Shi'a Pundit

Devoted to the viewpoint of Islam of Muhammad SAW and Amir ul-Mumineen, Ali ibn Abi Talib SA, in the Shi'a Fatimi Ismaili Dawoodi Bohra tradition.

war on Islam.

This is an insult to the faith of such magnitude, that there's really no other way to interpret it:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — World War II had its "krauts," Vietnam had its "gooks," and now, the war on terrorism has its own dehumanizing name: "hajji."

That's what many U.S. troops across Iraq and in coalition bases in Kuwait now call anyone from the Middle East or South Asia. Soldiers who served in Afghanistan say it also is used there.

Among Muslims, the word is used mainly as a title of respect. It means "one who has made the hajj," the pilgrimage to Mecca.

But that's not how soldiers use it.

Some talk about "killing some hajjis" or "mowing down some hajjis." One soldier in Iraq inked "Hodgie Killer" onto his footlocker.

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

Magneto appeal.

While continuing our conversation, Dan Darling makes an incredibly insightful analogy, that you have to be part geekboy to really appreciate:

I also understand how easy it is for angry or resentful individuals to fall under the sway of a demagogue who promises to provide a means to vent out their frustrations on the people or nations responsible for them. This is one of the main reasons why I think that so much support for bin Laden exists within the Arab world, as I've noted before, he has what I call "Magneto appeal."

In the fictional universe of Marvel Comics, mutants are feared, persecuted, repressed, and in various alternate realities finally exterminated by robotic Sentinels. Magneto takes those mutants have suffered oppression or seen those who have and after explaining that they are involved in a zero-sum situation, offers to help them vent out their anger on those responsible for their plight: humanity. This is one of the reasons why I hold that the war on terror is and always was more about power than it ever was about religion.

Instantly added to my vocabulary.

I find the rest of his argument compelling. He has shifted teh center of mass of my thinking on Sadr, for the moment I just intend to see what happens next.

There was an indepth profile of Sadr, maybe in the CSM, but I am not exactly sure. Someone fwded me the link and I've lost it. It was a journalist interview who actually went to Iraq and observed Sadr holding court, and was superbly detailed as well as maintaining a tone of skepticism throughout. I remember one part where Sadr admonishes someone who had been a looter, saying that the spoils of looting are haram (forbidden) ... If someone out there can help me find it, please let me know.

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

it's going to be messy either way.

Dan Darling has posted a response to my comments about the seeming disinformation campaign against Al-Sadr. Also, Afghan Voice briefly mentioned that I've taken a "rose colored" view of the man, who he calls a street thug. Let me make an explicit statement here to clarify, I don't think that al-Sadr is the saviour of Iraq or the Shi'a, I think that distrust of his motives is healthy and wise, and that he may indeed be a street thug. But my point is only that he may not be. And that regardless of who he really is, he has given voice to a legitimate undercurrent in the new Iraq, that the religion must play a role, and that separation of Mosque and State is a non-starter if we are to succeed there.

Dan's post is long and detailed, and does not lend itself to piecwise excerpting, so it's better that it be read in its entirety. I don't have a formal response, but just a few comments in general:

Sheikh Abdel Mahdi Darraji's rhetoric is a good example of leveraging standard-issue Arab memes to try and garner support for your cause of the week. But certainly, our behavior in Iraq at the fine-grained level of troops interacting with Iraqis has not been inconsistent with Darraji's perspective. It's not a stretch for the average Iraqi to listen to Darraji and think "hmm. that does make sense" given the filtered and anecdotal nature of news (and bad news travels more efficiently). On the whole, I think that Iraqi resentment to the occupation is a legitimate emotional response, and can't be explained away by invoking endemic antisemitism or some other "Shame of the Arabs" argument that is very popular (though NOT, I should add, with Dan).

My eyebrows raised at the Preservation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice mention as well. I'm not trying to downplay the threat of theocracy here. The record of such institutions in the Arab world is Not Promising. Of course, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 also decrees "laws for the encouragement of virtue, and prevention of vice and immorality, shall be made and constantly kept in force, and provision shall be made for their due execution.” Al-Sadr might just be the Iraqi Dennis Kucinich, whose calls for a Department of Peace are about as likely as a Vice and Virtue ministry in the US (well, unless President Ashcroft wins re-election in 2012...). NO I AM NOT saying that Islamic theocrats are freedom-loving Bejamin Franklins at heart, but pointing out rather that Sadr's government is 99% rhetoric at this point, and given that he doesn't have anywhere near the popular support he pretends to have (Juan Cole mentioned that his calls for massive public rallies in support were not exactly rousing), it's mostly just recruitment-oriented.

