Contents
List of Tables and Figures / vii
Acknowledgments / ix
1 Introduction / 1
2 Historical Context / 7
Origin of the Shi‘as From Capital of the Islamic Empire to Ottoman Backwater
British Dominance, 1917-1958
Summary
3 Da‘wa, the Call to Islam / 31
Recruitment
Opposition to the Movement
4 State Violence / 45
Toward Totalitarianism
Revolutionary Da‘wa
5 Social Bases of the Islamic Movement / 73
Clergy
Youthful Intelligentsia
Urban Poor
Other Societal Groups
6 Epigenesis / 101
Broad Socioeconomic Processes
Tactical Adaptations
7 The Political Ideology / 119
Traditional Shi'i Political Ideology
Ayatollah al-Sadr’s Interpretations
System Effected by Imam Khomeini
Internal Contradictions
8. What Will Iraq’s Islamists Accept? / 143
Interests to Which Islamic Government Appeals
Factors Rejected as Determinants
Extrapolation
Appendixes / 155
Glossary / 167
Bibliography / 173
Index / 183
About the Book and the Author / 193
Tables and Figures
Tables
2.1 Religioethnic Composition of Iraq in 1947 / 8
2.2 Successive Estimates of Iraq’s Religioethnic Composition / 9
3.1 Institutions Founded by Jama’at al-‘Ulama’ / 35
4.1 Islamists Who Died in Government Custody Between
December 1979 and Mid-February 1980 / 56
4.2 Iraqis Expelled Across the Border into the Bakhtiran District
of Iran During a Two-Year Period / 59
4.3 Leadership of al-Majlis al-A‘la lil Thawra al-Islamiya fi al-Traq
(Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, or Majlis [Assembly]) / 61
5.1 Religious Scholars of Najaf / 75
5.2 Educated Nonclerical Islamists / 86
5.3 Profile of Educated Nonclerical Islamists / 89
5.4 Islamists from the Urban Poor / 91
5.5 Profile of Islamists from the Urban Poor / 93
6.1 Cost Components of Gross Domestic Product / 112
7.1 Maraji'al-Taqlid al-Mutlaq (Sole Supreme Authorities) / 123
Figures
6.1 Political Process Model of Movement Emergence / 102
6.2 Political Process Model of Movement Adaptation / 110
7.1 Political Authority as Formulated by Ayatollah al-Sadr / 127
7.2 Lines of Political Authority as Actualized in Iran / 135
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To those Iraqis who helped me contact principals of Iraq’s Islamic movement and to those who provided me with information, I convey sincere gratitude. I thank two anonymous reviewers who made helpful suggestions, a number of which I have incorporated into the final manuscript. I am grateful to the editors at Lynne Rienner Publishers for their diligence and quality work. For any errors of commission, I take responsibility.
The Islamic Movement of Iraqi Shi’as
Introduction
In the seventh century, the Prophet Muhammad changed Arab society by means of the Islamic religion. In the twentieth century, Muslims are again wielding the requisites and concepts of Islam in an effort to change Arab society. Impelled by moral argument and the failures of existing governments, Muslim political activists seek to restructure their governments in accordance with God’s will, as they perceive it to be set out in revelation. In the cause of Islam, disaffected citizens are challenging secular governments. When free or relatively free elections are allowed, political parties with Islamic agendas do well in Muslim countries. The Islamic Salvation Front won a majority of votes in the 1990 local Algerian elections, and Islamic parties have scored electoral successes in Jordan, Tunisia, and Egypt.
