# Does Theology Matter? Politics and the Role of Religion and Sectarianism in the Contemporary Muslim World May 04, 2020 **In this series, the VISIONS blog will post excerpts from the** [**Report on Engaging Sectarian De-Escalation**](/sites/g/files/omnuum3186/files/shiism-global-affairs/files/10-31-19.pdf "Engaging Sectarian De-escalation - 10/31/19") **based on the "Proceedings of the Symposium on Islam and Sectarian De-Escalation at the Harvard Kennedy School."** **Moderator:** Elizabeth Prodromou **Panelists:** Mehdi Hasan, Jonathan Brown, Mustafa Akyol, Ibrahim Kazerooni **Summary:** This panel, entitled **Does Theology Matter?** reflects on the salience of theology in debates on sectarianism in the Middle East. While some causal impact is afforded to theological discrepancies between Sunni and Shi’a interpretations of Islam as a reason for sectarian tensions, our panelists recognize the primary role of political competition for power in amplifying, manipulating, or distorting supposedly inherent – but definitely surmountable – doctrinal qualms between the sects; qualms which would not be destructive for inter-sectarian relations in and of themselves. Panelists encourage more sincere dialogue in which diverse groups take seriously the agency of individuals and scholars to claim and interpret their own traditions instead of engaging in pointed polemics and antagonism and removing interpretive agency from diverse sectarian and denominational traditions. ## Mehdi Hasan We are sitting in one of the most famous centers of learning, academic scholarship, and knowledge in the world. So let me start by making a fundamental point, which affects everything I say on this subject, and my interpretation of this subject. Discussions of Islam and sectarianism outside of academia – at least in the world I inhabit – in media, in the corridors of power in Washington DC, London, and elsewhere, are defined and characterized by a great deal of ignorance rather than knowledge, scholarship, or learning. There is a famous story that a former U.S. diplomat used to tell, on the eve of the Iraq War in 2003. A Kurdish delegation went to the White House to discuss the invasion and what would happen after the invasion with George W. Bush, and they emerged from the conversation shocked that, with only a few weeks before the first bomb would be dropped, the President had no clue of the difference between Iraq’s Shi’as, Sunnis, and Kurds. Now, you might ask what else one expects from George W. Bush, but it was not just George W. Bush who personified such brazen ignorance as that of the Iraq War. Back in 2006 Jeff Stein, an investigative journalist, conducted a series of interviews with US politicians by asking them one simple question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’a?” The responses were astonishing. Congressman Sylvester Reyes, when asked whether al-Qaeda was Sunni and Shi’a, answered after a pause, “Probably Shi’a.” Then there was senator Trent Lott, former Republican senate majority leader, who when asked by Stein about the difference between Sunnis and Shi’as, declared “They all look the same to me.” These are top U.S. politicians in the security field, and these sweeping, ignorant statements about Shi’as and Sunnis, and religion and politics more broadly, come from people who should know better. Nevertheless, such nescient verdicts are widespread in politics and media on both the right and the left. There are conservative journalists like Bill O’Reilly, formerly on Fox News, who asserted that “The Sunni and Shi’a want to kill each other. They want to blow each other up. They have fun doing this. They like this.” You have liberal TV host and comedian Bill Maher, who said that “The Sunnis and Shi’as are going to have this out. We just need to let them have it out.” Even John Stuart of the Daily Show formerly stated that the last time Sunnis and Shi’as got along in the world was a thousand years ago. ![qom](/sites/g/files/omnuum3186/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2024-11/qom.jpg?itok=DCG7v6R0) Given this awful level of commentary, media insight, and political opinion, here are the points I want to make today to push back on what I think is a very lazy sectarian narrative that over-exaggerates religion, history, ideology, and theology; all of which I believe have very little to do with the sectarianization that we have seen in the Middle East and across the Muslim-majority world in the recent years. My view of sectarianism and religion is exactly the same as my view on sectarianism and terrorism. Theology is used as an excuse after the event. It is not a motivation: just as it does not drive people towards terrorism, it does not drive people towards sectarianism. It is used as a cloak, a cover, and an excuse. I’m always reminded of the people from Birmingham, England who went out to join ISIS in Syria. The last two books they bought from Amazon before they departed were Qur’an for Dummies and Islam for Dummies, which kind of sums up the mentality of a lot of people in that sphere. Religion comes very late and expediently in the process. In no particular order, the points I want to make are to bring us back to where I think this sectarian conflict is coming from. Firstly, I contend that this is not an ancient theological religious conflict. While the theological divide between Sunnis and Shi’as – which is very real, very legitimate, very substantive – goes back 1400 years, to the death of the Prophet himself, the conflicts we are seeing today, particularly in the Middle East, are very modern conflicts which have very little to do with people’s views of who succeeded the prophet in 632 