Shi'ism, Resistance and Revolution by Martin Kramer Review by: Fouad Ajami Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.

25, No. 2 (Apr., 1989), pp. 270-273 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4283307 . Accessed: 30/07/2012 04:38
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Shi'ism, Resistance and Revolution edited by Martin Kramer. Boulder, CO: WestviewPress; London: Mansell PublishingLimited, 1987. Pp.324 + index. ?27.50. Some fifteen years ago the Iranian publicist Ali Shariati (d. 1977) wrote of Shi'ism as a faith that had lost its early rebellious spirit, that had been stripped of that great act of negation that lies at the root of its history. 'Red Shi'ism', the pamphleteer lamented, had changed to 'Black Shi'ism': the religion of and political refusal had become the religion of mouming. It had all martyrdom gone wrong,the pamphleteer wrote, with the Safavids who domesticatedShi'ism from the 'greatmosque of the masses' to the 'Royal Mosque'. Of course it had not been that simple: Ali Shariatiwas not writinghistory:he was a man with a political agenda,with a gift for the arresting But the metaphor. intervening yearshave borneout the dramaof his imagery:the Shi'ism of political restraintand political withdrawal has throwncaution to the wind. In the land of Shariati'sbirth,and in otherMuslimrealms,we have been witnessingthe audacity andthe ordealof 'Red Shi'ism'. The rebellionhas come; Shariati is not hereto tell us what he thinksof the harvestof this politically stridentShi'ism. PoliticalhistorianMartinKramer has editedan excellent set of scholarlyessays on the phenomenonof radicalizedShi'ism. He has broughttogether 16 papers presentedat a conferenceat Tel Aviv Universityin Decemberof 1984. The essays cover Shi'ism's center in Iran and range over Shia politics in Iraqand the Gulf, Lebanon and Syria, and 'frontier Shi'ism' in Afghanistan,Pakistanand India. The story is carriedforwardfrom Shi'ism's historicalbeginningsright up to the present.And it is told by a groupof able and some very distinguished authorswho have given us an admirable accountof the place of the Shia in Islamicpolitics and of Shi'ism's new sense of defiance. the essays assembledhere (andI will only pick and choose among Cumulatively them in a brief review) tell us of the popularpassions, and the politicaltheory at workin the makingof this newly emancipated Shi'ism. But the millenniumis not at hand.For thereis here as well a recognitionof Shi'ism's limits, of the difficulty which a minority within the Muslim world faces in trying to alter the political course of contemporaryIslam. Shia rebellions are not a new phenomenonin Muslimhistory;the Shia have risen in rebellionbefore.But theirchallengesto the established order were crushed, historian Bernard Lewis reminds us in the volume's opening essay, and ended in the 'suppressionof the rebellion, the extirpationof the terrorists, the death or disappearance of the leader' (p.29). Or the rebellions knew a differentkind of fate, a differentsort of failure.Professor Lewis writes thatthe rebels came to power and then 'carriedon withoutany great significantchanges on the points which mattered'. It is this script writtenby ProfessorLewis which may lie in store for the most recent Shia challenge. Out of the political stormof recent years, this revolt may tum out to have been an affair of state in Iranand a hopeless politicaljoumey for other Shia in other Muslim realms. Indeed the burdenof Shi'ism's Iranianbase may yet prove to be very heavy indeed. Iran gave this latest Shia outbursta political center - a jurist who served like some Pied Piper for the oppressed, political money, some courage to frightenedcommunitieson the fringe of power in Sunni-ruled states.But Iranmay have 'Persianized'the Shia everywhere: it may have loaded them with a strongassociationwith Iranin political orderswhere the comununities that rule and belong are so eager to exclude and to discriminate. Shi'ism may mergewith raisond'tat in Iran,be madeto buttressit; threeessays on domestic and foreign politics of Iran by Shaul Bakhash, the anthropologist

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Michael Fischer, and ShahramChubinwould appearto suggest that this kind of mutationis already in the works. The mujtahidcan become a ruling jurist, the ulama can lay claim to the power and resources of a large state. But there is nothing like this in the cards for other Shia communitieswhere Shi'ism is either the faith of a hounded minority (think of Saudi Arabia or of Pakistan and Afghanistan)or the heritage of a 'compact' and disadvantaged communityin a land of other faiths and sects (think of Lebanonand Iraq). Iran may supply the Shia elsewhere with courage;but Irancan also lead them astray. On the way to a politics of redemptionmen can gambleand lose: this was the fate of IraqiShi'ism, a tale of political dispossessionand disappointment narrated by ProfessorElie Kedourie.If Shi'ism was presumably to have a centerthatcould rival Iran,Iraqwas the sole candidate.Iraqhad the centersof religious learningin Karbala,Najaf, Kazimayn,with their clerical class. Here the mujtahidswielded power, and developed an autonomousbase of political authority.All sorts of currentsof both Persianand