Caption: The al-Askariya mosque as it was before
By Ali Ismail
0778-842 5262 (United Kingdom)
THE ISLAMIC WORLD IS SPLIT OVER MOSQUE BOMBING
The Samarra outrage may rival the Ayodhya mosque scandal in India
I was having my breakfast on Wednesday morning when I heard on our kitchen radio of the bombing of the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq. The news commentator then spoke of the civil unrest which followed. That was hardly surprising.
The attack on the al-Askariya shrine marks the first time that Iraqi sectarian violence has targeted one of the country's focal religious symbols. On this occasion, it was a Shia mosque which was destroyed; there will be no prizes for anyone who predicts that Shia hotheads will be thirsting to follow up the outrage with attacks on Sunni places of worship with, if possible, considerable interest. That is the tit for tat world of Iraqi politics.
This particular Shia shrine has existed in the centre of the ancient city of Samarra since 944 AD when it was built to house the tombs of two ninth century imams, both direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
Ali al-Hadi, the tenth imam who died in 868 and his son Hassan al-Askari who died in 874, were both buried there at the end of the turbulent period during which Samarra was built as the new capital of the Abbasid empire, briefly taking over from Baghdad, then the largest city in the world.
The ongoing intense importance of the mosque is bound up with the 12th and final imam, the ‘Hidden Imam’ who, the Shias believe, went into hiding in the year 878 under the al-Askariya shrine itself to prepare for his eventual return.
According to Shia tradition, the ‘Mahdi’ (as he will then be called) will reappear one day to punish the sinful and to "separate truth from falsehood.” For many years, a saddled horse and soldiers were brought to the shrine in Samarra daily to be ready for his return. That tradition was also enacted in Hilla, approximately 100 miles to the south, where it was also thought the ‘Mahdi’ might reappear.
"It's one of the foremost important shrines in Iraq," said Alastair Northedge, a professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the Sorbonne, Paris who has completed an archaeological survey of Samarra.
"Najaf and Karbala are the two most important shrines in Iraq but only slightly subsidiary to them are the sites in Samarra and Baghdad. The shrine is central for the Shia. This is not just a major cathedral, this is more than that, this is one of the holiest shrines," he said.
For those of our readers who are of the Sunni persuasion and are not overly familiar with Shia traditions, I do hope I am not ‘teaching my grandmother to suck eggs’ by explicating as follows:
The Shia shahadah (declaration of faith) states: ‘There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, Alí is the Friend of Allah, The Successor of the Messenger of Allah and his first Caliph’.
If you are already familiar with standard Sunni beliefs, you will immediately notice the addition to the shahadah regarding Imam Ali, the cousin of the Prophet, the husband of his daughter Fatima, the father of Hassan and Hussein and the second person ever to convert to Islam. The terms ‘Shia’ and ‘Shiite’ derive from a shortening of ‘Shiat Ali’ (‘Partisans of Ali’).
Ali is the central figure at the origin of the Shia/Sunni split which occurred in the decades immediately following the death of the Prophet in 632 AD. The Sunnis regard Ali as the fourth and last of the ‘rightly guided caliphs’ (successors to Prophet Mohammed) as leader of the Muslims, following on from Abu Bakr 632-634, Umar 634-644 and Uthman 644-656. The Shiites think that Ali should have been the first caliph and that the caliphate should pass down only to direct descendants of Prophet Mohammed through Ali and Fatima, They often refer to themselves as ‘ahl al bayt’ (‘people of the house of the Prophet’).
Sunnis and Shias agree on the fundamentals of Islam - the Five Pillars - and recognize each others as bona fide Muslims. In 1959 Sheikh Mahmood Shaltoot, the head of the School of Theology at Al Azhar University, Cairo, the seat of Sunni learning and the oldest university in the world, issued a fatwa (ruling) recognizing the legitimacy of the Shia Jafari School of Law. The Jafari School is named after its founder Imam Jafaf Sidiq who was a direct descendent of the Prophet through two different lines of the Sunni Caliph Abu Bakr. Furthermore, Al Azhar University, though now Sunni, was actually founded by the Shia Fatimid dynasty in 969CE.
