Terrific op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times by Jeff Stein, national security editor of Congressional Quarterly. He’s been conducting a little experiment…
FOR the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”
A “gotcha” question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I’m not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who’s on what side today, and what does each want?
Here are some of the answers:
A few weeks ago, I took the F.B.I.’s temperature again. At the end of a long interview, I asked Willie Hulon, chief of the bureau’s new national security branch, whether he thought that it was important for a man in his position to know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. “Yes, sure, it’s right to know the difference,” he said. “It’s important to know who your targets are.”
That was a big advance over 2005. So next I asked him if he could tell me the difference. He was flummoxed. “The basics goes back to their beliefs and who they were following,” he said. “And the conflicts between the Sunnis and the Shia and the difference between who they were following.”
A member of the House intelligence committee:
Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: “One’s in one location, another’s in another location. No, to be honest with you, I don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something.”
Another committee member:
“Do I?” she asked me. A look of concentration came over her face. “You know, I should.” She took a stab at it: “It’s a difference in their fundamental religious beliefs. The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa. But I think it’s the Sunnis who’re more radical than the Shia.”
Now we’re not talking theology. Stein’s asking his repondents who’s who right now. Do they know that Hezbollah is Shiite? That Osama bin Laden is Sunni? Stein says that some of his interviewees are able to answer these questions easily. But all too many, he says, “don’t have a clue.”
“How can they do their job,” Stein asks, “without knowing the basics?”
I only wish someone would pose these questions to Bush in an interview.
white people don’t know what browns think everybody would know…
my jewish trust fund baby friends didn’t know what a hindu was
The nuances don’t matter if the increasingly inevitable outcome is to exterminate all the brutes.
The difference between the Shinnis and the Sueites? I dunno, it’s hard to remember.
No suprise here. Folks up top tend be the most clueless of em all.
Ask the same question to a US Special Forces Sergeant that is making chump change for a salary, he’ll not only give you an answer, but one in a different language depending on the group/team he serves on (Dari, Pashto, Persian, Arabic, Korean, etc). Conventional troops doing FID (Foreign Internal Defense) type missions will know. Eventually, these guys will leave the service at some point. More citizens know what the differences are, eventually leadership will have to take notice.
As hopeless as leadership on the top is (Bureaucracy, politicans regardless of what party they’re alligned with, self appointed ‘experts’), there are plenty that do know because they’ve got far more riding on it (like their life) or others who choose to educate themselves because it is important to know the world.
Depressing – obv something they are expected to know. I’m not so sure that a lot of brown ppl know the difference either. Or know about differences among Shiites..Ismailis, etc.
Can I be totally honest? I don’t know the diff (is there a diff?), but I’m always so frightened of mispronouncing “Shiite.” There, I’ve said it. It’s just not a comfortable word, if you know what I mean.
I’m much, much more comfortable with the Sunnis, you know, like, “Sunni side-up.” That always puts a smile on my face. Makes me think of the Walmart sign. Sunnis are much much more family-friendly, so if we’ve got to choose sides, I’d say as Americans we should walk on the Sunni side of the street. That’s part of what makes this country great, our optimism, and belief in a brighter day.
So, what I propose is we call the good muslims Sunni, and the bad ones Shiite, and that way everybody knows the difference. As I like to say, if you want to see a difference in the world, make a difference. Have a nice day!
It’s easy to be horrified by the lazy ignorance of our leaders at all levels of government, but I’m not sure that parsing the Sunni/Shiite divide will matter as it relates to US policy. Iraq = Arab = Sunni and Iran = Persian = Shiite, except when there are Iraqi Shiites and Iranian Sunnis (like the Kurds).
Iranian Shiites stormed the American embassy in Tehran and held the hostages for 444 days in 1979, cost Jimmy Carter the presidency, and started the whole yellow-ribbons-on-trees thing. Sunni Arabs felled the World Trade Center, launched America on a Global War on Terror (TM), cost John Kerry the presidency, and started the whole take-your-shoes-off-at-the-airport thing.
Since the US government’s current position is that Islam in all its forms is invalid as a belief system and basis for any sort of civic polity, I don’t think a crash course on the succession of the Prophet and the descendants of Ali will do the Pentagon, the State Department, or the CIA any good.
7, Mr. K, surpasses even your usual brilliance.
