Where we may safely assume that Moses did not descend from Mount Horeb clutching a stack of neatly etched tablets confirming God's wishes, we know that transmission of the Qur'an, a word that translates literally as 'recitation', was strictly an oral tradition for decades. Islamic fundamentalists may reject any suggestion that the material of the Qur'an is anything other than original and unedited, but research carried out reveals that manuscripts do not actually exist from the seventh century, and no qur'anic manuscript has materialised from anywhere in the Islamic realms that can be reliably dated to the period within a century of the Prophet's birth.

And not rejecting the Qur'an as such, early Shi'a theologians introduced the notion of the Imamate. At the foundation of this concept is the occultation of the Twelfth Imam. Shi'ite adherents are expected to practice Intizar, or waiting, for his promised reappearance. In its most fundamental construct, the doctrine of the Occultation or Ghayba holds that Muhammad ibn Hasan, the Twelfth Imam, never died. Rather he has been concealed by God and may not be seen by mortal men. In a miraculous and mysterious way his life has been extended until that day when he will make himself evident once again, through the will of God.

But where in the Christian eschatological tradition, the role of violence is unclear, the Shi'a theology is unmistakably clear that the rise of the Mahdi will be accompanied by a Jihad, or Holy War, in which the forces of evil on earth (among Shi’ites today the USA is known as the big, and Israel the small, Satan) and will be defeated and the world will enter an age of peace and happiness. (Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shi’i Islam: The History and Documents of Twelver Shi’ism, Yale Uniyersity Press, 1985, p.165.)

Obviously, eschatology performs a salient role in Twelver Shi'ism. Nonetheless, under what conditions will the Twelfth Imam reappear In the customs associated with the return of the Imam Mahdi, there are a number of "signs" that Shi'ites point to that they believe foretell his return. Many of these are directly connected to worldly conditions. Probably the most widely known of these signs and one that can be linked to both Sunni and Shi'a literature asserts that the Mahdi will "fill the earth with justice after it has been filled with injustice and tvranny." (Momen,1985, p. 166. For Sunni sources he refers to Ibn Maja, Sunan, Bab Khuruj al-Mahdi, p. 1366, No. 4082; Abu Dawud, Sunan, Kitab al-Mahdi, Vol. 2, p. 422.)

See case study 1:

It is generally accepted that an ‘apocalyptic belief’ also called millenarianism, functiones as a mitigating factor in the capacity of the peoples (1) to cope with the  consequences of an impingement upon their traditional way of life by projecting their problems onto a broader screen that helped them to clarify and objectify their social issues; (2) reduce the resultant dislocation and alienation; and (3) to  purge and cleanse themselves in an effective act of mass catharsis.

The Qur'an makes plain that Jews and Christians have disobeyed the commandments of a universal God. Jews are singled out for corrupting the scriptures and Christians for worshipping Jesus as the Son of God contrary to divine commandments. All who have gone astray must therefore be brought back to the true religion. For the unrepentant infidel there is only one justifiable consequence, no less severe than that ordained by Yahweh. 'Those that make war against Allah and his apostle (Muhammad) and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land.' (Qur'an, al-Ma'idah 5:31.)

The second book, or Sura, of the Qur'an, entitled AI-Baqarah (The Cow), instructs Muslims ambiguously in this way. It does not echo the recurrent message in the Bible that pre-emptive strikes are the favoured option, but still suggests that any and all who do not respond to the call of Islam may be regarded as aggressors against Allah and open to violent retaliation. Slaughtering idolators is all right! 'Fight for the sake of God those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. God does not love aggressors. Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is more grievous than bloodshed. But do not fight them within the precincts of the Holy Mosque unless they attack you there; if they attack you put them to the sword. Thus shall unbelievers be rewarded; “but if they mend their ways, know that God is forgiving and merciful. Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God's religion reigns supreme. But if they desist, fight none except the evil doers.” (Qur'an, al-Baqarah 2:191ff.)

This is why al-Qaeda in their latest tape a week ago, offered all Americans to join Islam. Also in his letter to President Bush, Ahmadinejad invited him to accept Islam, and then echoed the Prophet of Islam last week, in delivering a threat to Bush through Mike Wallace: “We are all free to choose. But please give him this message, sir: Those who refuse to accept an invitation will not have a good ending or fate.”

Another example the same week was where Fox News reporter Steve Centanni and photographer Olaf Wiig at the hands of Gaza ’s Holy Jihad Brigade where forced to converse to Islam.

Although generally speaking Islamic law forbids forced conversion, it is true that Muhammad instructed his followers to call people to Islam before waging war against them – the warfare would follow from their refusal to accept Islam or to enter the Islamic social order as inferiors, required to pay a special tax:

Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war…When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them….If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya [the tax on non-Muslims specified in Qur’an 9:29]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim 4294)

Muhammad reinforced these instructions on many occasions during his prophetic career. Late in his career, he wrote to Heraclius, the Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople:

Now then, I invite you to Islam (i.e., surrender to Allah), embrace Islam and you will be safe; embrace Islam and Allah will bestow on you a double reward. But if you reject this invitation of Islam, you shall be responsible for misguiding the peasants (i.e., your nation). (Bukhari, 4.52.191).

Heraclius did not accept Islam, and soon the Byzantines would know well that the warriors of jihad indeed granted no safety to those who rejected their “invitation.”

Muhammad did not get a satisfactory answer either from Chosroes, ruler of the Persians. After reading the letter of the Prophet of Islam, Chosroes contemptuously tore it to pieces. When news of this reached Muhammad, he called upon Allah to tear the Persian emperor and his followers to pieces (Bukhari, 5.59.708). He told the Muslims that they would conquer both empires: “When Khosrau [Chosroes] perishes, there will be no (more) Khosrau after him, and when Caesar perishes, there will be no more Caesar after him. By Him in Whose hands Muhammad’s life is, you will spend the treasures of both of them in Allah’s Cause” (Bukhari 4.53.349).

Muhammad did not limit his veiled threat only to rulers. Another hadith records that on one occasion he emerged from a mosque and told his men, “Let us go to the Jews.” Upon arriving at a nearby Arabian Jewish community, Muhammad told them: “If you embrace Islam, you will be safe. You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle, and I want to expel you from this land. So, if anyone amongst you owns some property, he is permitted to sell it, otherwise you should know that the Earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle” (Bukhari, 4.53.392). In other words, if you accept Islam, you may keep your land and property, but if not, Muhammad and the Muslims would confiscate it.

A similar theme is taken up in the chapter entitled The Prophets, namely that mercy is somewhat dependent on religious persuasion. “If only the unbelievers knew the day when they shall strive in vain to shield their faces and backs from the fire of Hell; the day when none shall help them! Indeed it will overtake them unawares and stupefy them ... Have they other gods to defend them? Their idols shall be powerless over their own salvation, nor shall they be protected from our scourge.” (Qur'an, al-Anbiya' 21:40ff.)

Thus orders for conversion were decreed under all the early Islamic dynasties—Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks. Additional extensive examples of forced conversion were recorded under both Seljuk and Ottoman Turkish rule (the latter until its collapse in the 20th century), the Shi’ite Safavid and Qajar dynasties of Persia/Iran, and during the jihad ravages on the Indian subcontinent, beginning with the early 11th century campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni, and recurring under the Delhi Sultanate, and Moghul dynasty  until the collapse of Muslim suzerainty in the 18th century following the British conquest of India.” Since these Muslim rulers and armies all revered Muhammad as an “excellent example of conduct” (Qur’an 33:21).

Islamic scholars tend to agree that the qur'anic attitude to conflict can be traced through a number of stages indicating that God delivered instructions to Muhammad responding to the changing situations confronting him. The first of these instructions probably reflects the period when the followers of Muhammad were living in the once-hostile surroundings of Mecca. It is thoroughly muted in tone and implies that any violence towards infidels or breakaway sects remains a matter for the future. 'We will surely punish the schismatics, who have broken up the scriptures into separate parts, believing in some and denying others. By the Lord we will question them all about their doings. Proclaim, then, what you are bidden and let the idolators be. We will ourselves sustain you against those that mock you and serve other deities besides God. They shall learn.' (Qur'an, al-Hijr 15:91-7.)

