Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The United States is at war with a predominantly Shiite Muslim country. It is certain that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a white Christian nationalist with extremist white Christian nationalist tattoos, who views himself as leading a Crusade against Islam, knows nothing about Shiite Islam and has never read a book about it, visited a Shiite mosque, or familiarized himself with the spiritual geography of Iran.
Yesterday, according to scenes on Iranian television, masses of Shiites flocked to mosques for Friday prayers and for sermons eulogizing the “martyr,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose death was fitted into the framework of Shiite mourning for martyrs.
People are people, and I don’t want to suggest that Shiites can’t compromise or indeed that they always live up to their ideals. But they do have a distinctive moral style, and Hegseth’s and Trump’s assumption that they would be willing just to put their heads down to avoid death was incorrect. For Shiites, steadfastness in a cause unto martyrdom is noble,
Shiites comprise ten to fifteen percent of the world’s Muslims. The Muslim faith was founded by the Prophet Muhammad in 610-632 as an monotheist ethical religion that sees itself as a continuation of Judaism and Christianity, the essential truth of which it admits. I wrote a book about the Prophet Muhammad:
Since Americans are at war with a Muslim country, they might want to get up to speed and read it.
Shiite Islam differs from the Sunni version in several key ways. One is that Shiites believe that after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, the Muslim community should have been led by his close relatives. The first leader or Imam should have been `Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law. Shiites believe that he should have been succeeded by his sons with the Prophet’s daughter, Fatimah, first Hasan and then Husayn.
In fact, Ali only came to power briefly, 656-661, and after his death power shifted to the Umayyad dynasty based in Damascus. Hasan agreed not to pursue a claim to secular leadership so as to avoid any continuation of what had become a civil war, though Shiites recognized him as the second Imam. His brother Husayn, however, felt an obligation to stand up for the Muslims in Iraq, who felt oppressed by the Umayyad kings. In 680 the Umayyad Caliph Yazid sent an army to put down what he saw as a rebellion, which killed Husayn and several of his close family, including an infant son.
I wrote a book about Shiite Islam:
Juan Cole, Sacred Space and Holy War (London: IB Tauris, 2002). Click here to buy.
The martyrdom of Husayn for Shiites is like the passion of Christ for Christians. They ritually mourn for him during the first ten days of the month of Muharram every year. The mourning rituals have varied over the centuries, but they have always been emotional, with weeping over the stories of his stand at Karbala in Iraq. There are gatherings and street processions. People strike their breasts. Although the upper classes and the high clergy discourage it, some working class Shiites flagellate, striking their bare breasts with chains or even cutting their foreheads with knives. These latter practices are rare nowadays. Boys become men when they first join in street processions, striking their chests with their hands, feeling the sting as they mourn the fallen Imam. There is another round of mourning on the fortieth day after the Imam’s death date. Sunnis don’t engage in these practices, though they have joined processions in the past in places with a lot of Shiites, as in Lucknow in India. In pre-modern India even Hindus sometimes also mourned Husayn, who was praised by Mahatma Gandhi.
I wrote a book about the Shiites of India, a community that is, like that of Pakistan, furious with the United States over the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei. I don’t know if your news channels are telling you, but there have been numerous attacks on US embassies, in Karachi and Lahore and big demos in parts of India.
American conservatives who despise Barack Hussein Obama for his middle name are engaging in Islamophobia and showing disrespect to the martyred Imam Husayn, whose life and death have touched many people inside and outside Islam. It is just prejudice toward a Semitic name; I have argued that it is no different from despising Benjamin Franklin or Zachary Taylor for not having an Aryan first name. Hasan means “good” or “handsome,” and Husayn is the diminutive. Ironically, in Arabic the diminutive can be used to indicate the superlative. I suppose it is like when people call the ripped, tall bodyguard “Tiny.” So Husayn was very good or very handsome.
Most Iranian Shiites believe that there were twelve Imams. The last one disappeared as a small child in Samarra, Iraq, to escape persecution in 874 A.D. Just as Christians believe that Jesus ascended into heaven, from which he will one day return, so Shiites believe that Muhammad al-Mahdi went into occultation and will someday return as the “Guided One” to restore justice to the world.
These two ideas, martyrdom and the expectation of the return of the Imam, have deeply shaped Shiite spirituality. Also important is studying the sayings and doings of the Imams.
Admittedly, nowadays not all Iranians are devoted Shiites. The youths in particular have often turned away from religion. But many Iranians are believers.
The late Ayatollah Ali Husayni Khamenei was recognized as a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad or Sayyid, which gave him high status in a Shiite society. He claimed direct descent from Imam Husayn. His refusal to retreat to a bunker, which allowed the US or the Israelis to bombard his home, killing him, his wife and daughter-in-law, was a claim on martyrdom. Alive, he was controversial because he had mismanaged the country and imposed an iron discipline on it, declining to countenance any movement toward liberalization. He also made the huge mistake of propping up the secular Baathist dicatorship of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, where his name is mud. He became a tyrant who ordered the mass slaughter of likely over 5,000 protesters in mid-January. But by murdering him from the air on February 28, Tel Aviv and Washington made him a martyr. And not only in Iran. Half of Tunisians admire him, and Iraqis are boiling mad over his killing. Most Shiites around the world do not believe in the Iranian Shiite notion of clerical rule, and I suspect a majority of Iranians don’t anymore either. But most do respect prominent Shiite clergymen.
Yesterday in Tehran at the Mosalla Mosque associated with Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, the Friday prayers sermon was given by Hojjat al-Islam Mohammad Javad Hajj Ali Akbari.
To the packed crowd, he described Khamenei as a martyr, a spiritual guide, and the physician for pain. He told of Khamenei’s eventful life and his role as a revolutionary against the American-backed dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the deposed shah or king. He praised his immersion in the holy Qur’an, the Muslim scripture.
He asked the masses of worshipers, “How can we continue on his path?” He said that the answer was that they must follow his words and his example. They must struggle (jihad) for the faith, they must be willing to accept martyrdom in its path.
Iran was shaking with bombing raids during the Friday prayers, no doubt, but huge crowds braved the danger. Sermons like that of Ali Akbari were delivered in cities all over the country. It reminds me of the Shiite processions and mosque activism in Iraq under American occupation.
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