by Reza Aslan
Based on the way in which the events of Karbala were interpreted, there developed in Shi‘ism a distinctly Islamic theology of atonement through sacrifice, something alien to orthodox, or Sunni, Islam. “A tear shed for Husayn washes away a hundred sins,” the Shi‘ah say. This concept, called ‘aza, or “mourning,” achieved its full expression in the rites formalized by the Shi‘ite authorities sometime around the mid-eighth century, and which to this day form the central rituals of the faith.
Every year, during the first ten days of the month of Muharram and culminating on the tenth day, or Ashura, the Shi‘ah commemorate Husayn’s martyrdom through lamentation assemblies, where stories of the martyrs are read by religious specialists called zakirs, and mourning processions, in which sacred objects belonging to Muhammad’s family are carried through the neighborhoods. But perhaps the most famous rites of the Muharram ceremonies are the Shi‘ite passion plays (ta‘ziyeh), which dramatize in detail the events of Karbala, and the funereal processions (matam), in which participants either beat their breasts in a rhythmic, almost mantric act of contrition, or flog their backs with whips made of chains, all the while shouting out the names of Hasan and Husayn, until the streets are stained with their blood.
Despite appearances, the Shi‘ite self-flagellation ceremonies have little in common with similar practices one finds in certain Christian monastic orders. This is not flagellation as a solitary act of pious self-mortification. Nor do these rituals correspond to the self-abnegation practices of some ascetic Hindu sects, for whom pain is a means of achieving a shift in consciousness. As nearly every objective observer of the Muharram ceremonies has documented, matam is meant to be a physically painless activity: an act of communal witnessing, not a means of scourging one’s sins. It is not pain, but the voluntary shedding of blood and tears for Husayn that brings salvation. For this reason, in many large cities, where the Shi‘ite funereal processions are frowned upon by both religious and political authorities, a vigorous campaign has been launched to replace the self-flagellation rituals with safe and supervised donations to mobile blood banks that trail behind the participants.
For the Shi‘ah, the Muharram rituals signify a moral choice; they are a public statement that, in the words of one participant, “if we had been there at Karbala we would have stood with [Husayn] and shed our blood and died with him.” Perhaps equally important, these rituals serve as an act of proselytizing. As another participant explained to David Pinault, “We do matam not just to commemorate Husayn but as a way of saying we are Shi‘ites.”
Most of the Sunni world condemns such acts of ritual devotion as bid‘a, or “religious innovation,” something strenuously opposed by all Sunni schools. But the Sunni are less offended by what the Muharram participants do than by what the rituals suggest: that paradise is awarded, according to the sixteenth-century Quranic scholar al-Kashifi, “to anyone who weeps for Husayn or who laments in company with those who weep for Husayn.” Therein lies the principal difference between the Shi‘ah and the Sunni. The Shi‘ah believe that salvation requires the intercession of Muhammad, his son-in-law Ali, his grandsons Hasan and Husayn, and the rest of the Prophet’s legitimate successors, the Imams, who not only serve as humanity’s intercessors on the Last Days, but who further function as the eternal executors (wali) of the divine Revelation.
The word Imam has multiple connotations. In Sunni Islam, the imam is merely the person who stands at the head of the mosque and leads the congregation in prayer. While the Shi‘ah sometimes employ this definition for their religious leaders as well, they also recognize a “fixed” number of Imams—the number of whom depends on the sect of Shi‘ism—who, as the Prophet’s legitimate successors, bear the responsibility of guarding and preserving Muhammad’s divine message. Unlike the Caliph, who is a political leader designated, at least theoretically, by the consensus of the Muslim community, the Imam represents the spiritual authority of the Prophet Muhammad and is designated by God through the fact of his birth. While the Sunni Caliph can only claim to be Muhammad’s vice-regent on earth, the Shi‘ite Imam, though lacking any real political power, is endowed with the living spirit of the Prophet and, as such, is thought to possess a spiritual authority that sets him above any earthly ruler.
