The Relationships that Shias and Sunnis Have with Political Authority Figures in Syria - Coursework Example

The Shia Muslims constitute about ten to fifteen percent (10-15 of the Muslim population around the globe (Amin). The Shias were called Shia from the term Shiat Ali, the faction of Ali who was the cousin of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. The Shias broke from the Sunnis essentially from the time of the first Caliph, Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr was chosen for his seniority and by a vote of a shura council which was a group made up of the most educated, respected and religious of the Muslim community. This happened soon after the death of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. While the Shias still thought Ali should have been the first caliph. (Sullivan) The distance of Shias from the Sunnis increased after the murder of Ali by the Khajarites, which were the first real extremist jihadists in Islam, while he was at prayer in Kufah. Ali was the fourth Muslim Caliph at the time. A Khajarite killed Ali to fulfill the wishes of his fiance, who was another jihadist extremist. All of the Shia Imams, which was the Shia version of the Caliph, were Alid, from the family of Ali (Adeeb 59-69). Other tipping points for the Shia include the murders of Alis sons Hassan and Hussein. Hussein and Ali were killed in Kerbala. Husseins tomb is found in Karbala while Alis was in Najaf. Their tombs are important places of pilgrimage for the Shia. The emotional outpouring in Najaf is a common scene because this was the anniversary of the day Shia mourn Husseins death. History and religion mean a lot to the Shia of Iraq. Hussein was murdered on the 10th of Muharrem, the first month of the Islamic calendar in the 8th century and on the 40th day after a persons death there is a special time of mourning in that part of the world. Husseins tomb is in Najaf, hence the arbaeen or fortieth (40th) commemoration was held in Najaf. Iraq is in many ways the theological center of Shia Islam. Most of the twelve Imams are buried there. Most of the holiest shrines for the Shia are there. (Sullivan) Most Shia who are in Iraq are Ithna Ashara Shia or Twelver Shia, as the case with the Shias in Iran. They believe that there were twelve Imams, with the last one still in occultation until the "last days." This last Imam will come back as Al-Mahdi, sort of the savior for the Shia. When he returns then there will be a just government, according to some Shia. Until then some believe that all governments will not be entirely just. (Sullivan) On the other hand, the Sunnis which were called as such from the word "Sunni" in Arabic comes from a word meaning "one who follows the traditions of the Prophet." They make up the majority, specifically eighty-five percent (85%), of Muslims all over the world. The Sunni Muslims agree with the position taken by many of the Prophets companions, that the new leader should be elected from among those capable of the job. This is what was done, and the Prophet Muhammads close friend and advisor, Abu Bakr, became the first Caliph of the Islamic nation. (Dodge) Sunni Muslims counter that there is no basis in Islam for a hereditary privileged class of spiritual leaders, and certainly no basis for the veneration or intercession of saints. Sunni Muslims contend that leadership of the community is not a birthright, but a trust that is earned and which may be given or taken away by the people themselves. (Dodge) Shias and Sunnis differ in various points. The basic points of difference include the historical schism. The Shias feel that Ali should have been the first caliph, and that Mohammed had said so during his last days. They even have a holiday, Eid Al-Ghadir, for the day that they believe Mohammed said that Ali would be the caliph after him. This holiday is called that because Mohammed was to have said at a spring in Saudi Arabia called Ghadir Al-Khumm which means the pool of Khumm, that whoever has him as a master has Ali as a master. That quotation, of hadith, has led many Shia to believe that only Ali should have been the first caliph, not Abu Bakr, and that all caliphs, excepting those in the family of Ali, the Alids, were falsely chosen and were not the true leaders of the Muslim umma or community. There is also the problem of the murders of Ali, Hussein and Hasan. Those murders are a history that is alive today in the lives of many Shia. (Sullivan) Theologically, the Shia and the Sunni have much in common. They both follow the Hadith Al-Jabreels statement on the five pillars of Islam which the first being the shehada, or the statement of faith, that there is no God but God and Mohammed is his messenger; the second which is the salah, are the five daily prayers; the third being the zakat, which is a voluntary religious tax paid directly to the poor. The Shias add in a khums tax, twenty percent of an individual’s profits. This is to aid in the protection and development of the umma; the fourth is the sawm which is fasting for the entire month of Ramadan if you are physically up to it and not traveling; and the fifith is the Hajj which is performing a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime