BOOK
REVIEW Worm in the Sunni
apple The Shi'a Revival
by Vali Nasr
Reviewed
by Sreeram Chaulia
Typical Western
reference points for the Muslim world harp on such
themes as authoritarianism, fundamentalism and
women's rights but miss the basic fault line of
sectarianism. Iranian scholar Vali Nasr's new book
shatters this myopia through a masterly analysis
of Shi'ite-Sunni rivalries that go back to the
founding days of Islam and are currently playing
out in the blood-stained streets of Pakistan and
Iraq. Its central thesis is that the Shi'ite
challenge to Sunni dominance
will reorder the future of the Middle East and
South Asia.
The book opens with Nasr's
visit to the headquarters of Pakistan's
Sunni-fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami in 2003, just
after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
The Jamaatis were aghast to watch on television
defiant and jubilant Shi'ites near Imam Husayn's
shrine in Karbala. The Iraqi Shi'ite challenge to
Sunni power and monopoly of what it means to be a
"true" Muslim opened fresh sectarian wounds in
Pakistan. Despite periods of
co-existence, Sunni-Shi'ite antagonism has lasted
long and retains urgency in the form of a
contemporary clash of identities. It is "a very
old, very modern conflict" (p 20).
The war
in Iraq threatens the millennium-long ownership of
the Muslim world by Sunni establishments operating
from "power towns" such as Cairo, Baghdad and
Damascus. For centuries, Sunni popular prejudices
and stereotypes of Shi'ites and their
"wrongheaded" Islam have generated an iniquitous
distribution of power. In Lebanon, Shi'ites are
ridiculed for "low-class, tasteless and vulgar
ways". In Saudi Arabia, shaking hands with a
Shi'ite is considered polluting, necessitating
ablutions. In Pakistan, Shi'ites are dehumanized
as "mosquitoes". Violent Sunni extremism breeds on
anti-Shi'ite bias that is neither imaginary nor
irrelevant. Nasr warns against papering over
genuine cracks in the name of pan-Islamic unity.
The actual bones of Shi'ite-Sunni
contention are control of state resources and
wealth along communal lines. Prophet Muhammad's
son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, is the font of
spirituality for the Shi'ites, who claim that the
former anointed the latter as his successor at
Ghadir Khumm. Initial usurpation of Ali's right to
govern by the caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar and Usman is
an affront to Shi'ite notions of ideal Islamic
leadership. The martyrdom of Ali's son Husayn at
the hands of Yazid in the battle of Karbala (AD
680) is confirmation to Shi'ites that the Umayyad
and Abbasid caliphates were illegitimate and
oppressive. The Husayn story is often invoked to
define Shi'ite troubles in modern times. Saddam
Hussein is, for instance, likened to Yazid.
Shi'ism's ideal is fighting for security against
Sunni tyranny.
Shi'ites are not content
with Sunni-style dutiful observance of laws. They
emphasize rituals associated with charismatic
imams and saints who are intermediaries for
healing, blessing and forgiveness. They love
visual imagery and accord a higher status to women
in piety, characteristics that anger puritanical
Sunnis.
The fear of revolts that Shi'ite
imams instilled in the Sunni caliphs was met with
persecution, imprisonment and killings of members
of Islam's minority sect. Condemned as "the enemy
within" and as "rejecters of the Truth"
(rafidis), Shi'ites were branded as "a
bigger threat to 'true' Islam than Christianity
and Judaism" (p 54). Blaming Shi'ites for the
decline of Sunni worldly power was the norm. For
survival, ordinary Shi'ites had to hide their
affiliations (taqqiya), and their imams
escaped to Iran and India to seek refuge. The
sufferings of the imams lie at the heart of the
Shi'ite version of martyrdom (shahadat).
Unless Sufism intervened in Sunni societies,
tolerance for Shi'ites was weak.
Shi'ism
tasted political power for the first time in the
16th century when the Safavids, who traced their
ancestry to the seventh Shi'ite imam, consolidated
their reign in Iran. They competed with the Sunni
Ottomans for control of the Muslim heartland and
patronized Shi'ite culture and learning. Shi'ite
ulama attached themselves closely to the
Safavids as landowners and courtiers and received
elevation in status. It is unsurprising that when
Saddam Hussein fell in Iraq, Shi'ite clerics
emerged as the real powerbrokers.
Shi'ism
underwent schisms over time and space into various
offshoots such as Zaydis (Yemen), Ismailis (India,
Egypt and Afghanistan), Druze (Lebanon), Yazidis
(Iraq) and Alawis (Syria). Its spread was
"inevitably tied to the way the faith has fared in
the halls of power" (p 79). Wherever Shi'ite
dynasties ruled, they shielded their flock from
Sunni discrimination and assault. Once the
Safavids fell in 1722, Shi'ites could not sustain
their political confrontation with Sunni
preponderance.
