Terrorism, Globalization and the Defensive Jihad
I was leafing through Phillip Bobbitt's very interesting book Terror and Consent, mainly because every time I pull up my own book off of Amazon, it tells me I should also buy his book. It actually has nothing to with my book, I don't know why it keeps pushing it on me, but in any event, when you go onto Amazon to buy my book (here) you can find it. I bought it after the incessant insistence of Amazon, hoping my insistence to all of you will induce you to get my book already if you haven't yet.
One thing Bobbitt has said a few times now is that in many ways those organizations that set themselves up in opposition to the current global order tend to mimic the structures of that order. If the enemy got it to work, I guess the theory goes, then so can we. And so the PLO or the IRA during the era of the strong nation state basically created their own shadow army, and had ranks in the army, and chains of command, as if it was an actual military in an actual country when in fact it was not, making the whole exercise a little bit strange. Hezbollah and Hamas actually don't do that, or not nearly to that degree. Certainly the chief global threat Bobbitt addresses, Al Qaeda, does not. There is far more decentralization, it isn't so much an organization as a brand, with plenty of outsourcing.
This, Bobbitt suggests, is in many ways the structure of the modern state, which he calls a market state. Boundaries become fuzzy, citizens move everywhere, money and companies and trade certainly moves across states almost seamlessly, and so what we are moving to is not so much a nation state unified by a set of ideas, or by a ruling dynasty or by defined territory or whatever, but a market state in which more or less the state grants the citizens that which they need (above all, protection from bad things) and derives its legitimacy from that. Terrorism, or a hurricane where the government does nothing in response, is the biggest threat to that market state.
I'm not sure I buy all of this, market state might very well describe how elites like me have lived their lives (some in the US, some in Iraq, some in Hong Kong and Tokyo and Jakarta) and how we might start to think of government, certainly territorial boundary disputes perplex me greatly, as someone who has lived in any number of territories under any number of governments with relative satisfaction, and I can't figure out why people wouldn't prefer to figure out a way to live happily and demand what they need under whatever government exists than insist on this thing they call "independence" where they are still going to want more or less the same things, with just different people in charge. But it seems from my vantage point here in Pittsburgh, as well as from my vantage point in Baghdad, the nation state seemed quite alive and well. People still ready to kill and die for particular governments, and the ideas or territories or dynasties (in other countries) they tend to espouse. I wonder whether this is sort of elites guessing how the rest of the world is moving based on their own experiences.
That said, there is something to this. Clearly boundaries are not what they once were, and there are global trends towards less control by the nation, and more by international networks and systems. And clearly Al Qaeda is, in this respect, more of a disparate network than a shadow army a la the IRA or the PLO. Whether one has anything to do with the other I haven't thought about much, Bobbitt has, and it's certainly interesting to contemplate.
What I find more relevant to my work, however, is how doctrinally Al Qaeda manages to achieve this. The reason is that classical jihad is remarkably conservative in character, designed as much to protect the internal stability of the Abode of Islam as to spread it into heathen lands through military expansion. The rules make this very clear. Under the classical rules, the mujahideen must swear fealty to the caliph. Only the caliph can call the jihad. Any other violence is strictly prohibited. In other words, you can't rebel. There's no such thing. or there is such a thing, it's one of the seven scriptural sins in Sunni Islam (and isn't terribly scriptural in that it's not well supported by text) and you can get cross amputated (hand on one side, foot on the other) and/or crucified for it. Again, the texts don't support all of this as clearly as the jurists do, I would therefore like to raise the point that perhaps some of this has to do with jurists pleasing caliphs through demanding political allegiance to the latter.
Now of course to say that these rules were ignored in large part is obvious enough; Islam is replete with cases of internal dissent and rebellion. But how does an Islamic organization that takes doctrine seriously deal with this? How to justify in the name of Islam near total departure from so many central rules of jihad?