Ottomanpolitics of the late 1800s and early 1900s made their presencefelt in the shrinecities of Iraq:the tobacco protestsof Persia of the 1890s, the constitutional revolutionin Persiain 1906, and the agitationthat followed the collapse of Ottomanauthority in the First WorldWarandthe British occupationof Iraq.A quarter-century of political involvementhad given the Shia divines a taste of political power. And in the crucial years of 1918 throughthe creationof the Kingdomof Iraq in 1921, the mujtahidswere in the forefrontof political activism. The mujtahids in the shrine cities of Najaf and Karabalatook the lead in pushingfor independenceduringplebiscites held by the British in 1918-19. The divines were convinced that the force of Shia numberswould prevail in the new independent polity. And in the summerof 1920, duringthe 'greatrevolt' against the British, the ulama gave the rebellion their sanction and approval.But from the perspective of the divines, the rebellion was a great failure. In Professor Kedourie's summation:'The rebellion was a throw of the dice that they [the mujtahidsand the Shia leaders] lost, and the consequencesof that failed gamble have dogged the Shiites of Iraqever since' (p. 149). Undertfie monarchyand the officer-led regimes that inherited the monarchy in 1958, Sunni notables and officers wielded power in Iraq. And the questionsof the Shia in Iraq became a political taboo,just a questionof political sectarianism, ta'ifiyya,that the political class was determinedto obliterate. Young Shi'is made their way to the political arena, particularly in the years between 1945 and 1958, but they did so, ProfessorKedourieobserves,as 'men of the regime and of its political class'. The officer-led regimes visited greater political ruinupon the Shia than did the monarchy.The Shia religious institutions were 'broughtunder central control, and suspected disaffection was put down with a heavy hand'. With the war between Iranand Iraq,the cruel dilemmaof the IraqiShia was thereto see: The Shi'is of Iraq'foundthemselvescitizens of a state levying waron theirco-religionistsanddemanding the sacrificeof theirblood in its cause' (p. 155). Khomeini summoned them to the just rule of the jurist; and SaddamHussein took them on a crusadein defense of orthodoxyand 'Arabism': is it any wonder that earlierdivines once frownedon politics as compromiseand betrayal?'How much better would have been Sukut,'ProfessorKedourieswrites, 'the silence earlierdivines traditionally recommended to believers!' The choice between yesterday's sukut and today's revolutionarytemptations confronts the cautious communities in Bahrain,Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. As Joseph Kostiner ably demonstratesin a chapteron the Gulf, the Shia there had been on the margins of political life; they had their resentments,but these had

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never translatedinto open rebellions. Men knew that political power lay in the handsof others, so they channelledtheir energies into safe endeavors:commerce and trade, the expandingopportunties in the oil industry.Currents borne by the wind taughtthe Shia in the Gulf to refrainfrom playing with fire. And the ruling dynastiesmaintainedsome kind of balancewhich shut out the Shia from political power while providingthem with a 'relativelystable and protectedway of life'. balancewas blown away - along with so muchelse - by the vast This precarious political and economic changes of the 1970s. There was Iran'scall to revolt; but there were, too, things internal to the states of the Gulf. There were the of those who were losing out in the boom, and the arrogance resentments of those who could now entertainall kinds of grandioseillusions abouttheirprerogatives. The spirit of asabiyya had never been vanquished,and the new scramble for wealth, as well as the fight between Arab and Persian in the Gulf, broughtthe asabiyyato the fore and lent it a new ferocity.The shia rebellionintersected with and fed a 'sunni backlash', Dr Kostiner observes. Ayatollah Khomeini had summonedmen to an Islamicrebellion.But he had to settle for somethingentirely different,a Shia following at odds with a rekindledsense of Sunniresentment. In the Gulf men took the new rebellion - its discourse, its passion, its grandiose - and turnedit into somethingvery claims that it is a revolt of the disadvantaged old and familiar:the tribalfeud, the passion of the sect, the primacyof the clan. And this was a battle the Shia could not win. It was at some geographicremovefrom Iran,in Lebanon,wherethe Shia revolt found some fertile soil. Though there, too, as three able and solid essays by Joseph Olmert, Augustus RichardNorton and Clinton Bailey demonstrate,the prospectsfor the Shia are not as brightas the true believers thoughtonly a few years ago. In the Lebanese setting sketched out by Olmert,Norton and Bailey, the Shia of Jabal Amil and the Biaq Valley and GreaterBeirut have shaken off the quiescence of times past. In partthe Shia world in Lebanonwas re-made by urbanization.Then came Iran's example after a bitter decade of IsraeliPalestinianwar in the Southernpart of the country.The Shia were the country's largest demographicgroup; in the aftermathof Israel's destructionof the PLO