There's a legitimate fear that Sadr might be an Iranian puppet, but if we treat him like one, then we make a tactical error. Because even if he really is a Hezbollah goon (and I guess my instinct difers from Dan on this score), it doesn't make his point invalid - that the new Iraq must represent not just the ethnicity but also the faith of the people. If the CPA treats that point as irrelevant (and all signs point to exactly this attitude), then we just might have a self-fulfilling prophecy on our hands.

And one last point about the Mahdi Army - we can't expect a vaccuum not to be filled. Even if Sadr disbanded it, it would re-form, since the US forces are unable to provide comprehensive security. As a result - even if the Mahdi Army doesn't even do any security policing at all - the perception of the need for an Iraqi militia is strong enough to guarantee it exists. This is the reality of our lack of resources. As Dan points out, security was the main (ONLY) selling point of the Taliban - but that was enough to make the sale. Don't misunderstimate the desire of a frightened people to trade liberty for security- it's happenning in a (comparatively) benign way right here in the US.

I'm fairly pessimistic. And I agree with Dan that a large well-armed group of thugs is a bad sign. Don't mistake my comments for wishful thinking - I don't care about Sadr, I care about the attitudes of the CPA, which will directly influence the end result.

Actually I do have to quote Dan for one comment:

I agree that the Iranian Revolution was a grassroots phenomenon and that the end-result is going to be a far more democratic fusion of Islam and democracy, with or without any possibility of future US or Israeli intervention. Unfortunately, it sure sucks for all of the people who have to live under the Islamic Republic during the interim period and I see no real reason why the same process should be allowed to repeat itself in Iraq.

yes it does indeed suck. But the tree of liberty is a thirsty bugger... I've referred to this as "the means influence the ends" - and a rigorous and honest fusion of democracy with Islam is going to take at least as much blood as the synthesis of Christianity and democracy did. There are no short cuts. Bechtel can't build the Liberty Tree overnight. The process by which a people achieve liberty is the foundation of that liberty itself - and the way we are proceeding in Iraq, we are pretending that liberty is clean and sterile and can be outsourced to Asian laborers.

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

Shehrullah il-Moazzam 1424H.

O Allah! This is the month of Ramadan in which descended the Qur'an as a guide to mankind and a criterion to separate truth from falsehood. O Allah! Bless us in the month of Ramadan, and give us Your help and accept our ibadat, for You have power over all things.

There is no god but Allah. We seek Your forgiveness. O Allah! Grant us Paradise and save us from Hellfire.

Mubarak to all on the holy month of Shehrullah il Moazzam. Please remember me and my family in your precious dua during Ramadan.

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

al-Sadr: proto-Khomeini? only if we make him.

The Shi'a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is an interesting figure. I've compiled a number of links as I try to find out more information, and have come away with the conviction that he's being drastically mis-represented by our media and by supporters of the war.

Consider this typical link from Winds of Change:

Iranian-backed Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr is warning the US to stay out of Sadr City, Baghdad's largest Shi'ite area. Al-Sadr is also calling for a Khomeinist-style theocratic government independent of the United States.

The first link leads to a "fisking" of the real story at The Financial Times (reg reqd). The clear attitude is that anyone who refuses entry to US troops into their neighborhood must have nefarious motives - but as first-hand reports of abuses by the occupying forces against civilian innocents demonstrates, there are good reasons for Iraqis to distrust their benevolent overlords.

The second link is a gross smear. The article actually quotes Sadr:

"I have decided and I have formed a government made up of several ministries, including ministries of justice, finance, information, interior, foreign affairs, endowments and the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice," the young cleric had said.

"If you agree, I ask you to demonstrate peacefully in order to express you support," al-Sadr had exhorted.

