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Red Lines and Deadlines
Sunni and Shia: The Worlds of Islam
Islam, as described by Muhammad, was a straightforward faith, demanding of its adherents only that they acknowledge a set of basic beliefs: that there is only one God, and that God is Allah; that believers must submit completely to God; that God is revealed in the Qur'an; that Muhammad is Allah's final prophet, and that all believers are equal before God. Beyond that, believers were called upon to observe "sharia" (the law as defined by the Qur'an), and to conform to the five "pillars" of the faith: public witnessing of one's faith, daily prayer, charity, fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, and making pilgrimage to Mecca.
Muhammad established no church or institutional structure for Islam; indeed, the faith's basic notion that all believers were equal before God seemed to rule out the notion of a priesthood. But Islam was a social and political movement as well as a religious one, and as it developed, a complex set of institutions grew with it, which over time took on an increasingly religious significance. And as the Arab empire expanded, Islam incorporated elements of the cultures it encountered, giving rise to varying schools of interpretation of the texts of Islamic belief: the Qur'an, the "sunnah" (the exemplary words and deeds of Muhammad) and the "hadith" (the records kept by Muhammad's companions).
With the rise of religious institutions and the expansion of Islamic scholarship, doctrinal arguments developed, which led to the development of a number of sects and schools of thought. But the most important schism in Islam -- the event that split the faith into the majority Sunni and minority Shia branches that persist to the present day -- took place at the religion's very beginnings.
The Caliphate
Muhammad died in 632 C.E. without leaving a son and heir, or clear instructions on who would succeed him. Under his leadership, Islam had become not only a faith, but the driving force behind an expanding Arab empire. Following tribal tradition, three groups of Muslim leaders -- those who had accompanied Muhammad on the "hijira" (the flight of the early Muslims from Mecca to Medina), the civic leaders of Medina who initially supported Muhammad, and the prominent families of Mecca who had become converts upon Muhammad's return -- met to decide who would act as head of the growing "ummah" or Muslim community.
The discussions split along partisan lines, which had roots in an existing rivalry between the closely related Hashemite and Umayyad clans. The Hashemites (the clan to which Muhammad belonged), supported Muhammad's son-in-law Ali (he'd married the Prophet's daughter Fatima), while the rival Umayyads backed Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father-in-law. Ali's followers became known as the Shia, from "shiat Ali" (party of Ali); those who supported the Umayyads came to be called Sunnis, from "Sunna" (one who follows the word and deed of the Prophet).
Eventually Abu Bakr was appointed to the new position, known as the Caliphate (from "khalifa," the Arabic term for successor), and assumed spiritual and political leadership. The new position was primarily secular: The Caliph led the Islamic community, but was not believed to possess any kind of divine power or prophetic ability, since Muhammad's teachings had established that he was the final Prophet.
While Abu Bakr's reign lasted only two years (he died in 634), his successors, Omar and Uthman, continued to expand the empire, moving into Iran and Egypt. But the political struggles between the clans continued, and both the second and third Caliphs were assassinated.
In 656, Ali was chosen as the fourth Caliph. He would be the last of the "rightly guided" Caliphs -- the men who had traveled and studied with Muhammad -- and his ascent to the throne triggered Islam's first open civil war.
The Schism
Muawiyah, the Umayyad governor of Syria, challenged Ali's authority as Caliph, and the empire fragmented, with both men claiming to be Caliph. Muawiyah argued that the Caliphate should continue to be decided by a consensus of the faithful, while Ali's followers maintained that the Prophet's bloodline should take precedence. Meanwhile Abu Bakr's daughter Aisha -- Muhammad's widow -- charged that Ali had been an accomplice in Uthman's murder and led her troops against his. Finally, in 661 C.E., Ali was assassinated by the Kharijites, a breakaway sect whose members rejected both Umayyad and Hashemite claims to the Caliphate.
Ali's eldest son, Hasan, who was uninterested in politics, rejected the Caliphate, and Muawiyah claimed the position, moving the capital to Damascus, Syria and ending the debate over succession. The Umayyad dynasty went on to rule for a century, expanding the empire as far east as present-day Pakistan and as far west as Morocco, even taking control of Spain in 711. The Umayyads consolidated Islamic rule over what we know today as the traditional center of the Islamic world as seen in the map above: North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. The Caliphate itself existed (with varying degrees of power) as a secular authority in the Islamic world until 1924, ending only when Ataturk abolished it as part of the secularization of Turkey.
The Shia, meanwhile, rejected the authority of the new Caliph, claiming that Muawiyah and the Umayyads were usurpers. They believed that membership in the Hashemite line -- in particular descent through Ali and Fatima -- should be the basis of authority within Islam. Ali's younger son, Husayn, gained a following in what is now Iraq, becoming popular with recent Persian and other Central Asian converts to Islam, who felt that the Umayyad Caliphate was treating non-Arabs as second-class citizens. A second civil war erupted as Husayn finally acted, pressing his claim to the Caliphate and leading a rebellion against the Umayyads.
