Ayatollahs, Sufis and Ideologues: State, Religion and Social Movements in Iraq
Faleh Abdul-Jabar
Saqi Books
This book is the first comprehensive study of Islam and Islamism in Iraq. It begins by presenting the multitude of forms and structures of religion present there: from organized religion to the myriad patterns of popular religion, as well as the various Islamist social movements and organizations in existence, all serving complex social, political and economic functions. It also attempts to avoid the oversimplified current views on the nature of Islam and its roles within Iraq, especially with regard to the interplay between ethnicity and religion: the trilogy of Kurds Shi'is and Sunnis, who presumably lead a strained, antagonistic relationship. While focusing on the unique nature of religion and state-religion tensions in Iraq, the book includes detailed comparisons with other Middle Eastern countries, mainly Iran.
Faleh Abdul-Jabar, is a visiting fellow at the School of Politics and Sociology, Birbeck College, London University. He has written extensively about Iraq and the Middle East. His works include Post-Marxism and the Middle East and Tribes and Power: Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Middle East, also published by Saqi Books.
Contents
Glossary / 7 Introduction / 13
Part One: Religion, Community and State 1. The Nature of Shi'ism in Iraq / 23 Yitzhak Nakkash 2. Zghurt and Shmurt: Aspects of the Traditional Shi'i Society / 36 Peter Heine 3. Kurds, Islam and State Nationalism / 45 Helkot Hakim
Part Two: Institutionalized and Popular Religion versus the State 4. The Genesis and Development of Maija ism versus the State / 61 Faleh Abdul-Jabar 5. The Nature of Confrontation Between the State and Maija'ism: / 90 Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim and the Bath Pierre-Jean Luizard 6. The Rituals of ‘Ashura: Genealogy, Functions, Actors and Structures / 101 Ibrahim Haydari 7. The Religious Composition of the Kurdish Society: / 114 Sufi Orders, Sects and Religions Sami Shourush 8. The Origins of the Naqshabandiyya Sufi Order / 140 Helkot Hakim
Part Three: Islamist Social Movements: Genesis, Development, Strategies and Exile 9. The Da'wa Islamic Party: Origins, Actors and Ideology / 149 Abdul-Halim al-Ruhaimi 10. The Muslim Brotherhood: Genesis and Development / 162 Basim al-Azami 11. Islamist Fundamentalist Movements Among the Kurds / 177 Sami Shourush 12. The Deportation of Shi'is During the Iran-Iraq War: / 183 Causes and Consequences Ali Babakhan 13. Iraqi Shi'is in Exile in London / 211 Jens-Uwe Rabe Part Four: Systems of Thought 14. Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qassim al-Kho’i: / 223 Political Thought and Positions Yousif al-Kho’i 15. The Political Theory of Muhammad Baqir Sadr / 231 TalibAziz 16. The School of Najaf / 245 Jawdat al-Qazwini 17. The School of Qum / 265 Jawdat al-Qazwini
Contributors / 283 Index / 285
INTRODUCTION
Faleh Abdul-Jabar
The rise of modern Islamic social movements across the Middle East and beyond has been a noted phenomenon since at least 1967. That year marked the ‘appearance’ of Mary the Virgin in Cairo, following the defeat in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war. A thin line runs from the Virgin Mary episode to the anti-Ba‘th Shi'i Islamist mass demonstrations in Iraq, in February 1977, to the phenomenal success of the Iranian revolution in February 1979, the assassination of Sadat at the hands of a small, clandestine Islamist group led by Khalid al-Islamboli in October 1981, down to the verge of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) on power in 1990—91 through the ballot, or the Islamist military takeover in the Sudan a year earlier, or the seizure of the Afghani capital, Kabul in 1996 by the fundamentalist Taliban.