As Muslim power increased, the tone was destined to turn more aggressive, and eventually it becomes all-encompassing. 'Proclaim a woeful punishment to the unbelievers, except to those idolators who have honoured their treaties with you in every detail and aided none against you. With these keep faith, until their treaties have run their term. When the sacred months are over slay the idolators wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush everywhere for them.' (Qur'an, al-Tawbah 9:4.) This verse, is claimed by fundamentalist Muslims to abrogate not less than 124 other qur'anic verses of a similar nature.

Although this research document certainly cannot address each one of them, see our case study for how, the above is played out in on the ground reality today:

One could of course argue that divine opinion on the subject of violence emerges for example also in the S.Asian Bhagavadgita. But an exhortation to fight is interposed not so much as a divine command, rather a brief lecture delivered for the benefit of those questioning the morality of aggression. For example in an address to Arjuna, the hero of the story, by Krishna, the mortal incarnation of the creator god Vishnu in his guise as a charioteer. Faced with the prospect of killing his fellow man, Arjuna throws away his weapons, but Krishna urges him to battle, telling him that it is unmanly not to fight here and now. It is only when Arjuna continues to delay that Krishna responds as a guru who would instruct his disciple. Wisdom, he tells Arjuna, consists in realisation that the atman, the soul of man, the divine core of his personality, is permanent, while the body is doomed to die and there is therefore no reason to grieve for the living or the dead. “One man believes he is the slayer, another believes he is the slain. Both are ignorant; there is neither slayer nor slain. You were never born; you will never die. You have never changed, you can never change. Unborn, eternal, immutable, immemorial, you do not die when the body dies. Realising that which is indestructible, eternal, unborn and unchanging, how can you slay or cause another to slay?” (As quoted in M. Jurgensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, 2000), p.149.)

During the final years of the Prophet's life and for much of the caliphate of 'Abu Bakr, the so-called wars of apostasy were fought with tribes that refused to abandon either Christianity or any other forms of religious belief that did not conform to the developing Islamic code. Jealousies also arose between the Medinan clans, who collectively earned the title of ansar or 'helpers', and whom the Meccan migrants referred to as the muhajiroun. As if this was not enough, 'Abu Bakr was obliged to deal with the rantings of false prophets and their followers. Most notably, these clerics spouting their unorthodox brands of Islam included one Musaylima from the tribe of Hanifa in central Arabia, who emerged briefly into the limelight in 632, and 'al-Aswad, who was energetically promoting his personal claims of divine revelation in the Yemen in the same year. The collective ideologies of the unorthodox factions were promptly condemned by the mainstream and became known as firaq. The term “heresy”, incidentally, has no comparable significance in Islam.

Deeper schism, would become fully apparent from the time of the 'Abassid dynasty, although in reality the germ of conflict had been present from the outset and was probably evident in a minor sense even during the lifetime of Muhammad. In the reign of 'Abu Bakr the supporters of 'Ali ibn Abi Talib were starting to air occasional differences in their approach to spiritual and moral guidance, and it is from these historical divisions that the en trenched differences between factions developed, accounting for much of the slaying of Muslims by fellow Muslims in the world today. A fundamental problem for the successors of Muhammad lay in his ambivalence about who should succeed him, and in this respect early Islamic experience differed from that depicted in the scriptures of early Christianity.

For example on Muhammad's death, a rivalry came to the fore between 'Abu Bakr, his most trusted lieutenant, and 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, the man to whom Muhammad's only surviving daughter, Fatima, was married. The majority of activists among the Prophet's followers, the original Muslim electorate, considered that he had indicated 'Abu Bakr as the rightful heir and so in 632 they voted overwhelmingly for him as their first Caliph. Others were unhappy with this decision, on the grounds that Muhammad had allegedly presented 'Ali to the close circle accompanying him on his final journey to Medina with the advice, 'Everyone whose patron I am, also has 'Ali as their patron.' A disadvantage for 'Ali in his campaign to assume the leadership was that the position of son-in law in a society used to polygamy carried little weight.

The effects of electing 'Abu Bakr over 'Ali were felt in other ways that would contribute to the emergence of squabbling divisions within Islam. 'Abu Bakr's caliphate guaranteed the Quraish tribe a privileged position but at the same time it provided him with the absolute authority to disinherit the family of the Prophet, the ahl albayt, from its former special status. This would have economic repercussions. Under Arab convention Muhammad's kin included the descendants of his great-grandfather, Hashim, and at least some of the dependants of Hashim's brother, al-Muttalib. It was mutually agreed during Muhammad's lifetime that neither he nor members of his family should be required physically to handle charitable donations, or zakat, because they were deemed to be unclean. Under qur'iinic decree the family of the Prophet became legally entitled to receive material handouts, including one-fifth of all collected war booty, known as khums, and other unearned property or fay'. Once these had been denied by 'Abu Bakr, the position of the ahl al-bayt became precarious. (Encyclopedia of Islam, 10 vols, Leiden, 1997, vol. 1, p. 257.)

At the same time a distinct mood of resentment was growing among the Arab public against dynastic institutions. For centuries past the tribal clans had lived with the imposition of hereditary succession and rule by divine right. The legitimacy of this arrangement may have been challenged infrequently, but few people were under illusions that dynastic kingship did other than encourage despotism. Many of the rank and file had become disenchanted with the very principle of monarchy, and they resented the old-style aristocracy, which they felt had enjoyed too much of a cosy relationship with the monarchy. Hence they reached the conclusion that it might be better to elect heads of the Muslim state on the basis of personal qualities of leadership and their ability to engender loyalty among subjects. 'Abu Bakr had already earned a degree of popularity, and, although he came from the Quraish tribe, he was not a member of its elite, which made him an ideal choice. After his short-lived reign, the second caliphate went to 'Umar, chosen not least because he came from a similar social background, but in spite of this 'Umar's lot was to be slain by a grudge-ridden Persian slave. The election of the third Caliph, 'Uthman, amounted in some ways to a retrograde step, since he was firmly positioned as a member of the aristocracy. 'Uthman promptly became a target of detractors who criticized him for introducing innovations that had no place in the Qur’an. During the rule of these first three elected Caliphs, all of whom had been voted into power by the Meccans, 'Ali and his supporters in Medina were obliged to await their chance. Already deep cracks were showing in the unity of the Muslim community, and during the first half of 'Uthman's caliphate a popular movement supporting the election of 'Ali had also begun to take shape in Kufa. A comparatively modern city, built out of empty desert on the banks of the middle branch of the Euphrates on the eastern margin of the Arabian steppe, Kufa would become synonymous with early Muslim radicalism, and would act as a stronghold of the breakaway Shi'a element. The Kufan pro-'Alid faction began to agitate for the removal of 'Uthman, and there were strident calls to restore the rights of the family of the Prophet. Matters came to a head when one of the voices of the radicals, Malik bin al-Harith al-Ashtar, organised a local armed revolt that resulted in the overthrow of 'Uthman's city governor, Said bin al-As. (Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 8, p. 853.)

His replacement was a man more sympathetic to the 'Alid cause, and, encouraged by this shift in administrative politics, the Kufan rebels then joined up with units from Egypt and Basra before converging on Medina to demand a mixture of better pay, social and religious reforms, and the resignation of 'Uthman. When they did not receive the desired response, the palace of the caliphate was placed under siege by the Egyptian force and 'Uthman was assassinated. Significantly, he was slain by the hand of a fellow Muslim.

