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.

Yassin assassinated.

"Sheikh" Ahmed Yassin is the "spiritual leader" of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that has performed terrorist attacks against innocent Israeli civilians inside the Green Line (ie, inside the nation of Israel proper, not just out in the Occupied Territories).

Or, I should say, Yassin was:

Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader and founder of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, was killed early Monday by an Israeli missile that struck him as he left a mosque in Gaza City, his family and Hamas officials said. They said at least two bodyguards had been killed with him.

Sheik Yassin, a symbol to Palestinians of resistance to Israel and to Israelis of Palestinian terrorism, was by far the most significant Palestinian militant killed by Israel in more than three years of conflict.

Black smoke curled over Gaza City as Palestinians began burning tires in the streets and demonstrators chanted for revenge. Mosque loudspeakers blared a message across Gaza of mourning for Sheik Yassin in the name of Hamas and another militant group, Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

Remember that to the Palestinians, Hamas is a champion striking back at an occupying power. The basic rationale for targeting civilians is that Israel is nominally a democracy and thus the civilians have ultimate responsibility for the actions of their government - in fact, as Steven den Beste puts it, there is no such thing as a civilian.

Intellectually, I accept the logic that legitimizes me and my family (including my 2 year old daughter) as targets for enemies of my country that seek to avenge wrongs inflicted upon them by my government, which I have the power to affect. The logic does not hold for oppressed people such as Arabs who are ruled by tyrants (themselves having gained power with American support during the Cold War) and who have no power over their governments beyond mass violence and civil unrest - an outcome that the tyrants avoid by feeding them a diet of anti-Semitic paranoia as a distraction.

Personally, the death of Yassin does not motivate me to weep tears of remorse. Far more significant tears were shed in mourning as the result of Yassin's life than in his passing.

I do think that Matthew is on to something. Not about the curious timing of the attack - after all, Sharon needs to pacify the right as he prepares for the Gaza pullout and as the security fence gets re-routed (I'm waiting for Jonathan to weigh in on this). Rather, on the long-term strategy - that the policy of killing the leaders of Hamas will have a net positive result. Ultimately, targeting spiritual leaders tends to validate their otherwise-poor arguments. It would have been better to isolate or perhaps even "disappear" Yassin rather than simply give him the martyrdom he longed for.

curious about my sneer quotes in the first sentence? The terms mean something very different to a Bohra. Very different indeed. I refer you to your library copy of Mullahs on the Mainframe.

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fuzzy analogies: Shi'a and Catholics.

Razib takes exception to the Shi'a-Catholic/Sunni-Protestant analogy, and makes some very good points about why the mapping is not 1:1. However, as a Shi'a myself, though, I still find the analogy useful when discussing religion with Christians, because there are some string parallels that I think Razib overlooked:

Sunnis and Protestants focus more emphasis on the individual as the route to God. These can be loosely termed "democratic" though of course that allows for all sorts of grassroots-driven diversity. However that has its downside, as the rise of Christian and Islamic fundies alike who take a literalist view of the holy book, manufacture religious sources to support their interpretations (think hadith and historical revisioninsm ala "America was founded on Christian values") .

Shia/Catholics are more hierarchical driven and see te path to God as lying through an intercessor who has divine authority. This imposes a discipline of the range of interpretations possible of the holy sources. Shi'a dont accept any hadith that doesnt have an isnad (record of narration) that traces to Ali AS, for example. The role of Imam and Pope ar not equal but they certainly are analogous.

Note that Iranian and Iraqi Shi'a (and other Ithna Ashari "Twelver" groups) are very similar to Sunnis in the way they organize their religious authority structures. My own sect, the Ismaili Bohras (separate from the Ismaili Aga Khanis), is more traditional and thus follows the Catholic analogy (without equivalence) more closely.

As always, I urge anyone interested in learning more about Shi'a practices and beliefs as well as my own community's response to the challenges of integrating modernism and tradition, to read Jonah Blank's excellent ethnography, Mullahs on the Mainframe.

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analysis of the interim Iraqi Constitution.

Steven Den Beste has a must-read analysis of the new interim Iraqi Constitution. This is an academic-quality piece of work. Steven uses a dichotomy between semantic and structural clauses to illustrate how any given constitution is able to react to long-term changes, and points to the prevalence of the former in the EU Constitution and the latter in the U.S. Constitution to make the point. Armed with these concepts to aid the analysis, he takes a look at the new Iraqi document.

The bottom line is that the interim constitution has an innovative approach to the problem of the ethnic divisions within Iraq, which promised to be the major obstacle to ratification and implementation. The two great innovations of the US Constitution were 1) setting the Judiciary as a separate and co-equal third branch of government, and 2) using a bicameral solution for the Legislative Branch to solve the big-state/small-state problem. In the Iraqi Constitution, the great innovation relates to the Executive Branch (and doesn't bother with a bicameral legislature) because the fundamental problem is ethnic, not demographic.