The clear thread running through these developments appeared to question, or even disprove the modernist, lineal notion that advance in society towards modernity encourages the decline of all traditional patterns of social structures, including religion. The resurgence of Islamism seemed to suggest that Islam is of a ‘different’ essence. When similar trends were observed among the Sikhs of India, or, as Gilles Kepel has amply shown, within Judaic traditions, the difference assumed a wider validity, that of Orient-Occident dichotomy. And sooner rather than later, the Weberian polar Orient-Occident dichotomy was brought into full force. This is based on a cultural polarity of two different, opposing essences. Essence, in this tradition, is an Aristotelian fixed determinant of the dynamic or stagnant ‘nature’ of society. Yet a scrutiny of the very concepts of fundamentalism as a fixed cultural essence, gave rise to a more fruitful conjunctural method, to study the role of Islam in modern societies. The works of N. Keddie, Juan Cole, Kepel, Sami Zubaida, E. Mortimer, to name but a few, stand in bold relief.
While a plethora of works on the inter-relationship of state, society and religion has covered a multitude of countries, such as Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Algeria, Egypt and the Sudan, no comprehensive research on religion-state-society in Iraq has ever been carried out. With the exception of a few papers and essays (Hanna Batatu, John Thomas Cummings, Sylvia Haim, Ofra Bengio, Amatzia Baram, Peter Sluglett and others), Islam and Islamism in the Iraqi context has remained an understudied phenomenon. Thus, a glaring gap in our knowledge of the social and political roles of religion in Iraq is too obvious to ignore.
Little attention has been given to Islamism in Iraq, which preceded the Iranian Revolution; even less has been focused on its nature, origins, the social movements that developed as a result of it, the social actors it involved and the ideological responses it gave rise to. These aspects remain relatively obscure.
As well as ‘filling the gap’, this book was motivated by an attempt to go beyond the oversimplified, totalizing conceptions of Islam; beyond the schematic representation of Iraqi society within the customary trilogy of Sunnis, Shi'is and Kurds, and beyond the narrow, communal conception of contemporary Islamist social movements in Iraq.
Islam provides a multitude of forms, structures, doctrines, schools and social actors, which are too complex and intricate to confine within a holistic ‘essence’. Institutionalized religion, in the form of the Shi'i marja'iyya, or the Sunni institution of Shaykh al-Islam or Mufti, is an ethical, literate pattern of religiosity, anchored in the sacred text, the legalities of the divine law, with an emphasis on the norms and canons of purity, in terms of social and private contracts and rituals, as embodied in the jurisprudence of rituals (fiqh al-‘ibadat) and jurisprudence of contracts (fiqh al-mu 'amalat), or the theology, relating to the nature of God, and the divine designs for the past, present and future of human kind. It resembles the ideal type Weber termed as ‘ethical prophecy’. While the Shi'i institution is decentralized and informal, the Sunni institution is blended with the state bureaucracy, lacking the former’s organizational and financial autonomy.
A second set of institutions in Islam is the religious madrasa, the transmitter and producer of religious knowledge. In the madrasa, much of the renewal of modern Islamic thought takes place, and many of the ‘ideological brains’ and ‘militant hands’ come out of it. However, the madrasa is also the bastion of rigid conservatism. The pattern of headship, or social networks among the bureaucratized or autonomous clerical class, or in the madrasa, vary from country to country. These patterns have played, and continue to play, crucial social, political and cultural roles. Khomeini’s first cells originated in the networks of his own novices and emulators; four decades on, the Taliban (literally novices of a religious school) movement in Afghanistan thrived on such master-novice associations as well.
A third level is the myriad patterns of popular religion, like the Sufi orders, organized on the basis of the guilds in urban neighbourhoods, or blended with tribal structures in rural settings, as seen, for example in the Naqshabandiyya Sufi order prevailing in west Kurdistan and the Qadiriyya Sufi order in the east; another example might be the hay’at hussaynia (Husayn rituals bodies), which organize the ‘ashura and other rituals in the city neighbourhoods or rural villages. Patterns of popular religion stand in contrast with canonical-ethical religion of the literate clerical class. The Sufi thikr (ceremony), or the Shi'i passion plays (tashabih), or Husayn assembly (majlis ta‘ziya), the Sunni visitation to tombs of saints, or the Shi'i pilgrimage to holy shrines (ziyarat), provide examples of community-based organizations of religion which may function as conduits of media of salvation, mediation with saintly figures, moral catharsis, social solidarity, and, most importantly, tools for mass politics.