The existence of the Imam is essential, according to the preeminent Shi‘ite theologian, Allamah Tabataba‘i, because human beings need the divine message to be elucidated for them—and not just elucidated, but preserved and renewed. Because human beings do not have the capacity to attain knowledge of God on their own, the Imam becomes a continuous necessity for all societies and in every era. So in addition to the “fixed” number of Imams who succeeded Muhammad’s earthly authority, there must also exist an “ever-present” or “pre-existent” Imam who, as the eternal guardian of the Revelation, functions as “the Proof of God on Earth.” Thus, the first Imam was neither Muhammad nor Ali but Adam. And while the functions of Imam and prophet have occasionally existed in a single individual, the difference between the two positions is primarily one of consciousness. A prophet, claim the Shi‘ah, is someone who has, by the divine will, become conscious of God’s eternal message, which forever envelops creation like a numinous ether we cannot escape, while the Imam is someone who explicates that message for those who possess neither the prophetic consciousness necessary to recognize it nor the power of reason to understand it. Put another way, the prophet transmits the Message of God, while the Imam translates it for human beings.
According to the Shi‘ah, this relationship between prophet and Imam can be observed throughout the history of prophecy. Abraham may have been given the covenant by God, but it was Isaac and Ismail who, as his Imams, fulfilled it; Moses may have revealed the divine law, but it was Aaron who carried it into the Promised Land; Jesus may have preached salvation, but it was Peter who built the Church. In the same way, Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets, may have revealed God’s message to the Arabs, but it was left to Ali, his legitimate successor, to execute it. Thus the Shi‘ite profession of faith:
“There is no god but God, Muhammad is God’s Messenger, and Ali is God’s Executor (wali).”
As the executor of God’s will, the Imam is, like the Prophet, infallible and sinless, for as one Shi‘ite theologian has argued, “sin would destroy the validity of the call.” Consequently, the Shi‘ah developed the view that the Imams were created not from dust, as other humans were, but from eternal light. Furthermore, the Imams are said to preserve a secret esoteric knowledge handed down from Imam to Imam in a mystical transfer of consciousness. This esoteric knowledge includes the keeping of secret books, such as The Book of Fatima, which recounts Gabriel’s revelations to Fatima after Muhammad’s death. The Imams also know the secret name of God and are the only ones who possess the spiritual guidance necessary to reveal the inner truth of the Muslim faith.
It is this spiritual guidance that gives the Imams sole authority to interpret the Quran. The Shi‘ah believe the Quran contains within its pages two different messages meant for two different audiences. The Quran’s explicit message (zahir) is obvious and accessible to all Muslims through the discipline of tafsir (traditional Quranic exegesis), referred to in the previous chapter. But only the Imam can correctly employ ta’wil (the hidden, secret meaning of the Quran) to uncover the Quran’s implicit message (batin). And while the distinction between tafsir and ta’wil exists in Sunni Islam as well, the Shi‘ah believe that because the Revelation emanates from sources beyond human comprehension, the whole of the Quran consists of symbols and allusions that only the Imam has the spiritual perfection to elucidate. In the words of the eighth Imam, Ali ar-Rida, only the person who can correspond the Quran’s implicit verses to its explicit ones can claim “guidance to the right path.”
The primacy of ta’wil in Shi‘ism had great advantages for the early Shi‘ah, who were eager to link themselves with Muhammad by uncovering scriptural references that would justify their distinctive beliefs and practices. Of course, thi
s is a common tactic used by all sectarian movements that wish to connect themselves to their parent religion. The early Christians, for example, who were no more than Jews who believed that the Messiah had come, scoured the Hebrew Scriptures for allusions to Jesus so as to link their sect with Judaism and fit their Messiah into the numerous and often conflicting messianic prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures. In the same way, the Shi‘ah sifted through the Quran and found it replete with verses that, when properly interpreted through ta’wil, implicitly expressed the eternal truth of the Imamate. Consider the following extract from the Quran, known as “the Verse of Light”:
God is the light of the Heavens and the Earth.
His light is like a niche in the wall in which there is a lamp,
The lamp is within a glass, and the glass is a glimmering star,
Lit with the oil of an olive tree—
A tree neither of the East nor of the West—
Whose oil glows though fire touches it not:
Light upon Light!
God guides to His Light whomever He will.