The rise of modern states
fostered secular trends among middle- and
upper-class Shi'ites in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and
Pakistan. Urbanization loosened the grip of tribal
leaders and motivated the masses to demand a
direct voice in politics. Turbaned Shi'ite
ulama such as Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah
and the Azeri Abol-Qasem al-Khoi benefited from
this radicalization and became prominent. After
World War I, Shi'ites also embraced nationalism,
imagining a community where sectarian divisions
would not matter. This proved to be an illusion,
as old institutionalized viciousness against
Shi'ites continued under the guise of Arab
nationalism and secularism. Discarded as disloyal
agents of Iran, Shi'ites remained quasi-outsiders,
"an undesirable and heathen minority" who were
never admitted into bureaucracies or officer corps
of Sunni-ruled states.
Sunni
fundamentalism lent new intensity to the
anti-Shi'ite bias. Condemnation of Shi'ism was a
part of the Saudi-led revivalist project of
regaining lost Sunni glories. Jihadis in
Afghanistan and Kashmir were viscerally
anti-Shi'ite. Massacring Shi'ites in Gilgit was a
"practice run for attacks on India in Srinagar" (p
160). The polemics of even Sunni modernizers was
openly anti-Shi'ite in Arab countries and
Pakistan. "Sunnification of the political sphere"
renewed repression of Shi'ites in the late 20th
century.
Once Shi'ites abandoned their
blind subservience to the Arab cause and organized
their own militias and parties, Sunni suspicion of
their "treason" worsened. Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini's 1979 revolution in Iran rang big alarm
bells for Sunni fanatics by converting Shi'ite
ulama into the ruling class of a state.
Sunnis did not buy Khomeini's attempt to be the
paladin of a global Islamic awakening. Incensed by
Tehran's support for Shi'ite demonstrations, riots
and militant movements against Sunni ruling
regimes, "they saw mostly Shi'a mischief and a
threat to Sunni predominance" (p 144). Khomeini's
frontal face off with Saudi Arabia was framed as a
"Shi'a plot" to take over Mecca and Medina.
The Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) was "a
Sunni-Shi'a sectarian war cast in national terms"
(p 141). The Saudi-Pakistani strategic
relationship that underwrote the Taliban and
jihadis in Kashmir was formed to "eliminate Iran's
ideological influence" (p 157). Pakistan's
state-financed "green fundamentalism" eulogized
Sunni caliphs who killed Husayn and damned the
Shi'ite festival of Ashoura as a heathen
spectacle. Since 1989, Sunni-Shi'ite violence in
Pakistan has claimed more than 4,000 lives as the
"lines between jihad within (against Shi'as) and
jihad outside (in Afghanistan and Kashmir)
blurred" (p 167).
Sunni anxiety deepened
in the face of recent gains by Shi'ites in Iraq
that changed the sectarian balance of power.
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's moderate style set the
tone for Shi'ite ascendancy based on shared
identity of millions of Iraqis, Iranians,
Lebanese, Pakistanis and Afghans. Nasr argues that
a transnational Shi'ite consensus is forming
around the need to defend their power and
identity. This is being enhanced under the
onslaught of Sunni terror in Iraq. Today, Shi'ites
demand more and get it through the democratic
ballot box. Although pluralism within Shi'ite
ranks exists, "there is a basic shared vision of
regional Shi'a interests" reflected in the
"Nasrallah-Sistani-Khamenei axis" (p 184).
Illuminating the broadness of this vision,
Sistani's aide, Ahmad al-Safi, dared the
ulama of al-Azhar in Egypt (citadel of
Sunni beliefs) to break their silence and condemn
the insurgency in Iraq. Iran's present-day
political and clerical brass are more anti-Sunni
and anti-Wahhabi than usual and see opposing Sunni
hegemonism as central to Tehran's regional
ambitions. Riyadh, Amman and Kuwait (but not
Damascus) have their national interests aligned
with the Sunni insurgency's goal of wrecking the
Shi'ite-led Iraqi state. The breadth of the
al-Qaeda in Iraq network attests to the regionwide
web of Sunni linkages. Despite US accusations,
Nasr portrays Syria's Alawi leadership as a victim
(not facilitator) of the growing Sunni extremism
in Iraq.
A primary source of conflict in
South Asia and the Middle East is sectarian,
underlined by unequal allocation of power and
resources that do not square with demographic
realities. Nasr's forecast is that the worm in the
Sunni apple, Shi'ism, will build on the grievances
of its past suppression and cannot be prevented
from getting its due share. The dust from the
sectarian war will not settle until the underdogs,
the Shi'ites, obtain justice.
The Shi'a
Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the
Future by Vali Nasr. W W Norton, 2006, New
York. ISBN: 0-393-06211-2. Price US$25.95, 287
pages.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about
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Despite periods of
co-existence, Sunni-Shi'ite antagonism has lasted
long and retains urgency in the form of a
contemporary clash of identities. It is "a very
old, very modern conflict" (p 20). 