The relations between the high religious culture of the clerical class and the low, popular culture of the communities, are fluid and varied, involving subnational solidarities of the extended family, guild and city affiliation or even regional allegiances, or supra-national networks of emulators, or national, ethnic belonging. The relations between high and low cultures involve tensions, constraints, clashes and cooperation of every imaginable sort, ranging from social to cultural and other factors.
By the same token, the realm of modern Islamist, or militant Islam, contains a myriad of Islamic social movements of every conceivable structure, ideology, strategy, or course of action. In the case of Iraq, there are at least three Shi i political movements, five Shi'i institutions, two major Kurdish Islamist groups and two Sunni Arab organizations.
In summing up these points, it might be noted that the wider literature on Islam and Islamism across the Middle East, including Shi i Islamism, has provided ample evidence attesting to the fact that religion has a range of institutionalized forms, various social actors, different cultural forms, and diverse modalities operating within distinct and changing national contexts (G. Kepel, E. Sivan, S. Akhavi, E. Abrahamian, E. Mortimer, H. Enayat and R. Mottahedeh offer some examples).
The complexities relevant to Islam and Islamism also apply to Iraqi society, the national space where these patterns have originated and have been operating. Nowhere has this complexity intrigued scholars more than in the realm of studying Islamism in Iraq. Three distinct approaches underpin the meagre literature on Islamist activism in Iraq: a) communal; b) cultural-essentialist; and c) conjunctural. The basic concepts of the communal pattern revolve around the classical German community versus society dichotomy (Gemeinschafte vis-a-vis Gesellschaft) as developed by Ferdinand Tonnies. Projected onto the Iraq reality, they centre on the Sunni minority-dominated state vis-a-vis the Shi'i majority-oppressed community. Hence Islamist militancy is, firstly, confined to Shi'ism, and, secondly, is seen as an expression of grievances arising from this tense, communal dichotomy.
Within this approach, the community is almost treated as a homogenous monolithic socio-cultural entity. This lends a fixed essence to communal spaces and structures and the identity (or identities), sometimes imbued even with a mono-dimensional social or political activism, as if religious culture in and for itself creates a unifying space of social and political nature under any circumstances. This interpretation overlooks the rich social and cultural diversity within the Shi'i.
Gemeinschafte, which, as clearly demonstrated in Batatu’s voluminous work, have constantly been caught in the process of transformation to modern forms of social organization and culture in such a way that old forms existed in different levels of transformed symbiosis with new ones, that their reality is far more complex and rich in terms of social organization and culture: the tribe, the clan, extended families, urban guilds, status groups, city neighbourhood and city solidarities, splitting religious spaces and cutting across such totalizing categories as Sunnis, Shi'is or Kurds. As these traditional patterns have been, and continue to be, in a process of transformation (a set of erosion, modification and mutation of various elements), modern diverging social, economic and cultural interests have added to the complexity. The trilogy of Shi'is, Sunnis and Kurds is theoretically thin. In the words of Peter Sluglett, ‘The notion of the heterogeneity of Iraqi society is another theme that needs further definition and refinement, The facts are that the population of Iraq, now about 18 million, is divided on both ethnic and sectarian lines. Of course, neither the communities nor the sect constitute homogeneous or monolithic single entities.’ ‘A simplistic image of Iraqi society has emerged, largely under the influence of Middle Eastern “experts” of the U.S. defence establishment, of "their Arab Sunnis” supporting the “Sunni” regime of Saddam Hussain and the allegedly “somewhat less Arab” Shi'is (a sort of Iranian fifth column) bitterly opposed to it.’ (The Historiography of Modern Iraq, 1991, pp. 1412—3, italics added).
