The Nationalization of Shi'ism and the Iraq Provincial Elections Law
A few days ago a draft of the provincial elections law emerged, concerning the elections that are supposed to take place in the various Iraqi provinces late summer. There are a bunch of issues that are being spit out all over Iraqi media about it. The most important has to do with the rather odd way elections are done in Iraq--it's a closed list, you don't actually know who you are voting for by way of people, only the parties they represent. That's come under obvious criticism, but it's likely to stay I think.
Anyway, another interesting provision that attracted the immediate attention of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq, Hakim's party (one of the Shi'i Islamist parties), forbade the use of religious imagery or religious symbols in political posters, and prevented campaigning in mosques and other religious locations. SICI said they object strongly to this provision, I can't believe it will stay.
Two observations
My immediate first reaction was "how the hell did this get thing get into the draft law in the first place?" The Shi'i religious parties who basically run things these days ran their entire campaign for the parliamentary elections and the constitutional ones on religious symbols, the whole point was to stick Sistani's face on everything, to tell all the devout they had a religious obligation to vote for the Shi'i list and to cover the whole south with that message, to remarkable effect.
As for Sistani himself, he did his normal mediation--both making it a religious duty to vote, not explicitly endorsing anyone (as Allawi and his list kept insisting, turning blue in the face trying to get that point across), but not exactly objecting to his image being used for the Shi'i Alliance. The maraji', the high scholars, are very good at this--using ambiguity as a tool to advance religio-legal interests. Sistani does not endorse any political theory that leaves him in charge of the state, and so he doesn't want to enter the political fray too readily, and yet at the same time he clearly wants the Alliance to win, hence the indirection. This is the use of the fatwa, and the religious law generally, to mediate through some level of ambiguity and confusion. The use of law to confuse perplexes some, but it shouldn't. Our Congress writes ambiguous stuff all the time, and kicks it off to the Courts. Sistani is doing something like that, almost in reverse, kicking it back into politics rather than clarifying what the politicians said.
But this time, of course, things are a little bit different. In the provincial elections law, it's not secularists like Allawi and Pachachi (the only real possible electoral competition for any Shi'i) that are the issue. The issue is in the south, where it's all Shi'i Islamists,is which Shi'i Islamists you are going to endorse. SICI? Muqtada al-Sadr? Fadhila? And my guess is, I don't know, but I am guessing, that somebody realized if Sistani or Shi'ism was used this time as a campaign prop, it could get ugly. Somebody it seems wanted to put a stop to all of that, hence this law. Unimaginable they'd put it in for the national elections, but here, well do you really want Sadr and Hakim fighting over who really is the more Muslim?
SICI does. It would be a good guess to assume Sistani if forced to choose would prefer them, their leader Hakim is from a strong clerical family with classical training, and Sistani's contempt for Moqtada (discussed here) is rather thinly veiled. But it's not his style to get too deeply involved. This time though it looks like ambiguity, and ruling through ambiguity and misdirection, is harder to pull off. Whereas he can say "vote" and everyone might guess who he means when the opposition are renowned drinkers or people from another sect, it's not as clear here, all of the parties are dominated by Shi'i devout, all of whom claim to further the interests of Shi'i Islam. I am interested in seeing how this is going to play out, both the provision itself, and, if it fails, what Sistani will do.
Second, broader point addresses the specific SICI grounds for objection, which tend to show a great deal about Iraq and where the marja'iyya is headed generally. If you took an American lawyer and showed him this case and told him to find a problem with the no religious symbols provision, his immediate, first answer is "First Amendment". It's a violation of free speech to restrict parties, or religious groups this way, they have every right to campaign with whatever symbols they want. That might not be politically wise in some cases (see Jeremiah Wright), but it's protected.