if one is financially and physically able to without harming other commitments, like to ones family (Pillars of Islam). There are also many articles of faith that they share. They both see the Koran as the revealed word of God through Mohammed. They also look to the life of Mohammed as an example for how to live. The hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, are also used to consider moral, ethical, and practical decisions. Many Shia take pilgrimages to the holy sites in the Atabat which are the holy thresholds in Iraq of Najaf, Kerbala, Samarra, and Kazimayn. The Sunni do not normally consider these as places of pilgrimage, but some do revere Ali as one of the rashidoon or the rightly guided caliphs. (Sullivan) These similarities might per chance bring the Sunnis and the Shia closer together in the future. The differences, however, are also important. The most important distinction seems to be that the Shia revere their Imams, and that many Shia look upon the first twelve Imams as being near prophetic status. Some Sunni see this as heresy and look upon their caliphs as the true leaders of the umma. Others see only the rashidoon, or the first four "rightly guided caliphs, as being the best examples of Muslim leadership. There are many different viewpoints on leadership in both communities, but there seems to be general disagreement between the two about the place and stature of the Shia Imams, most of the Shia Imams were never recognized by the Sunni as leaders of the faithful. (Sullivan) For the Sunni an Imam is simply a leader of prayer in the mosque and a preacher, a knowledgeable man or part of the ulema. There are tens of thousands of such Imams in Sunni Islam. To the Shia an Imam is a vaunted character and has a special place in their lives. There have been no true Imams for the Shia since the twelfth Imam, Mohammed, went into the "greater occultation." Many Shia felt uncomfortable when some called the Ayatollah Khomeini "Imam Khomeini." The late Ayatollah Khomeini was not an Imam in the sense of belonging in the same group as the twelve Shia Imams. He was considered a marja at-taqlid, a source of emulation, and a great man by many Shia. Others found his ideas extreme, especially his concept of a cleric running the state, the wilayet-e-faqih. (Sullivan) The combination of the concepts of the Imam, the Mahdi, and adel, which means justice with its opposite zulm which, on the other hand, means tyranny, lead to the historical delineation of church and state in Shia Islam. In Iran, for example, until the time of the Ayatollah Khomeini and especially after his intellectual discourse on the concept of wilayet-e-faqih, the Shia ulema had been at the best of times in a polite, but contentious, relationship with the government. At the worst of times they were leaders of uprisings and dissent. Similarities could be found in the relations between the Shia mullahs and ayatollahs in Iraq and the Ottoman Empire which was Sunni in influence, most certainly in their relations with British when they ruled directly, and with the British-installed Hashemite, a Sunni monarchy that began with King Faisal, son of the Sharif of Mecca who was also a Sunni. The Shia religious leadership was the vanguard of the anti-British rebellions in the 1920s. Some of the families of the present-day leaders in the Iraqi Shia community were involved: the Al-Hakims, Al-Sadrs, Al-Khoeis and Al-Sistanis. There is a strong history of dissent from the leaders the Shia community in Iraq that policy makers should be aware of. (Sullivan) In Iraq there have always been Shia religious leaders who challenged the state for religious, ethical and other reasons. During the time of the Baath they were often tortured, killed or imprisoned. Many of the leaders of the Shia were point-blank murdered by the government, sometimes en masse, for allegedly challenging it. Some of the Shia and their leaders survived during the time of the Baath and Saddam Hussein by applying the concept of taqiyyah. They would hide their true beliefs in order to protect themselves from harm. This is an accepted practice by many Shia. Now that the Shia sees their time for power on the horizon they will not shirk their duties as they see them, and taqiyyah will not be needed. (Sullivan) The Sunni ulema, unlike the Shia ulema, have historically been more in concordance with the government leadership from Empire to Empire and after the times of independence, from state to state. Some of the ulema, prayer leaders and preachers, the Sunni version of Imams, have been appointed by the state and are in some ways beholden to the state for financing and their employment. There are some who clearly distinguish themselves as being anti-state. But these are now usually found either outside of the countries where they became ulema, or within extremist and other opposition groups. The mukhabarat (secret police) of some of the Muslim states have often made a point of replacing any Imam who could cause political or other trouble. The most vocal contrarians have been either expelled, imprisoned, stripped of their employment, or have fled to safer ground. There is no assumption of a necessary potential conflict between the "church