In
the modern era, the Muslim world has seen intense upheaval and
conflict, the bloodiest of which is attributable to religious and
sectarian causes. While many people consider this as proof of Islam
being an inherently violent religion, or as a reason to consider Muslims
as savages, the relationship between politics, religion and violence
here is much more complex.
The purpose of this post is to provide a
background of inter-sect relations between the two main denominations of
Islam, Sunni and Shia, from the death of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) to the
modern day, and how they contribute to instability in the region.
Most readers may be familiar with the migration of the Holy Prophet
(PBUH) and the nascent Muslim community to Madinah in the year 622 to
escape persecution from the people of Makkah. Once settled in their new
home, the Muslim community in the city could be divided into two camps:
the Muhajireen (Emigrants) who were the migrants from Makkah, and the
Ansar (Helpers) who were the native population of Madinah who clothed,
fed and sheltered the Muhajireen till the latter could stand on their
own feet.
The Muhajireen integrated remarkably well into Madinah's
environment and there was little, if any tension between the two.
However, after the death of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), there was a
disagreement between the two regarding his successor:
The Muhajireen
believed that as the Prophet (PBUH) had been one of them and they had
been his earliest supporters, the successor should also be one of them
whereas the Ansar argued that they without their taking in of the
Muhajireen and the aid they provided to the cause of Islam, the religion
may well have been crushed and thus, they were deserving of the
succession. To discuss who to nominate as Caliph, the leaders of the
Ansar met at the Saqifa Banu Saidah, the house of one of the Ansar
leaders, while the Holy Prophet (PBUH) was dying.
Just as he passed
away, his companions found out about the meeting. Abu Bakr, Umar ibn
Khattab and Abu Ubaidah bin Jarrah, three of the Prophet'S (PBUH)
closest companions, made their way to Saqifa, where Umar nominated Abu
Bakr; all present agreed and Abu Bakr was elected the first of the
Rightly Guided Caliphs in Sunni belief.
This was where the first split in the Muslim community formed. Ali,
the Prophet's (PBUH) cousin, son-in-law and close companion, was bathing
the Prophet's (PBUH) body in preparation for the funeral and was not
informed of these events till they had already transpired. While
subsequent Sunni and Shia accounts of his reaction differ, there is a
wide consensus that he was disappointed in not being consulted and that
several of the Prophet's (PBUH) companions did not initially give bayah
(oath of allegiance) to Abu Bakr as they supported Ali.
Ali's
supporters, the Shiatu Ali (Party of Ali) claimed that the Prophet
(PBUH) had indicated Ali as his successor, based on numerous instances
such as the Hadith of Khumm, which is accepted by both Sunnis and Shias
as valid. However, the Holy Prophet (PBUH) had delegated Abu Bakr to
lead the prayers during his final illness and most Muslims were content
to consider this as sufficient to endorse Abu Bakr; Ali himself gave
Bayah to Abu Bakr not much later and was a close advisor on matters of
state to Abu Bakr, Umar and Usman, all three of his predecessors as
Caliph.
However, there is much controversy over the death of Fatima,
Ali's wife, who died not much after her father, the Prophet (PBUH) with
the general Shia view alleging that she died from injuries sustained at
the hands of Umar and other supporters of Abu Bakr trying to get Ali to
give bayah, a view rejected by most Sunni scholars who claim she died
due to grief for her father.
Ali eventually became Caliph in 656 after Usman's assassination, but
his short rule was mostly occupied with civil wars, the major one of
which was the rebellion by Muawiya bin Abu Sufyan, the governor of
Syria. Muawiya belonged to the Banu Umayya clan, rivals of the Banu
Hashim to which the Prophet (PBUH) and Ali belonged, and his father Abu
Sufyan was one of the Prophet's (PBUH) fiercest enemies, surviving only
due to the amnesty declared when Makkah surrendered to the Muslims.
Muawiya used anger over the assassination of Uthman to drum up support
for a rebellion; during the major battle at Siffin, Ali's forces
appeared ascendant but the former ordered his troops to mount verses of
the Quran on their lances, signifying a call for arbitration according
to the Quran; this move caused a significant portion of Ali's army to
stop fighting, forcing him to agree.
The result of the arbitration was
that both should vacate their posts, a decision against Ali due to his
higher position and the fact that Muawiyah was a rebel. He refused to
step down and was martyred not long after at the hands of the Kharjites,
a group of fanatics with views not unlike today's ISIS.
