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| Volume VII, October 2000, Number 4 |
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| Book Review |
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For a printable version of this book review, click here.
The Arab Shia: The Forgotten Muslims, by Graham E. Fuller and Rend Rahim Francke. New York: Saint Martin's Press, 1999. 190 pages, with notes and selected bibliography. $49.95, hardback.
Robert Brenton Betts
Visiting professor at the University of Balamand, Lebanon.
The subtitle of this book is something of an exaggeration. When I went out to Kuwait with the State Department over thirty years ago as commercial officer, the first thing I was told to do was to familiarize myself with the large Shia minority, many of whom were rich and influential businessmen. The Shia majority in Iraq has never been a secret. As for the Shia of Bahrain, every business traveler then knew that you couldn't enter Iran if you had a Bahraini stamp on your passport because of Persian irritation with the mistreatment of the Shia majority there by the ruling Sunni elite. The Shia of Saudi Arabia have long been known to Aramco, and consequently the entire petroleum industry, since Dhahran is located in the midst of their principal concentration -- the eastern province of al-Hasa. And as for Lebanon, the whole world is familiar with the activities of the militant Shiite party, Hizballah, instrumental in driving the Israelis and their SLA minions out of south Lebanon earlier this year.
Having said that, I congratulate the authors for giving readers a clear picture of the Arabic-speaking Shiite Muslims in the contemporary Middle East. While far from forgotten, they have frequently been misunderstood and even demonized by some elements in the Western media. The majority of the world's Shia -- some 10-15 percent of all Muslims -- are of course found in Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. But the movement had its beginnings in what is today Iraq and its holy cities of Karbala, an-Najaf, al-Qadhimayn and the Sunni town of Samarra, all possessing tombs of Shiite imams, are the pricipal religious centers of the faith. Persia was a Sunni stronghold well into the late sixteenth century, and when the Safavid rulers came to power they turned to the "Shiite ulama (religious scholars) from Jabal Amil in Lebanon and from Bahrain . . . to enlist their aid in the formidable task of propagating the [Shiite] creed across the length and breadth of Sunni Iran" (p. 12). In comparison with the more numerous Shia of Iran, whose theocratic government has attracted world attention since the fall of the late shah in 1979, the Arab Shia are seemingly insignificant. Yet they predate the Iranian Shia by a millennium. Their geographical concentration in the oil-rich regions of lower Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia also lends them a potential importance beyond their numbers.
It should be pointed out that this book deals only with the "Ithnashari" or "Twelver" Shia, the overwhelming majority of the Arabs under consideration and in Iran as well. The number twelve refers to the twelfth and last imam, who disappeared in the late ninth century and, it is believed by the Twelver faithful, will reappear from his present hidden state of occultation to bring in the final day of judgment. It is the concept of "imam" that distinguishes Shiism from the rest of Islam. Whereas the mainstream Sunni accepted their caliphs from the whole body or "umma" of Islam, the Shia maintained that they should descend through the family of the prophet, who married his only surviving child, Fatima. For the Shia, these direct descendants of Muhammad were imbued with a spirituality and an infallibility in all matters of religion denied to ordinary mortals. The focus of Shiite piety is the second imam, Ali's younger son, Hussein, who was martyred near Karbala by Sunni forces under the Umayyad caliph al-Yazid. His death is commemorated every year on the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram known as Ashura.
Not considered except in passing are the Zaydi Shia of Yemen, the Ismaili Shia (or "Seveners"), admittedly found mostly outside the Arab world, their surviving offshoot the Druze, and the vaguely related Alawite minority of Syria. As some Shiite clerics recognize the Alawites as legitimate Shia, and since they are the only Shiite group that enjoys political power, it is disappointing that they were not considered. Although Syria's late president Hafiez al-Asad was, and his son and successor, Bashar, is a nominal Sunni for political considerations, their principal power base has always been their sectarian community which controls the armed forces. For the authors they are "a highly heterodox form of Shiism" (p 46), a rather odd choice of words since the Shia are themselves heterodox, but they do conform to the authors' social profile of Twelver Shia groups in the Arab world -- dispossessed, alienated and sufferers of "dhulm" or injustice (p. 19), at least until they seized power in Syria through the army and the secularist Baath party in 1966.