and state" as in Shia Islam, but there is the concept gained from the Koran of the "evil prince". In the Koran Muslims are enjoined to put forth effort or jihad to enjoin evil and ensure that which is good. Over the centuries some of the Sunni ulema have sometimes backed down to the wishes of the governments to preserve peace in the kingdom, empire or country. However, there is an underlying theme of adel in Sunni Islam as well. Justice is an important part of both branches of Islam. What it means and how one gets to it differ sometimes across the branches. The Shia ulema have been sometimes more anti-state than the Sunni ulema. The development of a Shia cleric-controlled state in Iran has certainly confused the situation. (Sullivan) Both Sunni and Shia Muslims share the most fundamental Islamic beliefs and articles of faith. The differences between these two main sub-groups within Islam initially stemmed not from spiritual differences, but political ones. Over the centuries, however, these political differences have spawned a number of varying practices and positions which have come to carry a spiritual significance. (Dodge) In Syria, the rise of political Islam can be traced to the 1940s, when a Muslim group called al-Gharra entered parliament, creating an Islamic Bloc to oppose the secular and civilian regime of President Shukri al-Quwatli. In 1944, its leaders presented a long list of demands that included installing special tramcars during rush hour to separate the sexes, shutting down all cabarets and casinos that served alcohol, arresting the owners of nightclubs, and the establishment of a moral police squad, similar to the one in Saudi Arabia, to be charged with patrolling streets and punishing transgressors of Islamic norms. In May 1944, al-Gharra violently protested against a charity ball held in Damascus, which wives of the ruling elite were planning to attend unveiled. Demonstrators took to the streets, carrying revolvers and knives, stoning cinemas that welcomed women and burning nightclubs. To win, the president decided to discredit the clerics in districts where they enjoyed most power; the poor neighborhoods of Damascus (Moubayed). Quwatli got Adila Bayhum, head of the independent Womens Union, to temporarily cease the free distribution of milk to the citys poor. Women were politely turned away when they attempt to get their supplies. Then, flour distribution was cut off in Midan, where the Islamists were popular; this was done since the government controlled all flour rations in the wartime economy. Consecutive regimes did not pursue moderate approaches, however, and clashed with the Brotherhood twice, in 1964 and 1982. The Brotherhood considered the Ba’ath to be secular heretics, and the Ba’athists considered the Brotherhood leaders to be dangerous fanatics who needed to be rooted out from Syrian society. The Muslim Brothers were disturbed by the Ba’athist takeover of 1963 and began to stir an anti-Ba’athist sentiment in Syria’s urban interior. Secret cells of Islamic groups were formed to bring down the Ba’athist regime. In Aleppo, the Sheikh Abd al-Rahman Abu Ghuddah, an ally of pre-Ba’athist Syrian President Nazim al-Qudsi and former Mufti of Aleppo, created the Movement for Islamic Liberation. Provocative speeches aroused the street and denunciation of the Ba’athist regime was widespread. By April 1964, rioting had developed into a religious war in the conservative city of Hama, where arms were used against the government. The prime agitator was Marwan Hadeed, a Muslim leader from Hama who claimed that the Ba’athists, alongside all secular people, were infidels who must be put to the sword. This posed a threat to the safety and security of Ba’athists. Enraged, the Ba’athists and Defense Minister Hamad Ubayd ordered the Syrian Army into Hama, bombarding districts of the city where the Brotherhood were located. In all, around 70 members of the Brotherhood were killed. Defeated, they put down their arms and ceased their militant activity for the next fifteen years, when they re-emerged in 1979 to challenge the regime of President Hafez al-Asad (Moubayed). In the mid-1970s, the Brotherhood became active again for numerous reasons. Having recovered, physically, morally, and financially, from the defeat of 1964; another was to have their outrage at its peek when Asad went to war in Lebanon in 1976, supporting the Christians against the Palestinian guerillas of Yasser Arafat; plus the mass recruitment into the Ba’ath Party made it easy to infiltrate and work from within against the regime and lastly the Brotherhood had a strong monopoly over schools, thus enabling it to indoctrinate many children and young adults. Islamic terrorism reached its peak in June 1979 when the Artillery School was attacked in Aleppo, resulting in the deaths of all its young Ba’athist cadets. Not all of the victims of the violence were Alawi Ba’athists; indeed even members of the Sunni Muslim clergy were targeted by the Brothers and their militant allies. The most prominent victim was Sheikh Mohammad al-Shami, who was slain at his mosque, on February 2, 1980 (Moubayed). Faced with a relentless Islamist onslaught, the Ba’ath regime struck back with remarkable