However, the problems that the innovations in 1776 and now 2004 were designed to solve stem from the same basic cause, namely the fear of tyranny of the majority/minority by the minority/majority. As Steven explains, the Iraqi interim constitution achieves an elegant solution tailored to the Iraqi reality of ethnic division, without actually making explicit semantic reference to ethnicity. (go read it!)

It's also worth noting that this is an interim document, but the permanent Iraqi constitution will be largely based on the precedent set by this one. The goal is to establish stable governance, and not let that goal get sidetracked by the allure of perfection. Perfection is the enemy of the good.

It's hard not to be optimistic about the document, but it's important to note that a constitution is just a piece of paper. In 1776 there were not terrorist attacks against religious targets and civilians to contend with, and the colonies were relatively isolated from external forces after winning the war (compared to Iraq).

I also think that the Bush Administration's planned handover of sovereignity, and massive troop reductions shortly afterwards, are going to work against stability in the long term. There is a real void in terms of civil order that our troops are unable to fill, and into which destabilizing Shi'a militias are stepping forward. The political-deadline-driven handover is going to be a massive obstacle to giving this new constitution a chance to become part of the landscape.

Overall, I am still greatly pessimistic. But the new constitution has allowed me some hope that things may yet evade the facts on the ground.

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Iraqis say no to sectarian war.

via Juan Cole, Sunnis respond to the bombing against the Shi'a with an outpouring of support - and blood donations:

Az-Zaman: In the Sunni city of Fallujah, mosque officials with microphones urged citizens to donate blood to the victims of the bombing at Kazimiyah. In in the Sunni district of Azamiyah in Baghdad, where the bridge was blocked that leads over the river to the Shiite quarter of Kazimiyah, appeals were also made over microphones for the Sunni inhabitants to save their brethren in Kazimiyah by donating blood. Hundreds of youth heeded the call and volunteered. Drivers volunteered to transport more than a thousand such volunteers. (The Shiites of Kazimiyah and the Sunnis of Azamiyah have an old rivalry and their youth gangs have often fought in the streets. There was trouble between the two last fall when Saddam was captured).

Although these Sunnis showed unwonted enthusiasm for helping the Shiites, they placed the blame for what happened solidly on the Coalition. They fear that the US intends to partition Iraq.

If az-Zaman is right about the sentiments of national unity generated by the bombing, it may have been the biggest mistake yet of the guerrilla insurgents.

The Islamic Democracy of Iraq is inevitable.

UPDATE: Juan Cole has more on the communal unity between Sunnis and Shi'a in the aftermath of the bombing.

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to be condemned.

WARNING: Graphic link, not for children.

This practice is an insult to the memory of Imam Husain AS. It is vile. Doing it to a child transgresses beyond obscene and into depraved.

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martyrs upon Husain AS.

The horrific attacks upon the faithful on the Day of Ashura, the day of the martyrdom of Imam Husain AS, were entirely predictable and preventable by the ruling military authority. After all, it was the Administration that put great stock in the infamous Zarqawi letter^[1] that described in detail a plot to target Shi'a religious events in order to ignite a sectarian war.

Syedna Muhammad Burhanuddin TUS has said in his bayaan that preventing a mukhlis Shi'a from ziyarat of Imam Husain AS in Karbala is a grievous, terrible sin. The fates of those who ruled over Karbala have been intertwined with their accomodation towards the pilgrims. Saddam Hussein interfered greatly with ziyarat, finally relenting, but his regime's end was marked for doom the moment stood in the way, even if for a moment.

Once, the emir of the region decreed that out of every ten pilgrims, one would be beheaded for the privelege of ziyarat. This was an attempt to quell the tide, but do you know how the Shi'a responded? They came in droves! Each begging for the great sharaf and privelege of being the one whose head was taken. Is there any higher honor upon this earth than facilitating the ziyarat of nine other mumineen to do ziyarat of Husain AS? I'd offer my head without qualm.

So Al Qaeda, or Ba'athists, or space aliens or the Illuminati or whatever all seek to wreak their hate upon the Shi'a. There is nothing they can do to us apart from send us to Imam Husain AS. The 125 dead and counting are just the latest martyrs upon Husain AS.

UPDATE: Compiling statistics and signing agreements are worthless as metrics for success in Iraq. Lest you think the martrydom of 125 (and counting) innocent worshippers is not worthy of including in your calculus?


^[1] comprehensively and systematically analyzed by Dan Darling who has significant expertise on this arena, see his regular War on Terror roundups over at Winds of Change.

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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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