The Shi‘a of Iraq

By John Calvert, Ph.D.
Fr. Henry W. Casper, S.J., Associate Professor in History

They traveled to Karbala in the hundreds of thousands, grave-faced men and women dressed in black, walking, crawling over the ground, chanting prayers and lamentations, rhythmically beating their chests. The date: April 22, 2003. The occasion: Arba‘in, the day on which the Imam Husayn was martyred centuries earlier by the forces of the “iniquitous” Sunni caliph of Damascus. For Shi‘i Muslims around the world, the annual commemoration of Imam Husayn’s martyrdom is an important component of their devotional landscape.

Yet, for a quarter of a century, Saddam Husayn severely curtailed and even banned the performance of Arba‘in and other Shi‘i rituals. As leader of the Sunni-dominated Ba‘thist regime, Husyan made every attempt to diminish Shi‘i identity in Iraq.

But now, in April 2003, the Americans were in charge. Together with their British allies, they had overthrown Iraq’s Ba‘thists. Saddam Husayn was on the run and would soon be extracted from the “spider hole” in which he sought refuge. For most Iraqis, but particularly for Iraq’s long-suffering Shi‘i population, the fall of Saddam Husayn was an exhilarating moment of liberation. In the ritual mourning of their martyred Imam, the Shi‘a released decades of pent up emotion.

Unintended Consequences

The Americans and the British had come to Iraq to build a democracy. In the view of the White House and of Whitehall, the project would serve two purposes. It would secure an oil-wealthy ally abutting the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose ambitions the U.S. administration was eager to check, and it would encourage democratic forces elsewhere in the region to push harder for positive change in their countries, perhaps with the assistance of the United States. The net effect would be the emergence of a kinder, gentler Middle East, one friendly to American political and business interests. Democracy, so the thinking went, would breed prosperity and contentment, which, in turn, would end the despair and humiliation driving Al Qaeda’s global jihad.

At the urging of their leaders, Iraq’s Shi‘a turned out massively to vote in the elections that followed Saddam’s ouster, but not necessarily because they sought to replicate the Jeffersonian model. Rather, most Shi‘a viewed the elections as a convenient instrument by which their beleaguered community might gain political power at the expense of Iraq’s Sunni establishment. The fruit of this strategy was the elevation to power of the Shi‘a-dominated coalition government of Nuri al-Maliki — and the Sunni backlash it engendered.

There have been other consequences. In decapitating the Ba‘thist regime, the Bush administration created the conditions of a Shi‘i renaissance in Iraq that has emboldened Iran and Lebanon’s Hizbullah. Some observers, including King Abdullah II of Jordan, have spoken openly of an arc of resurgent Shi‘i power stretching from Beirut to Tehran.

The U.S. now finds itself in the position of having to contain the Shi‘i surge, a goal it shares not only with Israel, its steadfast ally, but also with a number of Sunni Arab states and, it should be added, with the jihadi guerrillas and terrorists. The Iraq war has altered the Middle East’s balance of power, but not in ways anticipated by or appreciated in Washington.

The Partisans of ‘Ali

Every great world religion has its sectarian divisions. In Islam, the major sectarian divide is between Sunni and Shi‘i Muslims. Among the world’s Muslims, Sunnis are the clear majority, comprising between 85 and 90 percent of the total. Although there are significant Shi‘i populations in South Asia (India, Pakistan and Afghanistan) and the Caucasus (Azerbaijan), most Shi‘a reside in the Middle East, especially the Gulf region but also in Lebanon and Syria. What is notable is that, with the exception of Iran and a small number of dynasties in the medieval period, Shi‘i Muslims have rarely held the reins of political power. Indeed, in many modern Middle Eastern states, such as Iraq (where they comprise 60 percent of the population), Bahrain (where they are 75 percent of the population) and Saudi Arabia (where they are 10 percent), the Shi‘a have been marginalized and sometimes persecuted.