God gives examples to humanity,
And God has knowledge of everything. (24:35)
According to the sixth Imam, Ja‘far as-Sadiq, these exquisitely wrought lines conceal a message from God to the Shi‘ah. God’s light, Ja‘far claimed, is actually Muhammad; its containment in the glass, a reference to the prophetic knowledge that he passed on to Imam Ali, who “is neither a Jew [of the East] nor a Christian [of the West].” And just as the sacred oil glows without being touched by fire, so divine knowledge issues from the mouth of the Imam, “even if Muhammad had not spoken it.”
“Light upon Light!” exclaims the Quran.
“Imam to Imam!” replied Ja‘far.
The first of the “fixed” Imams to succeed Muhammad was obviously Ali, followed by his sons Hasan and Husayn, respectively. The fourth Imam was the only son of Husayn to have survived Karbala, Ali (also known as Zayn al-Abadin), who was eventually allowed to return to Medina after spending some years in captivity in Damascus. Ali Zayn al-Abadin was succeeded in 712 C.E. by his son Muhammad al-Baqir (who was four years old at the time of Karbala), though a small faction within the Shi‘ah rejected al-Baqir as the fifth Imam and chose instead to follow another of al-Abadin’s sons, Zayd ash-Shahid. This faction officially broke off from the main body of the Shi‘ah and became known as the Zaydis.
The majority of the Shi‘ah accepted the succession of al-Baqir, who then passed the Imamate to his son Ja‘far as-Sadiq. As the sixth and most influential Imam, Ja‘far formalized the Karbala rituals and established the principles of Shi‘ism’s main school of law. The Jafari school, as it is known, differentiates itself from Sunni schools of law, first by recognizing a different set of hadith, which include stories of the Imams as well as of Muhammad, and second by vigorously employing ijtihad, or independent juristic reasoning, as one of the primary sources of Shi‘ite jurisprudence.
For years the Shi‘ah were divided among themselves over the permissibility of the mujtahid (literally, one who employs ijtihad) to rely only on rational conjecture to issue authoritative legal decisions, or fatwas. The Akhbari school, for example, rejected the use of ijtihad altogether, requiring its Ulama to base their legal decisions solely on the traditions of the Prophet and the Imams. But it was the Akhbaris’ rivals, the Usuli school, whose enthusiastic support for the use of ijtihad in the formation of Islamic jurisprudence made it the dominant school in Shi‘ism. To this day, Shi‘ite law maintains the conviction that “whatever is ordered by reason, is also ordered by religion,” to quote the contemporary Shi‘ite legal scholar Hossein Modarressi.
There are now so many mujtahids in the Shi‘ite world that only those who have attained the very highest level of scholarship and who can boast the greatest number of disciples are still allowed to practice ijtihad. At the top of this order of mujtahids are the ayatollahs (the title means “the sign of God”), whose decisions are binding on their disciples. Only a handful of authoritative ayatollahs exist today—primarily in Iran and Iraq—but their religious and political authority over the Shi‘ah is formidable. As we shall see, it was precisely this authority that allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to impose his will upon the social, political, and economic forces that led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
Ja‘far died in 757, allegedly from poisoning, though this claim has been made for every Imam who was not openly murdered by Sunni authorities. Before dying, Ja‘far designated his eldest son Ismail as the seventh Imam. But Ismail died before his father, and was therefore replaced by Ja‘far’s second son, Musa al-Kazim. While the majority of the Shi‘ah accepted Musa as the divinely guided leader of the community, there were those who were disturbed by this apparent “switching” of designations. Is not the Imam a divinely appointed position, they asked? How could Ja‘far, the infallible Imam, have chosen the wrong successor? Ultimately, this faction was compelled by the force of their theology to argue that Ismail had not died, but gone into hiding, or “occultation,” in a spiritual realm from which he would return at the end of time, not as Imam Ismail, but as the messianic restorer known in Islam as the Mahdi.
