Intra-Muslim Intolerance: Thoughts on the Sunni Shi'a Divide
The conventional wisdom as to how secularism developed in the West is that the region went through a series of interminable, bloody wars based on whose God was the right one (or on whose side the one true God actually was) and eventually came around to accepting the notion that they could either keep doing this forever, or agree to separate religion from state and live more prosperously, and happily.
I'm not an historian, I have no idea. But I do know this--that if all of these folks in our legal academy really want to take the notion of Islamic law playing some significant role in Muslim states seriously, and are actually sympathetic to that cause, then they are going to have to try to turn their attention to a subject they have been ignoring to date, and that is the Sunni-Shi'a divide. Absent an improvement in theological conditions, the notion that any Islamic state is going to actually work to better the lives of its citizens rather than search widely for monsters to destroy really is not paying attention.
A number of events this past week have convinced me of this. First of all, Yusuf Qaradawi, among the most authoritative Muslim law experts in the Sunni world, took off on an unexpected rant against the Shi'a. Something about their believing in an additional chapter to the Qur'an, al-Wilayah (as probably the lone Shi'a expert under the (abysmally low) standards on the subject in the American legal academy, I've never heard of it), and some paranoid musings that they are infecting Sunni centers of learning with their dangerous ideas, their petrodollars and their organizational capacity that Sunnis cannot match.
My favorite criticism though was the Shi'a penchant for a doctrine known as taqiya, or dissembling, wherein a Shi'i can pretend to be something else to protect himself from harm. It's dishonest, is the common complaint. To a Shi'i, that's kind of like a slaveowner getting mad when a slave escapes by trying to pass as white--it's dishonest. As if it's the dishonesty that is the real problem.
Anyway, since his remarks, this fellow and Lebanese Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah of the Shi'a have been in a war of words, with each expressing shock and dismay at the divisive claims of the other.
Then two days ago, Sistani's website was hacked by some Salafist nuts who have basically declared some sort of internet viral victory over the "refusers" (the Salafist insult applies to the Shi'a). It still remains up today, terribly offensive to any devout Shi'i.
And so while I hear of many aspects of shari'a that require reform or development, and while so much thought is given to the notion of how to reform classical law and to make it relevant to the modern state, none of the proposed thinkers on this subject pay much attention to the Shi'i question, preferring instead to pretend the Shi'a don't exist. "I don't do Shi'i law, and so in this class/paper/talk, Islamic means Sunni Islam," so many say. Well fine then, but what does Sunni Islam say about the Shi'a, and how can the classical texts be used to foster a culture of tolerance and cooperation within different Muslim schools, because it's quite clear, from the rhetoric, and from the references employed by the Qaradawis of the world, that there is plenty in the classical tradition to foster the hatred, the anger, the rage and the misdirected paranoiac suspicion that currently penetrates Islamist circles.
Personally, I tend to think the future of Islam lies in the secular state where faith is important and central to social order but separate from state governance. I think our academy isn't there, but our thought lags behind the action on the ground, where AK in Turkey, Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, Bambang Yudhyono in Indonesia are leading that vanguard with remarkable success. That's for another time. But to those who are liberal, and yet who want a liberal Islamic law to govern the state and want to develop that law, turn your attention to the Shi'a just a bit. Because no state that starts calling fellow Muslims sneaky dissemblers who don't believe in the Qur'an and are seeking a takeover of Islam is going to be thought of as anything but illiberal and deeply, fundamentally benighted.
HAH
I'm not an historian, I have no idea. But I do know this--that if all of these folks in our legal academy really want to take the notion of Islamic law playing some significant role in Muslim states seriously, and are actually sympathetic to that cause, then they are going to have to try to turn their attention to a subject they have been ignoring to date, and that is the Sunni-Shi'a divide. Absent an improvement in theological conditions, the notion that any Islamic state is going to actually work to better the lives of its citizens rather than search widely for monsters to destroy really is not paying attention.
