From Shia-Sunni senseless killings in Pakistan and elsewhere to the increasing void across the divide, many Shias and Sunnis believe in all sincerely-misguided belief that doing so are meant to please Allah. Contrary to popular conception, this article argues that in essence, Shia-Sunni division is political, masquerading behind the façade of religion.
Whether Shia-Sunni dichotomy is political or religious depends upon how one looks at the equation. For Shia Islamists, like their Sunni opposition, the division is sectarian. Investing in Ali a unique divine function intermingled with political one, Shia Islamists contend that Ali was designated by the Prophet (PBUH) on the instruction of Allah to lead the Muslim community after his passing. For Sunni Islamists, although politics is inseparable from religion and Ali is one of the most revered companions, the Prophet (PBUH) did not choose anyone to succeed his political authority, leaving the question of choosing a ruler wide open to the choices of believers. Thus, the essential difference between the two is that whereas Shia theologians designate imamate as a divinely sanctioned hereditary and religious-cum-political office, Sunni caliphate is a non-hereditary and divinely unsanctioned political office.
When one looks at the Shia-Sunni bifurcation from a neutral lens – one devoid of any sectarian bias – the genesis of schism in Islam is exclusively political. In wake of the decease of the Prophet (PBUH), the question of taking on the mantle of his political authority divided the nascent Muslim community into four groups. The Emigrants (muhajir) from Makkah prevailed upon the other three contending parties, ranging from Supporters (ansar) of Madina to Qurasish-e-Makkah to the supporters of Ali. Abu-Bakr Siddique, the father-in-law of the Prophet and one of the most revered companions was chosen as the first ruler of Muslims in an assembly of people at Saqifah where Ali was not present. The supporters of Ali at the time – numbering almost a dozen people – purportedly believed that since Ali was the paternal cousin of the Prophet (PBUH) and his son in law, he was best set to lead the Muslims. Respect for the riper age among the Arabs favored Abu Bakr’s candidacy to power though exceptions to the rule did exist. The germ of a never ending dispute was laid. Ali became the fourth ruler of Muslims in line of succession starting from Abu Bakr to Umer to Usman.
Nevertheless, no event did sharpen the polarization of Muslims as much as the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali on 10 October 680. Contrary to popular misconception, the reason behind Husayn’s murder was political. In fact, the descendents of Ali, Husayn being the most prominent, were rallying points for opposition to allegedly illegitimate and oppressing regimes. Contesting the legitimacy of Yazid as a successor of Mu‘awiyah and responding to repeated appeals from Iraqis, Husayn left for Kufah to be intercepted at Kerbala, where Husayn and his weak escort were killed by the Yazid’s 4000 strong force. The subsequent historical oppression of Shias both under the Umayyad (661–750) and Abbasid (750‑1258) empires owed to the fact that Shia would acknowledge the rule of none other than the descendants of Ali through Fatimah as legitimate rulers, leaving firstly the Umayyads and later on the Abbasids vulnerable to popular discontents. Thus, in order to avoid hostility and persecution, the Shias adopted taqiyah or dissimulation – a political value framed in religious language.
The only major Shiite dynasty of Ismaili persuasion, the Fatimid (909‑1171) was the political rival of the Baghdad based Abbasid rulers. With Cairo as their capital, the Fatimids made a contesting claim to descent from the Prophet (PBUH) through Fatimah and Ali. Nevertheless, the Safavid rulers of Persia (1501–1732) brought their political rivalry, couched in religious jargons, with the Sunni Ottoman Empire in the west to new heights. Late converts to Shi’ism in the late fourteenth century and tracing their lineage to Seventh Imam, the Safavids made Twelve-Imam Shi’ism the state religion. Instituting Friday’s congregational prayer for the first time, the aggressive conversion of Sunnis and Christians to Shi’ism, popularizing the public vilification of Sunni symbols and propagandizing the differences between the two sects by the Amili theologians of Safavid court were all meant to seek legitimacy for Safavid authority both from within and in the face of fierce rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, the so-called sectarian differences between Shia and Sunnis were to reach their fever pitch with the polarization of Shi’ism along Usuli (rationalist) and Akhbari (traditionalist) lines by mid seventeenth century and the resultant expulsion of the traditionalists from Persia by late eighteenth century. While the Usuli School of jurisprudence stressed the application of reason to arriving at original answers to current religious questions, Akhbar is opposed such a course in favor of subscribing to earlier precedents only.
Investing the authority of arriving at original decisions in the person of marja at-taqlid (exemplars for emulation) or Mujtahids, the Usuli Shi’ism was to extensively increase the power of superior clergy – the general representatives of the Hidden Imam. This was to set sharper boundaries between Sunnism and Shi’ism especially with the launch of Islamic revolution of the Shiite persuasion in Iran – in effect, a triumph of the Usuli School of jurisprudence. Coming on the heels of information era, the revolution excessively intensified sectarian consciousness with disastrous consequences – only to be effectively popularized by the Saudis and their proxies. Surviving on exclusion, the Saudi-Iran rivalry of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century – camouflaging sheer political interests under the guise of religion – harks back to Ottoman-Safavid rivalry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Expecting the Saudis and the Iranians and their respective proxies to shed their political differences couched in religious terms is equivalent to defying the obvious: religion used as the vehicle for leadership.
In fact, as the foregoing discussion has shown, Shia-Sunni bifurcation is a political division. It is at best religious only to the extent that political values are wrapped up in religious language or at least Shia and Sunni look at each other through sectarian lens. It is here that, sometimes, misperception acts more forcefully than the reality itself. The choice is ours: do we want to live in the past by misconstruing the Shia-Sunni rivalry as a sectarian division? Or do we treat it as an intra-Arab political struggle? Opting for the latter choice means breaking decisively with the past in order to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity. The vanguard of this change in outlook can be educated Muslims aligning themselves with the moderate clergy. For the Muslims, to please Allah, the Quranic message is not to kill or divide in sects but to “hold firmly the rope of Allah all together and be not divided among yourselves.”
