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Shi'ite shrines as a
counter-force
By Jean-Christophe
Peuch
PRAGUE - Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims
converged this week on the Karbala shrine in southern
Iraq to pay homage to one of the most revered heroes of
the Shi'ite Muslim faith.
The march marked the
end of the 40-day mourning period commemorating the
death of Imam Abu Abdallah al-Hussein, the grandson of
the Prophet Mohammed, who was killed in Karbala in the
year 680 in a fight with troops commanded by the Caliph
of Damascus.
For Iraq's approximately 12 million
Shi'ite Muslims, who make up 60 percent of the country's
population, the event was first and foremost an
opportunity to show their religious fervor after decades
of repression under the regime of Saddam Hussein. But
some influential religious clerics also tried to turn
the Karbala pilgrimage into a show of protest against
the presence of US and British troops on Iraqi soil.
With the collapse of Saddam's regime and the
dissolution of the ruling Ba'ath Party, Shi'ite
mujtahids (those who infer expert legal rulings)
and ayatollahs have re-emerged as key sources of social
and political power in the south. About 100 kilometers
from Baghdad, Karbala belongs to the Atabat, or
"thresholds", as Iraq's holy cities of Shi'itism are
sometimes referred to.
Besides Karbala, the
Atabat also includes the southern shrine of al-Najaf and
the cities of al-Kazimiyah and Samarra farther north. In
addition to their religious character, these cities -
especially Karbala and al-Najaf - have traditionally
been centers of counter-power in Iraq's recent history.
Subhi Toma is an Iraqi-born sociologist who has
lived in France for more than 30 years. He says the
political character of Iraq's Shi'ite shrines stems from
the fact that they have always had a much
better-developed school network than the rest of former
Ottoman-ruled Mesopotamia.
In addition, Toma
says, Iraq's holy cities enjoyed a number of privileges
that helped foster resistance to the Sunni-dominated
governments that exerted power in Baghdad after the
demise of the Ottoman Empire. "In fact the opposition
[of these cities] to central authorities was the result
of privileges they had been enjoying under Ottoman
occupation - [notably] the fact that they were not
required to provide soldiers" for the Ottoman army, Toma
said. "These cities were exempted from military
conscription and, with the emergence of a centralized
state that wanted to draft every [single male citizen],
that became an important factor."
After the end
of World War I, the newly created League of Nations
entrusted London with the task of administering the
three former Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and
Mosul, which were to form modern Iraq. The foreign
mandate formally ended in 1932 when Iraq acceded to
independence under the Hashemite monarchy.
In
the south, opposition immediately began to form against
the emerging Sunni-dominated Iraqi state and its British
protectors. Protests and uprisings led by Shi'ite
religious clerics regularly broke out throughout the
1920s and were crushed by either the fledgling
British-trained Iraqi army or the Royal Air Force.
Gareth Stanfield is a research fellow at the
British-based University of Exeter's Institute of Arab
and Islamic Studies. He draws a parallel between the
early years of modern Iraqi history and recent protests
that have erupted in Karbala and other southern cities
demanding the immediate withdrawal of the US-led
coalition forces.
"I think it does tie in quite
strongly with the fact that the government of Iraq, in
the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire, was dominated by
Sunni elites, British imperialism and ... the Sherifians
[Hashemites], which did effectively disfranchise the
Shi'ite component of society," Stanfield said. "In that
sort of time, I think, the Shi'ite religious
establishment was very traditionally minded and they
opposed British imperialism, I suppose in a quite
similar manner as what is happening now, insofar as this
is an external involvement and a non-Muslim involvement
into the affairs of the community, which is a Muslim
community. So really the similarities are quite striking
with that in mind."
Confronted with the
mujtahids' growing influence, Iraq's secular
authorities in the 1920s and 1930s moved to erode their
power base by co-opting Shi'ite tribal leaders, granting
them parliamentary seats and tax exemptions. Iraqi
sociologist Toma said, "Indeed, [Iraq's shrines] had a
role of counter-power. These cities and people
originating from the Shi'ite community, from the south,
were instrumental in the resistance to British
occupation and, later on, in the resistance to [Iraqi]
central authorities [in Baghdad]. The monarchy had to
give them a share of power to guard against any
opposition [the Shi'ites] could generate."