Mi'la, the spokesman for SICI making the objections, didn't raise this (or the relevant provisions in the Iraq constitution) once. His primary points were two. First, we have to campaign in mosques because they are one of the few gathering points for all Iraqis (uninteresting, perhaps true though). Secondly, he emphasized that the religious figures in particular are Iraqis, concerned with the future of Iraq, and therefore placing them on the posters is a form of patriotic nationalism, it is not divisive. Now of course under such a theory, it would be perfectly consistent to ban pictures of Iranian jurists, or Lebanese jurists, not that this would be close to relevant (I can't imagine anything more disastrous politically than parading around Khamane'i's picture in southern Iraq as a campaign prop). What really strikes me, however, is the extent to which the Shi'i high scholars, the marja'iyya, are becoming dramatically nationalized in the contemporary world. You are arguing that these supposedly international religious figures have become national ones, it's quite significant.
That is certainly not the religious theory. In theory, each Shi'i lay follower picks among a small and discrete number of high jurists from whatever country in whatever place and follows the rulings of that one jurist. Institutional integrity in the system is maintained through common education in Najaf or Qom and of course communications of a direct or indirect variety. That's still the case in important respects, Indian Shi'a still often follow what Sistani says, for example.
Yet look at these jurists, and clearly they have focussed some of their efforts on the single countries in which they reside. I don't mean religious rules on, say, what is pure and impure (though these also vary based on place of the marja', Fadlallah in Lebanon is far more accepting of interaction with non-Muslims at every level than Khu'i, for example, ever was in southern Iraq). But when they do get themselves involved in political theories and ideas, they are directed at one nation. Sistani has taken the job of protecting the state from exceeding particular shari'a bounds, as noted in the last post, it is what he does, not a court, not a state institution, Sistani. All Shi'a who want the shari'a to have this role recognize that. Yet he has never issued a fatwa on what the Iranians or Lebanese or Pakistanis should be doing by way of political structure or formation. Likewise I've never heard Fadlallah say that Iraq's elections should be run this way and not that. And Sistani, this fellow born in Iran who speaks perfect Arabic but with a thick Iranian accent, actually becomes in public political arguments a nationalist figure, one who brings the country of Iraq together.
It's remarkable, how Shi'ism has managed both to retain some level of the universal, and at the same time, within its own religious institutions, adopt a great deal of modern, Western inspired nation-state theory.
HAH
Anyway, another interesting provision that attracted the immediate attention of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq, Hakim's party (one of the Shi'i Islamist parties), forbade the use of religious imagery or religious symbols in political posters, and prevented campaigning in mosques and other religious locations. SICI said they object strongly to this provision, I can't believe it will stay.
Two observations
My immediate first reaction was "how the hell did this get thing get into the draft law in the first place?" The Shi'i religious parties who basically run things these days ran their entire campaign for the parliamentary elections and the constitutional ones on religious symbols, the whole point was to stick Sistani's face on everything, to tell all the devout they had a religious obligation to vote for the Shi'i list and to cover the whole south with that message, to remarkable effect.
As for Sistani himself, he did his normal mediation--both making it a religious duty to vote, not explicitly endorsing anyone (as Allawi and his list kept insisting, turning blue in the face trying to get that point across), but not exactly objecting to his image being used for the Shi'i Alliance. The maraji', the high scholars, are very good at this--using ambiguity as a tool to advance religio-legal interests. Sistani does not endorse any political theory that leaves him in charge of the state, and so he doesn't want to enter the political fray too readily, and yet at the same time he clearly wants the Alliance to win, hence the indirection. This is the use of the fatwa, and the religious law generally, to mediate through some level of ambiguity and confusion. The use of law to confuse perplexes some, but it shouldn't. Our Congress writes ambiguous stuff all the time, and kicks it off to the Courts. Sistani is doing something like that, almost in reverse, kicking it back into politics rather than clarifying what the politicians said.
