The rise of Shia

Military power in Lebanon, clerical power in Iraq and political influence in Syria: the resurgence of the side of Islam subjugated for centuries throughout the Middle East now appears unstoppable

Renewed fighting in Lebanon involving the 4,000 or so Shia militiamen of Hezbollah has once again brought into sharp relief the fault line running through Islam today. On one side are the Sunnis, hitherto dominant throughout North Africa and the Arab Middle East, and on the other are the Shia, until recent times dominant only in Iran and subjugated or actively persecuted elsewhere in the region.

Now, however, the Shia are experiencing a revival fired by the interventions of the West in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have unleashed historic religious forces to fuel an age-old antagonism between the two sides that had not been anticipated by Washington or London. It is an antagonism that will determine the politics of the region for sometime to come as, long marginalised from power, the Shia are now clamouring for greater rights and more political influence.

Against this backdrop comes the military action surrounding Hezbollah, supported by Iran and by Syria, whose minority ruling elite is also of Shia background. Such support perhaps helps illuminate why the Israeli strikes in Lebanon have so far provoked a only a muted response from some Sunni-dominated Arab states, despite the Shia militia group's close relations with Hamas, the Sunni Palestinian group ranged against Israel in Gaza. Such relations are formed not only from the old proverb of my enemy's enemy is my friend, but also from the cultivation of radical Sunni Islamist movements by Iran.

Elsewhere, especially in Iraq, the balance of power that has shifted from the Sunni to the Shia has enormous implications for the Middle East. Never in the history of the region has Baghdad as well as Tehran been under the sway of overwhelming Shia political and religious power and influence. Some see the making of a "Shia crescent" stretching from Beirut to Tehran, cutting a swathe through the Sunni-dominated region. Others, as was put to me recently in the Shia holy city of Qom in Iran, are happy that at last the suffering of the Shia was being recognised. My interlocutor, speaking with anger, said that it took the tragic events of 9/11 for the world to wake up to the deeds of the Taliban and its radical Sunni Islamist state, rather than the continuing persecution and "slaughter without mercy" of Afghanistan's Shia minority.

It had been hoped that removal of the Baathist regime in Baghdad would usher in a period of building democracy in Iraq, and in the wider Middle East. But that hope is based on the premise of politics as a relationship between individuals and the state, and it fails to recognise that politics in the region is also built upon a balance of power between communities. By liberating and empowering Iraq's Shia majority, the West has also helped launch a broad Shia revival that will upset the sectarian balance in Iraq and in the rest of the Middle East for years to come.

Until modern times, the Shia had escaped both the academic and relgious scrutiny of the West. They were historically distributed across a wide geographic region. They remained in remote areas to shelter from persecution, such as secluded mountains of Jabal Amil in southern Lebanon, the marshlands of southern Iraq, and the highlands of central Afghanistan, and were initially little affected by the winds of change in the modern era that would sweep the Middle East.

Such changes, despite their dislocating effects, raised the material level of life in the region's cities, with their predominantly Sunni populations. Seeing this, the Shia in turn began to leave their redoubts in pursuit of material betterment and flowed into urban centres in ever greater numbers. Poor Shia neighbourhoods grew up around such cities as Beirut, Kabul and Baghdad, where some two million Shia came to make up approximately two-fifths of the city's population.

In this urban environment, it became painfully obvious to the Shia that the religious stigma they had long borne had been transformed into the most glaring social and economic disadvantages. This unfavourable political climate and social distress must be borne in mind if we are to understand the politicisation of religious feeling detectable among the Shia since the 1950s. A sense of deprivation among these urban Shia provided much fertile ground for ideologies of political dissent, first of the Left and later of radical Islam. The roots of radical mobilisation of the Shia populations in movements such as Hezbollah lie here.

Shia beliefs are held by perhaps one in 10 Muslims today - some 140 million people. Only Iran is overwhelmingly Shia, where they form 90 per cent of the population. Across the Persian Gulf, the littoral states with significant proportions of Shia include Kuwait, with 30 per cent of its population, Bahrain with 75 per cent, Saudi Arabia with 10 per cent, Qatar with 16 per cent and the United Arab Emirates with just 6 per cent. Approximately half of all Shia live in the arc beginning in Lebanon, with 45 per cent of its population being Shia, and ranging through Iraq with 60 per cent, Azerbaijan with 75 per cent, Afghanistan with 20 per cent to Pakistan, also with some 20 per cent.

In Syria, the ruling elite is Alawite, a Shia- affiliated group with just 15 per cent of the country's people. Alawite domination has bred deep resentment among many of Syria's Sunni Muslims who constitute 70 per cent of the population. Uprisings by Sunni Islamists in the early 1980s were partly fuelled by this sectarian divide.