Uthman's violent removal provided the opportunity for the Medinan 'Alids, fed up with more than twenty years of Meccan domination, to launch 'Ali into office as their fourth Caliph. However, his accession was viewed as counter-caliphate in that, having received acclaim to be the legatee of the Prophet, his supporters promptly placed the legitimacy of the three previous Caliphs in question. An approximate parallel can be drawn with the situation that prevailed in Christendom during the Avignon papacy, each side insisting that its man possessed entitlement to head the relevant movement. 'Ali's camp lost no time in broadcasting accusations amounting to a catalogue of misdemeanours that allegedly fouled the record of the previous administrations, including nepotism, favouritism, government failures and unwarranted religious innovation. It was, they clamoured, time for change. Yet 'Ali's election to the caliphate, when it came, did not earn a consensus of popular support. On the contrary, it was destined to trigger the first full-scale Islamic civil war.

Ali paid lip service to diplomacy by restricting his criticism of previous caliphates to 'Uthman's while praising the policies of 'Abu Bakr and 'Umar. But his unbending view was that the family of the Prophet should lead the community so long as any of its members survived who could competently recite the Qur'an, had studied the Sunna - the correct code of behaviour laid down by Muhammad and adhered to the true faith. This determination had the effect of colouring the already fraught political situation with a religious dimension, and before long 'Ali's opponents were talking of din 'Ali, the 'religion of 'Ali', in less than reverential tones. (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 381; vol. 2, p. 293.)

Ali was also hesitant to condemn the rebels who had laid siege to 'Uthman's headquarters, insisting that 'Uthman had brought his execution upon himself. Members of the Umayyad tribe and their supporters, already seething over the assassination, lost little time in branding 'Ali complicit in 'Uthman's slaying, and hence the stage was set for internecine violence. The time-honoured culture of intertribal bickering that Muhammad had sought to bring under control, a key requirement for Islamic expansion, had now returned with a vengeance.

Within a short time of 'Ali's election two influential former companions of Muhammad, Talha bin 'Ubaidallah and al Zubayr, broke ranks in open revolt and went over to the Meccans, agreeing to support the widow of Muhammad, A'isha, who had never been a strong admirer of 'Ali. 'Uthman's killers, they clamoured, must pay the price for their crime, and the rumour grew ever louder that 'Ali had blood on his own hands. The Meccan defectors gathered a substantial body of insurgents and, for his part, 'Ali raised a force in Medina. The two sides advanced to meet near Basra in a clash that became dubbed the Battle of the Camel because A'isha chose to watch the course of events from a palanquin perched on a camel's back.? 'Ali managed to come away victorious, with the added satisfaction that both Talha bin 'Ubaidallah and al Zubayr had been killed. 'Alid success, however, was short-lived because it was then the turn of Mu'awiya bin 'Abu Sufian, the Umayyad military governor of Syria, to cry vengeance for the death of his compatriot 'Uthman. In the spring of 657 Mu'awiya confronted 'Ali at a place known as Siffin near the great bend of the Euphrates in Iraq. It resulted in a prolonged military stand-off, with neither side able to claim decisive victory, and even when the matter went to arbitration no agreement was reached. The decision of those elected to arbitrate went against 'Ali, but he protested that it had not been carried out in accordance with qur'anic law and refused to submit. It proved a negative reaction that immediately lost him much of his popular support and, realising on which side their bread was buttered, the Syrians shrewdly handed their allegiance to Mu'awiya as the legitimate Caliph. The stalemate continued for several months until, at Adhruh in Transjordan, large numbers of the faithful gathered to witness a further abortive attempt to arbitrate for a new caliph. But a similar stand-off resulted, with 'Ali relying on the qur'anic instruction, 'If two parties of believers take up arms one against the other, make peace between them. If either of them un j ustl y attacks the other, fight against the aggressors till they submit to the judgement of Allah. In the view of 'Ali the aggressor was indisputably Mu'awiya, so any further decision about who should officially succeed 'Uthman had to be postponed indefinitely.

Some of the 'Alids found sufficient disagreement with the arbitration process that in 657 they migrated to the city of Nahrawan and within two years had become known as the Kharijis, from the word kharaja, meaning 'to rebel' or 'to go out'. In more recent times they have taken the name Wahhabi. The embryo of the Islamic state, this became partitioned for a while, with 'Ali exercising limited control from the city of Kufa, the Kharijis going their separate way in Nahrawan, and Mu'awiya using his strengthened position to administer large parts of the Muslim territory, including Egypt, which was now an Islamic province. 'Ali continued to lose ground and eventually controlled little more than central and southern Iraq among the occupied territories. A disaffected supporter from among the Kharijis assassinated him in the Kufa mosque in 661.

In the immediate aftermath, 'Ali's backers having demanded that the caliphate must go to another member of the shia't 'Ali, the legacy passed to ai-Hasan, 'Ali's eldest son. He, however, seems to have anticipated shrewdly that the odds of survival for any length of time were stacked against him and, shortly afterwards, he abdicated in favour of Mu'awiya. This critical decision not only launched a century of Umayyad rule, but also brought to an end the 'golden age' in which the Islamic patriarchs were elected by the people for the people. The Umayyads reverted to precisely the hereditary form of dynastic government that the early followers of Muhammad had so strongly resented. Mu'awiya's accession may have resulted in some two decades of comparative peace and prosperity yet in the longer term, for the next hundred years, the Umayyad dynasty did little to dissipate old-style factional loyalties.

As part of his deal for resigning the caliphate al- Hasan had negotiated a treaty that supposedly granted full amnesty and safety for the shia't 'Ali while depriving Mu'awiya of the right to appoint his own successor. Mu'awiya tore up the treaty. Notwithstanding his departure from the caliphate, Al-Hasan's luck was also destined to run out because he died prematurely in 669 or 671, allegedly poisoned by one of his concubines acting on behalf of Mu'awiya.

The next contender for the caliphate urged on by the Shi'a followers was 'Ali's younger son al-Husayn (also spelt Hussein or Husain), but he, like his older brother, fought shy of assuming office while Mu'awiya was alive. His decision proved wise. In 671 he witnessed a bloody reprisal by Mu'awiya's forces against the Shi'a when they rioted in Kufa, resulting in several of the Shi'a leaders being executed as an exemplary punishment aimed at curbing future insurrections against Umayyad rule. To add a sombre religious impetus, Mu'awiya personally instructed that 'Ali should be cursed from the pulpit during Friday prayers. (Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 7, p.263.)

At the same time the Umayyad authorities, with an eye to strengthening their position as the only credible authority in Islam, were urging contemporary Arab historians to dispense even with the traditional view that 'Ali had founded the Shi'a movement. Instead propagandists were encouraged to spread a story that its founder was a disreputable Yemenite Jew named 'Abd Allah bin Saba', who had not only stirred up the anti-'Uthman revolt but also invented a spurious doctrine that 'Ali was the rightful heir to leadership of Islam. By way of a counterblast a rumour went around, possessing clear echoes of the Christian Passion story, that 'Ali had not actually died but ascended to a paradise as an incarnate deity.

Mu'awiya died in 680 and matters came, once again, to a point of bloody crisis. Predictably, his followers ignored the treaty made with al-Hasan and in the spring of that year Mu'awiya's son, Yazid I, was elected on a wave of popular support. As the sixth Caliph since the death of Muhammad, Yazid proved to be a man with a mission, determined to stamp the authority of the Syrian-based Umayyads even more firmly on Arabia. On taking office he instructed his Medinan governor, 'Ubayd Allah, that al-Husayn must now acknowledge him formally as Caliph, to which Al-Husayn responded by packing his bags and fleeing to a stronghold in Mecca. Having declined to offer allegiance to Yazid I he was now fearful for his life and, as it turned out, was right to be so. On hearing of Yazid's demand for a show of subservient allegiance, many of the Shi'a supporters in Medina and Kufa bridled, encouraging al-Husayn to mount a revolt. But treachery was a foot and the situation was to come to a bloody climax that eventually took on legendary proportions, and for which the Shi'is have never forgiven their Sunni brethren.