The difference between Sunni and Shi‘i Muslims hinges on the issue of leadership: Who should govern the Muslim community following the death of the Prophet Muhammad? According to the Sunnis, the Prophet died without designating an heir. Left to their own devices, the Muslims of Medina chose leaders from their ranks. These were the “khulafa” — in the anglicized version of the term, “caliphs.” Unlike the Prophet, the caliphs possessed no special religious knowledge. Their tasks were simply to uphold the integrity of the Muslim community, defend it from its enemies and enforce the Shari‘a, the body of rules, regulations and advice that derive from the Qur’an and the Prophet’s example. In history there were three important caliphal houses: the Rashidun (632-661), the Umayyads (661-750) and the Abbasids (750-1258).

In contrast to the Sunnis, Shi‘i Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad did, in fact, designate a successor, namely, his cousin ‘Ali ibn Talib, who was also husband to his daughter Fatima. Further, they believe that the legitimate governance of the Muslims should remain in the line of ‘Ali and Fatima. Shi‘i Muslims refer to these descendants of the Prophet as “Imams” (literally, “leaders”) and consider their judgment on religious and worldly affairs to be infallible. According to Shi‘i theologians, God provided the Imams with special wisdom so that they might properly guide the Muslim community in the absence of the Prophet. Shi‘a attach special significance to the third Imam, Husayn, who was killed at Karbala in 680 C.E. in his attempt to wrest control of the nascent Islamic state from the Sunni Umayyads. Husayn’s “passion” is Shi‘ism’s central symbol, representing the eclipse of justice in a world bereft of legitimate leadership.

Yet, Shi‘i theology is also confident that matters will improve. According to Shi‘i doctrine, in the year 874 C.E., God concealed the Twelfth Imam in order to protect him from his Sunni Muslim enemies. Accordingly, the Twelfth Imam is invisible, even to believers. He will, however, return one day to earth as the Mahdi — the “Guided One”— and restore justice to the world. He will wreak vengeance against the illegitimate usurpers of religio-political authority and expand his just rule throughout the world through jihad.

This millennial scenario, elaborated and embellished over centuries in a vast body of apocalyptic literature, has much in common with Messianic traditions in other faiths, notably Judaism and Christianity. It is especially apparent among members of religious communities that are routinely oppressed or marginalized, the historical experience of the Shi‘a throughout the Middle East.

In the absence of the manifest Imam, the affairs of the Shi‘i community are guided by clerics (‘ulama). The most revered clerics are given the title “marja-e taqlid,” “source of imitation,” so called because every Shi‘i Muslim must follow the teachings and advice of a living marja on issues ranging from the sublime to the very ordinary: “Since perfume has alcohol in it, and alcohol is forbidden, may a Shi‘a wear perfume?”

In the 20th century, the title “ayatollah” (literally, “sign of God”) became customary for designating a marja-e taqlid. At any given time, there are only a handful of ayatollahs available to dispense wisdom. Over the 18th and 19th centuries, many of the most revered Shi‘i clerics resided at the shrine cities of Ottoman Mesopotamia: Karbala, Najaf (which houses the tomb of ‘Ali), al-Khadhimiyya and Samarra.

Shi‘ism vs. Arab Nationalism

The 19th century was something of a golden age for Shi‘ism in Mesopotamia. Taking advantage of the Sunni Ottomans’ inability to closely control the region, the region’s Shi‘i clerics and urban merchants enjoyed semiautonomy, especially in the areas south of Baghdad. In those days, Karbala and Najaf bustled with activity. Their streets were filled with pilgrims, seminary students and scholars from around Iraq and abroad. Lonely seminarians could, if so disposed, partake of the practice of mut‘a, a temporary marriage contracted with a woman for any length of time, even for a matter of hours. Sunnis regard this practice as a form of prostitution, but most Shi‘a consider it legitimate, tracing it back to the time of the Prophet.

The shrine cities, especially Najaf, were the preferred burial grounds for Shi‘a who sought to spend the period between death and bodily resurrection in the vicinity of their beloved Imams. Consequently, the cities benefitted from a brisk traffic in corpses, some of which were transported from as far away as India. In 2004, U.S. Marines battled the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in these same graveyards.

Following the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I, Great Britain and France imposed a new political order over the Middle East that severely diminished Mesopotamia’s informal autonomy. When, in 1920, it appeared that Britain’s occupation of Mesopotamia, which had commenced in 1917, was to be formally institutionalized in the form of a League of Nations Mandate, the Shi‘a rose up in violent rebellion, receiving only minor support from the Sunni population.