There are two ways. The first is that one doesn't actually have to follow the classical rules. When convenient to do so, as in slavery, they can be ignored. Osama Bin Laden has suggested as much at times, dismissively referring to such rules as the fiqh of the classical doctors as opposed to what he calls the fiqh of the Prophet Muhammad. In modern parlance, this is called the "fundamentalist" approach, and it is derided as not very legal, but I can't see why this is so. Simply because one has decided to poke a stick in the eye of traditional doctrine doesn't all of a sudden deprive the position of the status of law, unless it actually isn't taken seriously by decision makers. But such approaches are taken seriously by decision makers in contexts and times, and so it seems to me it is law. Not always very well reasoned, but still an outcome is achieved, and held to.
But as Sherman Jackson says, legitimacy in interpretation does matter, and there is a greater danger to losing it when you can't find anyone else who agrees with you from the supposed golden era (in the Sunni world, we'll go back to Shi'ism tomorrow). I don't think it's as stark as it seems Professor Jackson makes it out to be, but clearly it would help to find classical doctors who might help out.
And here, traditional classical doctrine, read selectively, dovetails beautifully with modern Muslim grievances to form a set of ideas that have spread across virtually the whole Muslim world. As I've noted a few times before, in previous posts, traditional classical doctrine doesn't hold to all of these rules of waiting for the caliph, for example, when the question is one of defense of the Abode of Islam. That is, if the Muslim world is getting ready to invade, say, Spain, then you wait for the caliph and make sure you remain loyal to him. If the land of whatever is under attack, well then get your sword and go fight for it, no time for waiting.
Now it seems in the classical context this is more a matter of the urgency of the situation than anything else. What kind of response can you mount if you are all sitting around waiting for orders that are going to take days to arrive given the technology of the day? That's the impression I get, and my favorite expert on the subject Majid Khadduri says something similar, that it is a "sudden attack" that merits the suspension of some rules.
But look how wonderfully it all fits in if you read "defense" more broadly (a plausible enough reading, but as noted in last post, not a necessary one), not to mean surprise attack, but something the classicists wouldn't have considered, a colonial enterprise. When you look at Bin Laden's list of grievances, it's all about attacks from the West. Talk to angry Muslims, it's all about how the West has done this and done that and how the Muslims are always the victims of Western aggression, not vice versa.
Yes some of it is a culture of victimization, yes some of it is downright ridiculous, some of it quite anger inducing, I'm not talking about merits, though everyone seems to want to. The point is perceptions, which are everything. And so when you take a people who currently believe they are always history's victims, never its aggressors, add to it a doctrinal avenue from which as victims violence might be unleashed, and a solution is found. No caliphate permission is needed, in the Sunni paradigm, for the fight is of defense. The Imam need not reappear, in the Shi'i paradigm, for we act only in defense. Modern sensibilities meet classical understandings, in a way that permeates the whole Muslim world. All of it. Not all accept all of the claims of self defense, Bin Laden's being a good example of one that is quite controversial and repudiated by a fair number. But a very substantial majority accept the premise that the Muslim world is under attack from the West, and that there must be a response thereto (what response is again a question up in the air) and if conducted properly it is defensive jihad.
But one more obstacle stands, when the attacks are not directed against the West, or non-Muslim states anyway, then how can it be an attack on the Abode of Islam? What classical doctrine is going to justify that? Well now we turn to apostasy, for while nothing seems to suggest you can revolt against a Muslim leader, if he's not Muslim, then all sorts of things seem okay. Read opportunistically and selectively, as all texts are to make a case, you can come up with a pretty long list of apostasy crimes, and then play with the facts to make anyone from the Saudi king to the Shi'a tea seller an apostate.
And we come back full circle. We have to attack and kill the tea seller, who is Shi'i, and deprive his family of a wage earner and his children of a father and his wife of a husband. It is defense. For he is Shi'i and therefore an apostate, and he acts in addition as an agent of the attacking West by selling tea to anyone including US soldiers, and therefore by killing him we are defending the abode of Islam. All permitted, all can be done without a higher caliphate authority, all can be organized in a highly decentralized fashion. The classical doctors permit it, when it is defense.
