Holy Places, Battle Scenes
A guide to Shiite Iraq.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110003262
BY ERIC ORMSBY
Friday, March 28, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
The exotic names Karbala and Najaf, where coalition
forces in Iraq are engaged in fierce combat, have
little resonance for most Americans. But for Shiite
Muslims they represent two of the holiest places on
the face of the earth, about which we should probably
know more.
The cities' shrines and sites of pilgrimage are equal
in importance for Shiites to the pilgrimage to Mecca,
their golden domes rising over a landscape of
perennial sorrow and lamentation: Both Karbala and
Najaf are indissolubly associated with the martyrdoms
of Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, and of his
son Husayn ibn Ali. The deaths of these men at the
hands of those whom Shiites still remember with curses
gave Shiism its foundational myth as well as its
distinctive stamp.
Though Shiite Islam is less known in the West than its
Sunni counterpart, it not only commands millions of
adherents but has created, over its long history, an
imposing and often brilliant cultural and intellectual
legacy, most vividly exemplified in the architecture
of its shrines and mosques. We connect Shiism with
Iran, but the Iranian adoption of this branch of Islam
occurred late--in the mid-16th century.
At Muhammad's death in 632, one faction supported Ali
for the nascent caliphate because he was married to
Muhammad's daughter Fatima and because he was the
closest surviving male blood-relative of Muhammad.
Other factions, following egalitarian bedouin
practices, militated for Abu Bakr, a close friend of
the Prophet renowned for his piety. Ali was in fact
passed over twice more for the caliphate, acceding to
power only in 656.
For his supporters, known as the party of Ali or
"shi'at Ali" (whence the name "Shia"), the first three
caliphs were little better than usurpers. Even as
caliph, however, Ali was under constant challenge, and
in 661 he was stabbed to death in the great mosque of
Kufa by a radical dissident. Control of the new empire
passed to his archenemy, the first Umayyad Caliph
al-Mu'awiyah. One of the archvillains of Shiite
hagiography, whenever al-Mu'awiyah's name is
mentioned, the tag "May he lie in the pit of hell!" is
invariably affixed.
The city of Najaf lies in the vicinity of the once
powerful city of Kufa, with its rival Basra one of the
principal garrison towns of early Islam, seething
cantonments where much that is uniquely Islamic in
art, thought and the sciences first took shape.
Traditionally Ali is believed to have been buried in
Najaf, which even now bears the honorific title
Mashhad Ali, the "place of martyrdom of Ali." As such,
Najaf commands the reverence that St. Peter's holds
for Roman Catholics.
Almost 20 years later, when the Umayyad Caliph Yazid
pressured Husayn, one of Ali's sons by his marriage to
the Prophet's daughter, to offer allegiance to his
rule, Husayn steadfastly refused. After fruitless
negotiations and skirmishes, Husayn and most of his
family were massacred at Karbala in October 680.
Husayn was decapitated, and his head was mounted on a
spear and paraded in public. During one such display a
voice is said to have cried out from the crowd, "Be
gentle! On that face I have seen the lips of God's
Apostle!"
The murder of Husayn provoked horror: for a
self-proclaimed Muslim ruler to kill a descendant of
the Prophet himself and to profane his body both
outraged and galvanized his supporters. The martyrdom
of Husayn, even more than that of his father, lies at
the inmost heart of Shiite Islam and is annually
commemorated with intense ceremony that includes
passion plays, self-flagellation and chanted
lamentation. Nowhere perhaps is the Shiite sense of a
deep and tragic injustice at the core of things more
conspicuous than in this ceremony, as is that ardent
yearning for the messianic return of the last imam who
will restore a just order to the world. The ceremony
takes place on the 10th day of the Muslim month of
Muharram during the period known as Ashura. By an
inauspicious coincidence Ashura fell this year mere
days before the outbreak of war.
Mr. Ormsby is a professor at McGill University's
Institute of Islamic Studies.
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq:
Your enemy is not surrounding your country — your enemy is ruling your
country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be
the day of your liberation." -George W. Bush 1/29/03
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