God and Earthquakes in the Religious Traditions
Friend of the blog Zahir kindly forwarded to me a most interesting claim by Kadhem Siddiqi, Friday prayer leader in Teheran's largest mosque. The good man has blamed the recent rise in natural disasters to, as I can gather from reading it in translation in both English and Arabic, scantily clad women, which lead young men into "corruption" (same word refers to bribes and sin in Arabic--worth a post on its own) from which unlawful sex arises, and then God sends earthquakes. Gays can rest easy, this one apparently isn't their fault.
There's actually a great deal one can say about this sort of idiocy. In the first place, it tends to show cross fertilization among fundamentalists in different religious traditions. Of course Pat Robertson and Kadhem Siddiqi may point to their own sacred texts to show how a wrathful God wreaks vengeance on the wicked, but there is still something quite striking about the fact that both have seen recent natural disasters and immediately connect this to some form of sin, whether it be dealing with the Devil in Robertson's case, or making it in the back seat of a Peugot in Siddiqi's. It's hard to believe that Robertson's claim didn't in one way or another inspire Siddiqi's. (and maybe Robertson was inadvertently inspired by a Muslim before him, my point isn't all bad ideas come from the West, obviously. It's that these things are cross fertilized in both directions across traditions by fundamentalists who are otherwise consigning each other to hell for their deviancies).
The other point of borrowing is the whole notion of women being the source of the sin. The actual sin in this case is unlawful sex, but it's ironic how half of those engaged in it are almost beside the point. They can't do much about it, the woman walks by in her immodest dress, and the man has no natural control. Again, much of this is cross fertilized, the femme fatale, or even the vagina dentata that's spread the globe. Women are the danger, the temptation, men the passive victims of it.
I've mentioned this phenomenon before in any event, in the context of Hezbollah's almost deliberate adoption of the vicious anti-Semitism of the Third Reich. And it's not new, while Muslims are fond of quoting the Qur'an and Sunnah to advance notions of racial equality, less studied is how there is a grand medieval Islamic tradition (without a basis in sacred text), endorsed even by Ibn Khaldun, of adopting the Biblical story of Ham to justify the horrible practice of African slavery in Arab lands.
Beyond cross fertilization, my second thought is precisely how isolated from reasoned inquiry some of these folks can be. In most of my dealings with clerics in Najaf, I haven't found this. The arguments are often esoteric, involving interpretations of text to reach conclusions that no real human being could possibly ever care about ever, but that's not anti-intellectual, in fact it might be the opposite problem. When they do make arguments that are based in real world fact that I find preposterous (one cleric has a whole institute in Najaf claiming to study whether or not Noah's ark actually landed there), they do actually seek to prove them empirically. I'd describe the methodologies and techniques as faulty, but then give these guys a break, they've been cut off from the world for 35 years. It is a sincere inspection, you can argue with their findings, they welcome the debate, or so it seemed when I so debated. They never even claimed epistemological certainty on their claim.
This earthquake thing seems to me entirely different. Look, part of his claim is certainly testable. Not the wrathful God part, obviously, but the correlation of sin to earthquakes. If you actually think God might be punishing you for not keeping your women veiled, then surely you should want to find out if the higher incidence of sin is leading to higher numbers of earthquakes. It doesn't do to just point out that God does this in the Qur'an, He's telling you He does it there, here nobody's said anything, you're just a dude in a turban making a guess. But there is no test,no means to know if it's even true that there are higher global levels of sexual promiscuity today than, say, thirty five years ago. Ihave my doubts. And to the extent he's talking about Iranian earthquakes, well there's obviously fewer scantily clad women walking around now leading men into corruption than there was 35 years ago. It's not just supposition, it's supposition that seems devoid of any attempt to establish a basis in fact.
But finally, I was led to ask myself why it is that Iranian figures always end up saying these things that link conduct to the Divine. Ahmedinijad's ridiculous claim that nobody blinked for nearly half an hour during his speech at the UN because the Hidden Imam had held them bound to listen, for example, and now this. I think part of it is a consequence of the specific Iranian rejection of the traditional Quietism embraced by the Shi'a historically, and embraced by them beyond Iran's borders.
There is absolutely plenty of resource within the Islamic tradition to develop a narrative wherein an angry and vengeful God wreaks havoc upon you if you disobey His Law, and that calls on man to improve himself to avoid such results. There is also plenty within the Islamic tradition that speaks of a kind and loving God who answers those in desperate need when they call upon him, and removes the source of their discontent. Those resources make abundantly clear that when something bad happens, it is not necessarily the believer's fault, in fact the good believer accepts the misfortune, not as deserved, but as a burden and recognizes his return and his reward lie with God who eases his burden and lightens his heart.