Nowhere is mention of a Khomeini-style theocracy. Sadr's spokesmen have in fact explicitly rejected the Iranian model:

Abbas al-Robai, one of al-Sadr's Baghdad aides, denied that the movement wants to create an Iranian-style state. ``What we are after is a democracy with an Islamic character, not a religious state,'' he said.

Though of course, since Sadr's appeal is primarily to the poor, there is already signs that Sadr's movement is attracting exacty the kind of religiously intolerant thugs that are the greatest threat to the development of such a democracy:

With unemployment running at 60-70 percent, al-Sadr's lieutenants have not found it difficult to recruit from poor Shiite areas in Baghdad and in the southern region of Iraq despite the movement's lack of a clear political vision for the country and al-Sadr's modest religious qualifications.
...
Many in Karbala, Najaf and Sadr City, a mainly Shiite area in east Baghdad named after al-Sadr's slain father, have expressed anger over the heavy-handed attempts by al-Sadr's followers to impose a stricter version of Islamic teachings.
...
residents in Sadr City, home to some 2 million Shiites, complain that shops selling compact discs and cassettes deemed immoral by al-Sadr supporters have been trashed or torched and say women not adhering to the strict Islamic dress code in public were being harassed on the streets.

(Let me make note here that I am Shi'a, but am an Ismaili Bohra, not the Ithna Ashari sect that dominates Iraq. I don't believe in the return of the Mahdi. I don't acknowledge any of the Shi'a clerics in Iraq as authoritative on religious issues).

There is a definite threat here, but centered not on Sadr, IMHO. Rather, it is the threat that the lack of Iraqi leadership is allowing religion to fill the political vaccuum. But the religious aspect of the future Iraqi state cannot be minimized, either - Iraq is NOT a place for pure separation of church and state (which I strongly and fervently support here in the US).

If Iraq is truly going to reflect the culture and personality of its people, then its future government does indeed need to incorporate Islam in some way. The problem with the American occupation and the governing council and Chalabi is that they do not demonstrate an awareness of the role that Islam needs to play.

Most critics seem to forget that the Iranian revolution was embraced willingly from within, not imposed from above by Khomeini. In fact, that makes the Islamic Revolution in Iran essentially unique - and also is why the flaws of the Islamic theocracy model are so clear to the vast bulk of the Iranian population today, who are striving for reform. But the point is that it was a natural process of growth. Iran's theocracy has a finite lifetime, and will soon fade, from internal forces. The result will be a truer and more robust synthesis of Islam and democracy (assuming that the US or Israel do not play the role of external threat, which might interrupt the process).

In 25 years, Iran will be a powerful ally. Iraq might well be where Iran is today, if Sadr eventually is elected from his growing base of support and leads Iraq towards a more religious identity. But if our intentions towards Iraq are true, then we have to at some point let Iraq make these decisions for itself.

However, if Sadr is made into a scapegoat and bogeyman figure, it will radicalize his base, and push them further from the path that eventually leads to democracy. Juan Cole notes that the Governing Council is trying to link Sadr with Ba'athist remnants, which makes no sense if you stop to think about the idoelogies involved. Sadr is also being accused of coordinating the bombings in Najaf that killed al-Hakim. And Billmon has more insight into the demonization process.

But what Sadr has actually done is provide Iraqis with a sense of true leadership. Unlike the Governing council which is widely regarded as a puppet of the US, Sadr is making a case for Iraqi sovereignity and control. Unlike the cleric al-Sistani, who has recused himself from political leadership, Sadr is asserting the importance of Islam in the future of Iraq in a tangible way. And he is taking the initiative for providing security and infrastructure that the occupying forces have still failed to provide to a majority of Iraqis.

Sadr is not a unifying figure yet, and doesn't have the broad support that he claims. But he does represent a non-trivial fraction of the Iraqi viewpoint. Attempting to marginalize or worse, demonize him will only guarantee the worst-case scenario.

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

Iraqi Shiite split widens.

full text of an article from the Christian Science Monitor:

A shootout between Shiite factions in Karbala Tuesday killed at least one person and injured dozens.
By Dan Murphy | Special to The Christian Science Monitor

SADR CITY, IRAQ - Depending on whom you talk to, Moqtada al-Sadr is either a young hot-head or a talented and pious son of one of Iraq's most revered Shiite clerics. But whomever you ask, he's clearly making waves and throwing the US-led coalition's plans for Iraq off kilter.

