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Enter the Iraqi Islamic Republic. Not
quite yet
By Ramin Mostaghim
TEHRAN - It has become fashionable to say that
Saddam Hussein's fall would prompt Shi'ite-dominated
Iran to export its kind of Islamic government to Iraq,
but analysts say this is too simplistic - and reflects a
poor understanding of the mix of religion and politics
in the Middle East.
This "theory" has been
bruited about during the US-led war on Iraq. It was
further fueled by the May 10 return to that country of
Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Hakim, leader of Iraq's
best-known opposition group, the Supreme Assembly of the
Islamic Revolution of Iraq, after 23 years in Iran.
Reports of how Iraqi Shi'ites this month took to
Baghdad's streets, some carrying pictures of the late
Ayatollah Khomeini, the architect of the 1979 Islamic
Revolution in Iran, added to this perception. Iran's
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also urged
Shi'ite clerics in Iraq to have more say in a
post-Saddam Iraq, saying any form of a secularized
version of Islam is "American Islam".
But
academics and ordinary Iranians say that the newfound
freedom of Iraqi Shi'ites, who make up the majority of
the country's population but were long oppressed under
Saddam's Sunni-dominated government, would not
automatically translate into support for an Islamic
republic - or any united desire by Iranians to see this
emerge across the border.
"The pivotal question
in a post-Saddam regime will be 'how powerful is Shi'ite
politics'?" asked Mohsen Abdulli, a former Marxist who
has spent five years in jail. "Viewing the infighting
and inner conflicts of Shi'ite politicians for and
against the Islamic regime in Iran, and their taking
different versions of political Islam within the
established reading of the Shi'ite religion, I can
assert that Shi'ism as an ideology is bankrupt," he
said. "It cannot be marketed and exported as easily as
the beginning of Iran's Islamic Revolution."
In
an article this month, Emadeddin Baqi, who has been
jailed for his research on Iranian dissidents and
intellectuals, wrote: "Even those clerics who were
already pro-Islamic government are not advocating an
Iranian Islamic-style government."
Shi'ite
Muslims are followers of Imam Hussein, grandson of the
Prophet Mohammad, after whose death these two strands of
Islam emerged to follow different revered leaders.
Iraq's Najaf and Karbala cities are the symbols of
martyrdom for Shi'ites.
There is a mix of
factors behind why Iraq is not necessarily going Iran's
way, despite the Shi'ite links between them, and why
Iran may not necessarily be pushing this openly either.
There are differences between Shi'ites in Iran and Iraq,
and between the two countries, like there are
differences between various tribes in the region,
experts say.
Even within Iran itself, there are
differences between the clergy's and politicians' views
of post-Saddam Iraq. The Islamic clergy in Iran have
varying views on Iraq and the role of Shi'ites there as
well. While Khamenei appears to want Shi'ite clerics in
Iraq to flex their political muscle, Hakim, on his
arrival in Basra in southwest Iraq, said: "I am a
religious clergyman, not a specialist in politics."
"The enlightened and disillusioned mullahs are
clever enough not to repeat the same mistake in Iraq by
pursuing an Iranian Islamic model of government in
Iraq," explained Hamid Reza Jalaeepour, political
science professor at Tehran University. "If Hakim had
not expressed his disavowal of politics, he would not
have received the figurative passport to go to seminary
schools in Najaf and Karbala," Baqi said in an
interview.
He recalled that Khomeini, an exile
in Iraq in the 1960s, had not been able to go to Najaf
until he made a commitment not to engage in politics
against the Iranian monarchy at the time. "Ironically,
Hakim and Khomeini discreetly avoided politics in order
to be accommodated in Iraq," Baqi said.
"The
survival secret of the seminary schools and Shi'ite
institutions in Iraq and even in Qom, Isfahan and
Mashhad [in Iran] is their standing aloof from political
challenges in both Iraq and Iran," he said, explaining
that Shi'ite institutions may now well prefer to stick
to religious matters.
"The Najaf and Karbala
seminary schools in Iraq will go back to tradition and
focus on Islamic jurisprudence and precepts," added
Seyyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, the 56-year-old grandson
of the founder of the seminaries in the Iranian holy
city of Qom 82 years ago.
Traditionally,
seminary schools have received direct contributions from
Shi'ite people and rejected government financial help to
keep their independence "and now in the post-Saddam
regime there is a chance for that tradition to prevail",
added Damad.
"Those who advocate an Islamic
republic in Iraq are in the minority," said Ahmad Helli,
an Iraqi refugee from Najaf who was a sociology teacher
and has been a fish peddler in Qom for the past 12
years. "Even Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Hakim, who was
warmly welcomed in Iraqi Shi'ite cities, was booed in
Qom in Iran by some Iraqi refugees."
Not that
Shi'ism does not make for a very strong bond. Shi'ites
have the same rituals, many based around Imam Hussein,
who was killed in Karbala in 680. Territorial borders do
not limit Shi'ite clerical institutions. In remarks that
show how Iranian Shi'ites hardly think of Najaf or
Karbala as cities in another country, Abbas Hasani, a
student at a Qom seminary, said: "Inshallah [if God is
willing], I would like to go to Najaf or Karbala for my
advanced studies."
"Shi'ite clerical
establishments have no motherland. Shi'ite clergymen,
based on their textbooks in seminary schools, are not
expected to believe in a modern nation-state," explained
Mahmoud Sa'riulqalam of Shahid Beheshti University in
Tehran.
But tribalism among people from
different regions creates divisions that affect Shi'ite
groups. Helli said that the Iraqi Shi'ite refugees in
Qom, hailing from different areas in Iraq, could not
even have a coordinated procession of lamentation for
Imam Hussein to mark Saddam's departure, so "how will
they establish an Islamic Shi'ite government in Iraq?"
"History teaches us that whenever intrusions
were made to Mesopotamia [Iranian in 539 BC and Greek in
331], and when Baghdad was invaded [by Timur the Lame in
1401, by the Persians in 1509 and by the Turks in 1534],
the impacts were great in the Middle East," said Hoshang
Shokranian of the University of Kermanshah in western
Iran, a two-hour drive from the Iraqi border. "The
schism in Shi'ite politics is the latest one thanks to
US President [George W] Bush's war against Saddam's
regime," he added.
(Inter Press
Service)
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