But this time, of course, things are a little bit different. In the provincial elections law, it's not secularists like Allawi and Pachachi (the only real possible electoral competition for any Shi'i) that are the issue. The issue is in the south, where it's all Shi'i Islamists,is which Shi'i Islamists you are going to endorse. SICI? Muqtada al-Sadr? Fadhila? And my guess is, I don't know, but I am guessing, that somebody realized if Sistani or Shi'ism was used this time as a campaign prop, it could get ugly. Somebody it seems wanted to put a stop to all of that, hence this law. Unimaginable they'd put it in for the national elections, but here, well do you really want Sadr and Hakim fighting over who really is the more Muslim?
SICI does. It would be a good guess to assume Sistani if forced to choose would prefer them, their leader Hakim is from a strong clerical family with classical training, and Sistani's contempt for Moqtada (discussed here) is rather thinly veiled. But it's not his style to get too deeply involved. This time though it looks like ambiguity, and ruling through ambiguity and misdirection, is harder to pull off. Whereas he can say "vote" and everyone might guess who he means when the opposition are renowned drinkers or people from another sect, it's not as clear here, all of the parties are dominated by Shi'i devout, all of whom claim to further the interests of Shi'i Islam. I am interested in seeing how this is going to play out, both the provision itself, and, if it fails, what Sistani will do.
Second, broader point addresses the specific SICI grounds for objection, which tend to show a great deal about Iraq and where the marja'iyya is headed generally. If you took an American lawyer and showed him this case and told him to find a problem with the no religious symbols provision, his immediate, first answer is "First Amendment". It's a violation of free speech to restrict parties, or religious groups this way, they have every right to campaign with whatever symbols they want. That might not be politically wise in some cases (see Jeremiah Wright), but it's protected.
Mi'la, the spokesman for SICI making the objections, didn't raise this (or the relevant provisions in the Iraq constitution) once. His primary points were two. First, we have to campaign in mosques because they are one of the few gathering points for all Iraqis (uninteresting, perhaps true though). Secondly, he emphasized that the religious figures in particular are Iraqis, concerned with the future of Iraq, and therefore placing them on the posters is a form of patriotic nationalism, it is not divisive. Now of course under such a theory, it would be perfectly consistent to ban pictures of Iranian jurists, or Lebanese jurists, not that this would be close to relevant (I can't imagine anything more disastrous politically than parading around Khamane'i's picture in southern Iraq as a campaign prop). What really strikes me, however, is the extent to which the Shi'i high scholars, the marja'iyya, are becoming dramatically nationalized in the contemporary world. You are arguing that these supposedly international religious figures have become national ones, it's quite significant.
That is certainly not the religious theory. In theory, each Shi'i lay follower picks among a small and discrete number of high jurists from whatever country in whatever place and follows the rulings of that one jurist. Institutional integrity in the system is maintained through common education in Najaf or Qom and of course communications of a direct or indirect variety. That's still the case in important respects, Indian Shi'a still often follow what Sistani says, for example.
Yet look at these jurists, and clearly they have focussed some of their efforts on the single countries in which they reside. I don't mean religious rules on, say, what is pure and impure (though these also vary based on place of the marja', Fadlallah in Lebanon is far more accepting of interaction with non-Muslims at every level than Khu'i, for example, ever was in southern Iraq). But when they do get themselves involved in political theories and ideas, they are directed at one nation. Sistani has taken the job of protecting the state from exceeding particular shari'a bounds, as noted in the last post, it is what he does, not a court, not a state institution, Sistani. All Shi'a who want the shari'a to have this role recognize that. Yet he has never issued a fatwa on what the Iranians or Lebanese or Pakistanis should be doing by way of political structure or formation. Likewise I've never heard Fadlallah say that Iraq's elections should be run this way and not that. And Sistani, this fellow born in Iran who speaks perfect Arabic but with a thick Iranian accent, actually becomes in public political arguments a nationalist figure, one who brings the country of Iraq together.
It's remarkable, how Shi'ism has managed both to retain some level of the universal, and at the same time, within its own religious institutions, adopt a great deal of modern, Western inspired nation-state theory.
HAH
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