Zaydi Shiism dates from the time of the fifth imam, when a large sector of the population of Yemen accepted one Zayd ibn Ali, the great-grandson of the first imam, as the rightful claimant to the title and "trace the Imamate through his descendants"(p.262). It was the ruling power in southwestern Arabia from the nineteenth century until 1962, and it remains the dominant faith of the West Yemeni highlands to this day. Unlike the Twelvers, they accept neither the concepts of the "Hidden Imam" nor "taqiyya" (dissimulation, or lying to protect the faith when threatened by non-Shia). A more important split occurred at the time of the seventh imam, when the Shia world was divided over whether to accept the rightful descendant, Ismail, or his younger brother, Jafar, as imam. Because Ismail was reported to be a drunkard, among other disqualifying qualities, the majority rejected him. Thus Twelver Shia are also known as Jaafaris. A minority stayed with the older brother despite his weaknesses and are known today as Ismailis or "Seveners." They enjoyed a large measure of success in the tenth and eleventh centuries, spread their message, or "dawa," across North Africa and the Levant, culminating with the establishment of a Shiite caliphate centered in Cairo that rivaled the Sunni establishment in Baghdad. Although they were ultimately overthrown in the twelfth century by Sunni leader Saladin as a prelude to his uniting the Eastern Arab world against the Crusader states, their impact on the Islamic world was significant. The Druze and Nizari sects are the direct result of the extremist Ismaili Shiite environment of Cairo during the reign of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim biamr-allah. Very few Ismailis remain in the Arab world -- a few thousand in Syria clustered around the castles of the medieval leaders of the Assassins -- but large numbers are still to be found in India and Pakistan and in places like East Africa and England, where these subcontinental Ismailis have migrated. Their spiritual leader is the Agha Khan.
Although the Muslims of Egypt are today entirely Sunni, the residual effects of Shia religious practices remain deeply ingrained. When describing Shiite "Constituents of Identity," the authors state that the "Ahl al-Bayt" (people of the family of the prophet) are especially venerated and loved. The graves of members of Ahl al-Bayt . . . are holy shrines with emotive and spiritual power" and visits to such shrines are "more frequent, and far more festive" than the pilgrimage to Mecca (p. 13). This description very aptly applies to Sunni Egyptians with their favorite pious ejaculation "Ya alh al-bayt," their belief in the spiritual power of shrines to local saints and their festive celebrations, or "Mawlids," on saints' days. Some of this may have come through earlier Christian beliefs (and the continued presence of a large Coptic Christian minority), but then Shiism was undoubtedly influenced by Christian concepts. For the Shia, God, having given believers Muhammad and the Quran, "would not leave his umma, or nation, without guidance after the Prophet's death." His concern, therefore, "dictates that in every age Muslims must have guides, imams, to continue the essential function of instructing the umma in the path of righteousness" (p.125). This concept would appear to be derived from the Christian belief that the Holy Spirit was sent by Christ to his disciples at Pentecost to guide them and, by logical extension, the Church until his coming again.
This according of semi-divine status to the imams, the existence of a clergy, or "mujtahids," to act as guides to the faithful after the disappearance into hiding of the twelfth imam, the belief in the power of holy men or saints beyond the grave, are all anathema to traditional Sunnis, especially the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, who are the strictest Sunnis of all; "Devout ‘Wahhabis believe that shaking hands with a Shii spoils a Muslim's ablution" (p. 20). For them the Shia are "heretics, polytheists, because of their veneration of saints . . . and thus guilty of the sin of ‘shirk,' or splitting the oneness of God" (p. 180). It is not surprising, therefore, that the Shiite minority of Saudi Arabia is "the object of systematic, official, legal religious discrimination -- the only Shia in the Muslim world who are formally denied the status of Muslims" (p. 183). Elsewhere in the Arab world the Shia, though not openly persecuted, are often subject to thinly-veiled persecution, particularly in Bahrain, where the poor Shiite majority is ruled by a wealthy Sunni elite without any concession to their numerical importance.