At the outset the prospects looked good for al-Husayn. The Kufan tribal leaders made contact with him in Mecca and formally pledged their loyalty. Having thus tested the water, and in the confidence that he would soon be able to head a successful revolt against the Umayyads, al-Husayn assembled a small rebel force and advanced on Kufa. Unbeknown to him, however, the city governor persuaded the majority of local supporters in the meantime to switch sides, and on 10 October 680, at Karbala , Al-Husayn and his party found themselves confronted by a much larger hostile force under the command of 'Ubayd Allah. Al-Husayn's loyal troops, along with more than twenty of the Prophet's ahl al-bayt, were surrounded and, in spite of fanatical resistance, massacred. Finally, al-Husayn, who had observed from a distance, was captured and executed. The date of his death is recorded variously as 680 or 681. (Ibid., vol. 3, p. 607ff.)

Out of this single act of treachery, this blatant volte-face by tribes and individuals who had invited al-Husayn to Kufa, a movement grew calling for revenge and self-sacrifice. Al-Husayn became recognised as the third of the great imams, and thus was fashioned the ancestor of today's suicide bomber. Sometime between 684 and 685 a pilgrim army of some 4,000 volunteers assembled in Kufa before heading for Karbala, where ostensibly they were to lament and make vows of attrition on the tomb of al-Husayn. The Umayyad army, now essentially orthodox in its adherence to Sunna, awaited them, and most of the 4,000 were slaughtered. The outcome of this attempted revolt was disastrous for the Shi'a, but it also probably made intractable some of the ideological splits that were already deepening within Islam.

At this juncture none of the various factions that had taken shape was clearly identifiable by name, although during the caliphate of 'Ali, under the conditions of the first civil war, his supporters, including all his family of 'Alids, became known as the shi'at 'Ali, to distinguish them from the opposing shi'at 'Uthman. The full title shi'at 'Ali is conventionally abbreviated to Shi'a, and its members are referred to as Shi'is or Shi'ites. Later on the supporters of Mu'awiya would become known as the ahl al-sunna or al-sunnah wa-l-jamaa, 'the people of the traditions of the Prophet', where Sunna means literally 'practice' or 'tradition', and from which Sunni is derived. The term was probably coined by a muhaddith (a scholarly authority on the Islamic canon) named Muhammad bin Sirin, who died in 728 or 729 and who had done much to categorise Muslims by dividing them into the ahl al-bida, effectively heretics, and the ahl al-sunna, representing the growing orthodoxy. The eighth century saw intense theological argument between rival Islamic groups about the interpretation of the Qur'an and the Hadith, culminating in a series of mihna, or theological trials. It was after these had taken place that ahl al-sunna became applied as a more widely recognised term.

Some smaller breakaway groups - the Ithna, 'ashariyya, Ismailiyya, Zayudiyya and others - emerged during the late Umayyad and early 'Abassid period, all wearing politico-religious coats of one colour or another. Other more blatantly heretical factions included the Rafida, Mu'tazila and Murji'a. All of these small parties whose traditions were labelled 'unorthodox' were known to the Muslim mainstream under the collective and rather derogatory title of ahl al-bida. The divergence of views was often borderline in nature. The Mu'tazila promoted the idea of free will rather than destiny being preordained, while the Murji'a argued in favour of deferring to the judgement of Allah on the complicity of certain companions leading to the death of 'Uthman and the later assassination of 'Ali. There was also a level of interest in Manichaeism, which involved a belief in some kind of dualism that conflicted starkly with the mainstream Islamic view of one God, Allah. Interest in this form of apostasy was known as zandaqa or zandiq, and to be accused of such a crime could cost the offender his or her life. But the term also came to be used more loosely for anyone following too liberal a lifestyle or in some way flouting Islamic beliefs and practices. It has been suggested that the young Islamic state was validating its Muslim credentials through persecution of zandaqa. Since it stood for many things it could be hurled at a wide variety of opponents.12 Eventually, the more obscure factions disappeared and Islam was left with three sects driven by a mix of politics and religion, the majority Sunna, the minority Shi'a and the somewhat smaller congregation of Kharijis. Tribal conflict continued unabated during the reign of Yazid 1.

In 682 the Medinans staged another revolt against the Umayyad government by expelling the Umayyad residents from the city. This insurrection prompted the arrival of reinforcements from Syria, and the two sides met in a bleak volcanic wasteland known as al-Harra. Once more the Medinan army suffered defeat and, in order to discourage any further attempts at insurrection in Arabia, Yazid I ordered his troops not only to occupy Medina but also to place the city of Mecca under siege. It was during this operation that the most sacred site, the Ka'ba, was burnt down. (The Cambridge History of Islam,1970 p. 82ff.)

Yazid I died unexpectedly, replaced in 685 by Abd aI-Malik ibn Marwan. Now a radical Shi'a faction with a distinctly more messianic ideology, headed by al-Muktar bin 'Ubayd al-Thakafi, began to clamour ever more vociferously for revenge against the killing of al-Husayn. The Shi'is were dependent on promoting 'Ali's only surviving son, Muhammad bin al-Hanafiyya, who although not a child of Fatima was nonetheless heralded as the new Imam and the Mahdi. Imam means 'model' and therefore became attached to any exemplary Muslim figure of good standing and character, but also to religious leaders. Mahdi translates as 'a divinely guided one', but the term gained distinct meanings for both Sunni and Shi'a. Among mainstream Sunnis it would be applied to occasional revivers of the faith when the Islamic community had grown impotent or found itself unduly oppressed. For the Shi'a the ideology of the Mahdi was also still to evolve fully, but it was already being identified with alHusayn and the myth that he had not died but disappeared. He was the hidden Imam due to return as a messianic figure, not unlike Jesus Christ, and rule over the Islamic world by divine ordinance.

He on the other hand was reluctant, and declined either to assume personal leadership of the Shi'a movement or to come to Kufa. In his absence al-Muktar seized the city by armed revolt. For a time there was a degree of internal conflict, because al-Muktar's decision to bring a number of non-Arabs into his civil administration did not meet with the approval of some of the more conservative tribal chiefs; but the revolt was suppressed and the rebels who survived fled to Basra. AI-Muktar's radical supporters took over full control of Kufa, determined to avenge the death of al-Husayn, but the Basran faction became equally determined to oust al-Muktar from power. They attacked and took Kufa in 687, resulting in a massacre that allegedly claimed the lives of between 6,000 and 8,000 of alMuktar's followers, including al-Muktar himself. (Encyclopedia of Islam,1997, vol. 5, p.345ff).

In spite of this disastrous setback the movement established by alMuktar survived, continuing with its messianic message that alHusayn would return as the Mahdi. It venerated an empty chair said to be a sacred relic from 'Ali himself. Popular among the lower classes, it earned the title Kaysaniyya from one of al-Muktar's former bodyguards who next took on the leadership, 'Abu 'Amfra Kaysan. The alternative name of Sabiyya derives from that of another contemporary messianic teacher, 'Abd Allah bin Saba.Muhammad bin al-Hanafiyya continued to be recognised by the bulk of Shi'is as the Imam and the Mahdi until he died in 700. But, in common with the traditions that developed about al-Husayn, many of his supporters believed that he had retired to an occult state and was destined to return in a blaze of glory at some time in the future.

Beyond the confines of Kufa, Abdullah aI-Malik ibn Marwan managed to bring civil war to an end, and, although persecution of the Kharijites continued, the Muslim Empire entered another period of expansion before his death in 705. Abdullah aI-Malik was succeeded by Walid I, who oversaw the zenith of Umayyad power, beyond which the dynasty entered a slow decline. The last of the great Umayyad caliphs is generally regarded as Hisham, the fourth of Abd al-Malik's sons, who held office for nineteen years. death no outstanding statesman emerged during a short period of weak and chaotic government by a succession of Marwanid caliphs. A resistance movement sprang up in the Hijaz and caused ongoing difficulties for the administration, first in Arabia, then over the course of time spreading through North Africa and into the Iberian peninsula. The takeover by the 'Abassid dynasty that ended Marwanid rule came in either 747 or 750 (accounts remain contradictory). (Ibid., vol. 6, p. 626.)