Faithful application of classical Sunni doctrine? I hope as the blog makes clear, judged by outcomes, that doesn't mean anything, judges have choices when they read texts, there is no purely faithful application in matters of adjudication. If choice is true on the question of the last post, three wives or four, it's ten times more true here, where you are carrying forward something from a different place and a different time whose application in different circumstances is subject to high levels of dispute. Clearly classical doctrine doesn't HAVE to be read this way, very serious Sunnis don't. Clearly it CAN be read this way, very serious Sunnis do. How much was it really an influence, and how much was it really just angry people looking for any old excuse to kill people they could associate with the target of their anger? I think a lot of the latter, and a wee bit of the former, but learned minds can disagree.
HAH
One thing Bobbitt has said a few times now is that in many ways those organizations that set themselves up in opposition to the current global order tend to mimic the structures of that order. If the enemy got it to work, I guess the theory goes, then so can we. And so the PLO or the IRA during the era of the strong nation state basically created their own shadow army, and had ranks in the army, and chains of command, as if it was an actual military in an actual country when in fact it was not, making the whole exercise a little bit strange. Hezbollah and Hamas actually don't do that, or not nearly to that degree. Certainly the chief global threat Bobbitt addresses, Al Qaeda, does not. There is far more decentralization, it isn't so much an organization as a brand, with plenty of outsourcing.
This, Bobbitt suggests, is in many ways the structure of the modern state, which he calls a market state. Boundaries become fuzzy, citizens move everywhere, money and companies and trade certainly moves across states almost seamlessly, and so what we are moving to is not so much a nation state unified by a set of ideas, or by a ruling dynasty or by defined territory or whatever, but a market state in which more or less the state grants the citizens that which they need (above all, protection from bad things) and derives its legitimacy from that. Terrorism, or a hurricane where the government does nothing in response, is the biggest threat to that market state.
I'm not sure I buy all of this, market state might very well describe how elites like me have lived their lives (some in the US, some in Iraq, some in Hong Kong and Tokyo and Jakarta) and how we might start to think of government, certainly territorial boundary disputes perplex me greatly, as someone who has lived in any number of territories under any number of governments with relative satisfaction, and I can't figure out why people wouldn't prefer to figure out a way to live happily and demand what they need under whatever government exists than insist on this thing they call "independence" where they are still going to want more or less the same things, with just different people in charge. But it seems from my vantage point here in Pittsburgh, as well as from my vantage point in Baghdad, the nation state seemed quite alive and well. People still ready to kill and die for particular governments, and the ideas or territories or dynasties (in other countries) they tend to espouse. I wonder whether this is sort of elites guessing how the rest of the world is moving based on their own experiences.
That said, there is something to this. Clearly boundaries are not what they once were, and there are global trends towards less control by the nation, and more by international networks and systems. And clearly Al Qaeda is, in this respect, more of a disparate network than a shadow army a la the IRA or the PLO. Whether one has anything to do with the other I haven't thought about much, Bobbitt has, and it's certainly interesting to contemplate.
What I find more relevant to my work, however, is how doctrinally Al Qaeda manages to achieve this. The reason is that classical jihad is remarkably conservative in character, designed as much to protect the internal stability of the Abode of Islam as to spread it into heathen lands through military expansion. The rules make this very clear. Under the classical rules, the mujahideen must swear fealty to the caliph. Only the caliph can call the jihad. Any other violence is strictly prohibited. In other words, you can't rebel. There's no such thing. or there is such a thing, it's one of the seven scriptural sins in Sunni Islam (and isn't terribly scriptural in that it's not well supported by text) and you can get cross amputated (hand on one side, foot on the other) and/or crucified for it. Again, the texts don't support all of this as clearly as the jurists do, I would therefore like to raise the point that perhaps some of this has to do with jurists pleasing caliphs through demanding political allegiance to the latter.
Now of course to say that these rules were ignored in large part is obvious enough; Islam is replete with cases of internal dissent and rebellion. But how does an Islamic organization that takes doctrine seriously deal with this? How to justify in the name of Islam near total departure from so many central rules of jihad?