A number of events this past week have convinced me of this. First of all, Yusuf Qaradawi, among the most authoritative Muslim law experts in the Sunni world, took off on an unexpected rant against the Shi'a. Something about their believing in an additional chapter to the Qur'an, al-Wilayah (as probably the lone Shi'a expert under the (abysmally low) standards on the subject in the American legal academy, I've never heard of it), and some paranoid musings that they are infecting Sunni centers of learning with their dangerous ideas, their petrodollars and their organizational capacity that Sunnis cannot match.
My favorite criticism though was the Shi'a penchant for a doctrine known as taqiya, or dissembling, wherein a Shi'i can pretend to be something else to protect himself from harm. It's dishonest, is the common complaint. To a Shi'i, that's kind of like a slaveowner getting mad when a slave escapes by trying to pass as white--it's dishonest. As if it's the dishonesty that is the real problem.
Anyway, since his remarks, this fellow and Lebanese Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah of the Shi'a have been in a war of words, with each expressing shock and dismay at the divisive claims of the other.
Then two days ago, Sistani's website was hacked by some Salafist nuts who have basically declared some sort of internet viral victory over the "refusers" (the Salafist insult applies to the Shi'a). It still remains up today, terribly offensive to any devout Shi'i.
And so while I hear of many aspects of shari'a that require reform or development, and while so much thought is given to the notion of how to reform classical law and to make it relevant to the modern state, none of the proposed thinkers on this subject pay much attention to the Shi'i question, preferring instead to pretend the Shi'a don't exist. "I don't do Shi'i law, and so in this class/paper/talk, Islamic means Sunni Islam," so many say. Well fine then, but what does Sunni Islam say about the Shi'a, and how can the classical texts be used to foster a culture of tolerance and cooperation within different Muslim schools, because it's quite clear, from the rhetoric, and from the references employed by the Qaradawis of the world, that there is plenty in the classical tradition to foster the hatred, the anger, the rage and the misdirected paranoiac suspicion that currently penetrates Islamist circles.
Personally, I tend to think the future of Islam lies in the secular state where faith is important and central to social order but separate from state governance. I think our academy isn't there, but our thought lags behind the action on the ground, where AK in Turkey, Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, Bambang Yudhyono in Indonesia are leading that vanguard with remarkable success. That's for another time. But to those who are liberal, and yet who want a liberal Islamic law to govern the state and want to develop that law, turn your attention to the Shi'a just a bit. Because no state that starts calling fellow Muslims sneaky dissemblers who don't believe in the Qur'an and are seeking a takeover of Islam is going to be thought of as anything but illiberal and deeply, fundamentally benighted.
HAH
The Shi'a of course would seem to have more going for them doctrinally in terms of justifying secularism, in the same way that ultra-orthodox Jews would. Any good reading recommendations for contemporary Shi'ite texts either explicitly or tacitly constructing a political theology contrary to Wilayet al-faqih?
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Explicit would require the Najaf jurists to take open issue with Qom, and that's not our madhab's style, so I haven't seen it. But Fadlallah does seem to talk about cooperation with other communities in a nation state guided by a "general law" that certainlydoesn't seem to suggest a marriage of state to jurist. Sistani clearly tacitlyis doing this too, his own website mentions wilayat al faqih in a nonlegal capacity, and he is intervening in the state in the manner that does not suggest he wants to control it entirely. But there is no explicit theory on his part that I have seen. Believe me, when I find it, it will come up here, I'm constructing it in myscholarship based on actions alone. It would be nice to see more clarification.
HAH
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"their organizational capacity that Sunnis cannot match." I trust that's a typo, yes?
"I tend to think the future of Islam lies in the secular state where faith is important and central to social order but separate from state governance."
Essentially the argument of Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im's latest book, Islam and the Secular State, is it not? (I've been away for a while so perhaps you've already said some things about his book and I missed them.)
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Welcome back!
I think An Naim has some excellent ideas really, and I will have to address them in more detail later. Not sure what the typo was supposed to be, I do think Shi'ism is far more institutionally organized than Sunnism, for better or for worse.
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