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"After
the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in
Islam" by
Lesley Hazleton
; Doubleday (239 pages,
$26.95
)
———
When
hundreds of thousands of black-clad Shiite pilgrims set
out on foot early this year, they risked their lives on
bomb-rife roads as they walked hundreds of miles to the
holy destination of
Karbala
. To outsiders, these Iraqis may have harbored a death
wish. To them, of course, they were fulfilling a
religious duty. They were off to commemorate Ashura, the
10-day mourning period for the martyrdom of Imam
Hussein.
Scores of
Shiite pilgrims died in Ashura blasts this year alone
— believed to be engineered by Sunni insurgents —
and it's this centuries-old internecine conflict that
Lesley Hazleton
brings to light in her new book. Written in an easy and
accessible narrative, the
Middle East
journalist tidily reconstructs a chapter in the long and
battle-weary history of Islam, from Muhammad's death in
632 to the clashes over naming his successor to the
brutal slaying of Imam Hussein in
Karbala
. The Shiite-Sunni story fights conclusion.
"The
Karbala
story is indeed one without end, still unfolding
throughout the Muslim world, and most bloodily of all in
Iraq
, the cradle of Shia Islam," Hazleton writes.
After a
prologue that briefly retells what came to be known as
the Ashura Massacre in
Karbala
in 2004, Hazleton takes her reader back to the origin of
the wide-scale bombing: Muhammad's death, of natural
causes at 63, and the absence of a successor. Though the
prophet had multiple wives, he had no sons to whom he
could pass his legacy. And so sharp divisions between
Shiites and Sunnis emerged, the former believing cousin
Ali had been chosen to lead, the latter holding that the
community picked the Muhammad confidant and Caliph Abu
Bakr. This book is about the dangers of interpretation
and the power of symbols.
The
Shiite-Sunni split in 7th century Arabia may seem
readily familiar to Islam and
Middle East
scholars, but the book is almost certain to educate lay
Western readers about the history of the world's fastest
growing religion (and, let's hope, policy makers). After
all, Islam didn't occupy the same place in the Western
imagination as it does in these post-9/11, post-2003
Iraq
invasion times.
Illuminating
details abound. Hazleton notes that four out of five
Muslims are not Arab. Shiite Muslims, while now at the
helm in
Iraq
, make up 15 percent of Islam's worldwide population but
close to half in the
Middle East
. Before appointing himself supreme leader, Khomeini
invoked the
Karbala
story in the Iranian Revolution in 1979. And the
region's oil on which the West depends so much fuels the
same Sunni insurgency that attacks Western armies.
Indeed,
"After the Prophet" will be held up as a
primer for grasping the modern-day
Middle East
— mainly in
Iraq
but
Iran
, too. Understand the history, Hazleton's book suggests,
and you understand why somebody would pack a truck with
explosives and ram it into a shrine. It's a well-known
premise but reminders are useful.
A 2006
attack on the Askariya Mosque in Samarra — Sunni
extremists,
Al Qaida
in
Iraq
, the suspected culprits — resonates with meaning in
the aftermath of similar attacks on Shiite shrines.
"Attack the Askariya shrine in Samarra, and you
commit something even worse: you attack the Mahdi
("one who guides divinely") and thus the core
of Shia hope and identity," Hazleton notes.
"The destruction of the Askariya shrine was an
attack not just on the past, or even the president, but
on the future."
As much
as the
Arabian Peninsula's
battles and betrayals from centuries ago have informed
the present, so does the West's own history of mingling
— the backing of coups and jihad fighters and even the
arming of both sides in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
Hazleton is careful to point this out.
"Such
heavy-handed intervention helped create the intense
anti-Westernism that today underlies both Sunni and Shia
radicalism," she explains. "After close to a
century of failed intervention, Westerners finally need
to stand back, to acknowledge the emotive depth of the
Sunni-Shia split and accord it the respect it
demands."
———
Miami Herald
staff writer
Trenton Daniel
spent seven weeks in
Iraq
earlier this year, as Shiite pilgrims traveled to
Karbala
for Ashura.
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