As part of the New York Times‘s coverage of the rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the paper included an article today titled “How Do Sunni and Shia Islam Differ?” The piece described the 7th century schism in Islam in some detail, and summarized the differences in religious beliefs. The implication is that this ancient historical information will help readers understand what is happening now.
This is sophisticated but still classic Orientalism: the belief that “Islam” (in this case, two types of “Islam”) has a timeless, unchanging essence that governs how its adherents will act in the present.
Enter Marc Lynch, the distinguished Mideast scholar at George Washington University who has also blogged and tweeted for years @abuaardvark. In the Washington Post, Lynch gets straight to the point:
“The idea of an unending, primordial conflict between Sunnis and Shiites explains little about the ebbs and flows of regional politics. This is not a resurgence of a 1,400-year-old conflict.”
Lynch goes to convincingly explain that Saudi aggressiveness, as shown by the January 2 execution of the Saudi Shiite cleric and activist Nimr al-Nimr, is motivated by political reality today, including the kingdom’s fear that it is weakening regionally after the Iran deal, and that its brutal intervention in Yemen has bogged down.
In some sense, the mistaken Orientalist explanation for Saudi behavior is less painful than Lynch’s interpretation. If the monarchy’s rising hostility were truly deeply theological, you could at least say their religious passion meant they couldn’t help themselves. But the fact is the Saudi king coldly executed Nimr al-Nimr mainly just to gain regional strategic advantage.
Let’s try a thought experiment to see the absurdity of Orientalist analysis. Let’s say Germany and France got into a dispute over the future of Europe. Would the New York Times run a sidebar informing its readers about Martin Luther and the rise of Protestant Germany in the 16th century, and the religious differences with Catholic France?
“thought experiment”……?
They (NYT) absolutely might. It wouldn’t be out of character. Edward SaidCerritos wrongly gave the liberal academy of the West the most negative interpretation of ‘orientalism’ that never existed previous to his tome. In the past there was an occident and an orient and the same amount of bigots and racists in both realms.
Orientalism is exactly what the NYT is proposing.
James North gave a hypothetical example. Let’s go with some actual history: the 30 years war (1618-1648) that raged in Europe, especially in Germany. Nearly all the major powers in Europe were involved.
The public justification for the war was religious: Protestant vs Catholic. However, Catholic France was aligned with the major Protestant countries. IMHO this proves that the French leaders were not motivated by religion, IOW they didn’t believe their own propaganda.
There’s a lot of that going around today. The Israelis and their US supporters and defenders put great stress on the supposedly horrible Iranians and the menace that Iran poses to Israel.
Nobody mentions the 1980’s, when Israel and the US (Reagan administration) sold modern weapons to Iran. This inconvenient fact has disappeared down an Orwellian memory hole.
How many times have you seen the terms Shiite Sunni split in the newspapers? I’ll answer for you, enough times that these terms deserve a definition. Now James North informs us that these terms don’t need a definition and if someone does define them then Mister North has his own definition for them: orientalists.
Let us assume that Mister North is correct that the Saudi Iranian tensions have very little to do with the definitions of these terms. Even so, these terms Sunni and Shiite will continue to be used to describe the tensions and the terms deserve definition. And to toss the term Orientalism on this and the German France analogy to boot shows a type of adolescent tendentiousness to Mister North’s reporting.
Just to be clear: in a newspaper article describing the 30 years war it would be totally appropriate to define the terms catholics and protestants if those terms were constantly used in articles to describe the war, even if the war had little to do with Martin Luther.
I disagree with both, the NYTs and the WaPos explanation for the Saudi-Iranian spat.
For the Saudi execution of Sheikh Nimr, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that there was no much Saudi calculus behind it, but just blind sectarian rage, and maybe also a desire of revenge for the killing of Saudi-backed militant leader Zahran Alloush in an airstrike near Damascus.
Regarding the underlining world view, I do believe that the Saudi rulers indeed view todays political world according to the orientalist view of a Sunni-Shia struggle dating back from the 7th century. This world view transpires all their arguments and behaviour, for example when the Saudis accuse Iran of meddling in foreign countries, especially majority Sunni arab countries like Syria, while completely ignoring their own meddling their and the fact that Syria and Iran already had a mutual defense treaty long before the war in Syria started. The same is basically true regarding the Saudi behaviour in Yemen, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Lebanon and elsewhere: the Saudis back wahhabi-Sunnis, no matter what kind of terrorists they are, as a matter to fight against Shia.
But the other side, Iran and friends, have a totally different view on these conflicts. They view these conflicts as a political struggle – resistance against imperialism and imperialist zionist and wahhabi terror, and for liberation from global US-zionist supremacy -, where all sects, religions, and ethnicities, Shia, Sunni, Christians, Jews, Arabs, Kurds, Persians, and whoever. That’s why many Hezbollah fighters for example wear Christian crosses in their battles, why Iran and Hezbollah always supported Hamas, PIJ, and even the Muslim Brotherhood.
Both, the NYT and the WaPo disinform their readers on this.
It certainly isn’t enough to explain the doctrinal differences, but it shouldn’t be assumed that they are totally irrelevant to the social, political, and economic factors in the Sunni-Shi’i division. Historically Shi’ism arose as a rebellion against caliphs seen as corrupt (after the first four “righteous” caliphs) in the name of the original Islam, and in Sunni-dominated countries such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Lebanon Shi’ism still has this character as a rebellion of “underdogs”. That is reminiscent of certain Protestant groups in Europe (e.g. Anabaptists). However, in another respect the stronger parallel is that between Shi’ism and Catholicism as variants of their respective religions with a unified clerical hierarchy, and that is more relevant when we consider a Shi’i society like Iran. (For this account I am indebted to a classroom discussion of the topic with Arab students when I was teaching at Brown University.)