ferocity. On June 26, 1980, the Brothers tried to kill Asad in Damascus and in turn, he passed the law 49 on July 8, which stipulated that membership in the Brotherhood was a capital offense, punishable by death. At present this law is still in effect while negotiations between the government and the Brotherhood are underway (Bayanouni: More). The fighting reached its peak on February 2 to 3, 1982 in Hama, where the Brothers took to the mosque pulpits and called for a “total war” against the Ba’athist regime. Authorities responded with force, giving the Syrian Army orders to crush the insurgency. The army responded positively, crushing the insurgency, and killing many thousands in the process. The defeat in Hama was a massive setback for the Brothers who disappeared from the Syrian political landscape for the rest of the 1980s (Moubayed). To compensate for the losses it inflicted in 1982, the regime constructed hundreds of mosques throughout the country, and encouraged people to be pious but not fundamentalist and militant, as the Brotherhood had been. This eventually back-fired as “backdoor” sermons on political Islam started to surface once again in the early 1990s. Fiery and militant preachers took over numerous mosques, and banned books by the legendary jihadi ideologue, Said Qutb, were distributed widely (Moubayed). The U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in March-April 2003, has played an important part in reviving Syrian militant Islam. While some Americans regularly accuse Syria of giving shelter to an assortment of Iraqi and foreign militants – ranging from Saddam Hussein loyalists to Takfiris – the Syrian authorities and the wider public have to contend with the very real twin threat of the revival of the Brotherhood and its many militant and Salafist offshoots. The official position of the Syrian government is that it cooperates with the Americans, if only to neutralize the militant threat inside Syria. True, Syria did turn a blind eye to the fighters who crossed the border to fight in Iraq in 2003, but it soon corrected this policy (Moubayed). When the fighters were defeated or deported back to Syria, a combination of frustration, anger and despair overtook them. Unable to strike at the Americans in Iraq or the Israelis in Palestine, they unleashed their anger on their fellow Syrians. In addition to the Mezzeh attack of 2004, a group of terrorists were apprehended, after a shooting that caused panic among picnickers, in July 2005 on Mount Qassioun overlooking the Syrian capital. Earlier in the summer of 2005, Syria announced that it had arrested one man and killed another who had been planning an attack in Damascus on behalf of Jund al-Sham, a terrorist organization that has recently emerged in the country (Moubayed). In order to defeat political Islam in the long-term, the Ba’ath regime continues to promote moderate Islam through regime-friendly clerics like the deputy Mohammad Habash, the Aleppo-based preacher Mohammad Kamil al-Husayni, and new Grand Mufti Ahmad Hassoun, who has announced that he is categorically opposed to political and militant Islam. One of these clerics, for example, has a sign on the gates of his mosque in Aleppo saying: “No to explosions!” There is some speculation that in the event of the sudden demise of the Ba’ath regime, the Brothers and their militant allies would quickly acquire ownership of the Syrian state. Certainly the events in neighboring Iraq since the invasion should be a wake up call for Washington. In Iraq, the U.S.-led invasion has ironically buried Iraqi secularism for good, thus surrendering control of the political landscape to Shi’a and Sunni Islamists (Moubayed). The Islamic groups do represent a certain segment of Syrian society that cannot be ignored. Recently, some reconciliation steps have been taken by the government, including several amnesties which have set free over 1,000 members of the Brotherhood. But the regime has made it clear that a return to organized political activity, for either the Brotherhood or any other Islamic party, is a red-line that the Islamists would cross at their peril. The regime, however, would be committing a grave mistake by not giving the Islamic activists a platform to express their views therefore not resolving the tension and leaving the streets of Syria a battleground for the opposing groups (Moubayed). CITED WORKS Adeeb, Mohammad Hussein. The Brief History of the Fourteen Infallibles: Ansariyan Publications, 1997 Amin, Hussein Abdulwaheed. “The Origins of the Sunni/Shia split in Islam.” Islam for Today. 2001. 4 December 2007. . “Bayanouni: More Influential Opponents in Syrian Regime.” The Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) Official English Website. 8 June 2007. The Muslim Brotherhood. 5 December 2007. . Dodge, Huda. “Sunni - Shia: Brief History.” Religious Education. 19 March 2007. IslamiCity. 3 December 2007. . Moubayed, Sami. “The History of Political and Militant Islam in Syria.” Terrorism Monitor. August 11, 2005. 4 December 2007. . “Pillars of Islam.” Discover Islam. Islamic Path. 6 December 2007. . Sullivan, Paul. “Who Are the Shia?” History News Network. 26 May 2003. George Mason University. 5 December 2007. . Read More