But ah, Preston, by accidents of history and geography, Iraq (like Iran) has a Shiite majority. Saddam was Sunni, but now that he’s gone, the long oppressed majority is in the mood to do some oppressing of their own. There lies the rub.
Thanks Nina. Sometimes the material just writes itself.
Mr Kobayashi, you put Ismail on my face too!
— white people don’t know what browns think everybody would know…
And vice versa. I wouldn’t expect a Sunni Muslim in Iraq to recite the differences between the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches. And those two groups have the sense not to blow each other to Hell.
Except that they did in Northern Ireland . . .
haha. thats funny and also offensive, neat trick
Except when they do, of course.
That’ll surely come as news to the one-hundred thousand European dead in the Peasant Wars of 1525.
Good sense my foot.
Can anyone really be surprised by this? This is just another layer of incompetence with respect to how the war in Iraq has been executed.
Just to be a wonk, and in the name of accuracy (since we’re noting the intellectual ineptitude of our government) — the Episcopal Church is an American institution, one regional offshoot of the Church of England. The worldwide Protestant body that grew out of the C of E is called the Anglican Communion. Such Protestants everywhere are called Anglicans. Episcopalians have never been engaged in a shooting war (whether bullets or longbows), just rhetorical ones about homosexuality, and they tend to battle only their Anglican brothers and not the Catholics. Henry VIII split from the Roman Church in 1534, the start date of the Protestant Reformation.
Siddhartha-bhai, don’t Sufi in silence. Look on the Sunni side and keep Ismailing.
(we’ll be playing here all week folks…)
Yo, don’t do that! Wikipedia, google. Something.
He does work for them. Our boy Preston, despite his Parsi insides, is a Wasp on the out 😉
Whoops–English Reformation (not Protestant). Thanks!
Siddhartha and Mr. K seem to be craving punishment. ..
This is the kind of thing that makes me realize I live in an incredibly pathological bubble of weirdness. I can barely remember when I learned the differences. 9th grade? And then when people rise to the defense, trying to say why it doesn’t matter, I’m just speechless.
Preston, just to clarify my somewhat murky comment, no disrespect intended…
Of course you’re right about the Anglicans and Episcopalians, etc, but the Reformation proper started in 1517 with Luther’s theses. By the late 1520s and early 30s, taken up (with various remixes) by the likes of Calvin and Zwingli, it had become the most pressing political issue in virtually all the European states. The law of unintended consequences ran riot, and for the next eighty years, the fallout was devastating.
Siddhartha it would be great to have some links with information on the real “differences” so those that aren’t really aware can educate themselves. I for one have a lose religious idea of what the differences are but it would mean a lot to have actual references that I can read up on and understand better.
Indeed–I was caught up on the English part . . .
One very good reason for knowing what Shiites think is that Ahmadinejad– second only to Kim Jong Il in the worldwide bad muthaf*cker stakes (sorry Chavez, you’ll have to wait your turn)– is a fundamentalist Shiite. With regards to the Twelfth Imam (the medieval cleric Ali, around whom Shiism was founded, and on whom messianic hopes are pinned), Max Rodenbeck recently wrote the following in the NYRB:
In other words, the messier things get, the happier Ahmadinejad is.
It’s a long but helpful article. It would be too much to hope, I suppose, that our policy makers and dogs of war would actually take the time to read such things.
One could read all the arcane pronouncements and tomes from leaders in the modern Islamist movement, but this is like pouring over the millennialist Left Behind rantings of the Christian Right in the USA. They are not policy statements or white papers so much as narcissistic ramblings designed to score points with a constituency. Ahmadinejad, just like Osama, doesn’t have clerical standing. He can pontificate all he wants, but the substance of his writings only matters inasmuch as it proves he’s crazy. He doesn’t speak for Shiism (just as Osama doesn’t speak for Sunnism). Ahmadinejad is also not the Supreme Leader of Iran. He can’t even go to war since he doesn’t command the army.
Mr. K, JOAT,
The 12th Imam of the Shia is actually Muhammad al-Muntazar al-Mahdi. He is said to have disappeared and people are waiting for his return. Here is an article that lays out the differences very simply. Yeah, the source is the BBC. There are many websites about Islam but they tend to be from one school or another, and complex, as well as not very well laid out. Certainly if some of the Muslim brothers and sisters here would care to comment on this article’s reliability, that would be appreciated.