Cultural essentialism attributes the rise of Islamism to the incompatibility of Islam with modernity or lack of sufficient separation of the secular from the sacred. A variety of this approach is the notion that Shi'ism as such is a radically anti-modern-state doctrine. The concept of the hidden Imam which denies legitimacy to worldly powers is claimed to have been the source of cultural rejection of modernity of which the ruling elites in the Middle East were part. Or Shi'ism is held radical by dint of the logical structure of the theo-jurisitic doctrine itself; its social and political activism and action is deduced from this source with no due consideration to socio-political, economic and other factors. Both communal and cultural approaches share common reductionist grounds.
The conjunctural approach, by contrast, has provided a comparative study of Islamist social movements (Batatu, Zubaida, Cole and Keddie, among others). Accordingly, Islamist militancy could be typified into various different patterns, among which is the social pattern where Islamist protest is caused and stimulated by many catalysts and factors among which ‘factors of economic and social change that are common to many Muslim countries, and sometimes Third World countries’ (N. Keddie and Juan Cole). Another general pattern is local, where activism is spurred by protest against group-discrimination under authoritarian regimes in specific nation-states. A third variety may also be seen in protests anchored in social disparities, economic exclusion and political disfranchisement resulting from the disturbance of the processes of modern nation-building.
This book is the result of a two-day academic seminar on State, Society, Religion and Social Movements in Iraq which was organized by the Iraqi Cultural Forum, a London-based research group active since 1993, in conjunction with the Department of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College, University of London, in 1997. Prominent academic researchers, political writers and social activists with academic training gathered together to examine various aspects of the topic. Whether or not the contributors in this volume may agree with my views in this introduction, their chapters focused on the unique nature of religion and state-religion tensions in Iraq, common features with other Middle Eastern societies notwithstanding. The collection may well contribute to widen the perspectives of our observation and help bring forth hitherto undiscussed major issues.
Part One examines the role of religion in defining community and its relation to the state.
Professor Y. Nakkash lucidly shows that compared to Iran, Shi'ism in Iraq is a sui generis in cultural and other terms. In his opinion, part of Shi' i protest, or militancy, stems from their response against state attack on their identity as Iraqis. His conclusions defy any schematic conceptualizing of Shi'ism as a homogeneous cultural space, presumably transcending national and historical contexts. Professor Peter Heine arrives at a complementary conclusion. By examining the structure of traditional society in Najaf in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, he deduces that, while Shi'is in general were divided along ethnic lines (Turks, Persians, Arabs), Arab Shi'is of Iraq were socially divided into Bedouin/town dwellers; Shi'i cities competed against each other, whereas city dwellers in turn were, sociologically speaking, segmented. Among the various groups (‘'ulama, non-clerical notables, merchants, artisans and armed groups in charge of violence), Heine examines the role of the monopolizers of means of violence, the neighbourhood gangs who have sundry interests dictating their cooperation with or rebellion against state authorities (the Ottomans).
Helkot Hakim examines a linguistic-cultural battle between Arabist, secular state elites and nationalist Kurds. Paradoxically, Islam is thrown into the clash to blur the linguistic-ethnic character of the Kurds.
Part Two examines the high and low culture of Shi'i and Sunni Islam. In Chapter 4, I study the genesis and development of the informal institution of marja'ism. My conclusion is that while centralization forces-were at work on all levels as from the mid-nineteenth century, triggering similar tendencies within the Shi'i institution, a decentralized religious turn was, paradoxically set in motion when centralization of the state itself peaked in the 20th century, a fact which reveals the tensions between an authoritarian state and an autonomous religious institution.
Pierre Jean Luizard examines the tension between the state and the institution of marja'ism, he concentrates his analysis, however, on a single episode, that of Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim versus the Ba'th regime. By contrast, Ibrahim Haydari, Sami Shourush and Helkot Hakim study the popular forms of religion, the functions, structures and actors of the Shi'i ‘ashura rituals (Ibrahim Haydari), or the origins of the Naqshabandiyya Sufi order (Hakim), or the multitude of sects, Sufi orders and religions among the Kurds (Shourush). These chapters provide narratives and analysis of the specifics of the Durkheimian nature of these forms of low religious culture as community-based and community self-reflective ceremonial ritualism.