There are two ways. The first is that one doesn't actually have to follow the classical rules. When convenient to do so, as in slavery, they can be ignored. Osama Bin Laden has suggested as much at times, dismissively referring to such rules as the fiqh of the classical doctors as opposed to what he calls the fiqh of the Prophet Muhammad. In modern parlance, this is called the "fundamentalist" approach, and it is derided as not very legal, but I can't see why this is so. Simply because one has decided to poke a stick in the eye of traditional doctrine doesn't all of a sudden deprive the position of the status of law, unless it actually isn't taken seriously by decision makers. But such approaches are taken seriously by decision makers in contexts and times, and so it seems to me it is law. Not always very well reasoned, but still an outcome is achieved, and held to.
But as Sherman Jackson says, legitimacy in interpretation does matter, and there is a greater danger to losing it when you can't find anyone else who agrees with you from the supposed golden era (in the Sunni world, we'll go back to Shi'ism tomorrow). I don't think it's as stark as it seems Professor Jackson makes it out to be, but clearly it would help to find classical doctors who might help out.
And here, traditional classical doctrine, read selectively, dovetails beautifully with modern Muslim grievances to form a set of ideas that have spread across virtually the whole Muslim world. As I've noted a few times before, in previous posts, traditional classical doctrine doesn't hold to all of these rules of waiting for the caliph, for example, when the question is one of defense of the Abode of Islam. That is, if the Muslim world is getting ready to invade, say, Spain, then you wait for the caliph and make sure you remain loyal to him. If the land of whatever is under attack, well then get your sword and go fight for it, no time for waiting.
Now it seems in the classical context this is more a matter of the urgency of the situation than anything else. What kind of response can you mount if you are all sitting around waiting for orders that are going to take days to arrive given the technology of the day? That's the impression I get, and my favorite expert on the subject Majid Khadduri says something similar, that it is a "sudden attack" that merits the suspension of some rules.
But look how wonderfully it all fits in if you read "defense" more broadly (a plausible enough reading, but as noted in last post, not a necessary one), not to mean surprise attack, but something the classicists wouldn't have considered, a colonial enterprise. When you look at Bin Laden's list of grievances, it's all about attacks from the West. Talk to angry Muslims, it's all about how the West has done this and done that and how the Muslims are always the victims of Western aggression, not vice versa.
Yes some of it is a culture of victimization, yes some of it is downright ridiculous, some of it quite anger inducing, I'm not talking about merits, though everyone seems to want to. The point is perceptions, which are everything. And so when you take a people who currently believe they are always history's victims, never its aggressors, add to it a doctrinal avenue from which as victims violence might be unleashed, and a solution is found. No caliphate permission is needed, in the Sunni paradigm, for the fight is of defense. The Imam need not reappear, in the Shi'i paradigm, for we act only in defense. Modern sensibilities meet classical understandings, in a way that permeates the whole Muslim world. All of it. Not all accept all of the claims of self defense, Bin Laden's being a good example of one that is quite controversial and repudiated by a fair number. But a very substantial majority accept the premise that the Muslim world is under attack from the West, and that there must be a response thereto (what response is again a question up in the air) and if conducted properly it is defensive jihad.
But one more obstacle stands, when the attacks are not directed against the West, or non-Muslim states anyway, then how can it be an attack on the Abode of Islam? What classical doctrine is going to justify that? Well now we turn to apostasy, for while nothing seems to suggest you can revolt against a Muslim leader, if he's not Muslim, then all sorts of things seem okay. Read opportunistically and selectively, as all texts are to make a case, you can come up with a pretty long list of apostasy crimes, and then play with the facts to make anyone from the Saudi king to the Shi'a tea seller an apostate.
And we come back full circle. We have to attack and kill the tea seller, who is Shi'i, and deprive his family of a wage earner and his children of a father and his wife of a husband. It is defense. For he is Shi'i and therefore an apostate, and he acts in addition as an agent of the attacking West by selling tea to anyone including US soldiers, and therefore by killing him we are defending the abode of Islam. All permitted, all can be done without a higher caliphate authority, all can be organized in a highly decentralized fashion. The classical doctors permit it, when it is defense.