After his
martyrdom, his son, Hasan ibn Ali, the grandson of the Holy Prophet
(PBUH) became the lesser-known fifth Rightly Guided Caliph and only
ruled for a few months, before abdicating in favour of Muawiya on some
conditions, including that he would not form a dynasty to rule the
Caliphate; Hasan retired to Medina where nine years later in 670, he was
poisoned by one of his wives at Muawiyah's instigation.
This passed the Imamate to his brother, Hussain. Imam Hussain and
other notable people such as Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr and Abdullah ibn Umar
tolerated Muawiyah as he was a competent leader. However, near the end
of his reign, Muawiyah nominated his son Yazid as his successor, and
started ordering people to take bayah at Yazid's hand. Imam Hussain was
among the few who refused to do so, even when threatened, as he viewed
it as a violation of the treaty that his brother had signed.
The issue
became a full-blown dispute when Muawiyah died and Yazid became Caliph.
The people of Kufa seemed receptive to his message and invited the Imam
to their city to preach among them. Imam Hussain agreed and dispatched
his cousin, Muslim bin Aqeel, to Kufa to gauge support and take bayah on
his behalf. Hussain departed from Madinah to Kufa with his family, but
in the interim, Yazid replaced the governer of Kufa with one of his own
men, Ubaydullah ibn Ziyad, who arrested and executed Muslim, and
dispersed the pro-Hussain feeling in the city.
Hussain received this
news when he had already commenced his journey and was close to the
city. He decided to continue onwards but ibn Ziyad received orders from
Yazid to gain bayah from the Imam at any cost and blocked his path with
an army at a place called Karbala. They also cut off the supply of water
to his camp by preventing access to the nearby Euphrates River. The
Imam again refused to bow to Yazid and as a result, the battle of
Karbala was fought on the 10th of Muharram, where the Imam and 72 of his
companions, including almost all the male descendants of the Prophet
(PBUH) at the time were martyred.
The Umayyad army did not even spare
the Imam's six month old son, Ali al Asghar. The remainder of the
caravan, mostly women and children, were forcefully marched to Damascus
where Yazid and his court mocked the Imam, but were silenced by a speech
given by Zainab bint Ali, the Imam's sister; among other things, she
affirmed that her kin were martyrs in Paradise and vowed that Yazid and
his supporters would face justice on the Day of Resurrection. In
response, Yazid imprisoned the Ahlul Bayt, the family of the Prophet
(PBUH), but was forced to release them when ordinary people started
crowding the prison to learn about the events of Karbala.
The events of Karbala were not only some of the most tragic in the
history of Islam, but also acted as a catalyst for many others. Imam
Hussain's sacrifice and martyrdom inspired many anti-Yazid people to
rise in revolt and although the Umayyads crushed them, they would soon
be toppled by the Abbasids, who capitalized on the anger among the
populace over the treatment of the Ahlul Bayt. More importantly, this
brought about a schism in Islam that split it into two.
Overnight, the
Shia went from being a politically oriented group to a separate
religious sect that laid emphasis on devotion to the Ahlul Bayt and the
Imams. The Abbasids did not prove to be any better however; while most
Muslims were against the slaughter of the Ahlul Bayt, the Abbasids were
suspicious that the Imams would seek to press their claim to the
Caliphate and thus, encouraged persecution of the Shia. All of the Imams
in the Abbasid period, starting from Imam Jafar al Sadiq till Imam
Askari, were poisoned at the instigation of the Abbasid Caliphs.
However, the Shias began to spread slowly, centered around Iraq and
spreading outwards, and received a boost from the destruction of the
Abbasid Caliphate by the Mongols, which ended state repression. Till the
16th century, many of the Shias in the Middle East belonged to
non-Twelver denominations like Ismailis, Bektashis etc. The
establishment of the Safavid Empire in Iran changed that. The Safavids
imported Shia scholars from the Middle East, provided support for Shia
proselytizing and religious works, and heavily persecuted Sunnis; as a
result, a majority Sunni land was quickly, if violently, converted to
mostly Twelver Shia belief within a few generations.