The radical cleric is also forcing to the surface splits within Iraq's Shiite community, oppressed under Saddam Hussein although representing about 60 percent of the population. By confronting other clerics and demanding more political power from the coalition he has revealed a patchwork of allegiances and grievances that show the Shiites are far from a monolithic political force.

Late Monday evening in Karbala, the site of Shiite Islam's second holiest shrine, members of Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army militia engaged in a running gun battle with supporters of Sheikh Ali Hussein Sistani in a struggle for control of the shrines to Abbas and Hussein. The tombs of these 7th-century imams are regular pilgrimage sites and their guardians are accorded respect and power among the Shiites.

According the Baghdad-based Iraqi Governing Council, one person was killed in the fighting and 35 were injured.

Mowaffak al-Rubaie, says the situation was so sensitive that he didn't want to discuss who had sparked the clash, or even directly address the factions at all. "This was between two groups trying to control the local muni cipality and the shrines."

"What none of us wants is for major splits to emerge within the Shiite community,'' says Mr. Rubaie. "So the GC is sending a delegation to Najaf and Karbala to reconcile all of the parties and to try to resolve this crisis."

Such mediation would involve dealing with Mr. Sistani, probably the most widely revered living cleric among Iraq's Shiite community. Until now, Sistani has maintained a pious distance from the country's emerging politicians. Though many believe that Sistani disapproves of the young Sadr's confrontational approach, Tuesday's clash was the first sign of open conflict - and perhaps evidence that the young Sadr has gone too far.

Amatzia Baram, a leading historian of Iraq and a senior fellow of the US Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., says he has followed the rise of Sadr with some unease.

While he doubts that Sadr, whose religious credentials are almost solely confined to the reflected glory of his deceased father, will ever win anywhere close to a majority of Iraq's Shiites to his side, he does command a devoted following among the poor of Sadr City, a poor Shiite area of Baghdad that is home to about 2 million people.

Sadr City was named Saddam City until shortly after the regime fell, and is named after Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, Moqtada's father, who was assassinated by the Hussein regime in 1999. The elder Sadr's portrait is everywhere in town.

"Sadr is a junior clergymen but he's very clever as a politician,'' says Mr. Baram. "He may not be the most popular figure in Iraq, but he has a strong and focused base among the poor of Sadr city. That's why he's so dangerous - he has a lot of potential footsoldiers."

Sistani represents the majority of Iraq's Shiites. A cautious figure, he is so respected that many believe he can not only repair internal divisions within the Shiite community, but also heal some of the country's larger sectarian and ethnic divisions.

"Sistani is a quietist,'' says Dr. Baram. "He could buy the Americans another year, just like that, if he opened his mouth and said it would be chaos if they go. But his approach is to not get too involved."

It is too soon to tell what the fallout of the incident in Karbala will be. For instance, Sadr's men may have acted on their own initiative. Security in both Karbala and Iraq's other major shrine city, Najaf, have been left in the hands of local figures out of respect to the religion.

But tension has often been high in both cities, particularly since a car bomb killed a leading cleric and 85 followers outside the shrine of Ali in Najaf.

There have been frequent scuffles between pilgrims and security guards.

Analysts say all this could make Sadr a more marginal figure, that in turn could make his supporters, with less to lose, more dangerous.

The shootout in Karbala was the latest in a string of incidents involving Sadr and his Mahdi Army.

Last Friday, he declared his own government and denounced the US-appointed Iraq Governing Council. On Thursday, his men fought with US soldiers in Sadr City.

Representatives for the 2nd Armored Calvary said a patrol in the area was lured into an ambush and had to fight its way out past a gantlet of as many as 500 armed men. Two Iraqis and two US soldiers were killed.

On Tuesday Sadr had helped lead the physical expulsion of the US-appointed district council for Sadr City from its building. He and a number of other leaders in the district are seeking to replace the council with representatives they see as more legitimate. US military officials rejected his demands, heightening tension in the area.

Maj. Aaron Marler, a political officer with US forces in Sadr City, describes Sadr as a marginal figure who is standing in the way of the eventual transfer of authority to Iraqis. "He is simply not participating in the political process here,'' says Major Marler. "This is something he is free to do, and we encourage him. But what we don't deal with is threats and demands.