Faithful application of classical Sunni doctrine? I hope as the blog makes clear, judged by outcomes, that doesn't mean anything, judges have choices when they read texts, there is no purely faithful application in matters of adjudication. If choice is true on the question of the last post, three wives or four, it's ten times more true here, where you are carrying forward something from a different place and a different time whose application in different circumstances is subject to high levels of dispute. Clearly classical doctrine doesn't HAVE to be read this way, very serious Sunnis don't. Clearly it CAN be read this way, very serious Sunnis do. How much was it really an influence, and how much was it really just angry people looking for any old excuse to kill people they could associate with the target of their anger? I think a lot of the latter, and a wee bit of the former, but learned minds can disagree.
HAH
Isn't there a little bit of mixing of jus ad bellum concerns (is it ok to fight to bring about an Islamic state?) and jus in bello concerns (is it ok to kill a Shi'ite greengrocer in the pursuit of "self-defense" against murtadin?)?
One thing I think we can set aside in general is the question of causality. This is too complicated. Take the least ambiguous ruling possible. Say, drinking alcohol (if you are not a Hanafi). When a person refrains from drinking in full accordance with the rules, even then we have no idea at which level the rules are causing the behavior? They may not be motivating the individual to a sufficient extent, but are creating the background social conditions which increase tremendously the costs on him drinking.
But this is a case of preventing someone from doing something the person might otherwise *like* to do. What you are talking about in jihad is *sanctioning* something people very much enjoy doing! (Google Slavoj Zizek's piece "You May!" from the LRB.)
So, then, what is the question? I think there are two:
1. Are the classical rules of jihad creating or causing the behavior of jihadis? [Your answer is clearly "no".]
2. Are the actions of the jihadis so clearly incongruous with the classical rules that we are forced to doubt all sorts of other things about the relevance of traditional Islamic doctrine? [You are cautious about saying "yes" to this here, but in other posts say so on other questions.]
But there are other, broader, ways of approaching it. As a political theorist, I would ask these questions:
1. What are the basic ideological, conceptual and psychological building blocks of the Islamist stance in general and the jihadi stance in particular?
2. Is it possible whether these building blocks are resonant with classical ones?
A brief outline answer to the first question would be: that the world is divided for moral-obligation and political-solidarity purposes into believers and unbelievers; that the source of moral rights and obligations is God and the source of moral knowledge is scripture; that God's revelation is intended to order this world as well as the next; that Muslims are commanded to act to bring about this order through legal and political institutions; that the revelation is a universal one and the sole truth; that rightly-guided Muslims are commanded to impose justice and right morality on their brothers; that Muslims ought to be a (single) community of power and glory; that physical force are permitted to bring about this state of affairs.
This is a selection of what I would call the basic "ideological, conceptual and psychological building blocks of the Islamist stance in general." One could add to the list, I am sure.
Now, would you sincerely argue (not as a lawyer) that these positions are not shared by the classical political doctrines? (Of course, one could say that in fact UBL and others do not act per scripture ...)
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On the jus ad bellum and jus in bello, I think the conflation might stem from the classical sources themselves. Unless one is to argue that Grotius did not in fact develop this dualistic axiom, but rather that classical Islam did and he took it from them (not an impossible proposition given the circumstances, just not one I have heard argued), then it is unsurprising that the clear distinction did not arise then. Certainly the idea that there are two types of war, offensive and defensive, and one has a set of rules of who is to fight in it, and the other has a different set, seems to suggest a bit of a conflation. In any event, the dualistic axiom is, as my friend Robert Sloane points out here, not always logically clear in our world, in which the line between war and peace is not always a clear one. That is nowhere more true than in the Middle East. (Not meant to suggest the axiom is a bad one--it works, as Sloane makes clear. It's just not as logically defensible as it is experientially, and I guess you would know which I take more seriously given my own view of the law.)