With
the emergence of prominent lay political figures from
within the Shi'ite community - some of whom became
cabinet ministers - the influence of the
mujtahids further diminished. Many jurists
trained in Sharia Islamic law chose to return to the
world of jurisprudence and the focus of Shi'ite protests
progressively shifted toward combating
underrepresentation in state structures.
Later
on, however, the revival of Islamic organizations
rekindled the influence of senior mujtahids
opposed to the more-or-less-open socialist orientations
of the various regimes that succeeded the monarchy after
1958.
After the institution of the Ba'ath regime
in the late 1960s, Baghdad's conflicting relations with
Tehran provided ground for increasing repression against
the Shi'ite community. The Iraqi government expelled
thousands of Shi'ites across the border with Iran.
Schools and universities were closed down, religious
endowments were confiscated and religious processions
were outlawed.
Running parallel to this coercion,
authorities in Baghdad continued to undermine Shi'ite
solidarity by dragging selected Shi'ite clerics and
tribal leaders into their network of patronage - a trend
that culminated after Saddam became president in 1979.
During the 1980-88 war with Iran, the secular Ba'ath
regime succeeded in bringing the Shi'ite clergy under
stricter control, appointing some favored religious
leaders to positions of authority and making Shi'ite
clerics salaried civil servants.
British scholar
Stanfield believes the deposed Iraqi leader succeeded to
a degree in subduing the influence of Shi'ite
mujtahids: "[Saddam] was actually relatively
successful because what he managed to do was firstly to
associate those religious clerics that were opposed to
him. He [also] managed to tar them with the brush of
being associated with Iran, and Shi'ites in Iraq
[consider themselves] primarily as Iraqis. I think the
notion of Iraqi nationalism [during the war] tended to
outweigh Shi'ite brotherhood with Iran. [Saddam] also
managed to ensure that he got at least the tacit support
of the Iraqi ayatollahs. He did it through patronage and
extreme coercion, but I think there [was] an acceptance
that there [was] a niche within the political system in
which they could operate as long as they played by the
rules. The rules obviously were extremely rigidly
enforced, but I think [Saddam] was successful in calming
Shi'ite tendencies down."
As Stanfield points
out, this policy culminated with the crackdown of the
1991 uprising when divisions among the Shi'ite community
weakened the protest movement, thus facilitating the
ruthless repression by Saddam's Republican Guard.
The downfall of the Ba'ath regime has cleared
the way for the return of a number of Iraqi Shi'ite
clerics who have been living in exile in neighboring
Iran. The most prominent of them is probably Ayatollah
Mohammed Baqer Hakim, the leader of the Tehran-sponsored
Supreme Assembly for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI).
Hakim, who is reportedly considering returning
to his home country after more than 20 years, has long
called for the institution of an Iranian-style Islamic
republic in southern Iraq. Whether the influence of
either the SAIRI or its rival al-Dawa (Islamic Call)
organization - whose members have also been forced into
exile by Saddam - will outweigh that of domestic clerics
in Iraq's Shi'ite communities remains an open question.
Signs of rifts between the two groups have recently
emerged, with some local leaders questioning the
legitimacy of the returnees.
All the same,
sociologist Toma says no future Iraqi government will be
in a position to ignore the re-emergence of Shi'ite
clerics as a secular political force.
"It is a
factor that will have to be taken into account," Toma
said. "I believe that whatever the power mechanisms that
will emerge in Iraq, it will be impossible to ignore
these movements, particularly the movement that has
existed inside the country. For the past 10 days or so
we have been witnessing a kind of repetition of what
happened [during the civil war] in south Lebanon when
domestic ayatollahs took control over schools and
hospitals. Of course some would object that Iraq is
going through a temporary crisis. But in other
countries, temporary crises have led [ayatollahs] to
fulfill social functions and subsequently remain an
indispensable political force."
On April 10,
Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Sayyed Abdelmajid Khoei was
murdered in Najaf's central shrine, the tomb of Imam
Ali, just hours after returning to Iraq after many years
in exile. A few days later, an angry crowd laid siege to
the home of Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani in Najaf,
demanding that he leave the country. Order was restored
only after armed Shi'ite tribesmen entered the city and
dispersed the crowd.
Toma believes that vying
for influence over Iraq's Shi'ite community will
continue to pit domestic and exiled clerics against each
other until a new government - which the United States
has said should represent all components of Iraqi
society - emerges from the ruins of Saddam's regime.
"This mobilization will take spectacular forms," said
Toma, "as each group will attempt to prove that it is
more representative than the other."
(©2003
RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC
20036.)
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