AD. Today, what we call a Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East is in many ways a Saudi-Iran conflict. It is a regional cold (and sometimes hot) war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’a Iran, which has been raging for forty years rather than 1400. We recall that before sectarianism came along, Arab nationalism and several related political ideologies dominated the scene. My second point is that even this whole Saudi-Iran conflict is overblown in my view. There have been ups and downs in their relations. However, the way you read about it in the media these days is that from 1979 onwards the two nations have just been at each other’s throats on religious grounds, which is completely ahistorical. We forget that back in 1999, President Khatami of Iran went to Riyadh and met the crown prince of Saudi Arabia on the runway, before they hugged each other. Not long after, President Ahmadinejad was photographed in Qatar at the GCC summit holding hands with King Abdullah. Can you imagine that today? This history is all conveniently forgotten as the politics have moved on. Thirdly, if Shi’a Iran and the Sunni Gulf states are so hostile towards each other for theological reasons, and if the whole region is so neatly divided along sectarian lines, how do you explain the constantly shifting cross-sectarian alliances which have nothing to do with theology or religious literacy? How do you explain Shi’a Iran’s longstanding support of Sunni Hamas? Or Sunni Qatar turning to Shi’a Iran for help last year, and cozying up with Iran in the face of fellow Salafi Sunni Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Qatar? What happened to ancient sectarian cleavages? Suddenly they don’t matter when you are in the middle of a massive geopolitical route in the region. Fourthly, on the matter of Iraq and Syria: you cannot overstate the role that these two conflicts – the Iraq war in 2003 and subsequently the Syrian uprisings from 2011 onwards – have played in sectarianizing the region and the wider world. You can go as far afield as Indonesia or Malaysia, or even to the United States and UK, to witness the fallout from that vicious sectarian genie that was allowed out of the bottle in 2003. And it is no coincidence that the most sectarian force in the Muslim world, ISIS, was created in Iraq and moved to Syria. It wasn’t created in Saudi Arabia, despite all my criticisms of Saudi Arabia. While Saudi Arabia does disseminate Wahhabi ideology, which is very similar to ISIS in many ways, the interest in ISIS was not born in Saudi Arabia. Rather, it was borne from war-torn countries beholden to horrible dictatorships, which for all their horribleness had a relatively secular history. So do not be deceived. When sectarianism emerges, it does not come from the most religious of people. Sectarianism, I find in my own experience, often comes from the most irreligious of people. These are people who have found religion at convenient times to justify their preexisting political, social, or economic agendas. Sectarianism comes, political scientists tell us, from where states have collapsed and produced political and social vacuums; where governments have lost capacity and lost legitimacy. Iraq is a classic example of this theory. Paul Bremer, who was sent to Iraq to run it as the viceroy for the Bush administration, divided up power in Iraq. He set up an Iraqi governing council, and the seats were set partially for Shi’as, partially for Sunnis, and partially for the Kurds. This was an explicitly ethnic and sectarian conflict. ![bremer iraqi council](/sites/g/files/omnuum3186/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2024-11/bremer_iraqi_council.jpg?itok=59PuYIh5) The role of outside powers in sectarianizing regions is often overlooked or underplayed. We need only look at the U.S. embassy memo released by Wikileaks in 2006, transmitted to DC from Damascus under the headline “Play on Sunni fears of Iranian influence.” I’m not saying that the United States is the cause of all sectarianism, but we ought not overlook the meddling of outside powers in sectarianism in a manner which is not rooted in theology. I don’t believe that the U.S. embassy or the Israeli government give a damn about who succeeded the prophet in 632 AD. Yet Naftali Bennett, Israel’s most right-wing minister, came on my show a few months ago, and proffered that “If the Sunni Arab countries don’t want to be butchered by their Shi’a neighbor, they ought to cooperate with us, and work together against the Big Menace.” Fifthly, and finally, Yemen is a conflict often framed in sectarian terms. Tom Friedman wrote that “the main issue today is the 7th century struggle over who is the rightful heir of the Prophet Muhammad.” This religious question is what Tom Friedman believes is what the Yemenis are fighting over. Many people are not aware that in the 1960s Saudi Arabia backed the Shi’a king of Yemen at the time and Egypt backed the secular forces of the opposition, demonstrating the extent to which the sectarian prescription is contrived. What was happening in the 1960s when people were taking different sides in Yemen? Thus, the sectarian narrative is not just lazy and ahistorical, but it is also dangerous. If you frame sectarianism in the Middle East as a theological or religious conflict, it basically means you can’t resolve it, because it is supposedly a Godly struggle. This approach absolves local politicians and outside powers from their deliberate and transparent role in sectarianizing the region, and avoids us confronting these uncomfortable truths of political machinations in public discourse. Unless we have these discussions