Introduction to Middle East
Sectarian Wars
By Hasan Afif El-Hasan
The actual religious requirements of Islam are quite simple,
but no religion can lead society down a common path to worldly
happiness or to the here-after heavens when the religious are
at war with themselves.
Today, the most rigid religious Islamic states in the Middle
East, Saudi Arabia and Iran could be on the brink of an allout war. Saudi Arabia and its partners in the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) have been waging daily air attacks on Iranbacked Yemeni Huthi rebels’ targets for some time. The
perception in the Sunni-Arab World today is that Shiite Iran
is meddling in the affairs of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen,
interfering militarily and spreading its tentacles via proxies
like Hizbullah in Lebanon and Syria, and al-Huthis in Yemen.
The Yemen civil war or the wars in Syria and Iraq or any war
between Saudi Arabia and Iran are not just new conflicts like
other confrontations that pop up suddenly in the headlines,
only to fade into the background after a short time.
The bloody wars that are now raging in Yemen, in Syria and
Iraq, where tens of thousands are being killed and millions
are displaced, actually began 1383 years ago when the Prophet
Muhammad died. Islam was divided within itself, three of the
first four caliphs who succeeded the Prophet as the leaders of
Islam were murdered, two by fellow Muslims. The Muslim World
was split into many groups including the rivals Sunni and
Shi’a, over the interpretation of the Islamic tradition and
the succession to the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims called it the
Big Strife ‘al-fitna al-kubra’. In the beginning, the
doctrinal differences between the Sunni and Shi’a were of
minor importance, far less than those that divided the rival
churches in Christendom.
The Shi’a maintained that the caliphate should be hereditary
in the line of the Prophet Muhammad, and the more generally
accepted view of the Sunni Muslims was that the caliphate was
elective, and any members of the Prophet tribe, Quraysh, was
eligible. The 680 AD massacre of Karbala sped the
transformation of the Shi’a from a political party to
religious sects. Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet
Muhammad, and many of his family and supporters including his
six-month-old son were killed by the forces of Umayyad caliph.
Well known Shi’a sects are the Twelvers, the Zaidiyyas and the
Ismaelis. The Shi’a sense of martyrdom and persecution has
been reinforced by their long experience through the centuries
as minority groups under Sunni rulers whom they regarded as
usurpers. Their mystical emotional force and appeal to the
oppressed masses gained them large numbers of dedicated
adherents. The Shi’as were not always the oppressed. Their
ruling dynasties became dominant power in many Islamic
countries including the Fatimid in Egypt, the Safavid in Iran,
Iraq and Central Asia, and the Zaidis in Yemen.
Today, deep divisions persist not only among Shi’a, but also
among Sunnis. Sunni scholars to this day study and debate
fatwa rulings based on the Quran and the words and deeds of
the Prophet. The problem is that what is authentic for some is
a matter of dispute for others. There are the Sufis, the
Wahhabis, the fundamentalists, the jihadists, and the
moderates.
Vast majority of Saudi Arabia’s citizens follow a strict Sunni
Islamic tradition where the religious leaders enforce the
Wahhabi school of thought and sway over every aspect of Saudi
life; and the majority of Iranians under the ruling Mullahs
theocracy follow the “Shi’a Twelver” Islamic order as the
official religion of the state.
Unlike many other Arab regimes, the Saudi ruling family never
promised democracy nor ordered elections to claim legitimacy.
Instead of the ballot box, the Saudis claim that Allah (God)
gives them the legitimacy they need to govern by imposing pure
Islamic tradition in their Kingdom. They insist that people in
Arabia, home of Islam’s two holiest sites, should practice the
tradition which the Prophet Muhammad had established when he
received the revelation.
Almost three hundred years ago, Muhammad al Saud, an Arab
tribal leader from Najd, allied himself with Muhammad ibn
Abdel-Wahhab, a fundamentalist Islamic scholar, to conquer and
unite the Arabian Peninsula using religion to trump the
opposing tribes. Al Saud and his religious partner established
the first Saudi State in 1745 and imposed Abdel-Wahhab
(Wahhabi) version of Islam on its people. The two allies and
their descendents ruled parts of Arabia off-and-on ever since.
By 1927, the present Saudi Arabia State was established by
King Abdul Aziz bin al Saud, the father of the current king.
Six of King Abdul Aziz forty-four sons have succeeded him
since his death in 1953.