Across the border, recent political changes in Iraq have generated new cultural, economic and political ties among Shia communities across the Middle East. Since 2003 thousands of pilgrims from the countries of the region and the wider Shia diaspora in the West have visited Najaf, Karbala and other holy Shia cities in Iraq, creating transnational networks of seminaries, mosques and clerics that tie Iraq to every other Shia community, including most importantly that of Iran. According to some, these pilgrimages have reinforced the growing popularity of devotional piety in Iran and have embraced the revival of Shia identity and culture in Iraq. This has included the growing stature of Iraqi religious figures such as the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Recent events in Iraq set an example for the of Saudi Arabia during the 2005 Saudi municipal elections, when turn-out in Shia-dominated regions was twice as high as elsewhere. Shia were encouraged to vote by comparing their political empowerment in Iraq, following participation in elections there, to their situation in Saudi Arabia. The mantra "one man, one vote" that galvanised the Shia in Iraq thus resonates elsewhere. The Shia of Lebanon, through the political wings of such groups as Hezbollah, have also used the formula successfully, as well might their co-religionists in Bahrain in parliamentary elections later this year.

But this simple accounting belies the profound influence of Shi'ism upon contemporary Islam and perceptions of Islam. There are Shia intent upon altering the intellectual and political course not only of Shi'ism, but all Islam. Just as the Iraqi Shia's rise to power has brought hope to Shia throughout the Middle East, so has it bred anxiety among the region's Sunnis.

The process of "debaathification" of Iraqi society, which removed significant obstacles to the Shia's assumption of power, is seen as an important cause of the ongoing Sunni insurgency. Now the Sunni backlash has began to spread far beyond Iraq's borders - from Syria to Pakistan - raising the spectre of a broader struggle for power between the two groups that could threaten stability in the region. To avoid this will require satisfying Shia demands while placating Sunni anger and alleviating Sunni anxiety in Iraq and throughout the region.

Relations between Iran and the other Shia in the region will be key. Despite the history of Iraqi nationalism, Arab and Persian mutual suspicion and the legacy of the Iran-Iraq war, Iran is not displeased with the changes in the region and will not want to "rock the boat" irredeemably. Before recent changes, Iran considered itself surrounded by hostile Sunni states: Iraq and Saudi Arabia to the West and Afghanistan and Pakistan to the East. It would not want to see "anti-Iranian Arab nationalism" championed by Sunnis to emerge as a threat.

In many ways both Washington and Tehran have an interest in keeping stability in Iraq. However, the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, and the taming of Iranian regional ambitions and Shia resurgence, will be seen by many as a much needed counterbalance to the changes brought about by the American-led military intervention in the region. But what is certain is that the emergence of Shia-Sunni discord will not be easily reduced for the foreseeable

future. Future politics in the region will be determined by the capacity of Sunni and Shia to live with religious pluralism in Islam. This will not be an easy task.

Anthony O'Mahony is Director of the Centre for Christianity and Interreligious Dialogue, Heythrop College, University of London. He is co-editor with Wulstan Peterburs OSB and Mohammad Ali Shomali of Catholic and Shia Engagement: Faith and Reason in Theory and Practice.

Mourning minority in a Sunni world

So who are the Shia? The usual way to describe Shi'ism's essence is to say that its adherents have always championed the claim of Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, to be their prophet's true successor.

They believe that rule over the Muslim community must rest solely with Ali's descendants. Shia is indeed a contraction of Shi'at 'Ali - Ali's faction. After Muhammad's death, Muslims who favoured other candidates repeatedly blocked the accession of Ali to the caliphate. When he finally did come to rule, they withheld their allegiance. Later they crushed his family and followers on a desolate plain in modern Iraq in 680. This event, commemorated annually by Shia though the observance of a period of mourning, provided Shia Islam with a deeply emotive drama of martyrdom.

A line of Ali's descendants, the Imams, were persecuted and allegedly martyred for representing a living challenge to tyrannical rule. It is this sense of suffered injustice that came to pervade Shi'ism. The fate of martyrs was all the more poignant as they had been slain by fellow Muslims. To mourn them was also to grieve for the lost of unity of Islam. Even today, Muslim "ecumenism" remains an intellectual exercise, with almost no place in the intimate dialogue between Shia hierarchy and believers. What began as a dissident position on the matter of succession in the seventh century blossomed in time into a full religious tradition, distinguished from Sunni Islam by its own reading of theology and sacred history.

There is no pan-Shiism, or even unified leadership for the community, but Shia do share a coherent religious view.

In most times and most places, Shia are in the minority, at worst persecuted and at best merely tolerated by a Sunni Muslim ruling establishment. To resolve their dilemma as a minority, the Shia employed a wide range of strategies towards the Sunni world. On the one hand, it is difficult to regard the Sunnis as unbelievers of the same order as the Jews or the Christians; on the other hand, since the Sunnis do not believe in the Imams, they cannot be regarded as believers. This problem is resolved by dividing mankind into three religious spaces: believers, Muslims and unbelievers. It was not the Shia who devised this distinction; it is based on Qur'anic verses which imply a certain difference between believers (muminun) and Muslims (muslimun).