about politics, politicians, and outside powers, we are not going to bear witness to any better results in the near future. We will resign ourselves denial about the real causes of sectarianism in the Muslim world, and by extension in the Middle East. Ali ibn Abi Taleb, the first Imam of the Shi’as and fourth caliph for the Sunnis, once aptly said in his letter to his campaigner Malik al-Ashtar, “Oh Malik, know that there are only two types of people. There are either your brothers in religion, or your equals in humanity.” ## Jonathan Brown For me, it is the first principle that Sunni and Shi’a Muslims are both Muslims and are bound up in one community. They have the same beliefs and objectives, and thus sectarianism is a vile poison that cannot be allowed into the Muslim body politic. Rather, it must be actively combated and should not be tolerated even for a moment. I’ll also agree with Mehdi, in that these are political issues. Having said that, let us consider theology. Often, when we consider Sunni-Shi’a reconciliation, we talk about ignoring or glossing over differences. I don’t think it helps to pretend that there are no differences between the Sunni and the Shi’a. I think it is important to know how to manage differences and to keep perspective. My first point will be that the Sunnis and Shi’a have a rich heritage at their disposal, which can be invoked in the pursuit of rapprochement. My second point will be that politics is a driver of sectarianism. Theology is really important, but even when we are talking about theology, politics is always right around the corner. My final principle will be that we ought never relitigate the past and its outrages. Onto my first point, as to the shared depth of the Sunni and Shi’a tradition. With heritage, one can construct either a nasty road of conflict, pain, agony, and hatred, or one can contribute to communal harmony, coexistence, and mutual respect. As an example, let us consider the epitome of the Ahl al-Sunna wa’l Jama’ah, Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Attributed to Ahmad ibn Hanbal is a statement insinuating that the Shi’a are not Muslims at all. I believe this to be a completely false attribution. Counter-factually, we could accept the position attributed to Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s teacher Imam al-Shafi’i, that a Sunni can pray behind a Shi’a because of the Prophet’s Hadith. We are hence presented with a choice: we can either take the first attribution to Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, or the second. Provided we are being fair and historically accurate, I would urge us in such cases to take the path of reconciliation. Similarly, we could follow the tradition of Sheikh al-Azhar, who said in his series of correspondences with the famous Lebanese Shi’a scholar Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din al-Musawi, that Sunnis and Shi’a converge in their doctrine much more than they diverge. We could take the path of Mahmud Shaltut, who in 1959 declared that the Ja’afari School of law is one of the schools of law accepted in Islam, along with the four schools of law. We could follow the tradition of Imam Khomeini, who stated that Sunnis and Shi’as have much more in common than they have different between them. ![al azhar](/sites/g/files/omnuum3186/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2024-11/al_azhar.jpg?itok=amdA1Vxg) The point here is that we could disinter all of the material in the Sunni or Shi’a heritage that vilifies the other sect, but this is a choice. From this, we can apprehend the importance of religious literacy. That is, everybody has the right to define their own tradition, and we ought not sift through someone else’s scripture or heritage and subsequently impose a belief upon them. We could delve into the Sunni tradition and selectively find all sorts of poison to vilify the Shi’a. Equally, we could delve into the Shi’a tradition and find all sorts of poison to vilify the Sunni. In such contexts, let people speak for themselves rather than prescribe their allegiances. My second point is that politics drive sectarianism. Even where theology is very important, politics are skulking around. For example, the most influential and virulently anti-Shi’a theological texts were always written in moments of political tension with the Shi’a. Let us take the Tuhfa Ithna Ashariyya, written by the eminent North-Indian scholar Shaykh Shah Abdul Aziz Dehlavi. Any declaration that the Shi’as are kufar emanates from this text, yet the piece was written in a context in which Shah Abdul Aziz fears a Shi’a political takeover in North India. If we cast ourselves back to Ibn Taymiyyah – the famous scholar of Damascus who proved the other major source of anti-Shi’a material – his invective derives from major fears that the Sultan had converted to Shi’ism. With the Mongols conquering Northern Syria and Iraq, he was trepid about the enforcement of Shi’a convictions upon the Sunnis. Theological discussions of Shi’ism don’t just emerge in a vacuum. They emerge amidst political anxiety about Shi’a power. I want to dovetail to my last point, which is that we ought not to relitigate disagreements of the past. Here I will give an example. There are sometimes Shi’a scholars who are recorded disparaging the Prophet’s wife Aisha, Omar the second Caliph, or Othman. As a Sunni, we can either get upset year after year about the judgements of Imami Shi’as, or we can understand and accept that there exists a disagreement between our traditions, without trivializing it. The logic of theology is important in Islamic history, but the precedent of coexistence is even more