I agree on the answer to your first framed legal question, and on the second, you, Professor March, as well as Mohammad Fadel, Michael Dorf, George Fletcher, Peter Awn, Bernard Freamon, all of whom have been supportive and sympathetic critics of my work, are causing me to qualify my earlier answer, which before was an unambiguous yes. Take polygamy. I can say to you, with all sincerity, that the reason that I think Islamists take it so seriously has nothing to with their desire to practice it, most Islamists in Iraq wouldn't dream of marrying a second wife, but rather as "resistance" to a Western family law paradigm. That deserves a post, it's a very broad generalization, but let me just throw it out there for heuristic purposes for a second. You could still say "if it's nothing but resistance, why polygamy? Why not dance the debka every morning at work? THAT would also create distinctiveness from the West." Clearly doctrine has something to say about that. Classical doctrine alone cannot possibly address the outcomes of the modern world, couldn't predict them, couldn't account for them, couldn't even really identify them. And so my criticism of much Islamic law scholarship remains. But does doctrine have any role at all in framing, creating, identifying, predicting modern outcomes? I think the polygamy example demonstrates it has SOME role to play. In some cases (modern finance, modern insurance), precious little, because quite simply you are putting words into the mouths of medievals who wouldn't have been able to conceive of what you are trying to grapple with. In other cases, though, more.
Which brings me to your political theory questions. There is substantial similarity between the classical doctrine and the Islamist one in the manner in which you frame it. I would go further and say as a lawyer, it could affect outcomes. Muslim states can at times take the international legal position that the West is some sort of monolith that acts in some sort of attempt to colonize and subdue Islam, which itself is viewed as a monolith. The eagerness to see apostates in concert to the West, to derive outcomes that basically put them in "our" camp or "theirs" can readily be traced to the classical worldview.
But just as I couldn't sincerely argue that classical doctrine has nothing to do with it, neither on the level of political theory or law, so could I never understand the modern Muslim world, in political theory or law, without looking to other things too. Why do we in Friday prayers in the Middle East hear the imam curse America, Israel, France, Britain specifically? Why in Indonesia are the Dutch and the Australians added? I haven't been, but give a fellow from Xinjiang a chance to speak freely, he might not even know where the Netherlands are, his first curse might be for the one the Saudi cleric would almost surely not include--China. The Pakistani or Kashmiri would add India surely. Everyone might say "believer" and "unbeliever" but the latter they really don't take to mean every unbeliever, or even every unbeliever engaged in hostilities with some part of the Abode of Islam. Anticolonial, national resistance sentiment has a great deal to do with it too. Regional chauvinism may or may not have been the reality of the medieval world, but certainly it is not reflected in the classical doctrine.
HAH
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There are both agent-particular questions here, as well as level of analysis questions.
Why Sayyid Qutb or Khomeini or Qaradawi or Sistani may want legal polygamy/Islamic unity/a ban on riba/Islamic rules of war rather than Geneva, etc etc. is one thing while why they are desired by a born-again fundie in Hamburg or Cairo or Birmingham may be something else. (I do mean the "may be": perhaps even the intellectuals/scholars/ideologues are motivated by identity assertion.) That is, the causal arrow between "anti-imperialism/identity assertion" and "wanting specifically Islamic laws" can go in different directions for different people. Maybe Sistani or Khomeini was religious before he was political. Maybe the kid from Birmingham is an angsty teenager first and then has a higher order desire to choose whatever is nominally "Islamic."
But to be impressed with the fact that the rise of religious politics or fundamentalism has many, many causes and factors (as you an I both are) is not to say that which specific goals, demands, values and programs are adopted is a random or generic matter. A Hindu nationalist, an Islamic nationalist/fundamentalist, a Romanian fascist, a Latino anti-imperialist, a Chinese nationalist will all end up desiring different things and the range of negotiation on them will be constrained internally. *Why* someone becomes politicized, religious, mobilized, etc is one thing, but then why a politicized, mobilized, religious Muslim will want certain things while a Hindu nationalist-fundamentalist will want others things is precisely the space in which "doctrine" matters.
But someone like myself need not be committed to either of two things: 1) that the classical doctrines easily or seamlessly remain authoritative for any given person; 2) that the mere fact that the body of doctrine exists is a sufficient explanatory mechanism for certain political or legal stances. I thus escape the unyielding and savage Hamoudi Critique!