See case study 2:

The momentous events of the Umayyad era left behind a bitter legacy of disagreement about the rights of inheritance of Muslim leadership. Traditionally, the Sunnis have had no problem with the history of succession and have accepted the legitimacy of the first four elected leaders, whom they regarded as the 'rightly guided caliphs'. Shi'is reject the legitimacy of the first three and recognise only 'Ali as Muhammad's chosen if largely thwarted successor. It has been their uncompromising position that 'Abu Bakr, 'Umar and 'Uthman usurped the entitlement of 'Ali and that the original companions of the Prophet were complicit in denying him his rightful inheritance. It is this above all else that underpins the historical grievance between Sunnis and Shi'is, although it was specifically the killing of al-Husayn that led to a tradition of glorious martyrdom among Shi'is. Sometime during the eighth century the term al-rafida, 'the deserters', ceased to apply exclusively to a heretical breakaway faction and came to be used as a term of abuse directed at all members of the early Shi'a movement.16 The term is still applied in a derogatory manner. A modern Islamic commentator (unnamed) publishing his views on the Internet, notes that, 'Among such bad names, which are often repeated in books written by the enemies of the Shi'as, is the misnomer 'Rafidis', rejectionists. Any uninformed reader will instantly consider the possibility that they are the ones who rejected the Islamic principles and who did not act upon them, or that they rejected the Message of Prophet Muhammad. But the truth of the matter is quite different. They were called "Rafidis" simply because early Umayyad and 'Abassid rulers, as well as evil scholars who always tried to please them, wanted to misrepresent them.'

From the viewpoint of the mainstream Sunnis, 'Ali was bypassed for the caliphate more because of his own deficiencies than by any illegal usurpation on the part of the early electorate. In the popular view he was also implicated in the plot to murder 'Uthman. These aspects were probably widely aired in street conversation and would, in time, be recorded in a letter from the 'Abassid Caliph alMansur to a rebel leader from among the Hasanids named Muhammad al-Nafs, or al-Zakiyya.

The 'Alid camp and its embryo Shi'a movement eventually saw a way to bring the 'Abassids to power by backing the anti-Umayyad revolutionaries, who by then were operating from a secure Persian power base. But ironically, in this move to rid Islam of dynastic succession and for the rights of the family of the Prophet to be restored, the losers were destined, once more, to be the 'Alids and their supporters. When the first 'Abassid Caliph, the Prophet's uncle 'Abdullah bin al-'Abbas, took over in 749, he was at pains initially to emphasise family links with the Prophet and to demand vengeance for past wrongs. He could point piously to having backed the caliphate of aI-Hasan and to having consistently dismissed claims by 'Abu Bakr's daughter A'isha that her father had been the favoured companion of Muhammad. AI-'Abbas reminded detractors that he had gone so far as to support 'Ali's historical claims about legitimate right of succession and had warned al-Husayn about the dangers of leading an uprising.

But this was largely a shadow play, and as time went on the 'Abassid administration became openly paranoid about 'Alid claims to the caliphate. The rightful entitlement of the 'Abassids to rule took on such political sensitivity that within a short time they had distanced themselves from the 'Alids, their stance shifting to the extent of doing a U-turn, arguing that 'Ali had never been a legitimate contender for the throne. According to the incoming caliphs al-Mansur and his successor al-Mahdi, the 'Abassid claim to political legitimacy was based on hereditary descent from al-'Abbas, whom they regarded as having a stronger legitimacy than Fatima, since she was a woman and for the purposes of Arab inheritance the uncle was akin to the father. Meanwhile the 'Alids became known collectively to their followers as imams, a title which in their eyes denoted the religious leadership of Islam but which, in the view of the 'Abassids, amounted to little short of insurrection. In 786 internecine violence flared again, this time in Mecca where the Shi'a population rebelled. The uprising amounted, in part, to a reaction against the dismissal of some of the Shi'a's deeply held principles by the 'Abassid caliphs, and it resulted in another massacre of their number. The survivors were forced to flee to an area of West Africa known as the Maghrib, which today includes Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia, where they set up an independent Shi'a kingdom ruled by the Idrisid family.

At least some of the internal conflict during the 'Abassid period was caused by dilution of Arab authority. The caliphate, which by then had moved from Damascus in Syria to Baghdad in Iraq, was no longer in full control of the empire. Government had been decentralised and in many cases was now in the hands of local nonArab overlords. By the turn of the ninth century a number of powerful barons were running what amounted to rival states: the Fatimids in Egypt, the Ayyubids in Syria and the Mamluks in Palestine. This antagonised Muslim conservatives, who saw a renunciation of basic Islamic principles unfolding. In 809 civil war erupted for the fourth time in the short history of Islam, involving a vicious succession struggle between the sons of the fifth 'Abassid Caliph, Harun aI-Rashid. One of these rivals, al-Amin ibn Harun, seized control of the sixth 'Abassid caliphate, but within four years another brother, al-Ma'mun ibn Harun, mounted a successful coup. He and a third sibling, al-Mu'tasim ibn Harun, reached the timely conclusion that, in order to safeguard against such events in the future, the caliphate needed to secure itself with a loyal imperial guard. The present Muslim army, largely made up of Persian and Arab troops, could no longer be relied on to support the 'Abassid administration and so sometime after 833 al-Mu'tasim ibn Harun, who by that stage had taken over the caliphate, began to recruit a force predominantly made up of Mamluks. These former Turkish, Slav and Berber slaves - in effect mercenaries - had been seconded into the armed forces over a period of time and proved to be formidable warriors. Not surprisingly, their presence was highly unpopular among the Arab and Persian contingents of the Muslim army, and nowhere was the resentment felt more strongly than among the Khorasanian faction in Persia that had been instrumental in bringing the 'Abassids to power.

During this period of strife the caliphate steadily lost ground and eventually found itself more or less sidelined by a new civil authority, the sultanate. The empire was held together by its common use of the Arabic language and by the key sinews of its religion, the Qur'an and the Hadith. But it was not a united force, although many Muslim scholars argue otherwise. Some claim that since all Muslims recognise the unity or oneness of Allah, accept that the Prophet Muhammad received the divine revelations from God and believe that the souls of the dead will be restored at the Day of Judgement, it is unrealistic to say that they are divided along sectarian lines. Nonetheless, the inescapable reality is that within the first hundred years of Islam's foundation Sunni, Shi'a and Kharijite factions had each assumed distinct and identifiable loyalties that would rarely see eye to eye in the future. Each still views its own position as the legitimate one, and that of the other as unorthodox, much as Catholics and Anglicans consider that they have unalienable rights to the true faith of Christianity. From time to time the smouldering resentments between Sunni and Shi'a would erupt into violent feuding.

Today the Sunni branch of Islam, by far the most traditional and conservative, includes about 90 per cent of the faithful and extends into North Africa and east through India, Central Asia and Indonesia. Since the Shi'a movement went its own way in 661, Sunni has effectively dominated the Muslim world, and the view of its majority community is that, since Muhammad did not appoint a successor, the source of guidance for Islam must rest strictly in the words and instructions of the Qur'an. Rejecting any claim that 'Ali and his descendants were the exclusive executors and upholders of the traditions established by the Prophet, Sunnis continue to accept the legitimacy of the first four caliphs and believe that the office, not necessarily elected from Muhammad's own clan, rightly took over the leadership of the Muslim world. They have left the caliphs and their successors to safeguard the principles of Islam in government. The ulemas, the body of Sunni religious scholars whose most significant centre of learning is the al-Azhar university in Cairo, bears responsibility for interpreting Islamic religious law. In terms of practical devotion Sunnis hold an annual pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca and accept this as the major event in the religious calendar.