These traditions lie in tension with one another, as one seems to exhort action, and suggest that particular behaviors lead to particular forms of the good bestowed by God, and the other seems to look upon the world as an ugly, awful place, full of deviousness and dread, where the believer can find no peace, where the Prophet's grandson is decapitated not a century after the Prophet's death, by a man calling himself the Commander of the Faithful. The Afterlife is the Reward and if you want to hasten the Mahdi, well you pray or something, you don't up and say stupid things to the UN. Nobody adopts one or the other tradition exclusively, the traditions are both present, but rise and fall in importance relative to the other based on external circumstance.
Generally Shi'ism has tended to favor the second, more fatalistic tradition in the modern world. The world is corrupt, there isn't much you can do about it, it's ugly, the believers should be counselled patience, and to live as best as they can given the constraints of this world. It's not the only way to understand the Quietist tradition but it is one way to look at it. The notion that the believers could not control their own fate, however, runs violently against the ideas advanced by Khomeini and that led to the Iranian revolution. The believers CAN do something, in fact they did. Just Islamic rule CAN be instituted without supernatural assistance from the Mahdi. God DOES respond to us when we do good, and he DOES punish us when we are not, and so if bad things happen, they are within our control and are the result of our doing. The claim that immodest women cause earthquakes is in some sense precisely an assertion of human control rather than its denial, with God merely the agent of the human choices that are made. "We did not punish them, but they punished themselves" reads the Qur'an. Humanity in this vision is in complete control, when bad things happen, it is because of sin, and when good things happen, it is because of virtue. Fate isn't relevant.
It is a rather remarkable shift for such notions to spread among Shi'a leaders in particular, and suggests a far deeper theological and philosophical approach to faith within the different national Shi'a populations than has been discussed. Nobody else says such things, at least in my experience.
HAH
There's actually a great deal one can say about this sort of idiocy. In the first place, it tends to show cross fertilization among fundamentalists in different religious traditions. Of course Pat Robertson and Kadhem Siddiqi may point to their own sacred texts to show how a wrathful God wreaks vengeance on the wicked, but there is still something quite striking about the fact that both have seen recent natural disasters and immediately connect this to some form of sin, whether it be dealing with the Devil in Robertson's case, or making it in the back seat of a Peugot in Siddiqi's. It's hard to believe that Robertson's claim didn't in one way or another inspire Siddiqi's. (and maybe Robertson was inadvertently inspired by a Muslim before him, my point isn't all bad ideas come from the West, obviously. It's that these things are cross fertilized in both directions across traditions by fundamentalists who are otherwise consigning each other to hell for their deviancies).
The other point of borrowing is the whole notion of women being the source of the sin. The actual sin in this case is unlawful sex, but it's ironic how half of those engaged in it are almost beside the point. They can't do much about it, the woman walks by in her immodest dress, and the man has no natural control. Again, much of this is cross fertilized, the femme fatale, or even the vagina dentata that's spread the globe. Women are the danger, the temptation, men the passive victims of it.
I've mentioned this phenomenon before in any event, in the context of Hezbollah's almost deliberate adoption of the vicious anti-Semitism of the Third Reich. And it's not new, while Muslims are fond of quoting the Qur'an and Sunnah to advance notions of racial equality, less studied is how there is a grand medieval Islamic tradition (without a basis in sacred text), endorsed even by Ibn Khaldun, of adopting the Biblical story of Ham to justify the horrible practice of African slavery in Arab lands.
Beyond cross fertilization, my second thought is precisely how isolated from reasoned inquiry some of these folks can be. In most of my dealings with clerics in Najaf, I haven't found this. The arguments are often esoteric, involving interpretations of text to reach conclusions that no real human being could possibly ever care about ever, but that's not anti-intellectual, in fact it might be the opposite problem. When they do make arguments that are based in real world fact that I find preposterous (one cleric has a whole institute in Najaf claiming to study whether or not Noah's ark actually landed there), they do actually seek to prove them empirically. I'd describe the methodologies and techniques as faulty, but then give these guys a break, they've been cut off from the world for 35 years. It is a sincere inspection, you can argue with their findings, they welcome the debate, or so it seemed when I so debated. They never even claimed epistemological certainty on their claim.
This earthquake thing seems to me entirely different. Look, part of his claim is certainly testable. Not the wrathful God part, obviously, but the correlation of sin to earthquakes. If you actually think God might be punishing you for not keeping your women veiled, then surely you should want to find out if the higher incidence of sin is leading to higher numbers of earthquakes. It doesn't do to just point out that God does this in the Qur'an, He's telling you He does it there, here nobody's said anything, you're just a dude in a turban making a guess. But there is no test,no means to know if it's even true that there are higher global levels of sexual promiscuity today than, say, thirty five years ago. Ihave my doubts. And to the extent he's talking about Iranian earthquakes, well there's obviously fewer scantily clad women walking around now leading men into corruption than there was 35 years ago. It's not just supposition, it's supposition that seems devoid of any attempt to establish a basis in fact.
