New York Post
ONCE UPON A TIME IN KARBALA
By STEPHEN SCHWARTZ
October 1, 2006 --
THE SHIA REVIVAL BY
VALI NASR W.W. NORTON, 288 PAGES, $25.95
WITH America bedeviled by religious
dissension in Iraq, which has a Shia
Muslim majority, and the challenges
presented by Iran and Hezbollah,
both also inspired by Shia
traditions, a readable volume on the
Sunni-Shia split is timely. And with
a better editor and fact-checking,
this work, by a distinguished Shia
academic, could have been that book.
Vali Nasr, a professor at
the Naval Postgraduate
School in Monterey, Calif.,
begins his narrative with
the holy day of Ashura. On
the 10th day of Muharrem,
according to the Islamic
calendar, Imam Husayn,
grandson of the Prophet
Muhammad, was martyred in
680 C.E.
Husayn was killed at
Karbala (in Iraq),
in a protest against
corrupt rule over
the Muslims. The
deaths of Husayn and
his father, caliph
Ali ibn Abi Talib,
marked the beginning
of the division
between the Shias,
who supported Ali,
and the community
that became the vast
Sunni majority of
Islam.
Nasr plunges
into the
global
political
relevance of
the
Sunni-Shia
divide,
evoking the
background
from which,
ultimately,
the Khomeini
scheme for
clerical
governance
emerged. He
outlines the
history of
radical
Sunni
bigotry
against
Shias, which
can
justifiably
be described
as
genocidal,
and includes
extensive
commentary
on the
origins of
Hezbollah
and the
plague of
underreported
anti-Shia
violence in
Pakistan.
At
the
climax
of
this
historical
epic
of
the
new
Shia
power,
Nasr
describes
the
U.S.-led
intervention
of
2003.
With
the
fall
of
Saddam
Hussein,
the
city
of
Karbala
and
Iraq's
Shias
were
liberated
from
the
long
night
of
Sunni
extremist
oppression.
Ayatollah Ali Sistani, although an Iranian by birth, suddenly stepped forward in Iraq as the theoretician of moderate Shia politics, without clerical rule. Ever since, the lines of power in the Arab states, and indeed in the broader Muslim world, have begun to warp.
It would have been helpful had Nasr clarified why it is that American and other coalition soldiers, as well as Iraqis themselves, are dying in Baghdad and elsewhere, at the hands of Sunni terrorists mainly financed by Saudi Arabia. But as Nasr declares in his preface, he has not set out to write about the Iraq war.
But while Nasr may be right to disclaim any focus on the Iraq war, his book is a study of the background of that war: the relations between the new Iraq and Iran, the role of radical Sunni violence in the same war and the change in the Mideast that could not have taken place without that war.
"The Shia Revival" deserves reading and debate, since Americans and our allies put their lives in danger every day because of events at Karbala 1,300 years ago.
Stephen Schwartz is author of "The Two Faces of Islam."
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