The same holds true in Iraq, where the Shia are also a majority of the population but have been ruled throughout their history by the Sunni establishment, including in this century the British, who, having put down a Shiite rebellion against their rule in 1920, "confirmed their reliance on a corps of Sunni ex-officers of the collapsed Ottoman empire" (p. 46). The Shia have suffered indirect and direct persecution under independent Iraqi governments since 1932, especially that of Saddam Hussein. Shiite religious leaders have been particularly targeted. "Between 1970 and 1985 the [Baathist] regime executed at least 41 clerics" (p. 101), and Shia opposition to the government following the Gulf War was ruthlessly suppressed.
Only in Kuwait has the Shia minority of 25-30 percent been tolerated by the Sunni ruling majority. Here "they encounter little visible persecution at the official or social levels," and "are free to practice Shiism and observe its rituals openly" (p.155). The case of Lebanon is different from all the others because no one community is a majority, and of the seven main groups (Sunni, Shia, Druze, Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics and Armenians) the Shia are the largest, forming a plurality of about one-third. Here also they organized themselves politically during the civil war period, first with the "Amal" movement of the late imam Musa al-Sadr, and then, after the Israeli invasion of 1982, the militant Hizballah faction. Both have been represented politically in the parliament, and in the case of Amal in the government (Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Birri) since the war. Hizballah, moreover, played a dominant role in forcing the Israelis out of South Lebanon in May, 2000, for which all Lebanese, including even most Maronites, however grudgingly, are grateful. They have also succeeded in raising awareness of the social and economic deprivation of the majority of their community and taken measures to alleviate it.
What then are Shia goals and strategies according to the authors? Political and social justice rank high on this list, but the ways to go about achieving them are conflicting. One strategy is support of secularism. This would do away with a sectarian society in which minorities (in the case of Bahrain and Iraq, majorities) are persecuted by the ruling Sunni governments. The problem with this approach is that religion is so much a part of their identity. "If a Shii is secular, is one still Shiite?" According to the authors, "the answer seems to be, yes, but with a much weakened communal identity" (p.161). A religious approach, such as that proposed by radical members of Hizballah on the Iranian model (the establishment of a Shiite Islamic state) simply reinforces the distrust of non-Shia, especially in Lebanon, where the two-thirds of the population that is non-Shia violently opposes it -- Sunni Muslim, Druze and Christian alike. The authors conclude that "the Shia have every incentive to push for greater democratic practice in the Arab world" and that "their declared (but untested) long-term commitment to a democratic agenda should reassure the West" (p. 258). The West remains skeptical, however, viewing Arab Shia as willing tools of Iranian Shia extremism. According to the authors, however, this has never been true: "In fact the relationship between Iran and the Arab Shia is quite complex, leaving the Shia highly ambivalent about it" (p. 171).
Despite Western misperceptions, "Shiism is in no way intrinsically hostile to the West" (p. 257). They have legitimate grievances -- long-term support for the shah including the CIA-engineered overthrow of Mossadegh in the early 1950's and continued support for the Sunni government in Bahrain -- but these, according to the authors, should not stand in the way of rapprochement. It has already begun in the case of Iran, and should the West ever be able to remove Saddam Hussein from power, paving the way for the Shia to achieve their rightful political role in Iraq, much in the way of mutual hostility would be resolved.
Overall this is an interesting, well-written and thoroughly researched study. There are a few slips, i.e. the statement on p. 22 that "all Arab Shia live in ‘Sunni states'" which is certainly not true of Lebanon, where the president remains a Maronite and parliament is equally divided between Muslim and Christian groups, and the identification of the Copts on p. 37, along with Kurds, Persians, Turks, Circassians and Berbers, as an "ethnic" minority. Their difference is religious. Ethnically Copts are the same as Muslim Egyptians. There are also exaggerations like the term "forgotten" in the subtitle, and the supposed denial or ignorance of Arab Shia existence by Western "policymakers." Also, to claim as the authors do in the introduction that the mere discussion of the Arab Shia "is anathema in the Arab world" seems to me to be a rather strong overstatement.
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