IMPERFECTIONISM:

The blood is the life, Mr Rumsfeld! (Spengler, 10/12/05, Asia Times)

In the Shi'ite version [of Islam] (as Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis writes):

...the reigning caliphs appeared more and more as tyrants and usurpers, while for many, the claims of the kin of the Prophet, embodied first in Ali and then in his descendants, came to express their hopes and aspirations for the overthrow of the corrupt existing order and a return to pure, authentic, and original Islam.

The "Twelvers", the Shi'ite mainstream, expect the return of Muhammad al-Mahdi, the 12th of the Imams (the canonical descendants of Ali) at the end of time. Facile identification of this doctrine with the Christian belief in the return of Christ or the Jesus expectation of a Messiah leads some in the West to think of Shi'ism as closer in spirit to Western religion. But the hope for the Mahdi expresses not a quasi-Christian sort of quietism, but rather an encysted revolutionary impulse, and that is what we observe in the Shi'ite fascination for blood.

The blood is the life, and men pass to eternal life only through blood - but whose blood? Self-sacrifice in war is the fundamental religious act of paganism, for it is only by the sacrifice of the young men of the tribe that the tribe has surety of survival among a forest of enemies. Human sacrifice, especially among warrior-cults, is a common religious expression among pagans. But with the notion of a universal God comes also the prospect of universal peace: if all men one day might worship one God by the same name, then the perpetual warring among tribes fighting for survival also might cease.

In proud defiance of revealed religion, the destroyer of the tribes, Islam holds to the primal demand of self-sacrifice. The jihadi's self-immolation in war, symbolized by the drawing of blood and the bleeding of nature itself, is the fundamental act of worship. The immortality of the individual, put at risk by the encroachment of the metropole upon the life of the tribe, is regained through the revolt of the endangered tribes against the usurpation of the empire that forms its motivation. Shi'ism therefore represents the original impulse of Islam in its purest form, and the shedding one's own blood an authentic response. The victors of the revolt against the usurpers become usurpers in turn, and so on in never-ending cycle. Again, Lewis:

Most Sunni jurists, even while recognizing the evils of the existing order, continued to preach conformism and submission, generally quoting yet another principle, that "tyranny is better than anarchy." The Shi'ites, on the other hand, even while submitting, maintained their principled rejection of the Sunni order, and from time to time, more frequently in the early centuries than in the later, rose in revolt in an attempt to overthrow the existing order.

President George W Bush still hopes that Iraq's Shi'ites will bring core support to the constitutional project in Iraq. When he warned the National Endowment for Democracy on October 6 of "evil Islamic radicalism, militant jihadism" or "Islamo-fascism" he referred specifically to the Sunnis of al-Qaeda. As he said:

Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism. Whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom. These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus - and also against Muslims from other traditions, who they regard as heretics.

Shi'ite Iran seemingly no longer belongs to the "axis of evil", but is merely an "ally of convenience" of al-Qaeda's Sunni extremists. That is an odd way of looking at the matter, for the Sunnis of Iraq no longer can threaten American strategic interests, whereas the Shi'ites of Iran soon will threaten everyone's strategic interests. Short of massive and sustained bombardment, there is nothing America can do at the moment to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons. Perhaps the president does not want to engage Iran for fear of provoking the Iraqi Shi'ites. Washington's acceptance of Hezbollah as an electoral party in Lebanon has the same motivation. It may be that the president has little to say about Iran because there is nothing he can do about Iran.

Iraq's proposed federal constitution will be defeated in the October 15 referendum, not only because the Sunni minority rejects an arrangement that encourages rule by the Shi'ite majority, but because Shi'ite radicals led by Muqtada al-Sadr repudiate the pro-constitution Shi'ite establishment headed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Intra-confessional strife among Shi'ites represents a nastier obstacle to constitutional democracy than the Sunni insurgency.

Liberal democracy is, of course, a product of messianistic religion and nothing more than the encystment of the revolutionary impulse. It proceeds from the religious doctrine that the existing political order is unworthy of excessive respect--since, obviously, every government will fall short of the ideal until the Messah comes--allows the faithful to discard governments that fail to do the best we mere mortals can in the meantime, and situates the state within the framework of the larger society.

There are Shi'ites in Iran and in Iraq who don't grasp all of this and who think it appropriate to install a theocracy even before the messiah (their 12th Imam) comes, but most understand this to be heretical and Ayatollah Sistani understands it especially well. Spengler is certainly right that there are dangers here for us, but perhaps underestimates the role we can play in Reforming Shi'ism so that the Sistani vision defeats the Khomeini. It helps that Khomeinism has failed so spectaculary in Iran.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 11, 2005 1:51 PM