But finally, I was led to ask myself why it is that Iranian figures always end up saying these things that link conduct to the Divine. Ahmedinijad's ridiculous claim that nobody blinked for nearly half an hour during his speech at the UN because the Hidden Imam had held them bound to listen, for example, and now this. I think part of it is a consequence of the specific Iranian rejection of the traditional Quietism embraced by the Shi'a historically, and embraced by them beyond Iran's borders.
There is absolutely plenty of resource within the Islamic tradition to develop a narrative wherein an angry and vengeful God wreaks havoc upon you if you disobey His Law, and that calls on man to improve himself to avoid such results. There is also plenty within the Islamic tradition that speaks of a kind and loving God who answers those in desperate need when they call upon him, and removes the source of their discontent. Those resources make abundantly clear that when something bad happens, it is not necessarily the believer's fault, in fact the good believer accepts the misfortune, not as deserved, but as a burden and recognizes his return and his reward lie with God who eases his burden and lightens his heart.
These traditions lie in tension with one another, as one seems to exhort action, and suggest that particular behaviors lead to particular forms of the good bestowed by God, and the other seems to look upon the world as an ugly, awful place, full of deviousness and dread, where the believer can find no peace, where the Prophet's grandson is decapitated not a century after the Prophet's death, by a man calling himself the Commander of the Faithful. The Afterlife is the Reward and if you want to hasten the Mahdi, well you pray or something, you don't up and say stupid things to the UN. Nobody adopts one or the other tradition exclusively, the traditions are both present, but rise and fall in importance relative to the other based on external circumstance.
Generally Shi'ism has tended to favor the second, more fatalistic tradition in the modern world. The world is corrupt, there isn't much you can do about it, it's ugly, the believers should be counselled patience, and to live as best as they can given the constraints of this world. It's not the only way to understand the Quietist tradition but it is one way to look at it. The notion that the believers could not control their own fate, however, runs violently against the ideas advanced by Khomeini and that led to the Iranian revolution. The believers CAN do something, in fact they did. Just Islamic rule CAN be instituted without supernatural assistance from the Mahdi. God DOES respond to us when we do good, and he DOES punish us when we are not, and so if bad things happen, they are within our control and are the result of our doing. The claim that immodest women cause earthquakes is in some sense precisely an assertion of human control rather than its denial, with God merely the agent of the human choices that are made. "We did not punish them, but they punished themselves" reads the Qur'an. Humanity in this vision is in complete control, when bad things happen, it is because of sin, and when good things happen, it is because of virtue. Fate isn't relevant.
It is a rather remarkable shift for such notions to spread among Shi'a leaders in particular, and suggests a far deeper theological and philosophical approach to faith within the different national Shi'a populations than has been discussed. Nobody else says such things, at least in my experience.
HAH
What accounts for the differences between the leaders in Najaf and those trained at Qom and holding sway in Tehran? If you didn't mean to suggest that there are fundamental and consistent differences between these groups, please set me straight, but I'm getting more and more interested in the distinction between what appear to be two parallel shi'a communities.
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Sorry Professor Kilborn it's just that time of year when I'm not as regular as I should be keeping up with the blog. But to answer your question in two words, it was the 1979 Revolution. There were by the middle of the 20th century two clear strands of thought within Shi'ism and Najaf in particular, one more Quietist the other more Activist. Some like Sadr were unabashedly Activist, others like Khu'i were unabashedly Quietist, and of course quite a few lay between the two poles in the development of their own thought. I'd say in the 1960's this was all managed under Muhsin Al Hakim, the grandest of the Grand Ayatollahs of his time. Muhsin Al Hakim died in 1970, the strongly Quietist Khu'i eventually was by consensus deemed to take his place in Najaf, the Iranian Revolution happened in 1979 led by the most active of the Activists, Ruhollah Khomeini, and the Activist wing in Najaf led by Sadr was eliminated by Saddam in the most heinous manner possible. Iran in the meantime repressed its own Quietists, Shariatmadari most notably, though without near the same level of savagery (house arrest as opposed to nails being driven into your head while your sister is raped in front of you--literally that's the difference), and the strands effectively separated and have remained so. Of course they borrow from one another and of course they all deem one another to be fellow scholars with formally equal status, it's not a Catholic-Orthodox split, and in fact on most matters of importance to the believer in her individual life (rules on ritual, bans on commercial practices, etc) they are as they always have been indistinguishable, such that you could follow one side or the other and it wouldn't matter. So it is not a formal split or even a de facto theological one on most matters.. But there's no doubt of a profound difference, one that Najaf jurists in particular will never deny, on the question of the role of religion, and juristic authority in particular, in the state. And from that I do think a few things follow as the post points out.
HAH
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