Modern Shi'is continue to reject the first three caliphs as guardians of the prophetic legacy and recognise only the legitimacy of 'Ali. They also consider that Muhammad initiated a special category of men from within his own family to carry forward the responsibility for guiding the faithful, beginning with 'Ali and continuing with his male offspring from Fatima. These are the venerated imams, the incontrovertible messengers of Allah who assume their authority irrespective of time and place. Shi'is attach more or less equal importance to other pilgrimages. However, even in this common ideology there has been an element of dissent between two Shi'a factions, the Ismailis, the dominant group, and the smaller branch known as the Ja'faris or 'Twelvers'. On the death of Ja'far bin Muhammad 'al-Sadiq' in 765, a squabble arose over which of his sons should succeed him. The main faction gave their support to his eldest son Ismail and his descendants, which they trace to the present-day incumbent of the imamate, Karim Aga Khan. The splinter group rallied behind al-Sadiq's younger son, Musa al-Kazim, and today support his direct line of descent, which ended with al-Mahdi, the 'hidden' Imam. In the meantime the guidance of the twelve is obtained through the meditation of clerics known as mujtahidun, experienced in the interpretation of Islamic Shari'a or law. Their most senior ranks include the ayatollahs, whose pivotal role in Islamic states like Iran is well reported.

Twelve of these imams are recorded during the early period of Islamic history, and the number provides an interesting comparison with the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ. The most significant among them was probably al-Husayn, the third Imam, martyred in 680, since it was his violent death at the hands of the Umayyads that proved the inspiration for much of the suicide attacks that occur today. His untimely fate epitomises the Shi'a view of the world, with its mood of dispossession and interest in martyrdom. Another notable was the sixth Imam, Ja'far bin Muhammad 'al-Sadiq', who is acclaimed as the scholarly leader who formalised much of the Shi'a doctrine and made serious attempts to weld the Shi'a community together. Another, Muhammad bin Abdallah 'al-Nafs al-Zakiyya', was the radical extremist who led an abortive revolt during the caliphate of aI-Mansur. He was supported by at least some of the learned body of ulemas, and in a move to deter future uprisings by setting an example, the 'Abassid administration had these clerics flogged, tortured, imprisoned and in some cases executed. By and large, however, the imams adopted a moderate position in society and tended to dissociate themselves from extreme activities, though nonetheless they counted extremists among their followers.

The twelfth Imam, Muhammad abdul Qasim, also known as alMahdi al-Muntadar (which translates roughly as 'the guided one and the awaited one'), occupies an unusual place in Shi'a tradition. It is believed that he was born in Samarra in Iraq in about 868 during the caliphate of the 'Abassid ruler al-Mu'tamid. His mother is said to have been the granddaughter of a Byzantine emperor, abducted by the eleventh Imam, Hassan al-Askari, who kept her as his concubine. As a child al-Mahdi was hidden away from the community, perhaps for his own protection, since his inheritance of the imamate was energetically challenged by one of the brothers of Hassan al-Askari and the lives of two previous imams had already ended in assassination. The tenth Imam, his grandfather, had met a violent end and his father was also murdered in 872. To avoid further persecution from the 'Abassids, who were also hostile to his claims of leadership over the Shi'a community, he is supposed to have gone into hiding as an adult in an incident known as 'Occultation of the Twelfth Imam'. He may, in reality, have been assassinated like his forebears, but in the romantic imagination he disappeared down a well and became a ghaybat, an occult being. Deputies known as bab or na'ib took over his duties, and over a period of seventy years he appeared to them from time to time to issue instructions. These seven decades became known as the ghaybat-i sughra, or Lesser Occultation, ending in 941 with the death of the fourth bab. Shortly before the end of his life he allegedly produced a letter from al-Mahdi instructing that no more deputies were to be enrolled and that all tangible representation of the imamate was to cease.

Ghaybat is a term to which Shi'is attach particular significance, because it implies not merely that Allah has ordained the concealment but in doing so has miraculously prolonged the life of the imam for an indefinite period. Al-Mahdi is thus believed to be hidden from the world in a kind of immortal time warp, the ghaybat-i kubra or Greater Occultation, which will end at the Day of Judgement or at some other time in the future and therefore equates loosely with Christian belief in the Second Coming. Shi'is envisage al-Mahdi as being like the sun behind clouds, hidden for the time being but still possessing the power to warm the spirits of the faithful, and that one day he will lead his people to a restoration of their status, much as some believe that Jesus Christ will appear to re-establish a world of justice and peace. Very little, however, can be said about al-Mahdi's life with any degree of historical certainty, and indeed much of the popular lore about his future re-emergence in an event known as rafa stems from words attributed to the Prophet:

The world shall not end until a man from my family and of my name Shall be master of the world. When you see standards of green coming out of Khorasan Then join with them for the imam of Allah will be there. He will be called al-Mahdi.

Tradition has it that the rightful place of the Shi'a in taking the faith of Islam forward will only be resolved when the twelfth Imam returns to complete the 'cycle of prophethood', and therefore Shi'is apply the term Mahdi in a specific context. Sunnis also recognise Mahdi, but use it in a looser sense to identify unusually gifted men who are divinely inspired and who have appeared at different times in history to lead Muslims during periods of oppression and conflict.

See case study 3:

Although the current level of bloodshed in Iraq dominates the news at the time of writing, Iran provides a tacit example of how the conflict between Sunni and Shi'a factions is still very much alive elsewhere in the Middle East. Persia, which after the 1979 revolution became the Islamic Republic of Iran, has represented a continuous stronghold of Ja'fari Shi'ism. This branch of Shi'a has been the official religion of the country since the sixteenth century, and following the revolution its leading clerics took important political roles in the new Islamic government. After the abdication of the Shah, Muhammad Riza Pahlavi, the radical Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in France to head a new and fundamentalist Islamic government which removed all Western influence from the country and instigated a cultural revolution as a step toward founding a new Shi'a religious state. In encouraging militant extremism, however, many people considered that Khomeini's zeal was somewhat overplayed, and that he was responsible for extending the Gulf War against Iraq.

About 93 per cent of the Iranian population is Shi'a, with the remaining minority predominantly Sunni and Baha'i, and in urban areas this mix has often led to the rise of religious tensions. Iranian Shi'is feel that they are witnessing an unwelcome shift away from political Islam and towards secular nationalism, particularly since Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's second term as President, which began in 1993. Early in 1995 Rafsanjani ordered the Islamic Republic News Agency to establish a newspaper entitled simply ' Iran ', without any reference to Islam, and large advertisement hoardings appeared comprising the Iranian flag minus any Islamic logos. In the mid-1990s the political debate about the appropriateness of Islam as a political ideology became increasingly heated, and leading Iranian clerics were routinely berated for putting religion to political use. Younger elements in Iran came to the view that Islam was ill suited to the demands of modern statecraft.

Yet the use of religion as a political tool has, if anything, increased. In December 1997 the League of al-Assunah (the Iranian Sunni League) obtained a highly sensitive letter emanating from the Cultural Revolutionary Shura Council and in September 1998 the letter was published through the London offices of the Sunni League. The document is entitled ' Iran 's Fifty Year Plan to Export the Revolution and Spread Shi'ism'. The Sunni League seized on this as a propaganda tool to further its own political interests, and distributed copies of the leaked document to the heads of various states, noting that it represented further confirmation of their previous warnings about attempts to introduce Shi'a 'protocols', if necessary through violent means, not only into Sunni regions of Iran but beyond its borders .The document is prefaced with an uncompromising statement:

There is no doubt that if we are not capable of exporting our own revolution to the neighboring Islamic countries, their culture which is mixed with Western culture will attack us and be victorious on us. As we have achieved an ithnai-ashareiah state in Iran [apparently a reference to the twelve Ja'fari imams] after many centuries of struggle we therefore carry a serious and heavy duty in exporting our revolution. But because of the current global situation and the present international laws it is not possible to simply export the revolution, for the major destructive risks that we might encounter. Therefore ... we have set a fifty year plan which comprises five phases of ten years, to export the Islamic revolution to every neighbouring country so that we can first unite Islam. Because the hazards facing us from the Wahhabi and Sunni rulers are by far greater than those from the East or the West; because [these] oppose our movement and they are the genuine enemies of the rule of the faqeeh and the infallible imams, to the extent that they consider recognising the Shi'a school of thought ... as a heresy. By doing this they have split Islam into two contradicting branches. (Sunni League, Iran's Fifty Year Plan, London, September 1998).