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I think I generally agree, certainly I think you escape the savage critique (as harsh as truth, as uncompromising as justice, as Garrison would say) though I would emphasize that a politicized, mobilized, religious Muslim might want different things than a mobilized Hindu nationalist-fundamentalist wants for reasons having nothing to do with doctrine. It might matter, or it might be that Hindus dominate India and it is the majority-minority dynamic which proves more compelling to their preferred outcomes. Certainly I really don't think the substance of Sunni or Shi'i fiqh has much to do with the disputes taking place in Iraq,legal or political. Internal religious structural hierarchy absolutely, perceptions of religio-political history no question, so there is absolutely particularity to the Muslim experience (as well as broader political and social factors), but actual, substantive fiqh? I don't think you miss much by way of understanding if you don't know any of that.
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"Certainly I really don't think the substance of Sunni or Shi'i fiqh has much to do with the disputes taking place in Iraq,legal or political. Internal religious structural hierarchy absolutely, perceptions of religio-political history no question, so there is absolutely particularity to the Muslim experience (as well as broader political and social factors), but actual, substantive fiqh? I don't think you miss much by way of understanding if you don't know any of that."
Well, yes and no, depending on the level of analysis or time frame. Obviously, specific rules of fiqh are not helpful for understanding why the Sunni insurgency has evolved the way it has, or for understanding the differences between Sadr and Sistani. But I think you agree that the broader ideological, doctrinal and psychological building blocks do matter. Once you begin to orient yourself around specifically Islamist resistance to x, y, or z, then certain concepts, orientations, commitments and tropes emerge as salient which don't for secular, anti-imperialist nationalists.
But, then also look beyond the civil war (I hardly need to tell you that). Should a broadly Islamist Sunni or Shi'ite group come to power (in Iraq at large or in a province) in a stable situation and be charged with governing, they will have a "mandate" or a higher-order desire to "implement shari'a." Of course this desire will be full of revolutionary zeal and ideological over-simplification, and thus be different from what fiqhi reasoning might look like in a calmer, most self-confident setting, but certainly it would be precisely the letter of the rules which would emerge for such actors as what it means to "implement the shari'a."
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Perhaps we define doctrine differently, and I've gone back to trying to focus on the law. Certainly there are particularities to the Muslim experience, and to the Shi'i experience, or the Sunni experience, that are going to define any number of things, from the political order of the state to the potential for intra communal relations. "Doctrine" I take to be the body of legal norms and standards, from "when we are we allowed to use violence" to "what kinds of commercial transactions are forbidden". I don't really take "Ali deserved the khilafa" to be legal doctrine, it's something else. It doesn't solve any material dispute or regulate any area of life, it just helps form a narrative to distinguish one from the other. An important narrative, people get pretty violent on that very question in Iraq, I mean literally come to blows on that point, but still, it's not a legal question.
And here I think there is so much more to Shi'ism and the Shi'i identity than the mere legal doctrine. Social, political, economic,ethical, historical factors all contribute to that. Distinctiveness in any future Shi'i province, say, will be less based on the presence of polygamy or the veil (they'll have most of the same rules as Sunnis there), but it will be found in the beating of chests at Kerbala, in the historical accounts of Sunni oppression from Omar Ibn al Khattab to Saddam Hussein, in television programming detailing example after example of persecution of the Shi'a, in relative indifference to the Palestinian question, and I don't think these are legal doctrine really. Will they have an effect on legal doctrine, help make it more distinctive? I'd be the last one to deny that--my point on zakat and khums was precisely that these distinctions are created in part precisely to satisfy the craving for a distinct identity, they absolutely affect the law. I feel Shi'i when I pray three times a day, not five,and so I do three, and then scholars start saying three is better, even if the Prophet prayed five. And Sunnis start to say praying three is absolutely forbidden, even if the Prophet did it once in a while. But the point is that the identities will always subsume much more than these sorts of differences, within or beyond the civil war.
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