The British crushed the rebellion at the cost of 10,000 Arab lives and, in 1921, united the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul to create the state of Iraq. Partly to punish the Shi‘a, and partly to appease the Sunni Hashimites who helped against the Ottomans during the war, the British placed Faysal, son of the Sunni prince of Mecca, on the throne of the new country. Over the course of the following decades, Iraq’s politics and economy were directed largely by the country’s Sunni elite.

Against the emergence of Baghdad as the political center, Najaf and Karbala declined in importance. Unable to withstand the controlling impulses of the Sunni-dominated state, Iraq’s Shi‘i clerics retreated to the margins of society. One result was that during the period of the constitutional monarchy (1921-1958) Qom and Mashhad in Iran replaced Iraq’s shrine cities as the primary centers of Shi‘i learning. Certainly the most influential graduate of the seminary at Qom was Ruhollah Khomeini who became a marja in 1963 following the death of Iranian Grand Ayatollah Husayn Borujerdi. Khomeini went on to lead the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79.

In the absence of vigorous religious leadership, many Iraqi Shi‘a in the 1950s and 1960s expressed their disaffection with the political order by joining Iraq’s Communist Party.

The fortunes of the Shi‘i community declined further during the revolutionary era that followed the toppling of King Faysal II in 1958. Although the Ba‘thists who came to power in 1968 under the leadership of Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr claimed to govern in the name of nondenominational Arab nationalism, in fact their rule represented the continuation of Sunni paramountcy. Most members of the government hailed from Tikrit on the Tigris, Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr’s hometown. One of the Tikritis al-Bakr brought on board was the young Saddam Husayn. During the period that followed, Iraqis often chided that the Sunni Tikritis ruled Iraq through the instrument of the Ba‘th Party.

The Saddam years (1979-2003) represented the nadir of Shi‘i fortunes in Iraq. The president of Iraq diverted Iraq’s oil revenues away from the Shi‘i south to the cities and towns of the “Sunni Triangle.” He restricted Shi‘i religious observances. Although the bulk of Iraq’s army was made up of Shi‘i conscripts who served the state loyally, Saddam Husayn was afraid that elements within the Shi‘i population, particularly those with family ties to Iran, constituted a security risk. And so, during the early stages of the brutal war with Iran (1980-1988), he had tens of thousands of Shi‘a deported to Iran.

The sustained ill treatment of Iraq’s Shi‘a during the 1970s and 1980s ignited clerical oppostion to the Ba‘thist regime. The central figure in this reaction was the Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr.

Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was the driving force behind the creation of the Da‘wa Party, launched in the late 1950s in the holy city of Najaf in Iraq. Organized into secret cells, the party’s objective was to preserve Shi‘i identity against the influence of Western ideologies. However, during the 1970s the Da‘wa Party turned its full attention to Saddam Husayn’s suppression of the Shi‘a. Inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, some Da‘wa members turned to violence. In response, Saddam Husayn executed Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, allegedly by driving nails into his head and setting him ablaze. Their will unbroken, elements within Da‘wa attempted, in 1982, to assassinate Saddam, who retaliated by killing scores of people in Dujail, the hometown of the would-be assassins. It was for this particular crime that Saddam Husayn was tried and executed in December 2006. During Saddam’s execution, a number of the Shi‘i guards, one of whom managed to record the event on his phone-camera, chanted, “Long live Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr!”

Saddam Husayn’s defeat in the 1990-1991 Gulf War provided the Shi‘a with a new opportunity to change the status quo in their favor. Tens of thousands of Shi‘i conscripts in the Iraqi army, streaming home in defeat from Kuwait, heeded President George H.W. Bush’s call for the Shi‘a and Kurds to rise up against the tyrant. The American help that the Shi‘a expected never materialized. Although they did not want him in Kuwait, Washington and Riyadh were keen to keep Saddam Husyan on his presidential throne in order not to create a power vacuum in Iraq that might then be exploited by Iran. Employing the Republican Guard units that he had kept out of harm’s way during the war, Saddam Husayn crushed the uprisings and then unleashed a reign of terror upon the general Shi‘i population. Most of the mass graves discovered in the wake of the 2003 American advance up the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys date from this period of savage repression.

