Last Gasp of the Imperial Misadventure

Will some one tell me how you `convert` from Shia to Sunni -- and from Sunni to Shia...?

nasah: #152

Great Question. But I think it`s a one way street. It`s much easier to leave both of them. I am reminded of a song of an Indian film:

Mein Hindu banoo`n ga nah Musalmaan banoo`n ga
Insaan ki aulad hoon` insaan banoo`n ga

Mohammad Gill

Will some one tell me how you `convert` from Shia to Sunni -- and from Sunni to Shia...?

``Free``thinker writes <<< President Bush is imperialistic in his foreign policy but thank God he will be gone in 2 years >>>

American foreign policy, and neo-colonization of the world did not start with Bush, and it will not end with Bush, Bush is the product of a political economy deeply and structurally related with its military and a militaristic world view- that system works with automatic precision using various legitimations, regardless of the face of the president.

okhla writes <<< Don`t you find it frustrating that most of the ``rest of the world`` refuses to see things your way? >>>

Most of the rest of the world, suffering under US domination, lives as fact the things I talk about, unfortunately they don`t have the luxury to merely ``see``, they live them as social fact day in and day out....

``Free``thinker writes <<< You also ignored my point that I made in my earlier post that conditions in the US have improved considerably compared with those which prevailed a century ago. This is because of the continuity of its system which is not toppled over by the army generals (not because there are no army generals in the US but because the system keeps them in their place). >>>

Another aspect of your near illiteracy is revealed by the fact that even after questions have been answered you keep repeating them, and that there is nothing deep in your analysis except banal points like ``America is better than it was a hundered years ago``. Of course it is ``better`` (for whom is also worthy of consideration) after raping the world and destroying the indigeneous population and looting the wealth of its people and achieveing cultural hegemony, past which dimwits like your goodself cannot look. Look at all the wars this misearble country`s elite have conducted, look at the people and the ecologies they have destroyed and are destroying and look at how they drain the poor countries of resoures and wealth, and then look at the slogans they use which are fictions even at the home front. Look at how they are dominating trade and finance and restricting development while promoting militarism and a militaristic worldview. Come on, are you blind?

Masadi,

Dimwits.

Tahmed, feroz, Freethinker etc are all dimwits.

Don`t you find it frustrating that most of the ``rest of the world`` refuses to see things your way?

After all your posts are based on your ``research`` in your ``institute`` and feedback from your ``students``. Maybe after you get the ``Nobel`` prize, you will be taken more seriously.

Regards to your fellow authors & intellectuals at lulu.com.

Masadi: 146

You are again indulging in general accusations. You evaded to answer my question.

Do you have a system (not theory or an ideology) which is better than the western democracy and is functional (that is, it is working in other parts of the world)?

The western democracy allows changes to its Constitution and if they found better alternatives (not necessarily that you propose) they would incorporate them in the Constitution. You also ignored my point that I made in my earlier post that conditions in the US have improved considerably compared with those which prevailed a century ago. This is because of the continuity of its system which is not toppled over by the army generals (not because there are no army generals in the US but because the system keeps them in their place).

Think over these points; maybe your frustration will be somewhat relieved. I know it is your anti-western posture which doesn’t leave you in peace.

I don’t suggest that the west is free from flaws. President Bush is imperialistic in his foreign policy but thank God he will be gone in 2 years. The danger is that he might not embark on any other misadventure in his remaining time. That is where the Senate and the Congress are going to play their roles to restrain him.

You should consider the system which I believe the Muslim world can use (with some appropriate modifications) for its benefit. We need the system and don’t have to import Bush because we already have the likes of him in our country in the uniforms.

Mohammad Gill

``free``thinker writes <<< I had asked you to inform the readers with which system you want to replace the western democracy if it is so bad. You evaded that question. Do you want to adopt a Pakistani, an Egyptian, a Syrian, an Iranian, a Saudi Arabian (so on and so forth) system, or what? You did not answer specifically but went on tangentially accusing the western system >>>

You had asked me a question that shows your ignorance of the issues, a question that I have answered multiple time on here. The system(s) you see projected across the globe are a product of a world system, which is dominated by....yes you guessed it right. Now if we replace the global politico economic relationships with any different system, the results, holding other factors constant are bound to benefit humanity. And to add to Zeemax, the US does not only have one system for the domestics and one for the foreigners, it has multiple systems of oppression inside based on a pharoahic hierarchy it has created in a class based system, and when it comes to dark skinned people abroad, they don`t even bother with the count of those killed by their policies according to their official admission, we are like cockroaches that you kill and forget... Even the explicitly coersive system of medieval times was not so impersonal reagarding human suffereing.

#140 by freethinker

“I never thought when I wrote the article that I would enter into such a discussion as is occurring between us.”

The Shia Sunni issue is an important part of your article; you should have anticipated that some one would bring this up for discussion.

“I had stated simply that the stronger faction always dominated the weaker one. By domination, I was implying the kind of violent strife that emerges in Pakistan almost unfailingly every year. Although such outbursts are no comparison to the life and death struggle which is going on in Iraq, it demonstrates that the co-existence between Shias and Sunnis is not always peaceful.”

Gill sahib, the kind of strife that emerges in Pakistan occasionally is entirely different than what we have in Iraq. The roots of both issues are different and as both nasah and Parthaab have pointed out, they should be treated differently.