However, there are real differences between the two forms of Islam and these are what get emphasized. Many Sunni's would contend that Shiites seem to use the fundamentals of Islam as background material and concentrate their fervour on the martyrdoms of Ali and Hussein. This is best illustrated at the time of Ashura when each evening over a period of ten days, Shiites (mostly men I believe) commemorate the Battle of Karbala, to the accompaniment of wailing imams whipping the congregations up into frenzies of tears and chest beatings. It is alleged by some Sunnis that instead of missionary work to non-Muslims, the Shia faction nurse a deep contempt towards Sunni Islam and prefer to devote their attention to winning over the latter to their thought-ways. Apart from Iraq, there is ongoing violent strife between the Sunnis and the Shiites in Pakistan. On the other hand, in recent years there has been a measure of co-operation between the two factions in the Lebanon. Also, some of the most dynamic developments in Islam at this time are happening in Shia-dominated Iran.
At a practical everyday level, the Shiites have a different call to prayer; they perform wudu and salat differently by placing their foreheads onto pieces of hardened clay from Karbala, not directly onto prayer mats when doing namaz. They also have a tendency to compound their daily prayers, sometimes worshipping three times each day instead of five. The Shiites also have some different ahadith and prefer those narrated by Ali and Fatima to those related by other companions of the Prophet. Because of her opposition to Ali, those narrated by Aisha are reckoned by the Shiites to have the least weight. Shia Islam also permits muttah (fixed-term temporary marriage), which is now banned by Sunni Islam. Muttah was in fact permitted during the Prophet’s lifetime and is now being promoted in Iran by a strange alliance of conservative clerics and feminists; the latter group seeks to downplay the social obsession with female virginity which is prevalent in both branches of Islam, pointing out that only one of the Prophet's thirteen wives was a virgin when he married them.
Which bring us back to the situation on the ground in Iraq today. A bombing like this, against the Askariya Shrine, would no doubt have been discussed and planned beforehand by persons who were not benevolent towards either sect of the Muslims. Some commentators point at Israel and others at the USA.
The conspiracy theorists who point to Israel say that the Israelis have a strong motive to set up an Iraqi civil war. The Zionists lobby in the USA may be in favour of the USA remaining in Iraq indefinitely. President Bush has said that once Iraqi conditions became “stable” and the Iraqi military could cope, the Americans would pull out. Under heavy pressure from the growing anti-war movement, the president had already reduced troop levels from a maximum of 160,000 to approximately 138,000.
The Israelis, these people claim, have carried out some black operations in the past. The Israelis, they say, attacked the USA on at least two occasions, namely, the Lavon Affair and the USS Liberty incident. There have been reports of Israeli agents at Abu Ghraib prison.
In a state of desperation, the Iraqi government has declared martial law in three provinces.
One reporter said: “Gunmen killed dozens of civilians Thursday and dumped their bodies in a ditch, as the government ordered a tough daytime curfew of Baghdad and three provinces to stem the sectarian violence that has left at least 114 dead since the bombing of a Shiite shrine. Seven U.S. soldiers died in a pair of roadside bombings north of the capital, and American military units in the Baghdad area were told to halt all but essential travel to avoid getting caught up in demonstrations or roadblocks. As the country careened to the brink of civil war, Iraqi state television announced an unusual daytime curfew, ordering people off the streets Friday in Baghdad and the nearby flashpoint provinces of Diyala, Babil and Salaheddin, where the shrine bombing took place. Such a sweeping daytime curfew indicated the depth of fear within the government that the crisis could touch off a Sunni-Shiite civil war.”
‘This is the first time that I have heard politicians say they are worried about the outbreak of civil war,’ the Kurdish elder statesman Mahmoud Othman told the press.
Sherlock Holmes advised his friend Dr Watson to ask himself the question: Qui bono? (‘who benefited?’) when tackling difficult mysteries relating to crimes. Perhaps we should follow that guidance as regards this incident.