The document criticizes the religious discipline of several neighboring countries, including Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and various Persian Gulf states whose 'social and cultural corruption and non-Islamic way of life are apparent'. The strength of Shi'a antagonism against Sunni becomes clear when the letter describes modern Shi'is as the 'inheritors of millions of martyrs, whose blood has been running from the day the Prophet Muhammad died, killed at the hands of the false Muslim devils (Sunnis). This blood will not dry until every Muslim testifies that Shi'is are the true inheritors of Islam.' The overall objective during the fifty-year period includes the immigration of Shi'a families into cities where there is a Sunni majority. This is to be followed by the strategic placing of Shi'a agents in military and executive positions. The plan is then to foment strife between governments and leading clerics. 'We have to secretly enrage the Sunni and Wahhabi [formerly the Kharijis and also known as Salafis and Najdis] scholars against the social corruption and non-Islamic trends in these societies ... suspicious incidents will occur, which will lead to the suspension or replacement of some government officials. These incidents will be the cause of distrust.' By taking away what they describe as security, tranquillity and comfort, 'the ruling authorities will appear like a ship in the middle of a storm ... and will accept any suggestion to rescue themselves. The atmosphere will then be ready for revolution and ready for a takeover of power.' The final somewhat daunting paragraph in the document proposes, 'We will then advance to the world of disbelief and we will decorate the world with the light of Islam and the light of Shi'ism until the appearance of the longed-for al-Mahdi.'

As we indicated, in the late eighteenth century, prior to the European exploration and colonization of Africa, a number of significant religious movements spread quickly over west Africa. Along the way, a number of Islamic states were established that were based largely on the powerful attraction of charismatic prophets. Many of these claimed to be the Mahdi. As mentioned n 1881, Muhammad Ahmad, a charismatic religious figure in the Lower Nile region of East Africa, declared himself to be the Mahdi and sought to unite first the various tribes of what is now Sudan, but also the entire Islamic world, in a new religious state that stood in opposition to continued British intrusion into the region. In 1885, Muhammad Ahmad defeated and killed General Charles Gordon and captured the city of Khartoum, proclaiming a new Islamic state and a religious association that remains significant in contemporary Sudan.

See case study 4: 
 

The Lebanon Jihad

The Shi'a community is one of eighteen different religious groups that comprise the ‘Confessional’ -based political system in Lebanon. These include Sunni Muslims, Christian Maronites, Greek Orthodox, and Druze Muslims. Just as the Druze and Maronites, the Shi'a are a minority sect within their respective religions.

During the era of the Ottoman Empire, the Shi'a played virtually no role in the politics of the region, because the Ottomans ruled in the name of Sunni Muslim orthodoxy. (Juan Cole, Sacred Space and Holy War, 2002,16-30.)

During the latter years of the Ottoman Empire, the area surrounding Mount Lebanon in the Levant had been an autonomous region dominated by the Christian Maronites. Following World War I, the Maronites were successful in increasing the territory under their control to include the Bekaa Valley in what is now the southern part of Lebanon. This expansion of the control of the Maronites was supported by the French government, which had received the mandate over both Syria and Lebanon following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. (Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered, University of California Press, 1988, 17.)

The new lands that came under the expanded control of the Maronites contained large numbers of both Sunni and Shi'a Muslims. The Sunni, in particular, strongly objected to Maronite rule over what they considered to be their lands. In response, and in an attempt to maintain control, the Maronites eventually struck a deal with Shi'a leaders. In return for a large degree of their own freedom of political action in the south, the Shi'a agreed to accept Maronite control. The Shi'a had long lived in the region as a minority group persecuted by the Sunni majority and, at the very least, sought to bring that practice to an end. Their efforts were successful. As a result of their support of the Maronites, the Shi'ites soon materialized as a distinct and important faction in Lebanon; a position they had not been able to assume previously. Indeed, beginning in 1926, the French allowed the Shi'ites to create their own, autonomous, religious-based infrastructure and to practice their religion without outside interference. (Jaber, Hezbollah, 9.)

As expected, the Christian Maronites emerged as the dominant political actor in the mandate. Out of respect for the diverse factions however, political power was divided among the various religious entities. In addition, certain political arrangements were established in an attempt to maintain regime stability and legitimacy. For example, the presidency of Lebanon would always be in the hands ofthe Christian Maronites, the prime minister would always be a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of the National Assembly would always be in the hands of the Shi'as. Additionally, the ratio of Christian members of the assembly to Muslim members was fixed at six to five, a relationship that reflected the demographic majority of the Christians in 1932. This arrangement guaranteed that the Sunnis and the Christians would control the leading political and military positions in the new state of Lebanon.

Following ' World War II, Lebanon began to modernize. This process had a significant impact on all members of the state both socially and politically. And, this was particularly true of the Shi'ites. The infrastructure of the entire country began to both expand and improve. Transportation was made easier, which contributed to an influx of Shi'ites into Beirut, searching for a better life. Nonetheless, an almost immediate result was the rapid expansion of the "Belt of Misery."

Modernization impacted the media and the availability of information among the entire population. Radio and television contributed to a growing awareness among the Shi'a that their position within Lebanon was not what it could be, in a way that they had not been impacted before. This exacerbated their sense of relative deprivation and made the lack of social mobility, all the more painfully obvious. Most Shi'a in Lebanon saw an almost continuous sequence of what they perceived of as unjust government and a society that simply did not seem to work for them. And, Sunni hegemony within the Islamic community, placing the Shi'a in a sort of permanent minority status among the faithful, tended to exacerbate these problems.

Thus during the 1940s and 1950s, a significant gap was growing, economically, politically, and socially, between the Shi'ites and the rest of the country, largely because the government in Beirut tended to neglect them. Perhaps worse yet, semi feudal, landowning elites in the south were far more interested in their own personal gain than they were in the welfare of the Shi'a community as a whole. As a result, whereas the rest of Lebanon was modernizing, the Shi'ites lacked basic necessities: schools, hospitals, roads, and even running water in many instances. In comparison with the prospering areas of the Sunnis and Christians, their standard of living was medieval. As an example, in an analysis prepared in 1943, at the time of Lebanon 's independence, it was noted that there was not one hospital in the entire south Lebanon area. The closest health clinic was in Sidon , Tyre, or Nabatiyya, all in the middle or northern sections of the country. Further, the availability of water for irrigation or human consumption was a persistent problem in the region. Nonetheless, there was very little that the new Lebanese state was willing or was able to do for the minority and increasingly marginalized Shi'a community. (For details see Graham E. Fuller and Rend Rahim Francke, The Arab Shi’a: The Forgotten Muslims, 1999)

At another level, Shi'a religious leaders and many members of the lay public did not trust the government, which they perceived of as a secular, unworthy, activity. As a result, members of the Shi'ite community purposely held back from participating in public affairs, even within those fields that were within reach to them professionally. (Fuller and Francke, The Arab Shi’a, 46.)

In 1958, a civil war erupted in Lebanon, largely as a result of the increased factionalism caused by the political arrangements established over 20 years earlier. Predictably, the Christian community had developed an increasingly pro-Western orientation, gaining the favor of not only France, but the United States. This orientation came into conflict with the growing pan-Arab ideology of the Sunni Muslims throughout the region. Ultimately, U.S. troops intervened in the fighting and order was established when the leader of Lebanon 's army, Fouad Chehab, was elected president. (Fuller and Francke, 10.)

Then came, Ayatollah Khomeini who sought to connect the Shi'a past, with the Shi'a nature, and contend that “Western” thought and values are dangerous. He advanced the new theory of political Islam that promoted direct clerical rule whose task it was to act as representatives of the hidden Imam. Plus as he stated:

The two qualities of knowledge of the law and justice are present in countless fuqaha [the religious scholars] of the present age. If they would come together, they could establish a government of universal justice in the world. If a worthy individual possessing these two qualities arises and establishes a government, he will possess the same authority as the Most Noble Messenger in the administration of society, and it will be the duty of all people to obey him. (Khomeini, Islam and Revolution)

The concept of political authority resting in the hands of one high-ranking, religious scholar was not new in Shi'a scholarship and theology. And it was certainly not created by Khomeini. Such a concept is steeped in Iranian tradition and culture. It was first expressed in written form, and in a religio-political context, over 100 years before bv the Mullah Ahmad Naraqi. Khomeini was now reactivating it, with some modifications, "as a plausible theory of theocratic monism that was to assume the character of a miraculously revealed panacea to reverse imitative Westernization and to cure the strains of the rapidly emerging industrial society." (See, Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam, 268-269.)