During the 1990s, the Shi‘a suffered with other Iraqis under the weight of sanctions by the United States and Great Britain. The suffering was compounded by the country’s broken infrastructure — a legacy of the Gulf War. Given the West’s disregard for the well-being of Iraq’s Shi‘a, it is perhaps not surprising that the pilgrims who marched to Karbala in 2003 mixed their religious chants with anti-American slogans.

Tyranny of the Majority?

To the dismay of the U.S., the United Iraqi Alliance that came to dominate Iraq’s parliament following the 2005 national elections was comprised largely of Shi‘i religious parties. The top votegetter was the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Led by ‘Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, whose father had been the leading ayatollah of Najaf in the 1960s, SCIRI initially accepted the Ayatollah Khomeini’s theory of clerical rule, which some say made the party a proxy of Iran. However, in May 2007 SCIRI assuaged these fears by announcing that it would no longer take guidance from Iran and would instead follow the fatwas (juridical opinions) of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. In order to signify its new independence from Iran and its revolution, the party renamed itself the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

Another big winner in the elections was Muqtada al-Sadr, son of the much respected Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadeq al-Sadr, who was assassinated by Saddam Husayn’s secret police in 1999. (Muqtada is also the son-in-law of the previously-mentioned Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr.) Over the 1990s, Muqtada’s father looked to the interests of the impoverished dwellers in Shi‘i East Baghdad, which came to be called “Sadr City” in his honor. Muqtada al-Sadr inherited his father’s constituency and, like him, accepts Khomeini’s rule of the jurisprudent. However, Muqtada al-Sadr is not an ayatollah; he does not have the scholarly credentials (according to some accounts, he spent much of his youth playing video games). Rather, he bears the less distinguished title “Hujjat al-Islam” (“a proof of Islam”). Unlike other Shi‘i parties and individuals in parliament who are willing to cooperate with one another and with the Americans for strategic and practical purposes, Muqtada al-Sadr has used his black-clad Mahdi Army time and again to assert his authority both against U.S. forces and Shi‘i rivals.

The question before both Iraqis and Americans is whether the Iraqi government will be able to address effectively the challenges before it. Will it be able to provide security to Iraq’s citizens, both to the Shi‘a, who have been the targets of jihadi attacks, and the Sunnis, who have suffered terrible retribution? Will it work to incorporate more Sunnis into the state’s decision-making processes, for example, by reversing the de-Ba‘thification law? Will the government manage to pass an effective oil-revenue sharing law that will satisfy the demands of the country’s Sunni center? These and other issues remain unresolved.

We’re not in Kansas Anymore

In his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post describes the naïve, ideologically narrow vision of the American personnel attached to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in the Green Zone during the early years of the occupation. According to Chandrasekaran, CPA officials were chosen because of their political loyalty to the U.S. administration, not necessarily on account of their expertise or knowledge of Iraq’s affairs. Going in, many held the general assumption that Iraq’s Shi‘a were “secular” and open to U.S. tutelage. Like most Americans working in Iraq, they were unprepared for events as they unfolded. In toppling Saddam Husayn, the United States and its British ally let loose forces and trends, including a “Shi‘i revival,” which it has been unable to effectively understand, predict and manage in accordance with its interests.

About the author: John Calvert is the Fr. Henry W. Casper, S.J. Associate Professor in History. His research focuses on Islamist movements in the Middle East and South East Asia. With William Shepard, he is translator and editor of Sayyid Qutb’s A Child from the Village (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004), and author of The Arabian Peninusla in the Age of Oil (Philadelphia: Mason Crest, 2007) and the forthcoming Islamism: A Documentary and Reference Guide (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2007).

Suggestions for Further Reading
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Life inside the Green Zone (New York: Knopf, 2006).

Mallat, Chibli, The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad Baqer al-Sadr, Najaf and the Shi‘i International (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hamid Dabashi, Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr (eds), Expectation of the Millennium: Shi‘ism in History (State University of New York Press, 1989).

Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006).

Linda Walbridge (ed.), The Most Learned of the Shi‘a: The Institution of the Marja Taqlid (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).