize the legitimacy of the caliphates of Abū Bakr, ‛Umar and ‛Uthmān.

The Shia and Husain

After Mu‛āwiya had established himself as caliph Mu‛āwiya I, founder of the Umayyad dynasty, conflict with the Shia continued. He persuaded ‛Alī's son al Hasan ibn ‛Alī to renounce any claim on the caliphate in exchange for a huge payoff, which allowed Hasan to lead a long life of luxurious decadence in Medina, where he had 60 wives and 300 concubines, according to the more conservative figures Küng gives. Both Mu‛āwiya and Hasan evidently regarded the result as a good bargain.

Shia tradition sees it differently. In their view, Hasan was forced to give up the caliphate due to multiple poisonings by Mu‛āwiya, and refused to fight to seize the caliphate militarily out of pious relectance to shed further Muslim blood. "In Shiite texts," writes Küng, "Hasan's story is consequently more and more embellished with miracles."

In 671, Shia opponents of Mu‛āwiya began courting another son of ‛Alī, Al-Husain ibn ‛Alī, to come from Mecca to Kufa to be proclaimed as caliph, which would mean overthrowing Mu‛āwiya. Eventually, Husain decided to make the fateful journey to Kufa.

Intercepted by the caliph's forces, Husain's party made a stand at Kerbala in 680, in which Husain met his death. Leaving aside the rather gruesome question of which parts of his body wound up in which city, Husain is also revered by Shia today, the city of al-Najaf being perhaps teh most important site for reverence of Husain's memory. The "profession of faithfulness to Husain becomes central for the 'party of ‛Alī [Shia]," says Küng.

Though the conflict ‛Alī's caliphate was the cause of the Shia split, the memory of Husain is also highly important for the Shia, being a direct continuation of that struggle. These events may seem for Christians or Jews as distant and vague as the passion of Christ or the Exodus from Egypt may seem for adherents of other faiths. But for many Shia Muslims, as Küng observes, the stories of ‛Alī, Hasan and Husain are "the past that is very much present" (allgegenwärtigen Vergangenheit).

Transition to a new religious paradigm

Küng sees two events associated with ‛Alī's caliphate (656-661) as being both symbolic and pratical signs of the end fo the "original Islamic community" paradigm. Those were ‛Alī's decision to move the residence of the caliphate from Medina to Kufa in Iraq, and the splits in the ummah resulting from the civil war. Küng writes of the period of ‛Alī's caliphate and the first Muslim civil war:

* Certainly, Mecca remains the religious center of Islam and the Ka‛ba its central shrine. But the political center, the government of the Islamic state
[caliphate] is located for the first time (and remains forever) outside Arabia,
which becomes the periphery.

* For the first time, Muslim armies confront each other as enemies (which in the time of the Prophet would have been unthinkable). A war among believers contradicts the Qur'ān.

Tags: ali, islam, hans küng's der islam, husain, rightly guided caliphs, shi'a, shiites