Since the hidden Imam remains in occultation, the legal and spiritual sovereignty that rests with him cannot be fully exercised. As result, he requires the assistance of representatives in the temporal world to deal 'with the practical and spiritual matter of guiding the community. The logical choice for these representatives is the ulama who have traditionally interpreted Islamic law for centuries. From among the ulama, one can emerge who is the most enlightened and venerated cleric within the community. Ultimate authority of interpretation rests in his hands: the velayat-e faqih. (See En'and Abrahamian, The Iranian Mohahedin, Yale University Press, 1989, p.22.)

Then as we have seen in p.1 Al-Sadr, a Persian by birth, and thus non-Arab, was capable of leading the Arab Shi'a community of south Lebanon .

In 1975, he created the Afwaj al-Muqawamah al-Lubnaniyah or Battalions of the Lebanese Resistance. The organization quickly became known as simply AMAL, or "hope." Al-Sadr modified ancient interpretations of the martyrdom of Husayn and like Khomeini, created a more activist movement.

“This revolution did not die in the sands of Kerbala; it flowed into the life stream of the Islamic world, and passed from generation to generation, even to our day. It is a deposit placed in our hands so that we may profit from it, that we draw out of it a new source of reform, a new position, a new movement, a new revolution, to repel the darkness, to stop tyranny and to pulverize evil.” (Transcript of al-Sadr speech as it appeared in Al Hayat, February 1, 1974.)

Hezbollah rejects both nationalism and ethnicity as a basis for the identity of either the organization or its adherents. Loyalty to Lebanon is irreconcilable with the prophecy of Hezbollah. Indeed, the unrest that exists within the country is perceived of as the unavoidable result of synthetic and illegitimate formation. Hezbollah leaders assert that the country possesses no justifiable or lawful basis for its existence, and that its manmade borders were created by the great powers in order to facilitate a political deal in the 1920s. (Martin Kramer, Hezbollah's Vision of the West, Washington Institute for Near East Policy Papers, Number Sixteen, 1989, p. 27.)

Or as articulated by Naiim Qassem, Hezbollah's deputy secretary general:

In our region we have a problem with the West, which at one time placed us under the French mandate, at other times under the British mandate and over certain periods we were politically governed by the whims of the United States. When the West moves into a region, it does so with the intention of marketing its principles. It establishes schools, its own educational curriculum, Western cultural institutions, its own media, practically its own way of life and thinking. All of this, in a bid to impose its own ideologies in our region ... they seek to impose their own Western principles, not taking ours into consideration, in an attempt to suck us into their own agenda. From here we consider that there is a cultural conflict between us and the West and it is our job to invalidate their concepts here, to prove their evil and to spread our vision instead. If we succeed we will have obstructed their political agenda and this is our first kind of confrontation. (Quoted in Jaber, Hezbollah, 56-57.)

On April 18, 1983, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was destroyed in a massive explosion carried out by a Hezbollah suicide bomber, killing a total of 63. Six months later, a U.S. Marine compound located near the Beirut airport and a French military compound four miles away were bombed within seconds of one another killing 299.

Or take for example Hezbollah Salah Ghandour, who in 1995 drove his car, laden with bombs, into an Israeli military compound. Before his death, he recorded his final message:

I shall, insha'allah [God willing], shortly after saying these words, be meeting my God with pride, dignity, and having avenged my religion and all the martyrs who preceded me on this route. In a short while I shall avenge all the martyrs and oppressed of Jabal Amel, South Lebanon, as well as the children and sons of the Intifada in Palestine. I shall avenge all those suffering in the tortured security zone. Oh sons of Ali and Hussein and sons of the great Imam Khomcini, God bless his soul. Yea sons of the leaders Khameini and sons of the martyr Abbas Musawi and Sheikh Ragheb Harb, your jihad, insha'allah, is the preparatory jihad for the anticipated Imam, so let us continue until we achieve our desired target and the Godly gratification and thus arrive at our Godly promise. We belong to God and to God we shall return. (Quoted in Jaber, Hezbollah, 86-87.)

The leaders of Hezbollah claim they possess a large number of young Shi'ites who are ready to give their lives in martyr attacks in order to play their part in ultimate success of the movement. Although many scholars of Islam have condemned the practice, the leadership of Hezbollah detends it. They assert that these young martyrs follow in one of the more powerful and durable traditions of Shi'ism, inspired originally by Husayn. (Jaber, Hezbollah, 84.)

In the same way, there is no room in Hezbollah's vision of the future of the community for expressions of either Arab or Persian ethnicity, which, it is argued, splits Shi'ites along unnecessary lines. (Ibid., 29. He cites a speech by Shaykh Ibrahim Qusayr ofDayr Qanun al-Nahr, Al-Ahd, February 28, 1986. The occasion was a visit by Iran 's charge d'affaires, Mahmud Nurani, to Beirut.)

As a result, Hezbollah argues that the "ties of Islamic belief are the only ties which truly bind, and they bind without distinction of origin, nationality, race, language, or sect." The party does not acknowledge any of the state boundaries that exist among the Islamic states. This is particularly true of those that divide the Islamic umma and hinder the formation of a true Islamic identity. According to their ideology: "all believing Muslims must work together to implement what Sayyid Ibrahim al-Amin calls the 'one Islamic world plan,' the aim of which is the creation of a 'Great Islamic State' which will unite the entire region." (Martin Kramer, "Redeeming Jerusalem: The Pan-Islamic Premise of Hizballah." In The Iranian Revolution and the Muslim World. Ed. David Menashri, 1990, p.118.)

In this way, identity within the movement is not grounded in ethnicity, nationalism, place of birth, or language. Rather, it is firmly grounded in the millenarian faith of Shi'ism that stands at its ideological foundation. The plan of achieving the.'Great Islamic State, they perceive, will proceed in four phases. First is confrontation with Israel. Second is the toppling of the Lebanese regime. Third will be the liberation of Lebanon from interference by the Great Powers. Finally, these will be followed by the establishment of Islam as the exclusive basis of rule in Lebanon "until the Muslims of Lebanon join with the Muslims throughout the world in this age, to implement the single Islamic plan, and so become the centralized, single nation (umma) willed by God, who decreed that 'your nation will be one." Hezbollah not only seeks to establish a republic in Lebanon based on the rule of Islam, they seek to incorporate such a state into a far broader entity that brings together all Muslims. According to Ibrahim al-Amin, " Lebanon 's agony will end only 'when the final Middle East map is drawn. We seek almighty God's help in drawing this map as soon as possible, with the blood of the martyrs and the strength of those who wage the jihad.' This messianic notion that a final map of the entire region is now being drawn in blood sets the struggle of Hezbollah in a larger pan-Islamic context for its adherents." (Kramer, "Redeeming Jerusalem," 119)

Thus Hezbollah asserts that Iran and Lebanon (as part of a 'new' caliphate) are one nation. Indeed, the party itself is a function of the universal Islamic Republic, symbolized by Iran. The Islamic Revolution only began in Iran. Ultimately it will spread throughout the community. (Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizbu'llah: Politics and Religion, 2002, 72.)

In conclusion: religious terrorists as is the case with certain Islamic groups like Hezhollah, utilize violence in a perceived sacred cause. The cause is created from a worldview that allows the adherent to make sense of life and death by linking him or her to some form of immortality. Millenarian terrorists are fanatics, which is not to imply that they are mentally disturbed or psychopathological. But as we have been able to show before it includes a form of paranoia:

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