Talk of civil war – Iraq
uploaded 08 Mar 2006
“I think there’s very little that they can do with it. It’s not within their control. They are in a country which is possessed by people who have a religion which has not been reformed since medieval days and which is now behaving in the sort of way which we saw in the religious wars between Christians of various denominations in Europe several hundred years ago and which thank God we’ve got over long ago. I don’t believe the occupation forces, the British and the Americans and the others, can do anything about that …
…look this is not a matter which the Americans and the British can resolve, you can’t go in there and stop these people from hating each other and killing each other. It’s what they’ve been doing for a very long time. And they will probably continue to do it. So I think we should do our best to stand back as far as we can from it, not to get involved in trying to hold two sides in a religious war against each other and hope that the Iraqis themselves will be able to resolve it to stop the descent into civil war because I don’t believe that we can.”
(Lord Norman Tebbit, Former Conservative Party Chairman UK, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/anyquestions_transcripts_20060224.shtml)
Such statements strike a chord with Western audiences. They find it difficult to understand the Islamic world. They crave comfort in the notion that Iraqis are barbaric fanatics that are only too keen to rip each others throats out. It is only the decency of the upstanding peace loving Western troops that can keep these savages apart. They hold to a notion that there exists a massive gulf between what CNN refers to as “The Shia” and “The Sunni” and that the hatred between the two runs deep and wide, and has done for centuries. They may picture themselves as romantic heroes; as portrayed by Peter O’Toole in Hollywood’s Lawrence of Arabia, however we do not. We do not particularly care if the west deludes itself with images of Ali Baba and the forty thieves. But we do care about them exporting their warped version of reality to the Islamic world.
It is true that Iraq is a violent and deeply troubled area of the world. What is also true is that the source of all of these problems is the crusader occupation. If there is apparent rivalry between Shia and Sunni in Iraq today, it is a product of the current political situation. The so called Shia and Sunni both have the same creed and rituals. No matter how much they try to forge massive differences or exacerbate small ones, we know our religion is one. Since 1979 the west, along with corrupt middle eastern regimes have sort to force a wedge between Persian speaking Muslims and Arab speaking Muslims. They fought a bloody and futile war for eight years using our wealth and brethren, both Arab and Persian, as pawns. Then, Iraq was a homogenous Arab-Sunni block, whilst Iran was Persian and Shia. Whilst now, Iraq suddenly becomes a mixture of Shia, Kurds, with a few Sunnis and lots of foreign extremists. We know this Ummah is one, we know our book is one, and most importantly we know that Allah is one. In contrast we also know that the root of our problems in Iraq stem from the Westerners. We do not buy this idea that they pedal that the problems of Iraq are our own internal differences surfacing, as they always have done. Frankly this notion is used to create a cycle of violence against ourselves, and divert attention from Western crimes.
For the vast majority of the history of Islam, the Shia and the Sunni lived peacefully together. It was only in the last few hundred years that the Safavid’s established a quasi-independent Shia state in Persia and some tensions arouse. However, this was at a time when the Uthmaani Khilafah was in a state of rapid intellectual and political decline. For centuries, the Shia and Sunni continue to make Hajj (pilgrimage), year-on-year. In most areas of the Islamic world there are Shia and Sunni communities and by and large, there is little rivalry between the two, considering that each group numbers in hundreds of millions.
In the early days of the occupation of Iraq, there were several united Sunni-Shia marches and demonstrations and there were no reports of violence from one group to the other. If Sunni and Shia in Iraq are now killing each other in the way suggested: it is a new phenomenon that began during the occupation.
The war that is continuing in Iraq today, despite the political process there is between the various denominations within Iraq that want rid of the occupying forces. They have drafted in Iraqi civilians as an Iraqi army to fight the war for them. Due to the political reality of Iraq today, the Iraqi forces are primarily recruited from the Shia population and the majority of so called insurgents are from among the Sunni. In short, the war is primarily between the occupying forces and their allies from among the Iraqi people whether Sunni or Shia, versus the insurgency that is primarily derived from the Iraqi people Sunni and Shia.
Iraq has taken further steps towards civil war from two perspectives. Firstly, the insurgency has always been targeted against the occupying forces, so as more and more responsibility is handed over to their Iraqi allies, the insurgency will more and more be pitted against the Iraqi army, a proxy for the occupying forces but nevertheless Iraqi. Secondly, the resistance against occupation has gained in strength, support and momentum and may soon be named a “war” rather than an insurgency. So civil war may unfortunately be on the way, but this is unrelated to Sunni Shia differences. May Allah (swt) prevent the continuing political turmoil from leading to polarisation along, what they would call creedal lines as is being suggested.
Insh-Allah, Iraq is still far away from civil war in the sense of Sunni versus Shia. There is no justification in either Sunni or Shia Islam for either to declare war against the other. It is simply another red herring, designed to make the world believe that the problems in Iraq are because of Islam. However, only Islam can solve the problems of Iraq.
It is crucial that a movement of Iraqi people be cultivated, independent of the occupying forces, that produces a consensus on the future of Iraq, truly representing the thoughts and wishes of the Iraqi people without interference from the US. Such a movement, through popular support and respect could bring peace to Iraq and re-establish it on the path of progress. Through this, perhaps a new Khilafah state for the 21st century, but along the rightly guided lines of Rasool-Allah’s (Sallallahu alaihi wassalam) governance, could be re-established with its capital in Bagdhad that would bring peace, stability and progress to the Islamic world.
Source: KCom Journal