Husayn's small force faced the Umayyad army at Karbala, in what is now Iraq. Woefully outnumbered, he was killed along with all of his followers; his infant son died later, ending the Hashemite claim to the Caliphate. The Shia, however, did not disappear, but evolved into an oppositional movement within Islam, with its own leaders, doctrines, and ceremonies.
The deaths of Ali and Husayn came to be central parts of Shia spiritual life -- the Shia have come to see both men as divinely inspired martyrs who died defending the true faith of Islam rather than victims of a struggle for political power. Shia faith has a deep regard for martyrdom, and has incorporated mourning rituals, "passion play" theatrical reenactments and processions, and other passionate, demonstrative traditions that are absent from Sunni practice.
Perhaps even more importantly, the Shia and Sunni traditions disagree strongly on two related matters: the question of divinity in the succession from Muhammad and the role of the clergy in the practice of Islam. While the Sunni believe that all humans, past and present, have had the same relationship to God, the Shia hold that Ali and the eleven leaders of the Shia faith who followed him -- the twelve Imams -- were divinely inspired and infallible in their judgements. The Twelfth Imam is believed not to have died, but to have passed into "occultation," to return someday as the "Mahdi" or guided one, to lead a perfected Islamic society.
Most Shia -- including the large Iranian Shia population -- recognize the twelve Imams, and are thus referred to as "Twelvers" (minority branches of the Shia traditions only recognize the line up to the Fifth or Seventh Imams). The Imams are treated as saints, and their tombs have become pilgrimage sites. Given the messianic belief in the return of the Twelfth Imam, a hierarchical organization of clerics (which some historians have compared in structure to the Catholic Church) grew up to manage Islam until his return; these clerics are themselves understood to hold an elevated spiritual status.
This is in distinct opposition to the Sunni tradition, in which the "ulema" (clerics) function simply as prayer leaders and legal interpreters, recognized only for their learning and expertise in jurisprudence. Furthermore, the Sunni strictly oppose the "saintly" role the Imams play in Shia faith, since in Sunni interpretation this is equivalent to the elevation of humans to godly status, and thus forbidden.
Some minority Shia sects have added two further "pillars" -- jihad (understood generally as the duty to perform good works) and allegiance to the Imam -- but most of these groups have disappeared and the associated concepts have slipped out of practice. Mainstream Shia legal belief also includes a concept known as "temporary marriage" which the Sunni see as an endorsement of extramarital affairs. Overall, however, Shia and Sunni adherents agree on the core beliefs of Islam: the Qur'an and the Five Pillars. Neither Sunni nor Shia faith has remained static -- the body of Islamic jurisprudence includes a mechanism similar to legal precedent, in which new ideas can be incorporated into Islamic tradition using analogy with decisions described in the Qur'an, sunnah, or hadith.
In the twentieth century, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini introduced a major innovation into Shia law, though it has only taken root in Iran. Khomeini's concept of "velayat-e faqih" (guardianship of the jurisprudent), calls for government and civil society to be guided directly by the clergy. Put into practice following the 1979 revolution, this has resulted in Iran's hybrid government, in which an elected parliament and president are subject to the power of a body of appointed clerical officials.
Sunni and Shia
While Shiites have remained a minority throughout most of the Islamic world, they are still the majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. These areas -- primarily non-Arab -- were home to the first popular movements in support of Husayn's rebellion against Umayyad authority. Sunni dynasties continued to control the region up until the beginning of the 16th century, when the early leaders of the Safavid dynasty declared Shia the sole legal faith within their territory, which encompassed present day Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan. It is the legacy of the Safavids that today endures in the geographic concentration of Shia followers in this area.
Husayn was buried at Karbala. That site and the tomb of Ali, in nearby Najaf, have become pilgrimage sites for the Shia faithful, secondary for them in importance only to Mecca. The anniversary of Husayn's death, Ashura (the tenth day of the first month of the Muslim year) is one of the major holidays in the Shia calendar.
Mecca is the only pilgrimage site officially accepted by all Muslims, but Iran and Iraq are home to a number of sites considered holy to the Shia faithful, and the primary centers of Shia learning are also located in Iraq and Iran.
Because of this relationship, there have been centuries of intellectual exchange between Iran and Iraq, as scholars and clerics moved between the schools in Najaf, Karbala, and Qom, and visited the pilgrimage sites in both countries. Iran had been officially Shia since the Safavid dynasty, but Iraq had only a brief period of Shia rule, and had been administrated by Sunni leaders since the middle of the sixteenth century, continuing under the Ottomans, the British, and Saddam Hussein.
After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Iranian government sought actively to export its ideas, and the secular (though nominally Sunni) Iraqi government feared that the Shia majority would heed the call and revolt themselves. This led to increased oppression of the Iraqi Shia population, and was one of the causes of the Iran-Iraq conflict. Saddam Hussein's fears proved groundless, however, as nationalism trumped any pan-Shia feeling on both sides, and Shia troops fought one another throughout the war.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in 2003, the provisional Iraqi government has had to deal with new fears of an Iranian-inspired Islamic revolution. Shia leaders in Iraq have been debating the appropriateness of adopting "velayat-e-faqih" in that country; the traditional leadership, including Iraq's senior cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, rejects the idea, while the popular radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- whose father was assassinated by Saddam Hussein -- champions it. As of 2005, the outcome remains to be seen.