Even in the absence of elections, groups with Islamic agendas have managed to effect political change. In Iran the unarmed urban masses that were instrumental in bringing down the regime of the shah form the support base for an Islamic government. In other Muslim countries, groups with Islamic political agendas have resorted to direct action, even assassination, in their efforts to bring about change.1
There is no question of sectarianism in the Islamic movements of Iran, Jordan, and the North African countries, for the governments and their Islamic opponents belong to the same sect. The shah’s government and his religiously motivated opponents were Shi'i, and the Jordanian and North African governments and their religiously motivated opponents are all Sunni.2 Islamic political opposition in Iraq, however, has been branded as sectarian and attributed to Iranian export of revolution. In its official explanation for attacking Iran in September 1980, the Iraqi government cited the occurrence in Iraq of “terrorist acts and sabotage by infiltrators who came in from Iran, by Iranian residents in Iraq, and by other people of Iranian origin, who set about committing a large number of murders and injuries from explosions.”3 In his October 15, 1980, speech to the United Nations Security Council, Sa'doun Hammadi, Iraq’s minister of foreign affairs, charged “leaders of the reactionary and sectarian Da’wa Party” (emphasis added) with terrorism and collusion with Iran.4
A number of writers have followed the Iraqi government’s lead, blaming Iranian export of revolution and sectarianism for both Islamic opposition to the Iraqi government and for the Iran-Iraq War: “Khomeini commenced a well-financed campaign to turn the Shiites in Iraq, who make up more than one-half of the population, against the Sunni-controlled government.”5 “The ayatollah deliberately put the war in a religious frame, a clash between Shi‘ism in Persia and Sunni Islam in Iraq, when he denounced, as he still does, the Iraqis as ‘atheists,’ ‘pagans,’ and ‘followers of the Omayyads.’”6
The existence of Islamic political movements in countries without sectarian divisions casts some doubt on the Iraqi government’s charge that the Iraqi Islamic movement is sectarian in motivation and due to Iranian subversion. Likewise, the chronology of Iraq’s Islamic movement tends to discredit the charge that the movement is traceable to Iran. As this study shows, the movement predated the Islamic Republic of Iran by two decades. The religious composition of Iraq’s Islamic movement does, howeverT make the movement vulnerable to the charge of sectarianism. The majority of Iraq’s Islamic activists, like the majority of Iraq’s population, are Shi‘i.7
But if Shi‘i sectarianism implies anti-Sunnism or religious particularism, then Iraq’s Islamic movement is not sectarian. The literature of the movement bespeaks an attempt by pious Muslims to modernize and govern Iraq within an Islamic context. Sayyid8 Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, founder and leader of Iraq’s contemporary Islamic movement, did not propose to replace Iraq’s governing Sunnis with Shi‘as, nor did he propose an economic revolution in which a government of Sunni haves would give way to a government of Shi‘i have-nots. Instead, he sought to exchange pious leaders for impious leaders, to unite “the virtuous rich and the virtuous poor”9 in a defense of religion and traditional values. He expected Islamic government to facilitate people’s doing good deeds and to restrain them from doing evil by implementing the acknowledged injunctions of Islam.10 This motivation he shared with contemporary Sunni fundamentalists, as articulated by Maulana Abdul ‘Ala’ Mawdudi (d. 1979), founder of Pakistan’s fundamentalist Jama‘at-i Islami (Islamic Society): “The objective of the Islamic movement, in this world, is revolution in leadership. A leadership that has rebelled against God and His guidance and is responsible for the suffering of mankind has to be replaced by a leadership that is God-conscious, righteous, and committed to following Divine guidance.”11
Sayyid al-Sadr sought to bring Islamic practices into congruence with change and to bring Islamic clerics into the management of change in Iraq. In pursuit of Islamic government, reformist Shi‘i ulama (religious scholars) have led Shi‘as to abandon their traditional political quietism and involve themselves in politics, in cooperation with virtuous Sunnis. Spokesmen for Hizb al-Da‘wa al-Islamiya (Party of the Call to Islam), the largest group in the movement, told me in 1986 that 10 percent of its members were Sunni.12
The Ba‘th government of Iraq has successfully portrayed Iraqi Islamic activism not only as sectarian but as weak and unpopular, even while using draconian means of repression against activists. Outsiders have tended to agree with the government’s depiction, dismissing politicized Islam as having limited appeal to Iraqis. Militating against knowledge of, and even interest in, Iraq’s Islamic movement are the obstructions both reporters and scholars encounter in a country with a highly repressive government and a frightened populace. The invisibility of Iraq’s Shi'as also contributes to the government’s success in portraying the movement as sectarian. Arab Shi’as are a disadvantaged population whose political history has received little scholarly attention. History records primarily the deeds of the powerful, and Shi’i Muslims have not held national-level political power anywhere but Iran since the Middle Ages.
Evaluating the proffered explanations for and evaluations of Islamic activism in Iraq requires an inquiry into the historical record of the movement. In the account that follows, I take care to specify the actors’ categories and definitions and accept the validity of religious motivation.
Relationships between human beings and a supernatural being figure in many human calculations, whether the social scientist shares the actors’ belief in the existence of a supernatural being or not.
The political activists in Iraq’s Islamic movement are fundamentalists in the sense that they reject secularism and insist Muslims be subject to Islamic law. They are fundamentalist in that they are attempting to construct the fundamentals of Islamic ideology in a modern society. They accept the appellation fundamentalists, interpreting it as “non-compromising Muslims,”13 by which they mean that they reject syncretism and accept as legitimate sources of law only the Quran, the Prophet’s traditions, and Islamic jurisprudence. Implicitly recognizing that scripture allows more than one interpretation, Iraq’s Islamic activists do accept reformist rulings relative to traditional interpretations if those rulings come from esteemed Muslim jurisprudents. What they refuse to admit are non-Muslim sources of law.
Iraq’s Islamic activists are not fundamentalists if the word implies a rejection of modernism and change. In word and deed they have striven for modem technology. Nor do they reject all change in social practices. They acknowledge the need to reform certain traditional social practices, including the “un-Islamic habits and social usages responsible for the backwardness of [Muslim] women.”14 Since the word fundamentalist is sometimes used to signify a rejection of all change and for some people has a threatening or disparaging implication, I call Iraq’s Islamic political activists Islamists.
