A Concise History of Sunnis and Shi'is Read online

  Only four decades ago, the words Sunni and Shi‘i were virtually unknown in Western countries outside specialist academic circles. If an ancient feud between Sunnis and Shi‘is is truly the faultline that has divided the Muslim world ever since the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, why did it receive so little attention before the late 1970s? To take just one example, but a hugely important one: in 1947, British India was partitioned on independence into predominantly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan. At the time, the Sunni-Shi‘i divide received almost no attention and was clearly of little significance, even though India and Pakistan each contained both Sunni and Shi‘i Muslims.

  Nevertheless, an ancient religious dispute, a focus for primordial hatreds, can appear to fit the bill for today’s many disasters in the Middle East. Important figures in the West have fuelled this kind of simplistic perception. The idea that Sunnis and Shi‘is are now going through a period of bloodstained hatred similar to that experienced by Europe during the Reformation has become almost commonplace. Thomas Friedman, a columnist with a good background in Middle Eastern matters, wrote in a flippant piece in the New York Times on 1 April 2015 that ‘the main issue [in Yemen today] is the 7th century struggle over who is the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad – Shiites or Sunnis.’3 Such a perception needs to be challenged, as will become clear in the final chapter of this book. Another figure who has encouraged the spread of such contagious oversimplifications is Barack Obama. In his January 2016 State of the Union address, he stated that ‘the Middle East is going through a transformation that is going on for a generation, rooted in conflicts that date back millennia’. When seen in the context of his speech, this could only be a reference to the Sunni-Shi‘i divide. He has also implied on other occasions that ‘ancient sectarian differences’ are the drivers of today’s instability in the Arab world.4

  A simplistic narrative is in danger of taking firm hold in the West: that Sunnis and Shi‘is have engaged in a perpetual state of religious war and mutual demonisation that has lasted across the centuries; and that this is the root cause of all that is wrong in the Middle East today. This is a very convenient narrative. It deflects attention from the immediate causes of the increase in sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi‘is over the past few years. Where bloodshed between Sunnis and Shi‘is occurs it is usually entwined with political issues. The way to stop today’s bloodshed is to sort out those political problems. Unfortunately, that runs up against the vested interests of many players.

  It is quite wrong to see sectarian strife as endemic to Islam or the Middle East. Nevertheless, it is unquestionably growing at the moment. It has done so since 1979, and at a turbo-charged rate since 2003. Many mischievous hands have played a role in this, but there are also important forces that work against it. So there is no reason to despair – at least, not yet.

  Note on Terminology

  The names of cities, countries and even people can change over time, especially when a book covers history spanning more than 1,400 years. I have tried to use the best-known names that require least explanation. For consistency, I refer to Istanbul rather than to Constantinople, even though Constantinople was the form used throughout most of the centuries covered by this book. I do, however, refer to the city as Constantinople in the paragraphs dealing with its fall to the Ottomans in 1453. I also refer to the founder of the Turkish republic as Kemal Ataturk, although at the time he is mentioned he was still Mustapha Kemal. Iran and Persia provide a particular difficulty, since each name can carry very different overtones in English. It was not until 1935 that Persia officially changed its name to Iran, but it would have been confusing to start referring to Iran only at that point. This is especially so as the name Iran is also ancient, and has been used by the Iranian people to describe their land throughout the period covered by this book. Yet they call the language they speak Persian (Farsi, the language of the province of Fars). I have therefore tended to say Iran and Iranians when referring to the land and its people, but to use Persian when referring to the language and its culture. In any case, culture written in the Persian language has extended well beyond the borders of Iran, and sometimes may have little that is specifically Iranian about it. I have also referred to the Sasanian Empire – which the Arabs conquered in the seventh century – as Persian, because that felt right.

  I use the term ‘Greater Syria’ for the land extending south from the Taurus mountains (which are now inside Turkey) all the way along the coast of the Mediterranean to the Sinai peninsula. In doing this I am not trying to make a political statement. Greater Syria is primarily a geographical, rather than a political, expression; the term is useful because in the twentieth century this area was split up by modern boundaries that are irrelevant and misleading if mentioned in the context of earlier periods. Similarly, ‘Greater Bahrain’ refers not just to the islands of Bahrain but a large area of adjacent Arabian mainland.

  When discussing the concept of the Islamic Sharia, which is described in the glossary as ‘the religious, or canonical, law of Islam’, I have avoided the debate in modern scholarship over questions such as the extent to which the Sharia genuinely reflects the practice of the Prophet. Some modern scholars have argued that much of the Sharia, as we know it today, consists of existing customary laws which were recast as Prophetic and Islamic law. This question lies outside the scope of this book, as does the related one of the extent to which pre-Islamic Persian and other practices influenced Islam, and particularly Shi‘ism.

