{"id":369,"date":"2007-02-18T04:06:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-18T12:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=369"},"modified":"2007-02-18T04:06:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-18T12:06:00","slug":"the-trostkyists-of-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/the-trostkyists-of-islam\/","title":{"rendered":""The Trostkyists of Islam""},"content":{"rendered":"
Came across an essay by Fred Halliday<\/span>, one of the more level-headed commentators on matters of Islam, that seems worthwhile pointing out. Halliday teaches International relations at the London School of Economics and writes an occasional column (this is just such a one) for Open Democracy. In this article (read the full version here<\/a>) he argues that the tensions between Islam’s two major traditions \u2014 Sunni and Shi\u2019a Islam \u2014 are rooted more in current geopolitics than in differences of faith. Below, the opening paragraphs:<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

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Sunni, Shi\u2019a and the \u201cTrotskyists of Islam\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The conflict now besetting the middle east is, like all major international conflicts, multidimensional. It involves not just one major axis of violence (Israel\/Arabs, United States\/terrorism, west\/Iran) but several overlapping conflicts that draw states and armed movements into their arena. The major concern of strategists and analysts remains the polarisation between the US and its foes in Iraq and, increasingly, in Iran. But there is another important, ominous, conflict accompanying these that has little to do with the machinations of Washington or Israel, and is less likely to be contained by political compromise: the spread, in a way radically new for the middle east, of direct conflict between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims.<\/p>\n

Many generalisations and simplifications accompany the whole issue of Sunni and Shi’a Islam. In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, when Ayatollah Khomeini produced a radical, populist, third-world rhetoric that denounced the west and the “golden idols” or taghut who served imperialist interests in the region (among them the Shah of Iran, Anwar Sadat, Saddam Hussein, and the Gulf rulers), it was claimed by many that Shi’ism, the belief of around 10% of all Muslims, was inherently militant.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Sunni, who had historically accepted the legitimacy of Islamic rulers, the caliphs, and who paid their clergy from state funds, thereby controlling them, the Shi’a refused to accept the Muslim credentials of their rulers and produced a clergy, paid for by the subscriptions of the faithful, that were closer to the people and so more radical.<\/p>\n

I recall a conversation with Ibrahim Yazdi, the first foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran (who after Ayatollah Khomeini’s death spent years under virtual house arrest in Tehran). As he sat under the enormous chandeliers of what had been the Shah’s foreign ministry, he exclaimed with pride: “We are the Trotskyists of Islam!”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Came across an essay by Fred Halliday, one of the more level-headed commentators on matters of Islam, that seems worthwhile pointing out. Halliday teaches International relations at the London School of Economics and writes...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}