They are Islamist in that they advocate Islam both politically and religiously, insisting that Islamic people should have Islamic government.
Some Iraqi clerics date Iraq’s Islamic movement to the post-World War I period, when clerics strove for a legitimate Islamic government to replace the Turkish government driven from Iraq by the British, but I view the 1919— 1923 period of clerical activism as a precursor to the contemporary movement. This is because the intervening decades of the Hashimite monarchy were essentially without opposition to the existing government on behalf of Islam, and because the political movement that began in 1957-1958 differed in nature from the military campaign launched by the ulama in 1920. In both periods the ulama had the same declared goal, namely, legitimate government according to Islamic requirements as they perceived them, but the contemporary movement is religiously reformist and part of a decentralized political mobilization occurring throughout the Muslim world.
Like any social movement, Iraq’s Islamic political movement has developed a literature embodying its essential ideas and principles. The literature exists in two modes: erudite and popular. Works in the erudite mode, Ayatollah al-Sadr’s Falsafatuna (Our Philosophy) (1959) and Iqtisaduna (Our Economy) (1961), for example, are aimed primarily at the ulama. These books seek to ground the movement’s tenets in Islam and demonstrate that the author’s interpretations are faithful to Islam. Somewhat easier reading are abbreviated versions of these works, written for the laity, and articles he wrote for journals such as Sawt al-Da‘wa (Voice of the Call). Ayatollah al-Sadr described his objective in the latter works as “adding to and simplifying” the arguments in books addressed to the ulama.15 The tenor of the writing is didactic, in the manner of a pastor seeking to confirm and inspirit disciples, as demonstrated in the following quotation from an article he wrote for Sawt al-Da'wa: “In the absence of the Mahdi [Savior], mere mankind becomes responsible for the exalted mission. The members of the organization [Hizb al-Da‘wa al-Islamiya] defend its cause for the glory of God. Those who issue the call to Islam [al-da'wa] have understood their religious obligation ahead [in time] of their Muslim brothers.”16
The popular literature, often in the form of pamphlets and newspapers, provides news of the movement and of Iraqi government actions, including news not appearing in legal Iraqi newspapers, which, for most of the existence of the Islamic movement, have been instruments of the government. In Islamist publications, policies and tactics relative to the practical operation of the Islamic movement are explained and defended. Publications in this mode aim to mobilize believers and to strengthen the resolve of those already active. The weekly newspapers Al-Jihad (The Struggle) and Al-'Amal al-Islami (The Islamic Task), aimed at Islamists and sympathizers generally, are examples of publications in the popular vein.
Because the Islamic movement is highly decentralized, as indeed are all social movements, support for the cause is frequently a sense of affiliation rather than formal membership in an Islamic group. Believers responsive to the religious symbolism clerical leaders can evoke constitute a large pool of sympathizers, but only formal members can be given direct orders.
My information on the movement comes from the publications of Iraqi Islamists, supplemented by personal interviews conducted with leaders, members, and sympathizers of the Islamic groups. Declaratory information from the various sources is related to operational information on the actions of Iraqi Islamists and on the political forms taken by the Islamic Republic of Iran, an extension warranted by the affinity between the ulama leadership of Iran and the ulama leadership of Iraqi Islamists.
Although the religious convictions of Islamists direct them to high ethical standards and Islamists outside Iraq are not obliged to dissimulate as those inside Iraq are, literature written by activists and oral information given by activists are necessarily self-serving in some degree. The actors’ interpretations may differ from mine and other outside observers’, if for no other reason than the absence of shared experience. While it is necessary to know the actors’ definitions of their situation in order to appreciate the subjective meaning of events to the participants, it is not necessary to accept those definitions as presented; thus I examine information about the movement for internal contradictions and an excess of idealism.
Internal contradictions exist in greater or lesser degree in any ideology and affect the prospects of a political movement deriving from the ideology. The resources a governing elite can bring to bear against a movement also affect its prospects. Just as a confluence of historical developments sets the stage for the genesis of a political movement, so the internal dynamics of a country and external resources available to protagonists affect the development of a political movement.
The historical context within which Iraq’s Islamic movement emerged is drawn in the next chapter, which is followed by a chronicle of the actual development of the movement and, finally, analyses of the movement.
Notes
1. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt is the best-known victim of assassination by a group with an Islamic political agenda.
