Caliphate
Opposed To Shia Apostasy And, Eventually To Sunni Monarchies
Saeed Naqvi
The expanding Shia-Sunni conflict in the
Muslim world is exposing vast gaps in popular understanding of the schism.
For example when Zine El Abedine Ben
Ali, the Tunisian strongman was ousted, people thought a Shia dictator had
fallen. From this they extrapolated that the Arab Spring was an anti Shia plot.
Why would such a misunderstanding arise?
Because Zaine El Abedine happens to be a very typical Shia name in large parts
of the world. The suffix to his name, Ben Ali, makes the name sound that much
more Shia because the basic division between the sects centres on the
personality of Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law. Shias are “partisans”
of Ali in this dispute.
A Sunni, with a Shia ring to his name is
explained by a simple historical detail: the Fatimids ruled large parts of
North Africa and Mediterranean enclaves from 909 AD to 1171 AD. They even ruled
Sicily. The main church in Palermo, capital of Sicily, has a column with
Quranic inscriptions which have been preserved as a tourist attraction. For two
hundred years Moharram processions, a patently Shia observance, were mandatory
on Palermo’s main roads.
Al Azhar University in Cairo derives its
name from Fatima Zehra, the Prophet’s daughter. The late Sid Ahmad one of the
left leaning intellectuals in Cairo with a regular Salon on the Nile described
sophisticated Egyptians with a telling phrase: “Sunna bil Deen; Shia bil Hawa.”
Which means: “Our faith is Sunni but our hearts are Shia” all traced to the
Fatimid spell.
This kind of cultural confusion is
widespread. There are a large number of Muslims who are born Sunni but respect
“ahle bait” or members of the Prophet’s family a notch above others. All the
Sufi schools in India, for instance, fall in this category. Khwaja Moinuddin
Chishti Ajmeri’s famous quartrain in praise of Imam Hussain is cited as
evidence of this streak.
“Shah ast Husain; Badshahast Hussain
Deen ast Hussain; deen panch ast
Hussain”
(Hussain is my spiritual and temporal
Master
Hussain is my faith and the protector of
my faith)
The Sufis came to India from Central
Asia which had retained cultural and spiritual strands from the days of the
Persian Empire.
They had spread out so wide in India
that as early as the 15th century the great Sufi Malik Mohammad
Jaisi was writing his great allegory Padmavat near Rae Bareli, making him the
first great poet in Awadhi, preceding Tulsidas by decades.
Shia-Sunni equations remained blurred in
many parts of the world because of the confluence of the streams with rapidly
advancing Sufi mysticism. For instance the Fatimids left behind an ambiguous
Islamic culture on this count in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan and
the Levant.
For decades Syrian and Iraqi Islam had a
heavy overlay of atheistic Baathism. Religion surfaced in a big way only after
the US occupation of Iraq in April 2003. It became almost necessary for the US
to encourage Shia power because they needed televised images of Iraqis
celebrating Saddam Hussain’s fall.
Habitual Baathists could not overnight
appear on the streets as pious Sunnis, denouncing the man they lived in awe of.
During the 1992 Shia uprising in Karabla, brutally suppressed by Saddam
Hussain, hundreds of thousands of “troublesome” Shias had been settled in a
ghetto named Saddam city on the outskirts of Baghdad.
When crowds did not materialize on the
streets of Baghdad to celebrate the televised pulling down of Saddam Hussain’s
statue at Firdaus Square on April 9, 2003, a request was placed with Shia leaders
like Muqtada Sadr to mobilize celebrations. That is when the streets were
filled with Shias from Saddam city to provide visual support to US success.
Promptly Saddam city was renamed Sadr city.
Does it make sense that in ten years of
US occupation, Baathists first reverted to being devout Sunnis and have now
mutated into the likes of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, leading the faithful into the
Sunni Caliphate, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria? Baghdadi belong to the
virulent school of Ikhwan ul Muslimeen opposed to “Shia apostasy” as well as to
“Sunni monarchies”.
The Caliphate appears to be a more
recent idea which gestated during the brutal campaign in Syria which failed to
affect a regime change in Damascus. The embarrassment of those who funneled
support to the opposition against Bashar al Assad in Damascus is now enhanced
by the durability of Nouri al Maliki in Baghdad. He tried and ousted the Sunni
Vice President Tariq al Hashemi who was something of a Western favourite and
for that reason suspected by the Iranians.
There are interests in the Syria-Iraq
corridor who are under the control of their Western and Saudi sponsors.
Aggravating the current situation is the fact that, with time, these controls
are loosening. Additionally, a wide range of other Sunni groups who have
suffered considerable status reversal, are clustering around an Abu Bakr al
Baghdadi like figure, not because they want a Caliphate, but because they wish
to weaken and oust Maliki in Baghdad and, if possible, Assad in Damascus.
It is worth noting that while mounting
the brutal air and naval attacks against the Palestinians in Gaza, the Israelis
are citing the “Caliphate” as the menace they fear Palestinians will eventually
gang up with. There is no mention of Hezbullah and Iran.
#
#
# #