Due to the power of
the Safavids at their height, the neighboring, majority-Sunni Ottoman
Empire viewed the Shia in its own lands with suspicion and continued the
Abbasid practice of Shia persecution, as did the Mughal Empire in South
Asia to a smaller extent. [1] [2]
In the 20th century, Sunni-Shia relations improved due to national
struggles and joint pan-Muslim causes such as the Khilafat Movement in
South Asia to save the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s and the anti-Zionist
struggle against Israel which united many Muslims across the world
against a common enemy. However, this progress stalled and in fact,
started taking steps backwards due to the spread of Wahhabism and
Salafism. Prior to the 1970s, these austere ideologies were primarily
confined to the Arabian Peninsula, making up a tiny fraction of Sunni
Muslims.
However, new-found oil wealth allowed the Gulf States,
primarily Saudi Arabia, to pour petrodollars into Wahhabi literature,
mosques, madrassas and aid programs, especially in South Asia and the
West. This caused the two inter-linked movements to grow rapidly,
contributing to the increasing conservatism of many Muslim and Arab
societies in comparison to the 60s and 70s. The rise of these movements
contributed to deteriorating inter-sect relations as they do not believe
in the concept of shrines, which on the other hand are a staple of Shia
religious thinking.
Also, these movements are far more liberal in the
application of takfir or excommunication than mainstream Sunnis and have
often labeled Shias to be murtad (apostates), often worse than
non-Muslims. Interestingly, many Salafists in the West are new converts
rather than already Muslim and most of the Muslims involved in terror
acts there are self-taught and generally religiously illiterate.[3]
The Gulf nations were generous patrons of Wahhabism for two main
reasons: Firstly, it enabled the Gulf regimes to move firebrand or
troublesome clerics out of their countries and into others, allowing
them to rule more freely with a more subservient clergy. Secondly, the
Islamic Revolution in Iran shook the Middle East, showing that even the
most powerful of the monarchs in the region could be toppled. Terrified
of this being repeated in their countries and suspicious of their own
Shia populations, the Gulf rulers found it convenient to paint the Shias
as the enemy and use the spectre of the Persian Safavids coming to
violently spread Shia ideology in a way to drum up support and divert
their populations from thinking too deeply about the illegitimacy of
kingdoms in Islam and stifling restrictions at home.
As a result,
inter-sect harmony has deteriorated in virtually every country around
the world, though current relations vary: for instance, in the Persian
Gulf region and the Levant, there are tensions between the communities
and even open war as in Syria, where Sunni rebels fight a generally
Shia-backed government. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the rise of
extremist groups such as the Taliban,Sipah e Sahaba and Lashkar e
Jhangvi have resulted in the targeting of Shia intellectuals, mourning
processions in Muharram, and imambargahs/mosques. However, support for
such attacks is confined to a minority and the majority of Sunnis and
Shias in South Asia continue to coexist in relative harmony. [4]
Some may continue to wonder why rivalries in this region are so
deeply rooted in religion and events that occurred centuries ago. To
understand that, we must look at the concept of the Ummah. In Islam, all
followers of the religion are declared to be one nation, in other words
deconstructing national and racial boundaries in favor of a more
inclusive system where race and origin do not matter, at least in
theory.[5]
Since the Muslim conquest of the Middle East took place so
rapidly, and subsequent conquests and proselytizing engaged a diverse
range of geographically separated peoples, the only common identity with
which to bind empires and nation-states together was the concept of
Islamic brotherhood. Thus, religion has always been the tool of choice
with which rulers have enforced their will upon the region and have also
been toppled. With the Shia, a further incentive for cohesion is their
status as a minority; Of the 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, only 200
million or 15% are estimated to be Shias. [6]
To sum up, the Shia-Sunni relationship is less a victim of
theological differences and more that of political games and power
hungry leaders on both sides. In the end, it is not that Muslims or
savages or Islam is dangerous, but that the Middle East and Muslims are
victims, earlier of colonialist mindsets among foreign powers and now,
of their own ignorance and narrow-mindedness. Most members of each
group do live in harmony with each other across the world and where they
don't, one can hope that technology and open minds can achieve that
soon.
Sources:
- http://www.cfr.org/peace-conflict-and-human-rights/sunni-shia-divide/p33176#!/?cid=otr-marketing_url-sunni_shia_infoguide
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia%E2%80%93Sunni_relations
- http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/10/end-alone-0
- http://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2014/12/20/the-radicalization-of-south-asian-islam-saudi-money-and-the-spread-of-wahhabism/
- http://eng.dar-alifta.org/foreign/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=367&CategoryID=3
- http://www.pewforum.org/2009/10/07/mapping-the-global-muslim-population/
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