The Samarra outrage may rival the Ayodhya mosque scandal in India
I was having my breakfast on Wednesday morning when I heard on our kitchen radio of the bombing of the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq. The news commentator then spoke of the civil unrest which followed. That was hardly surprising.
The attack on the al-Askariya shrine marks the first time that Iraqi sectarian violence has targeted one of the country's focal religious symbols. On this occasion, it was a Shia mosque which was destroyed; there will be no prizes for anyone who predicts that Shia hotheads will be thirsting to follow up the outrage with attacks on Sunni places of worship with, if possible, considerable interest. That is the tit for tat world of Iraqi politics.
This particular Shia shrine has existed in the centre of the ancient city of Samarra since 944 AD when it was built to house the tombs of two ninth century imams, both direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
Ali al-Hadi, the tenth imam who died in 868 and his son Hassan al-Askari who died in 874, were both buried there at the end of the turbulent period during which Samarra was built as the new capital of the Abbasid empire, briefly taking over from Baghdad, then the largest city in the world.
The ongoing intense importance of the mosque is bound up with the 12th and final imam, the ‘Hidden Imam’ who, the Shias believe, went into hiding in the year 878 under the al-Askariya shrine itself to prepare for his eventual return.
According to Shia tradition, the ‘Mahdi’ (as he will then be called) will reappear one day to punish the sinful and to "separate truth from falsehood.” For many years, a saddled horse and soldiers were brought to the shrine in Samarra daily to be ready for his return. That tradition was also enacted in Hilla, approximately 100 miles to the south, where it was also thought the ‘Mahdi’ might reappear.
"It's one of the foremost important shrines in Iraq," said Alastair Northedge, a professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the Sorbonne, Paris who has completed an archaeological survey of Samarra.
"Najaf and Karbala are the two most important shrines in Iraq but only slightly subsidiary to them are the sites in Samarra and Baghdad. The shrine is central for the Shia. This is not just a major cathedral, this is more than that, this is one of the holiest shrines," he said.
For those of our readers who are of the Sunni persuasion and are not overly familiar with Shia traditions, I do hope I am not ‘teaching my grandmother to suck eggs’ by explicating as follows:
The Shia shahadah (declaration of faith) states: ‘There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, Alí is the Friend of Allah, The Successor of the Messenger of Allah and his first Caliph’.
If you are already familiar with standard Sunni beliefs, you will immediately notice the addition to the shahadah regarding Imam Ali, the cousin of the Prophet, the husband of his daughter Fatima, the father of Hassan and Hussein and the second person ever to convert to Islam. The terms ‘Shia’ and ‘Shiite’ derive from a shortening of ‘Shiat Ali’ (‘Partisans of Ali’).
Ali is the central figure at the origin of the Shia/Sunni split which occurred in the decades immediately following the death of the Prophet in 632 AD. The Sunnis regard Ali as the fourth and last of the ‘rightly guided caliphs’ (successors to Prophet Mohammed) as leader of the Muslims, following on from Abu Bakr 632-634, Umar 634-644 and Uthman 644-656. The Shiites think that Ali should have been the first caliph and that the caliphate should pass down only to direct descendants of Prophet Mohammed through Ali and Fatima, They often refer to themselves as ‘ahl al bayt’ (‘people of the house of the Prophet’).
Sunnis and Shias agree on the fundamentals of Islam - the Five Pillars - and recognize each others as bona fide Muslims. In 1959 Sheikh Mahmood Shaltoot, the head of the School of Theology at Al Azhar University, Cairo, the seat of Sunni learning and the oldest university in the world, issued a fatwa (ruling) recognizing the legitimacy of the Shia Jafari School of Law. The Jafari School is named after its founder Imam Jafaf Sidiq who was a direct descendent of the Prophet through two different lines of the Sunni Caliph Abu Bakr. Furthermore, Al Azhar University, though now Sunni, was actually founded by the Shia Fatimid dynasty in 969CE.
