The Leftfield Mullah

I'm feeling like revisiting the Naqba that is Iraq. I used to post a lot on www.slate.com, as DirectHex, especially I was stuck in the US and the land of my fathers was being bombed to bits.
So I wrote a couple of things - especially on the nature of post war Iraq. Those guys kept putting it up on the Editors choice - which suprised me becuase of how viruntley anti-status quo I was.

So when you follow the link find DirectHex on the page.

Zos Infidels and zere democracy .....

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Date: Mar 27 2003 11:26PM

{read the article for context please) …Going on from that. You have to remember that the same thing probably will happen now.

The underlying dynamic is the total and abject paranoia about Iran. It is no coincidence that the largest Shia opposition group SICRI, is based in Iran and is led by an Ayatollah ( ayt. Bakir Al Hakim) . These guys have been actively frozen out of the post-war picture because of their close ties to Iran.

Why do they have close ties to Iran - mainly because of the sheer number of Iraqi refugees that live in Iran - refugees created by the rebellion of the first US led Gulf War.

It also goes unreported that SICRI have been fighting a low level insurgency against Saddam and the Baath ever since. Its most notable success is allegedly the attempted assassination of Uday Hussien - Saddam's son - which left him crippled and possibly pushed him out of the line of succession. Outside the kurds these guys not only have the numbers of fighters (about 10,0000) but also ground level support.

It is markedly interesting that Al Hakim announced this week that getting rid of Saddam was good but there would be no truck with any occupation.

Failure to engage SICRI is due to Saudi and Israeli terror of Iran. Which is a big mistake I think.

SICRI may be based in Iran but is definitely no show hound for the Iranians. Iraqi Shia's are different from Iranian Shia's. Iraqi's are Arab and Iranians are not. The great fear of a fundamentalist republic like Iran arising in Iraq is silly.

There are signs that maybe the Bush Two crowd are working out that it may not be a good idea to hack of the Shia this time. I notice the repeated assurances by US Military that An-Najaf , Kufa and Kerbala - the centres of Shii religious life and theology- are places to avoid battle.

Its certain that to rebuild Iraq, the Shia majority will need to be on board, and that means that SCIRI will have to be on board too

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Date: Apr 14 2003 3:48PM

The First thing to point out is that Shi'ism is very different in character from the Sunni Schools of Islam. Formed in the decades after the Death of Mohammed - the prophet of Islam - over the rights of succession, Shii'ism has its own crystallised form of theology which veers sharply in several important factors from main stream Sunnism.

One of the biggest differences is the concept of religious authority. Shi'sm has a clergy - something not officially present in mainstream sunnism where leaders emerge. Shii'sm ranks and trains Mushtahids (religious lawyers) much like the Inns Of Court in London.

Ayat. Khomeini's big contribution to all this was to change the clergy from a passive non-interventionist doctrine, to a politically active and politically aware group.

Before Shi'ism had been happy to practice Taqiya( quiescence ) in the matters of state - this meant that rulers were given relatively little trouble as long as the basic rights of Shi'ism were respected.

Khomieni, and Ali Shariati, used the fulcrum event in Shia theology - the martyrdom of Imam Hussien- to argue for active and revolutionary Shi'ism. The logic being that one could not be a muslim cleric without addressing the need to be politically active against forces opposed to Islam.

This is because the Shia believe that Ishtihad ( interpretation of Islamic law) is still possible by the clergy , whereas Sunnism beleives that the door of Ishtihad were closed in the 13th century

Add to this the fact that the Shia Clerics are extremely well organised with structured levels of authority akin to the levels in the judicial structure of any Western state ie. A supreme court judges ruling outweighs a district court.

Therefore it is no surprise that when the organized and brutal force of the ba'ath was broken, the only other organized Iraqi force is able to step in - the Clerics. As the article quoted also makes the important point that most clerics if not all in Iraq were suppressed or persecuted at some stage. Giving them the unique currency of being anti-saddam and anti-american.

The US Gov. has always failed to understand Shi'ism, its structure and its theology repeatedly - evident in Iran , Lebanon and Iraq over time. Its unique ability to organize and to be a revolutionary force within its own polity and maintain credibility with its own population has shocked and mystified CIA analysts and middle east "experts" alike. In Iran the CIA spent time looking for leaders amongst the westernized elite - only to be taken aback by the rise of the Clerics.

Ironically, because Shi'ism is able to interpret and deal with changing situations via jurisprudence - it maybe the most likely school of Islamic thought able to come up with a decent alternative to Wahabi fundamentalism and the failure of secularism across the middle east