The Holy Cities of Shia Islam
Mashhad
The eighth Imam, Reza, is buried in Mashhad, and his golden-domed tomb is the most important Shia pilgrimage site located in Iran itself, visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually. The city itself is laid out in a circle around the shrine, and the region surrounding the tomb serves as "bast" or a place of refuge; the shrine itself has statelike authority, and can grant asylum to those who seek safety.
Qom
Qom is the center of Shia scholarship in Iran, home to the country's most important madrassas; the tomb of the sister of the eighth Imam makes the city an important Shia pilgrimage center as well. Khomeini trained here as a student, and returned here in 1979, making it a base for the Revolution. It continues to be a center for Shia scholarship.
Shiraz
The city of Shiraz is an important pilgrimage site -- though not for its Shia heritage. Historically, Shiraz has been a center for Iran's Sufi intellectuals. Sufism is a mystical movement that first emerged in Shia communities during the 8th century (though there are Sufi groups in Sunni Islam as well). While an incredibly wide variety of beliefs and practices exist among the Sufi brotherhoods, Sufis in general reject the literalism of traditional Islamic jurisprudence in pursuit of a personal -- and often mystical or ecstatic -- relationship with God.
Many of the Islamic world's greatest writers and thinkers -- including Hafiz, the Persian language's greatest lyric poet -- were attracted to Sufism, joining the Sufi brotherhoods. Hafiz is buried in Shiraz, and his tomb has become a destination not just for Sufi adherents, but for Iranians in general, who consult his collected poems as an oracle. It is believed that if one keeps a question in mind and chooses at random one of Hafiz's poems, the first couplet will provide an answer.
Najaf
Najaf is the site of the tomb of Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law, the Fourth Caliph and First Imam, and like Qom it is a center of Shia scholarship. The Shrine of Ali is one of Shia's holiest places, and the city that grew up around it has remained a center of Shia thought, even under Sunni and secular governments. Khomeini moved to Najaf in 1965, after being sent into exile by the Shah, and spent thirteen years there, during which time he formulated much of the political theory he was to put into practice following the 1979 Revolution. Najaf has never been an easy city to govern -- its residents revolted against both the Ottomans and Saddam Hussein -- and as of summer 2005 it remains a hotly contested place, with radical Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia fighting the postwar Iraqi government and the U.S. Army.
Karbala
Husayn, Ali's son, Muhammad's grandson, and the central martyr in the Shia tradition, died at Karbala and is buried there. For Shiites, his tomb is the holiest site outside of Mecca and Medina, and many make the pilgrimage there -- up to a million pilgrims visit the city to observe Ashura, the anniversary of Husayn's death. Like Najaf the city has become home to a number of Shia madrassas.
At Ashura, Karbala is the site of the "ta'ziya," a passion play that reenacts the circumstances leading up to the martyrdom. The ritual is practiced elsewhere, but the observance is particularly intense in Iraq in general and at Karbala in particular, including a bloody self-flagellation ritual -- in which young men not only whip themselves, but cut their scalps with swords -- rarely practiced elsewhere in the Islamic world.
Baghdad (Kazimayn)
The shrines to Musa al-Kazim and Muhammad al-Jawwad, the 7th and 9th Imams, are located in Kazimayn, now a Baghdad suburb. Baghdad itself served as the capital of the Sunni Caliphate on several occasions from the 8th through the 13th centuries; it was only part of a Shia state for the first few decades of the 16th century, when it came under Safavid rule.
Samarra
Samarra is the site of the shrines to the 10th and 11th Imams, Ali al-Hadi and Hassan al-Askari, though more interestingly the city is also the place from which the 12th "Hidden" Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, is believed to have entered his period of occultation. There is a shrine built atop the cellar in which the child Imam was last reported seen.
Medina
While Medina is an important, if optional, stop for pilgrims on the hajj, it is a pilgrimage destination for Shiites. The shrines to the 2nd and 4th Imams, Hasan and Ali Zayn al-Abidin, are located there; Muhammad's daughter Fatima is also buried in Medina.
Mecca
Pilgrimage to Mecca is compulsory, at least once in a lifetime, for all Muslims who can possibly afford it. The "hajj" (pilgrimage) itself centers on the Great Mosque surrounding the Kaaba, the cubical structure thought to have been built by Abraham and Ishmael -- the shrine that the world's Muslim's face in prayer everyday.
The hajj is tightly regulated by the Saudi Arabian government, which limits the number of visitors (generally to two million) for the annual observance, and forbids political activity or sloganeering during the pilgrimage. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, however, Iranian Shia pilgrims challenged this authority, waving portraits of Khomeini and openly chanting anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. slogans along the route and at the Kaaba itself; tensions came to a head in 1987 when 400 pilgrims were killed in fighting between Iranian demonstrators and Saudi police. The Iranian protests were widely seen -- as was the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie -- as challenges to Sunni dominance. Since the 1990s, relations have improved, especially following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and the hajj has been peaceful since.
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