  John McHugo

  June 2017

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  In the Beginning: Before There Were Sunnis and Shi‘is

  The split in Islam between Sunnis and Shi‘is is often traced back to the question of who should have led the Muslim community after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD. Failure to resolve that question to the satisfaction of all resulted in a great scandal: a civil war among Muslims over the leadership of the community. This began less than twenty-five years after the Prophet had been placed in his grave, and while there were still many people alive who had known him well and loved him.

  One side to that civil war is often presented today as consisting of those who said that Muslims should choose the best available leader for their community. There were only two provisos. The first was that he should be a leading figure who was known for his devotion to the faith. This meant that he should be chosen from among the Prophet’s eminent Companions while they still lived. The other was that he must be from the tribe of the Quraysh to which Muhammad had belonged. This requirement may seem rather unnecessary to a modern reader who is unfamiliar with the history of Islam, but there were sound reasons for it at the time, as we shall see. The opposing party, it is frequently said, was made up of those who argued that leadership could be provided only by someone who was in the bloodline of the Prophet: initially, his cousin Ali, who was his closest living male relative at the time of his death and was married to his daughter Fatima. According to this view, the community should thenceforth always be led by a male descendant of that union.

  Looked at this way, the dispute appears as much political as religious. It can even be interpreted as the pitting of those who favoured a somewhat more democratic form of religious authority (the Sunnis) against those who supported a strictly monarchical one (the Shi‘is). As time passed, the split would appear to take the form, at least on the surface, of struggles between rival dynasties. Yet there has not been a caliph with a strong claim to universal acceptance among Sunni Muslims since 1258, the year in which Hulegu the Mongol sacked Baghdad. According to the most widely known account, he ordered the last of the Abbasid caliphs to be wrapped in a carpet and trampled to death by a soldier on horseback. This form of execution was chosen because Mongol protocol dictated that royal blood should not be seen to be spilled. As for the Shi‘is, apart from a few groups such as the Ismaili followers of the Aga Khan who are a small minority even among them, none today pledge their
allegiance to a worldwide religious community in which the supreme authority is a living descendant of Ali and Fatima.

  Yet today the division between Sunnis and Shi‘is seems very much alive. It is frequently seen as an important aspect of the conflicts that have been ravaging Syria and Iraq over the past few years, and of the power politics playing out between Saudi Arabia and Iran. There must therefore be something more behind it than ancient civil wars and half-forgotten dynasties. We have to follow the history from the beginning right through to the present if we wish to understand the division and its impact on us now. Over time, incompatible narratives to explain the history of the early Muslim community emerged. These would split Islam. In Islam, as perhaps in other religions, history and theology became permanently intertwined.

  I

  Islam’s central tenet is faith in the one true God. It shares this with Christianity and Judaism, alongside belief in the Last Judgement, the Resurrection of the Body, Heaven and Hell. Even though the three religions have important differences which divide them, each enjoins its followers to live their lives in accordance with core virtues that are shared by them all, such as compassion, honesty, generosity and justice. Islam’s sacred scripture, the Qur’an (literally ‘the recitation’), consists of passages which Muhammad believed were revealed to him by the angel Gabriel. From the earliest days of the faith, the revelations that make up the Qur’an were known to be distinct from everything else the Prophet said. The Qur’an is not the sole source of Muslim teaching, however, since all Muslims agree it is to be amplified by following the example of the Prophet and emulating the way he lived his life.

  The hallmarks of Islam are to be found in Muslim devotional practices – such as the formal prayers that are to be said at prescribed times over the course of the day, the fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca known as the Hajj. But the religious laws that govern the way Muslims should lead their lives are also key to living the religion. These, too, are based primarily on the teachings contained in the Qur’an and the customs established by the Prophet. After his death, the community was faced with many important questions. Among the most important was how to formulate and interpret these rules that govern the way Muslims perform their devotions and lead their lives. They make up what came to be known as the Sharia (literally, the path to the watering hole in the desert).

  The Prophet had died fairly suddenly, and had not made any clear arrangements accepted by the whole community as to who was to lead it after his death. He had not instituted any kind of priesthood or left behind an uncontested teaching authority on spiritual matters. Moreover, ever since the Prophet’s Hijrah, or emigration, from Mecca to the oasis of Medina some ten years before he died, the Muslim community had been a political entity. It had since grown into what today we would call a sovereign state, and required political leadership. This had been ably supplied by the Prophet himself while he was alive. Who was best qualified to supply it now? There were pressing problems of statecraft that had to be addressed at once. These were likely to involve murky compromises and messy decisions by a leader who would also be required to have the purity of heart needed to give guidance on spiritual matters. Sooner rather than later, this was likely to lead to a hard choice for the community: the person best able to exercise authority over it as an effective political leader might not be the most suitable candidate to be its spiritual guide.