Part Three contains five chapters on various Islamist social movements of Shi'is, Sunnis and Kurds. Abdul-Halim Ruhaimi studies the Da'wa party, Basim al-‘Azami the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, and Sami Shourush the various Islamist Kurds. The three authors focus on the genesis, ideology and actors of these movements, which reveal some common characteristics.
Ali Babakhan, who unfortunately passed away before the publication of this book, and Jens-Uwe Rahe, follow the line and move on to examine the Islamist militants in exile, who were acting in and reacting to a new environment. Babakhan’s contribution, based on two books of his in French, is the first of its kind on the causes and consequences of the deportation of the Shi'i in the 1970s and 1980s, a phenomenon which, by and large, has been the most well-known topic among academics but the least studied of all.
The last part, dedicated to ideologies, is mainly focused on Shi'i Islamist thinkers. This is all the more natural, since they occupied the intellectual horizon, whereas the Sunni Islamist leaders towards action.
Yousif al-Kho’i writes on the political thought of Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qassim al-Kho’i, the great marja'vdno was superior to Khomeini in juristic terms. The general view that he is apolitical, even a preacher of acquiescence, is relatively misleading. Talib Aziz closely examines the political theory of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in its entirety, which is composed of three different elements relating to political action, the political system and the Islamist platform of social reform. Sadr was the first mujtabid to endorse the creation of a modern political party for the Shi'is.
Jawdat al-Qazwini provides two comparative historical and detailed chapters on the Najaf and the Qum schools, based on his thorough PhD dissertation on the topic, renowned for its first hand information. Like Yousif al-Kho’i, al-Qazwini descends from a notable family which contributed to the Shici world of jurisprudence in the mid Euphrates (Hilla) for centuries. Other contributions were vital: texts in languages other than English were translated by Abdulilah al-Nuaimi, Wendy Christiansen and Nadje al-Ali. Without their dedication this volume would have not materialized in its present shape.
Part I Religion, Community and State
Chapter One
The Nature of Shi'ism in Iraq
Yitzhak Nakkash
In the wake of the 1991 uprisings against Saddam Hussein, Iraqi army units were engaged in large-scale operations against Shi'is in the marshes of southern Iraq. This campaign was backed by a massive propaganda effort mounted by Iraqi government officials and the media against the Shi'i marsh Arabs, portraying them as ‘un-Iraqi’ and describing their culture as ‘primitive and debased’.1 The Ba'th government’s assault 011 the identity and culture of the marsh Arabs in the aftermath of the Gulf War raises the following two basic questions: Who are the Iraqi Shi'is? What is the nature of Shi'ism in Iraq? One can approach these questions from various perspectives. The one opted for in this chapter is a comparison between Shi'ism in Iran and Iraq: some aspects of the political development of Shi'is in modern Iraq will also be highlighted.
The development of Shi'ism in Iran and Iraq in the past few centuries reflected two radically different processes of community formation. Iran’s population became by and large Shi'i in the 16th and 17th centuries, following the establishment of the Safavid state in 1501. Since then, Shi'i Islam has been the state religion in Iran (save for a short period after the Sunni Afghan occupation of Isfahan in 1722). On the whole, the state supported religion and the ulama well into the 20th century. In contrast with the state sponsored conversion of the Iranian population to Shi'ism, modern Iraqi Shi'i society was formed from the mid-i8th century onwards. This process reflected the rise of Najaf and Karbala as the two strongholds of Shi'ism in a country which was a Sunni Ottoman possession, and the conversion of Iraq’s settled tribes to Shi'ism. This large-scale conversion did not pervade the former social values of the tribesmen. Indeed, against the Persian ethnic origin of the large majority of Iranians, the Iraqi Shi'is have to a great extent been distinguished by their Arab tribal attributes and moral values, which endured long after the establishment of modern Iraq in 1921 under Sunni minority rule.2
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Faleh Abdul-Jabar
Ayatollahs, Sufis and Ideologues
Saqi Books
Saqi Books Ayatollahs, Sufis and Ideologues State, Religion and Social Movements in Iraq Edited by Faleh Abdul-Jabar
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
