Sachedina on Sistani, etc.

I was so intrigued by Juan Cole’s (highly indirect) reference to the possibility
of Grand Ayatollah Sistani having adopted Gandhianism that I immediately
blogged
about it. Then I picked up the phone to speak to someone who, I was
confident, could give me further insight on this important topic. To
my happy surprise, my esteemed friend
Dr. Abdulaziz Sachedina
picked up the phone on the first ring.

I was surprised, because Sachedina travels a lot away from our common home-town,
Charlottesville, Virginia. Why, just last month, he made his third
visit to Iraq since the downfall of Saddam. (I felt foolish that
I had not called him earlier to say “al-hamdu lillah ala salaamtak” after
his safe return, and to ask him what he had learned on his trip.)

Sachedina, you see, is someone who knows his way around the world of Mesopotamian
Shi-ism pretty well. Born an “overseas Indian” in Tanzania in 1942,
he returned with his family to India after Tanzanian independence. He got
his first degree in India, then in 1967 he traveled to Mashhad, Iran, where
he spent four years getting a degree in Persian language and literature and
Islamic jurisprudence. While in Iran he made a broad network of friends
and colleagues in religious circles: those friends included people who are
now high up in the Iraqi and Iranian Shi-i institutional hierarchies.

“So Aziz, do you think Ayatollah Sistani has been directly influenced by
Gandhianism at all?”

Sachedina replied carefully. He said that in his contacts with Sistani,
the Ayatollah had mentioned a number of non-traditional sources for his thinking,
including what Sachedina described as “psychological tracts.” “But Gandhi’s
works? No, I don’t think so. He doesn’t believe in religious
pluralism, you have to understand that. He sees himself as speaking
for all Muslims, certainly– Sunni as well as Shi-i. But Gandhi? No,
I don’t think so… If his followers have been using Gandhian-style
tactics, then that would be more tactical than spiritual, I think.”

Sachedina and the Ayatollah go back a long way…

In fact, Sachedina
reported that the fatwa Sistani issued quite some time back, in which
he forbade Sachedina from speaking to groups of Muslims, was still in force. (I think it had been occasioned by some of Sachedina’s teachings on
concepts of Islamic democracy.)

“The fatwa never really stopped anyone else from speaking to me,” Sachedina told me with
a light laugh. “It does mean that I can’t go and see the Ayatollah
himself these days, though.”

On this most recent visit to Iraq, he entered the country over the land border
from Khorramshahr, Iran. “It was very easy. So many people going
in that way! I did pass through a border post, yes. The Iraqi
border guard looked at my passport and said, ‘Ameriki? Ahlan wa sahlan!’
with a broad smile.” [American? Welcome!]

Given the issue about the fatwa and so on, it may not be too surprising
to learn that Sachedina has little respect for Sistani’s leadership qualities
as such. “I doubt that these are his policies we’re seeing being
enacted these days,” he told me:

It’s much more likely they are those of his son Muhammed Reza Sistani, his
son-in-law Murtaza Kashmiri who lives in Dubai, or his other son-in-law Jawad
Shahristani who lives in Iran. Those three are all pretty smart people
who understand very well how to use the enormous symbolic power of the Grand
Ayatollah.

Their thinking is that if there’s a delay in the elections in Iraq, it will
set back their plans for the Shi-is to be able to realize the strength of
their numbers. Their feeling is that the Sunnis are much better organized
than they are, politically– despite some of what you may see from the outside.
And therefore, the longer the Americans stay in the country, the more
the Sunnis will be able to regroup and re-coup some of their earlier strength…

He himself seemed to concur with the judgment that the Shi-is were far less
well-organized than it might appear from the outside. In the course
of a one-week visit to Iraq, he traveled to a large number of different cities.
“My concern was to visit the shrine cities,” he explained.

He noted that the political situation in each of the major shrine cities
he’d visited had been very different:

For example, in Kadhimain, Muqtada Sadr’s people are dominant. In Samarra,
it’s the Sunnis (though of course there’s also a Shi-i presence there). In
Karbala, control seems divided. In Najaf, too. Sistani has his
headquarters there– but Muqtada is in control in Kufa, which is very close.
Only in and around Basra do Sistani’s images seem to be dominant.

So he is one voice there in the country, yes, but not the voice. He
hurt himself a bit in the early days after Saddam’s downfall by being indecisive.
He was reported to have issued a fatwa urging cooperation with
the Americans, you recall, and then he withdrew it.

So yes, I sensed only lukewarm support for Sistani around the country. Muqtada
has lots of supporters, especially from among the poorer people and the unemployed.
He’s a real firebrand!

He noted that though the general atmosphere in the mainly-Shia circles in
which he had moved seemed fairly relaxed and happy– “people are freely enjoying
themselves”– still, at some of the shrine complexes themselves he encountered
tough and intrusive security searches on going in. (This is not suprprising
to me, given the series of bombings and other large-scale killings that have
been perpetrated at these gathering-places that are of such huge symbolic
importance in Shi-i culture and thought. Not surprising, but
very disturbing… Makes me kinda glad to belong to a religious group–the
Quakers–that intentionally foreswears the whole idea of “Holy Places”.)

Anyway, where was I? Yes, here: Sachedina recalled that at Abbas’s haram (shrine complex) in Karbala he’d found the atmosphere
“relaxed”. But in Muqtada-controlled Kufa, “the security searches were so heavy-handed that I was quite frightened.” When
he went to Samarra, he did so on a Friday. He’d been hoping to catch the Friday
prayers there, but he arrived too late. “It was interesting to see
that the shrine there, which is controlled by the Sunnis, still has Saddamist
inscriptions around the walls, though the pictures of Saddam are all gone,” he said.

Among the things he had seen elsewhere in the country on this latest trip
were enormous long caravans of supplies for the US military that were being
trucked in from Kuwait, through Basra. “So many mobile homes they were
bringing! It certainly looks as though they’re intending the American
troops to stay for a long while!” He also commented on the generally
difficult economic situation for Iraqis, the lack of jobs and of many basic
services, and on the “very uptight” demeanor of the US troops whom he saw
as he traveled around the country.

And on the big political issues facing Iraqis these days?

“They want the U.N. to come in,” he said emphatically. “The call for
elections is in part being used as a tactic to bring that about.”