  By the time Muhammad died, the community he had founded had come to dominate the desert subcontinent of Arabia. He had made Medina his capital, but Mecca, not Medina, was his native city and the place where he had begun his mission. Apart from the relatively small band that had responded to his initial preaching, the Meccans had been indifferent to his message or had actively opposed it. After a while, the city’s fathers had made the situation of the first Muslims very uncomfortable. The result had been that Muhammad had gone to Medina, a large oasis with considerable settled agriculture that lay more than 250 miles to the north, where he already had some followers. This was in response to an invitation to act as a kind of resident arbitrator in disputes between the tribes living there – a position that would imply a degree of leadership. He had charisma and wisdom, and was known for his trustworthiness. He would have appeared an ideal outsider to fulfil such a role.

  To the Muslim Muhajirun or ‘emigrants’, who set out for Medina from Mecca in unobtrusively small groups, there were now added Medinan converts who became known as the Ansar or ‘helpers’. They were able to consider the Prophet one of their own, since his paternal grandmother had originally come from Medina. Yet not all the inhabitants of Medina converted. The Jewish tribes in the oasis retained their own religion, and substantial numbers of the other inhabitants remained polytheists. Despite this, over time Muhammad became the most powerful man in the oasis and its de facto leader. That leadership eventually consolidated into rule. Initially, however, his authority was on sufferance, except as far as his Muslim followers were concerned. His position of pre-eminence stemmed from agreement, especially treaties of alliance with the major tribes. While he was still in Mecca, conversion to Islam had involved the risks of ostracism, discrimination and active persecution. We can therefore assume that all conversions while he had been in Mecca had been sincere. But now, in Medina, it became expedient for many to accept Islam for reasons of self-interest. This large group was referred to as the Munafiqun, generally called ‘the hypocrites’ in English, who are frequently attacked in the Qur’an.

  War with Mecca broke out almost immediately after Muhammad went to Medina, and seems to have been initiated by him and his followers. In contrast to the agricultural lands of Medina, Mecca was situated in a dry, rocky valley and had little or no agriculture of its own. Its prosperity depended on trade and, to a lesser extent, on its status as a pilgrimage destination, since it possessed the shrine of the Ka‘ba, which tradition stated had originally been built by Abraham and his son Ishmael (Ibrahim and Ismail in Arabic), although it was now a crowded house of idols. Meccan caravans had to pass Medina on their way to and from Syria, and it was this trade that Muhammad and his followers began to raid as a source of booty. By attacking its trade with Syria, he was threatening Mecca’s lifeblood.

  ARABIA IN THE TIME OF THE PROPHET

  Raiding of this sort was permitted by long-established Arabian custom. The tribe was the basic social and political unit of pre-Islamic Arab society, and rights and obligations were limited to those towards other members of the tribe, and the upholding of whatever agreements the tribe may have entered into with others. Third-party arrangements included relations with other tribes, as well as engagements with individuals or groups who might seek the tribe’s protection. The deterrent of vengeance, the old cry of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, was the cornerstone of justice and the only way in which law and order were maintained. It could be exacted not merely against the perpetrator of a wrong, but against any member of the wrongdoer’s tribe. Not for nothing was ‘persistence in the pursuit of vengeance’ a cornerstone of the central Arab virtue of hilm, the quality which also combined steadfastness, courtesy, generosity, tact and self-control, and was the characteristic most sought after in the leader of a tribe.

  This illustrates just how hard and lawless life was in seventh-century Arabia. It was not just the barrenness of the desert that was harsh. It had produced a brutal society that practised, among other extreme acts, the infanticide of unwanted baby girls. Not only was the physical environment hostile, but the lack of any settled government meant that there was no social unit above the tribe. Islam was something entirely new. When somebody became a Muslim, this meant that he or she had a new allegiance and a new code of conduct that overrode that of the old tribal customs. Tribal relationships were modified among those who had accepted the new religion, and the brutality of those relations softened by the teachings of Islam. If one tribe had a claim against another for the murder of one of its members, the Qur’an taught that the life of the
murderer was forfeit – but it would be better and more praiseworthy to renounce the right to the murderer’s death and accept blood money instead. Islam forbade the killing of another member of the murderer’s tribe on the old basis of an eye for an eye, so vengeance could now be exacted only against the murderer himself. The death penalty for the murderer or acceptance of compensation was the choice for the victim’s family, and the victim’s family alone, to decide.

  Islam provided a kind of ‘super-tribe’, of which all Muslims were members. Yet Islam did not replace tribalism as such. That would have been impossible in seventh-century Arabia, and there is no sign that the idea even occurred to the Prophet. The converts to the new faith formed a community that closed ranks against outsiders, such as the polytheists of Mecca, but the community’s relations with the tribes of Mecca (and elsewhere) were still based on the old tribal customs. The Muslim attacks on Meccan caravans would have been understood in these terms by everybody in Arabia. Tribes which had converted to Islam would now focus their energies on spreading Islam, rather than dissipating it on raids against each other and blood feuds.1

  II