important. In the Ash’ari School of theology, if you say that God is above you, you point up at God, which is technically kufr because you are confining the residence of God. That may be theoretically problematic, yet we do not declare such people who gesture upwards towards God unbelievers, since the early Muslims pointed up at God. The very fact of that precedent means that no matter how much theological logic would exhort our condemnation of this practice, the early Islamic community composed of our forefathers and foremothers is respected. Similarly, the Sunni-Shi’a split is an archaic one. Nevertheless, they were all considered Muslims, and that precedent of coexistence and mutual acceptance means much more than any theological argument we can array. ## Mustafa Akyol Just as Muslims are burdened by this sectarian predicament, so too have the Christians suffered through a more enduring sectarian conflict, as evidenced in the decade of Catholic-Protestant tensions which once roiled in Northern Ireland. As Mehdi posited, these tensions were not about theology as much as they were a dispute over who would dominate and rule Northern Ireland. This exemplifies that sectarian conflict is not between theologies, but between identities. When we say that we are Catholic, or Protestant, or Sunni, or Shi’a, we are saying that we belong to a group which demarcates our identity. How much we believe in the accompanying theological beliefs is a secondary consideration. I agree that the wars in Iraq and Syria are wars over identity. The question then becomes how we can make different identities share power instead of trying to dominate the system in so autocratic a manner. Indeed, politics are the very reason for which our sects were created in the beginning. Early Muslims were divided not on the nature of the Qur’an, nor on the nature of Christ, but about who would rule after Prophet Muhammad: a question of governance, and therefore politics. Even so, theology remains important in my opinion. When we hold a certain theological disposition or belief, it might exacerbate political problems. Two powers fighting each other for land constitutes a temporary political tension, but if you see the other side as the incarnation of Yazid, the problem immediately becomes more intractable. Therefore, theology can play a role in aggravating – or perhaps healing – the tensions bearing upon us today. That is why I very much believe in reverting to Islamic traditions and extracting ideas which help us advance a more pluralistic, tolerant, and even liberal comprehension of Islam. Sectarianism initially emerged from the First Fitna, an early Islamic civil war. There were the partisans of Caliph Uthman, and the supporters of the fourth Caliph Ali. Uthman was killed, and though Ali did not orchestrate or support this, some people insisted on claiming his blood. In the midst of this war, a fanatical group arose which condemned both sides as kafirun (infidels) and resolved to kill them. This group embodies the most dangerous tendency in Islam to declare a group kafir because of their ideas, and subsequently justify attacking them. This tendency has been revived in the takfiri tradition, of which ISIS is the worst case. We know that this belligerent mindset poses problems. There exists, however, an antidote embedded within the teachings of the Murji’ah; a school of thought which originated in Syria before developing in Iraq. On the issue of whether Uthman is above Ali, or Ali above Uthman, they simply concluded that only God can truly preside over the matter. As such, they postponed this dispute to our afterlife, so that it may be resolved by God. They refrained from giving any judgment on this seething question of religious primacy. Moreover, they believed that faith is not something we can detect from the outside by looking at our acts. They thus declared that anybody who says that they are a Muslim and believes in God is incontrovertibly Muslim, and it should be left to God to decide upon them and their sinful deeds. They used the term Ahl al-Qiblah – people who turn towards Mecca to pray – and in so doing unified all Sunnis, Shi’as, Salafis, and Ahmadiyyas, for we are all Ahl al-Qiblah. Thus in the midst of the Fitna, the Murji’ah conceived of an idea for pluralism which pivoted on the humility of deferring judgement to God. John Locke makes a very similar argument in a letter concerning toleration and why heretics should not be punished. We have traditions of toleration in Islam, and even the Western world more broadly, which ought to be revived today through education. We should see that it is arrogance which lies behind the declaration of ourselves as the only “right” Muslims. I end with the notion that although secularism has been maligned for good reason – as in the case of Turkey’s enlightenment-inspired ban on the headscarf – we should accept that there does exist a delineation between issues which are directly religious, and those which are not. We should leave better issues for God to resolve than those we often do, and in so doing should tend towards a doctrine of living and let live. ## Ibrahim Kazerooni The theme of this symposium probes the interface between politics and theology in an attempt to find a solution for de-escalating the sectarian conflict in the Middle East. Of course religion has a role to play in overcoming sectarian divides but to understand how to heal these wounds, it is necessary to get to the roots of these conflicts, which more often than not are very complex. A cursory look at the coverage of the western media of these events, leads one to think that the conflicts in the Middle East are all sectarian – they are fights between competing religions or between sects within the same religion. While sectarian feelings have been rising since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, this is not the whole story. Sectarianism is usually the result, not the cause, of a wide variety of tensions. There are plenty of examples of civil conflict in the Arab world with no sectarian divide. Libya is being torn apart by fighting between the armed groups that toppled Muammar Qaddafi over who controls the oil resources. Egypt has been in crisis due to a political struggle for control of the state between the army and its backers on the one side and proponents of al-Qaida on the other. There are many political and economic interests involved, but no sects. I would like to propose that while the effects of sectarianism in the Middle East have been manifested in religious tensions and conflict, the root causes of this sectarianism are found elsewhere and it is these root causes which need to be addressed in order to heal the religious dimensions of the conflicts. The current confrontations appear to have an important sectarian element, but it cannot be accurately understood simply as a “Sunni versus Shi’a” fight. Applying such a framework can distort analytical focus and oversimplify regional dynamics. This dynamic is clearly seen in the case of Iraq and Syria before their total destruction by the U.S. invading army, and by mercenaries in Syria respectively. Syria was multi-ethnic society, with communities enjoying integration and diversity based first on being Syrian, and then on their respective religious and ethnic identities, long before the conflict began. Intermarriage and sociopolitical exchanges were common, and only since 2011 has ethnic and religious tensions begun to expose fault lines within communities based solely on fear created and perpetuated by foreign-backed terrorist organizations like Al Nusra and the Islamic State. Understanding the dynamics of the Middle East conflict requires an examination of some of the alternative frameworks that have been put forward to explain the current phase of regional politics. “Sunni versus Shi’a” makes for a simple headline, but does not do justice to the complexities of the new Middle East crisis. Since 9/11, every country in the region touched by major U.S. interference has collapsed into civil war as their social fabric has been irreversibly shattered: Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Libya. The ensuing arc of sectarian warfare bears uncanny resemblance to scenarios explored in a little-known study by an influential Washington D.C. defense contractor. The 2008 RAND Corporation report on the “Future of the Long War” was sponsored by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Army Capability Integration Centre. It set out U.S. government policy options for prosecuting what it described as “the long war” against “adversaries” in “the Muslim world,” who are “bent on forming a unified Islamic world to supplant Western dominance.” Among the strategies explored by the U.S. Army-sponsored report is “Divide and Rule,” which calls for “exploiting fault lines between the various groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts.” While the first usage of “Divide and Rule” in the English language began circa 1600, through the centuries, the commonly understood meaning is unmistakable: The retention of power by utilizing a deliberate strategy of causing those in subordinate positions to engage in conflicts with each other that weaken and keep them from any unified effort to remove the status quo force from power. The policy of maintaining control over subordinates or potential opponents by encouraging or causing dissent between them, thereby preventing them from uniting in opposition to pose any serious threat to the existing power structure is a very familiar story throughout history. It’s an age-old formula used to maintain imperial rule. As a mechanism it rests on identifying pre-existing ethno-religious division in society and then manipulating them in order to prevent subject people’s unified challenge to the rule by the outsiders. It has multiple applications, most commonly used in the political arena but also in the military, sociological and economic realm as well. The aim of divide and rule is to create dysfunctional states and destabilize a delicate balance reached over centuries that leads to permanent divisions needed for control. While I do not intend to evaluate the disadvantages of such policy at this stage, nevertheless I would like to pose the following question: once sectarianism becomes part of foreign policy portfolio actively supported and financed for its political capital by foreign forces and part of the divide and rule strategy, can theology have any role beyond directing the resistance to the colonial project? In another words if sectarianism is to be the birth pang of military control and its deliberate strategy of divide and rule; as Cavanaugh asserts for the war of religion of the 16th and 17th centuries, how should theologians behave? ### Captions Figure 1. The shrine of Lady Fatima Masuma in Qom, Iran - one of the two pillars of Shi'i scholarship and religious authority (Wikicommons). Figure 2. Paul Bremer & members of the Interim Iraqi Governing Council (Wikicommons). Figure 3. The Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, Egypt - the preeminent center of Sunni scholarship and religious authority (Pixabay). See also:- [ Sectarianism and sectarian de-escalation ](/research-domains/sectarianism-and-sectarian-de-escalation) - [ Shi'ism and geopolitics ](/research-domains/shiism-and-geopolitics)