2. Sunni pertains to Muslim followers of the sunna, the path of tradition acknowledged by about 89 percent of Muslims. Shi'i pertains to the Shi‘as, the other 11 percent of Muslims. Shi‘as regard Imam Ali as the legitimate successor to the Prophet Muhammad. As used in this work, the term Shi‘a(s) refers to the Ithna ‘Ashari (Twelver) Shi’as, the majority group within Shi'ism. Ithna ‘Ashari Shi'as form the majority population group in Iraq, Iran, and Bahrain and significant minorities in the other Gulf states, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The smaller branches of Shi’as are the Zaydis, who inhabit Yemen, and the Isma'ilis, associated in modem times with India.
3. Iraq, Al-Niza' al-Iraqi al-Irani, p. 13. (Translations of Arabic sources are by the author.)
4. Statement reprinted in Ismael, Iran and Iraq, p. 206. The foreign minister was referring to Hizb al-Da‘wa al-Islamiya, founded in Iraq by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in 1957.
5. Renfrew, “Who Started the War?” p. 100.
6. Jansen, “Who Started the Gulf War?” pp. 15-16. Ayatollah, meaning “sign of God,” is a title given to high-ranking Shi‘i clerics. In this reference, Jansen is alluding to Imam Ruhullah Khomeini (1902-1989) of Iran.
7. A 1920 census conducted by the British military authorities, and reported in Statistical Abstract for the Several British Overseas Dominions and Protectorates (London, 1924), found the Iraqi population to be 56 percent Shi‘i (cited in Tarbush, The Role of the Military in Politics, p. 14). For subsequent estimates of Iraq’s religious composition, see Table 2.2.
8. In Iraq, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad are addressed with the title sayyid (fern, sayyida).
9. Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, as cited in Batatu, “Shi‘i Organizations in Iraq,” p. 181.
10. al-Sadr, Islamic Political System, p. 36.
11. Mawdudi, The Islamic Movement, p. 71.
12. August 7, 1986, interview with Dr. Abu Ali, designated Hizb al-Da‘wa spokesman in London, and Brother Ali, a member of Hizb al-Da‘wa.
13. Al-Da’wah Chronicle, October 1981, p. 1.
14. al-Sadr, Islamic Political System, p. 36.
15. al-Sadr, Contemporary Man and the Social Problem, p. 22. In Contemporary Man, Ayatollah al-Sadr simplified and supplemented the critiques of capitalism and socialism presented in Falsafatuna.
16. al-Sadr, Min Fikr al-Da‘wa, p. 11
2
Historical Context
Located at the northwest end of the Persian Gulf, Iraq1 is a crossroad where Semitic culture from the south and west has met Iranian culture from the east. Western and southwestern Iraq are geographically part of the Arabian Desert. Northeastern Iraq is composed of high mountains and steppe, the latter receiving enough rainfall for agriculture without irrigation. Between desert and steppe lies the central plain known formerly as Babylonia or Mesopotamia, the land between the two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Since ancient times people have used the river water to produce dates and wheat. Southeastern Iraq is yet a fourth distinctive area—marshlands in which little agriculture is possible.
In size Iraq is comparable to California. Its population is considerably less than that of California but is estimated to have reached 18 million by 1990.2 Despite its location on the Gulf, Iraq has only about 26 miles of coastline. Iraq’s main port, Basra, lies 60 miles from the sea, on the Shatt al-Arab, the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, which flow together their last 100 miles to the sea.
Not far from the confluence of the rivers developed the civilization of the ancient Sumerians, a non-Semitic people of unknown origin. In the ensuing millennia, the Sumerians and their successors in the plain were encroached upon by desert nomads from the south. Some of the Semitic people from the south, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, and the Arabs, themselves established great empires before vanishing into the ethnic multiplicity of Mesopotamia.
Conquerors also came from the east. The land of the Tigris and the Euphrates had been under Persian control for over 800 years when the Arab Muslim armies triumphed there in a.d. 637. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of the population adopted the Islamic religion and Arabic language of the conquerors, and maintained both thereafter despite subsequent periods of Persian and Turkish domination.
From the Arabs came the name Iraq, but to Arab geographers the term referred only to Lower Mesopotamia. Land north of modern Tikrit on the Tigris and somewhat north of Hit on the Euphrates was called Jazira, …
The Islamic Movement of Iraqi Shi‘as
Joyce N. Wiley
Lynne Rienner
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
The Islamic Movement of Iraqi Shi‘as
Joyce N. Wiley
Lynne Rienner Publishers
Boulder & London
Published in the United States of America in 1992 by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301
and in the United Kingdom by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU
© 1992 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wiley, Joyce (Joyce N.)
The Islamic movement of Iraqi Shi‘as / by Joyce Wiley,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55587-272-7 (alk. paper)
1. Shi'ah—Iraq—History—20th century. 2. Islam and politics—
Iraq. 3. Iraq—Politics and government. I. Title.
BP192.7.I7W55 / 1992
297’.82'09567—dc20 / 91-29921
CIP
British Cataloguing in Publication Data
A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book
is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements
of the American National Standard for Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