Until now, Sadr has benefited from the belief of many of his followers that the differences between him and Sistani are simply ones of style, not of substance.

"All of the marjas [Shiite religious scholars] are of one mind,'' says Abbas al-Rubaie, editor of a newspaper that Sadr partially controls. "Sistani is of course very important, but Moqtada al-Sadr is easily recognizable as the most important current Shiite leader."

One of the principal differences between Shiite and Sunni Islam, which split in the 7th century in a dispute over who should lead the religion, is the importance of the clergy to the Shiite.

While Sunnis have a very loose and nonhierarchical organization, Shiites believe strongly that religious scholars are needed to help interpret the will of God in the modern context with religious rulings, or fatwa.

These scholars, the marja, are far from a monolithic group themselves, with different views on everything from the role of Islam in the state to the appropriate punishments for crimes. Every Shiite is, more or less, the follower of one marja, so the most popular marjas like Sistani have an enormous amount of de facto political power at their fingers, if they chose to use it.

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

losing the peace: cheap labor.

It's great we are building schools in Iraq. But it's NOT great that we are doing it with cheap imported labor from Asia. via TPM, the article in the Financial Times last Tuesday:

“We don't want to overlook Iraqis, but we want to protect ourselves," the US Army colonel who heads the Coalition Provisional Authority's procurement office told the paper. "From a force protection standpoint, Iraqis are more vulnerable to a bad guy influence."
...
"Iraqis are a security threat," says a Pakistani manager in Baghdad for the Tamimi Company, based in the Saudi city of Dammam, which is contracted to cater for 60,000 soldiers in Iraq. "We cannot depend on them."
The company, which has 12 years' experience feeding US troops in the Gulf, employs 1,800 Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis and Nepalese in its kitchens. It uses only a few dozen Iraqis for cleaning.

In the dusty backyard of the US administrators' Baghdad palace, south Asians, housed 12 to a Saudi-made temporary cabin, organise 180,000 meals a day for US troops and administrators.

A Tamimi manager says the company pays an average salary of one Saudi riyal (Dollars 3) a day and grants leave once every two years. The contracts are awarded by Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, which in 2001 won its second Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or Logcap, contract to sub-contract the supply of US military provisions. The Logcap is open-ended and its Iraqi share is worth "in excess of Dollars 2bn", according to officials of the Defence Contract Management Agency in Baghdad.

Though Marshall initially accepts the security premise for the policy, an email from a reader suggests otherwise:

Josh: I just read your FT blog - to a certain extent I think this rationale of the "Iraqis can't be trusted" is a bunch of hoo ha.
UAE: 20% of the pop is local. Of the 80% of the expat pop, fully 75% are subcontinenters. Why? Dirt cheap, much cheaper than the Arabs (imported or otherwise).

Of the international construction firms here, they all use minimum of 80% subcontinenters (i.e. the Halliburton and Bechtel types take all the money).

Bottom line: wages are a function of the price of living in the home countries. The price of living for subcontinenters in the subcontinent is nothing. E.g. I pay my Indian maid USD 300 month of which she supports a family of 10 people in Bombay and still manages to save probably 50% of her salary here in Dubai.

When you prepare city plans you have to do population studies first, e.g. existing and forecasted pop, breakdown of population by M/F and ethnic mix, et al. Why? as an example - the low wage Indians are in construction camps w/o dependents- I need land for construction camps for them, not houses; they also do not own cars so I don't need to factor in their "trips" as car trips, I factor them in as bus trips since they are bused everywhere, etc.

The reader misses one additional point - much of the imported labor is from Pakistan, not India. That means that the same security risk applies as with Iraqis! It is clearly a financial calculation, not a security one.

I know of many many families from India and Pakistan who have moved to Dubai and other middle east countries for precisely this reason, so I have much corroborating information. Coupled with the many reports of how money is being misspent in Iraq, this is amounting to an outrage for both Americans (whose money is being wasted) and Iraqis (who are being exploited).

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

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About Shi'a Pundit

Shi'a Pundit was launched in 2002 during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The blog focuses on issues pertaining to Shi'a Islam in the west and in the Islamic world. The author is a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community. Bohras adhere to the Shi'a Fatimi tradition of Islam, headed by the 52nd Dai al-Mutlaq, Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS).

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