However, there are real differences between the two forms of Islam and these are what get emphasized. Many Sunni's would contend that Shiites seem to use the fundamentals of Islam as background material and concentrate their fervour on the martyrdoms of Ali and Hussein. This is best illustrated at the time of Ashura when each evening over a period of ten days, Shiites (mostly men I believe) commemorate the Battle of Karbala, to the accompaniment of wailing imams whipping the congregations up into frenzies of tears and chest beatings. It is alleged by some Sunnis that instead of missionary work to non-Muslims, the Shia faction nurse a deep contempt towards Sunni Islam and prefer to devote their attention to winning over the latter to their thought-ways. Apart from Iraq, there is ongoing violent strife between the Sunnis and the Shiites in Pakistan. On the other hand, in recent years there has been a measure of co-operation between the two factions in the Lebanon. Also, some of the most dynamic developments in Islam at this time are happening in Shia-dominated Iran.
At a practical everyday level, the Shiites have a different call to prayer; they perform wudu and salat differently by placing their foreheads onto pieces of hardened clay from Karbala, not directly onto prayer mats when doing namaz. They also have a tendency to compound their daily prayers, sometimes worshipping three times each day instead of five. The Shiites also have some different ahadith and prefer those narrated by Ali and Fatima to those related by other companions of the Prophet. Because of her opposition to Ali, those narrated by Aisha are reckoned by the Shiites to have the least weight. Shia Islam also permits muttah (fixed-term temporary marriage), which is now banned by Sunni Islam. Muttah was in fact permitted during the Prophet’s lifetime and is now being promoted in Iran by a strange alliance of conservative clerics and feminists; the latter group seeks to downplay the social obsession with female virginity which is prevalent in both branches of Islam, pointing out that only one of the Prophet's thirteen wives was a virgin when he married them.
Which bring us back to the situation on the ground in Iraq today. A bombing like this, against the Askariya Shrine, would no doubt have been discussed and planned beforehand by persons who were not benevolent towards either sect of the Muslims. Some commentators point at Israel and others at the USA.
The conspiracy theorists who point to Israel say that the Israelis have a strong motive to set up an Iraqi civil war. The Zionists lobby in the USA may be in favour of the USA remaining in Iraq indefinitely. President Bush has said that once Iraqi conditions became “stable” and the Iraqi military could cope, the Americans would pull out. Under heavy pressure from the growing anti-war movement, the president had already reduced troop levels from a maximum of 160,000 to approximately 138,000.
The Israelis, these people claim, have carried out some black operations in the past. The Israelis, they say, attacked the USA on at least two occasions, namely, the Lavon Affair and the USS Liberty incident. There have been reports of Israeli agents at Abu Ghraib prison.
In a state of desperation, the Iraqi government has declared martial law in three provinces.
One reporter said: “Gunmen killed dozens of civilians Thursday and dumped their bodies in a ditch, as the government ordered a tough daytime curfew of Baghdad and three provinces to stem the sectarian violence that has left at least 114 dead since the bombing of a Shiite shrine. Seven U.S. soldiers died in a pair of roadside bombings north of the capital, and American military units in the Baghdad area were told to halt all but essential travel to avoid getting caught up in demonstrations or roadblocks. As the country careened to the brink of civil war, Iraqi state television announced an unusual daytime curfew, ordering people off the streets Friday in Baghdad and the nearby flashpoint provinces of Diyala, Babil and Salaheddin, where the shrine bombing took place. Such a sweeping daytime curfew indicated the depth of fear within the government that the crisis could touch off a Sunni-Shiite civil war.”
‘This is the first time that I have heard politicians say they are worried about the outbreak of civil war,’ the Kurdish elder statesman Mahmoud Othman told the press.
Sherlock Holmes advised his friend Dr Watson to ask himself the question: Qui bono? (‘who benefited?’) when tackling difficult mysteries relating to crimes. Perhaps we should follow that guidance as regards this incident.
THE END
This article appeared in the Bangla Mirror newspaper on 2nd March 2006
posted by Ali at 11:52 AM
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