In 1959, the Shaikh of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, traditionally one of the foremost Sunni authorities, said in a fatwa that Shia was a legitimate interpretation of Islam (see here, scroll down). More broadly, Sunni and Shia recognize one another as Muslim. Political and ethnic differences are clearly another matter.
Again there are others here more qualified to speak on such matters than I am 🙂
Salaam
Hold the fatwas please. Imam Ali, the cousin of the Prophet (PBUH), is not the 12th Imam. Repeat, Imam Ali is not the 12th Imam.
here is an interview with the Aga khan that reflects this general lack of knowledge and how education can help this problem …..
See why members of the House Intelligence Committee don’t care to know the difference between a Shiite and Sunni? ;>)
That linked interview of the Aga Khan starts off by saying that he’s a descendant of Muhammad. Which sounds all cool and special until you do some fairly straightforward math and realize that everyone in Europe is a descendant of Muhammad. And no one, obviously, is descended from Jesus.
“There was a date in the not-too-distant past at which all individuals were either ancestors of everyone alive today, or ancestors of no one alive today.” [link]
Kobayashi: It would be too much to hope, I suppose, that our policy makers and dogs of war would actually take the time to read such things.
While those mentioned in Stein’s article may have been ignorant, the policy maker who caused the Iraq war, Wolfowitz was very well informed. In fact, one of his good friends is Azar Nafisi, whom he actively encouraged to write Reading Lolita in Tehran. Also, he is going out with an Arab, after his divorce.
I don’t totally agree with the NYRB article. This theory (mentioned by others too) seems to suspiciously follow the doomsday scenario outlined in the pre-2003 period leading up to the Iraq war. It is quite interesting to note what Iranians themselves have to say about that topic. No specific links to blogs at this point. I recall reading them through this main link though.
The descendants of the prophet are a kind of subcaste in Islam. It’s not a genetic thing, but Muslims defer generally to the groups thought to be direct descendants of the prophet.
Shia-Sunni struggle:
The battle starts with who should have been the first caliph after Muhammad.
Shia version: The first caliph should have been Ali the son in law of Muhammad (ali was married to muhammad’s daughter fatima. They say Muhammad appointed Ali as the person to follow him as the leader (1st caliph). They say Ali was wronged when he was not made the first caliph after muhammad’s death.
Sunni version: The first caliph Abu Bakr (muhammad’s father in law, his wife ayesha’s husband) was rightfully made the first caliph because Muhammad (who would usually lead the prayers) once stopped in the middle of the prayer and asked Abu Bakr to lead the prayer thus letting the believers know that he wanted Abu Bakr to be the first caliph.
Anyway, Muhammad dies and Ali the fighter (he truly was a great fighter) is busy with funeral preparations and the other believers appoint Abu Bakr as the first caliph. Ali finds out and refuses to give bayat (oath of allegiance to Abu Bakr at apparently Fatima’s bidding who was majorly pissed off) and the cold war starts which only turned into open warfare once Ali became the 4rth caliph later on.
Ali also missed out the chance of becoming the second caliph (omar) and the third caliph (osman). Ali became the 4rth caliph eventually and then the Muslims split into Sunnis Umayyad Caliphate led by Muawiyah Sufyan and Shias by the imam series where ali was the first imam, and then hasan, hussain, ali-zayn and so on.
Ha. The difference was explained by my 9th grade redneck world history teacher with a droopy ‘stache- “The difference is that Shiites take no shit. Shiite, shit, see its simple.” Ha. Same teacher who thought world history means 31 out of 33 chapters on Europe.
i posted on this here.
but Muslims defer generally to the groups thought to be direct descendants of the prophet.
in which case, they should defer to everyone who is descended from eurasians in the last 1,000 years since everyone probably can trace a lineage back to the prophet 🙂
Oh, I’m quite certain that Iranians themselves aren’t in agreement with Ahmadinejad and Khamene’i… but the question to ask is who will have control of the nuclear codes, or who has the wherewithal to launch rockets in Israel.
Wolfowitz is knowledgeable, I don’t doubt it. Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld are both very smart people too. Much knowledge, but also much hubris.
But our lawmakers, as well as our “intelligence” agencies, are a sorry lot. They haven’t much knowledge to go along with their hubris.
Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld are both very smart people too
of course, we all know that condy is a “student of history.” we know cuz she told us.
This is a very interesting thought though.
When I saw the movie Hotel Rwanda, I couldnt for the sake of my life tell the difference between Hutus and Tutsis. But apparently to them it was obvious. Same thing with lots of other ethnic conflicts.
So, if aliens from Mars were looking down on us, they wouldnt be able to tell white from black from brown?
Kobayashi…that is not really what I was alluding to ..it was the fact that “educating” the masses is a first step in solving this dilemma….. did you at-least get a chance to finish the interview or did you get stuck once the decendent thing got hold of you ??
Incidentally, getting back to Siddhartha’s post, if someone wants to know more about Shias/Sunnis, Catholics/Protestents, Bulghars/Buggers etc, they can do no better than to read the cartoon history series by Larry Gonick. [Quite leftist, but not a bad place for a quick start.]
I did read it, wandegya_boy. But these arguments about Christian vs Muslim don’t really interest me much. It’s like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus arguing about who’s more real.
The Aga Khan is talking about education in terms of “each side needs to know what the other believes.” Yes, that’s good, in a sort of obvious way. But once we know the differences, then what? What about the content of those beliefs? What about the exclusive nature, in theory or in practice, of many major religions?
I’d say much of the conflict is not from “misunderstandings” but from human willingness to kill and die for religion. While it might be politically expedient to describe Christianity or Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism as “religions of peace” the reality is very different from that.
So, the real educational service, in my opinion, would be for leaders to start weaning people from their religions, until only the cool cultural elements remain, and all the strident “belief” is whittled away.
But do I think that’ll ever happen? No.
Quizman and Mr.K :
It’s not clear if Wolfowitz was knowledgable about the region before he invaded. For example he did not know about the “holy” cities of iraq. Before the war he said :
Those were the days before Najaf, Karbala etc were familiar place-names.
The Protestants of Northern Ireland are Presbyterians, not Anglicans/Episcopalians.
I hope this thread doesn’t vanish because I’d like to draw upon the wisdom of the commenters here.
This summer I was fortunate to sit-in on a special topics course in int’l political economy on the subject Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism. The lecturer was a proponent of a school thought that was entirely new to me and caused many sleepless nights. He referred to his position as the ‘myth of ethnic conflict’ where ethno-politics & conflict originates from the creation of the modern state, post Treaty of Westphalia, in the 18th-19th centuries. The Sri Lanka and Yugoslavia case studies were the most heavily featured in support of this position.
The position is summarized here:
So, my question is to what extent is the Sunni/Shia division not only differences in theological interpretation but also ethnic? Maybe ‘ethnic’ in this context is not the appropriate word but a divergence occurred per chance, became internalized and later institutionalized over time into political/economic relations.
Is their a place for Sunni/Shia factionalism in the ‘myth of ethnic conflict’ model? Is the original split inherently political, as I interpret AMfD’s post?
Re: In defense of ignorance
Nothing wrong with being ignorant. Nancy Pelosi does not need to know the details of the affair of the necklace, battle of the camel, the arbitration agreed to by Ali at the Battle of Siffin, or the bloody finger of Uthman displayed in the mosque in Damascus. They are not the reason death squads raom Iraq, killing people of the opposing sect.
In fact, knowing all this would probably make it harder for a policymaker to make sensible decisions about Americans in Iraq and in America. A theological conference resolving Ali’s claim to the caliphate is not going to stop the sectarian killing.
(Yah, sure, it is worth having some knowledge, but I’m making the case for ignorance here.)
A theological conference resolving Ali’s claim to the caliphate is not going to stop the sectarian killing
Ya Ali Madad!
In fact, knowing all this would probably make it harder for a policymaker to make sensible decisions about Americans in Iraq and in America. A theological conference resolving Ali’s claim to the caliphate is not going to stop the sectarian killing.
If you have studied policy for long enough (and I hope against hope that the pols have), then I highly doubt that knowing the differences would come in the way of making good policy. I think this post should viewed in the larger context in which it is placed, that is, that this government has never had the slightest clue what they were trying to do in Iraq. The WMD debacle, the deBaathification fiasco and the ostensible link between 9/11 and Saddam were not aberrations. It is symptomatic of a series of clueless decisions.