sanctuaryin Lebanon, they seemed ready to inheritLebanon's rubble. But the storydid not have such a happyendingfor them:therewere deep splits withinthe Shia communityto begin with, splits between those who clung to the Lebanese state,wantedprideof place in Lebanon'spoliticalsystem and those who ralliedto Iran'scause and who saw themselvesand their work as extensionsof the Iranian revolution. And there were other factors to contend with: the presence in Lebanon's politics of both Syria and Israel, the will and the fears of the other communitiesof Lebanon, and the resurgenceof the Palestiniansposing as the praetorian guardfor the Sunni communitiesof West Beirutand Sidon. The Shia of Lebanon have discardedtheir old quietism, but there is no Shia dominionin Lebanon'sfuture and no end in sight to the politics of banditryand hate. What is clear is that the Shia of Lebanon'scountrysideare now presentin force in the politics of Beirut:they have brokenwith the insularity of theirvillages and walked into the politics of a contestedcity. In the neighboring Syrian state, as well, there has been another dramatic migrationfrom the (heterodox)countrysideto the city. The childrenof the Alawi countrysidehave come to Damascus and they are there as its militarymasters. MartinKramer's essay 'Syria's Alawis and Shi'ism' is an illuminating look at how this came to pass, and an intriguinganalysis of the relationshipbetween the Alawis of Syria and Twelver Shi'ism. Like the Twelver Shia in Lebanon,the Alawis were a communityshut out of

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political power, 'divided and unassimilated'.There emancipationwas, for the most part, the conquest of political power through the army. But there was anotherpartto the Alawi rise to power:their searchfor religious legitimacy.And this is where Dr Kramer'snarrativeis particularly compelling.Stitchingtogether various memoirs and fragmentary bits of evidence, Kramershows how Alawis makingtheirway out of rurualinsularitysoughtreligiouslegitimacyby embracing (at least in public) Twelver Shia jurisprudence. It was a marriageof convenience, two communities of marginality brought together in their struggle with the hegemony of orthodox(Sunni) Islam in Bilad al Sham.The Frenchhad given the Alawis a Twelver Shia cover, in the 1920s, by establishingindependentAlawi courtsand claiming that these courts would rule in accordwith Twelver Shi'ism. Naturally the Alawis kept to themselves, ruled in accord with Alawi custom. With independence,the Alawis sought an accord with the Sunni authoritiesof Damascusand had to settle for afatwa attestingto theirbeing Muslimsfrom Hajj Amin al-Husayniin Jerusalem. By the early 1970s, after the Alawi conquest of political power and the Sunni rejection of Alawi dominion, the matterof Alawi recognitionwould become a thornypolitical issue. This time, the Alawis would again, as in the 1920s, seek a Shia cover. The solution was to be provided by the Shia political divine then ascendantin Lebanon,Iman Musa al Sadr:'The regime of Hafiz al-Ased needed quick religious legitimacy; the Shi'is of Lebanon, Musa al Sadr had decided, needed a powerful patron. Interests busily converged from every direction'. (p.247). Several years later the Iranianrevolutionfound an ally of sorts in the Syrian regime. The star of Twelver Shi'ism had 'risen in Iran and Lebanon'. Meanwhilethe Alawis continueto straddlethe fence: they are, alternately, either defenders of orthodox Islam and the besieged 'Arab order' or, like the Shia, heterodoxrebels, themselves persecutedstep-children of the Arab world. The Jurisprudenceof Shi'ism, and more importantly,its temperamentand psyche were molded by persecutionand marginality. Shi'ism was nurtured in the shadows of power. Save for that 'Shia century' (930s until 1050s) where Shia themespermeated the elite cultureof Islam,Shi'ism has been the faith of men and communities who got along without exercising power, who developed a keen sense of where they lived and of the ground on which they stood. Only in Iran would Shi'ism be the faith of a majority,and only there would the clerical estate finally put forth a notion that clerics have a right to rule. Today Iranproposesits temperament and its jurisprudence as a guide for Shia in otherrealms.In place of the caution of these communities, the Iranian tribunes now urge unbridled activism; where men once let ambiguity soften the hard edges of social and political life, the true believers now dismiss ambiguityas cowardiceor worse. Led by the custodians of the Iranianstate, the Shia upstartsof Islam have attackedthe citadels of orthodoxyand of the status quo. The attackersspeak the languageof redemptionand deliverance.But at its core theirrebellionis made of wrathand resentments,the rage of the excluded,and, of course,an Iranian bid for primacy. For their part the defenders speak of order, of the stricturesof the Sunna, of the 'wholeness' and 'purity' of things Arab. And at its core, their defense is about some very old and familiarthings:the defense of privilege, the inabilityto take in othersbeyond one's clan and sect, the hatredand suspicion of men who partakeof other customs and doctrine. Can anything really positive emerge out of the feud and the carnage?
FouAD AJAMI