The followers of Ismail—called the Ismailis, or “Seveners,” because they accept the existence of only seven Imams before the Mahdi—were not the first to promulgate the notion of a “Muslim messiah.” The term Mahdi originally meant “one who guides divinely” and was regularly employed from the beginning of the Islamic era as an honorific title; Muhammad was called “Mahdi,” as were Ali and his two sons, Hasan and Husayn. After the massacre at Karbala, both Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr and Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah were proclaimed the Mahdi during their unsuccessful revolts against the Umayyad Caliphate. However, the Ismailis were the first Islamic sect for whom belief in the Mahdi became the central tenet of faith. Even so, it was not until the majority Shi‘ah—known as the “Twelvers” because they follow Musa’s line down to the twelfth and final Imam—also adopted the doctrine of the Mahdi that a uniquely Islamic eschatology was developed centered on the “Hidden Imam” who had left this world for a transcendent realm from which he would return on the Day of Judgment to restore justice on earth.
Because there is no mention of the Mahdi in the Quran, Muslims looked to the hadith for insight into the second coming of the “Hidden Imam.” As one would expect, these traditions differed greatly depending on geographical location and political affiliation. For instance, in Syria, where Umayyad loyalty dominated both religious and civil concerns, the hadith claimed that the Mahdi would be a member of the Quraysh, while in Kufa, the seat of Shi‘ite aspirations, the hadith insisted that the Mahdi would be a direct descendant of Muhammad through his son-in-law, Ali; his first duty upon returning to earth would naturally be to avenge the massacre at Karbala. Some traditions predicted that the coming of the Mahdi will be portended by civil wars and false prophets, earthquakes and the abolition of Islamic law. According to the fourteenth-century historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun, the Mahdi will either directly precede Jesus, or both messiahs will descend to earth together and join forces to kill the Antichrist.
As the doctrine of the Mahdi began to dominate Shi‘ism, Sunni religious scholars gradually distanced themselves from further speculation on the topic. Sunni schools of law openly criticized belief in the Mahdi in an attempt to discourage what was fast becoming a politically disruptive theology. The fears of the Sunni establishment were well warranted. The Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad Dynasty partly by appealing to the messianic expectations of the Shi‘ah. Indeed, the first Abbasid ruler gave himself the messianic title as-Saffah (“the Generous”). He was addressed as “The Mahdi of the Hashimis.” The second Abbasid Caliph gave himself the title al-Mansur (another messianic term for the Mahdi found primarily in Yemen), and the third simply called himself “the Mahdi,” explicitly identifying his rule with that of the promised restorer.
After Imam Musa came Imam Rida, the eighth Imam, whose tenure coincided with the Calip
hate of the famed Abbasid leader Harun al-Rashid. Imam Rida died in 817 C.E. and was succeeded by his son Muhammad Taqi (sometimes called Imam Jawad). By this point, the animosity between the Abbasid Caliphs (themselves Shi‘ah) and the Shi‘ite Imams had become so great, owing to the Abbasids’ fear that the Imams could become political rivals, that the tenth and eleventh Imams—Imam Hadi and Imam Askari, respectively—spent nearly their entire Imamates locked away in Abbasid prisons. When the twelfth and final Imam, Muhammad ibn Hasan, was born in Samara in 868 C.E., the Shi‘ah decided it would be better to spirit him away and hide him from public view. Thus, the twelfth Imam, called Imam Mahdi, went into occultation (ghayba), from which the Twelver Shi‘ah expect his return at the end of time to usher in an era of peace and justice on earth.
With the Imam no longer present on earth, the Shi‘ah settled into a long period of political quietism and “cautionary dissimulation” called taqiyyah. Because the exercise of direct political power necessarily entailed the usurpation of the Mahdi’s divine authority, all governments were considered illegitimate pending his return. As a result, the role of the Shi‘ite Ulama was reduced to little more than representatives of the Mahdi, what the Iranian scholar Abdulaziz Sachedina has termed “living isnads”: human chains of transmission leading back to the “Hidden Imam.”
This is not to say that Shi‘ite governments did not arise. In the year 1501, a sixteen-year-old amir named Ismail conquered Iran and installed himself as the first Shah, or King, of the Safavid Empire. Ismail proclaimed Twelver Shi‘ism to be the official state religion of Iran and initiated a brutal jihad against Sunni Islam both within his land and in the neighboring Ottoman Empire. Ismail’s jihad against the Sunnis ended a few years later at the hands of the Ottoman Sultan Salim I, and while that defeat may have halted the Shah’s excursion into Ottoman territory, Iran itself was changed forever.