Wahhabi clerics are not considered holy men like the Shi’a
mullahs, but only interpreters and arbiters of the Quran and
the Prophet’s life example. They control every aspect of life
and consider anyone who makes a moral judgment based on
anything other than the Quran, a nonbeliever ‘kaffer.’ Their
‘religious police’ roam the streets of the cities to enforce a
traditional rigorous religious life. They enforce codes of
behavior and decide among other things what women can wear in
public and who can accompany them. Cinemas are banned,
concerts are outlawed and even listening to music is
forbidden.
The royal family lifestyle, however, is more like the ancient
emperors which the Muslims had conquered and less like the
Prophet’s way of life in Medina. The first Muslims mistrusted
kings and the institutions of kingship. In Quran and in the
early Muslim traditions, King occurs only as one of the Devine
titles and was treated with utmost respect. But when applied
to humans like the tyrannical Pharaoh, it has negative
connotations. Al Saud kings live luxurious lifestyles and
their family has become infamous around the world for the
profligacy of the many playboy princes. The thousands of Saudi
princes are increasingly viewed by the rest of Saudi society
as burdensome privileged cast.
The Wahhabi doctrine calls for the return to the authentic
Islam and remove all the distortion brought about by the
mystical Sufi practices in Turkey and the acts of devotion to
honor the Shi’a imams in Iran. Wahhabis defined the Ottoman
Islam as polytheistic and challenged the legitimacy of their
empire, and they considered the Shi’a as members of heretical
sect. In 1802, they attacked the southern Iraqi shrine city of
Karbala which holds special position in Shi’a Islam. The
attack was chillingly brutal, thousands of Shi’a Iraqis were
murdered and the shrines were destroyed. Karbala is the place
where Hussein ibn Ali was killed by the forces of Umayyad
caliph in 680 AD and started the Shi’a movement. He is
venerated as the third of twelve infallible imam of Shi’a
Islam.
In the sixteenth century, the Shi’ate Safavid dynasty of the
Shahs of Iran established a united and powerful state
embracing the whole area between the Mediterranean and the
approaches to Central Asia and India. Iran since then has
become the spiritual center of the Twelver Shi’a Muslims with
its revitalized Islamic Persian culture that is different from
the Arabs in many essentials.
Four dynasties ruled Iran, the Safavid, the Zand, the Qajars,
and the Pahlavi. Once oil was discovered in Iran, the British
and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company controlled the Iranian
economy and practically ruled the country. In World War II,
Reza Shah was forced by the British and the Russians into
exile for supporting the Germans in the war, and his son,
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, succeeded him. The US and the UK backed
a military coup d’état when the popular charismatic Prime
Minister Muhammad Mosaddegh nationalized the Iranian oil
industry. They deposed the Iranians beloved Mosaddagh and
brought back the oil company, the most hated symbol of foreign
exploitation. Members of the new middle class became
disaffected by the Shah’s policies and the masses of the
population saw the Westernization and un-Islamic modernization
of the country as the source of all evils. The Iranians
revolted, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ran for his life and died
shortly in Egypt. The exiled religious leader and politician,
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been issuing
uncompromising demands for the Shah abdication, returned to
Iran in 1979 as a triumphant hero to establish the Islamic
Republic of Iran. Islam never was a theocracy in the sense of
government by priesthood until the emergence of the Islamic
Republic of Iran under the leadership of Khomeini.
When the US overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and
elevated the Shi’a in Iraq, it helped extend Iran’s regional
influence east and west. Following Ahmadinejad’s election as a
president of Iran in January 2006, Iran re-launched its
nuclear enrichment program. According to some observers, by
the end of 2009, Iran was operating sufficient centrifuges to
produce nuclear bomb; it had tested the solid-fuel missile and
it had launched a satellite into orbit. That helped Iran to
project its influence across the region and highlighted the
fragility of the Arab regimes that Washington had counted
amongst its traditional allies.
The people of the Middle East are killing each other; there is
no transition to democracy in the horizon; Arab regimes and
Israel are united against a common enemy, Iran; and the
Palestinians’ tragedy is no more of Arab or non-Arab concern.
Can the Middle East people manage the daunting political
challenges posed by these sectarian wars waged by undemocratic
regimes, where everybody loses except the US military
industry?
– Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Ph.D. is a political analyst. His
latest book, Is The Two-State Solution Already Dead? (Algora
Publishing, New York), now available on Amazon.com and Barnes
&
Noble.
He
contributed
this
article
to
PalestineChronicle.com.