The ethnic, sectarian or communal violence at a large scale emerges when both warring parties sidestep the law and the state apparatus to resolve their differences violently and this violence can go on until 1. both parties are exhausted, 2.one group is completely taken out or 3.the government is able to re-establish its preeminence to stop the violence. Minor scuffles that you mentioned in Pakistan may cause loss of life, nevertheless, is not the result of a complete breakdown of law and order but is a result of emotional issues between the communities.

To illustrate this I would mention that there is a rift between the Hindu and Muslim communities in India. The disputes go on until they reach a point where both parties sidestep the law, which results in incidents like Gujarat. Similarly, when groups of people in 1947 decided to take their differences outside the limits of law, a massacre took place on both sides of Punjab. The massacre did not stop until the warring groups were completely ejected from each others areas of influence or majority.

The two examples that you quoted are actually very illustrative of what I have been implying in my posts. You seem to believe that the sectarian violence and the state persecution are one and the same thing. What you are quoting are mostly instances of state persecution against one group which could be a political or may even be a different religious group.

As I had shown you in my previous posts, Saddam on many occasions persecuted both Shias and Kurds as they were his political opponent. He did not persecute them for their ethnicity or the religious beliefs on behalf of his Sunni brethren or his own Sunni faith. That is why despite Saddam’s brutalities, Shia and Sunni still lived side by side in Baghdad. Saddam also maintained a strict state structure that had the ability to control any sectarian violence before it could spread in Iraq.

Once the US took over, they destroyed the state structure in Iraq by removing the army, police, and the Bureaucracy thus leaving a vacuum that they were never able to fill with the US army. Obviously, the US army lacked skills to mediate or forestall the spread of violence between the two communities. With complete control of media in Iraq and by managing the information the US was able to create a situation where both communities decided to operate outside the limits of the law and the eruption of sectarian violence that spread quickly and still goes on unabated.

If the US had maintained the structure, both groups could possibly have had recourse to the government officials, police, the court system and even the Iraqi army to address the grievances. In the absence of such a structure, and by constant attempts by the US controlled media in Iraq to magnify the differences to divert attention from insurgency, it was not difficult to escalate the problems between the communities into a full fledged sectarian war.

This is my last post on this subject. However, I would like you to read this article to see the impact of the sectarian violence in Baghdad, probably something the US encouraged from the get go.

Read it here

http://www.ndtv.com/topstories/showtopstory.asp?slug=Officials+suspended+over+Gorakhpur+clash&id=21297&category=National

Re: # 140

A flaw in your argument is the assumption that internal security is not the primary ingredient to peace.

If that were the case, then in India at least, in the absence of internal security, there would have been massacres on a large scale on religious, casteist and linguistic lines. This would have happened even in the USA.

Certainly compounded by biased media and revenge mode.

Internal security is the key to peace.

Re: # 118,

Dr. Gill, It would be rather a simplistic and naive person to accept wholesale, the current media propaganda that Bush initially had only good intentions for Iraq.

If that were the case, he would nt have needed an excuse like WMD to attack the country. Saddam was by and large doing nothing on the international level, having been weakened considerably by economic sanctions. Iraq was already sufferring, but due to his dads sanctions.

The whole world knew that Bush was on the look out for a muslim nation for revenge on the 9/11 attacks, and Saddam, as a `dictator` fitted the media bill. And that a war would cripple the country and eventually divide it on sectarian lines, after an ethnic blood bath, in the absence of any internal security and warring factions. This, the whole world knew BEFORE even the WMD were claimed by Powell.

How could the CIA have possibly not known what the whole world knew before the attack?

Re: # 139 Nasah

``but what is happening in Iraq is something else. the Americans bear the direct responsibility for these bloody encounters massacres``

Nasah, before convicting the Americans, spare a moment for this thought:

``The fall of Tabriz in 1501 before the advancing forces of Shah Isma‘il Safawi marked the beginning of a new era in Iranian history. The land of Persia, whose population up to that time had been mainly Sunni, was now beginning to be transformed into a Shi‘ite homeland. Suppression of the Sunni Iranians was swift and merciless. The Sunni ‘ulama and Sufis were specifically targeted for persecution. Many preferred exile to certain death`` [reference]

or this:

``The House of Saud has made no secret of declaring the Shi`a as ``not being Muslims``, or ``Kaafir``. This is evident from the Shia minority in Saudia Arabia which has no political power or rights, and from outright edicts in which Salafi clerics have declared ``Shia blood to be halal, i.e. permissible to be shed.``[reference]

In short, what we see as relative calm in the Mideast is a result of centuries of tribal warfare that `cleaned out` Sunni-Shia populations. Even Saddam maintained relative calm through a brutal clampdown.

HP: 130

I never thought when I wrote the article that I would enter into such a discussion as is occurring between us. I had stated simply that the stronger faction always dominated the weaker one. By domination, I was implying the kind of violent strife that emerges in Pakistan almost unfailingly every year. Although such outbursts are no comparison to the life and death struggle which is going on in Iraq, it demonstrates that the co-existence between Shias and Sunnis is not always peaceful.

The battle between Ali and Aisha became a precursor to what happened afterwards at Karbala which perpetuated Shiism as a permanent and distinct sect. You wrote, “Ali and Aisha fought a political battle for the control of power in Mecca,” which is true and the bloody battle at Karbala was also motivated by the political reasons. Are you trying to validate the Aisha-Ali battle?


The US also invaded Iraq for political reasons. Why should then this be a big deal? The Shias and Sunnis who are cutting each other’s throats on daily basis cannot be exonerated from the responsibility of the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq.

You wanted instances of Sunni-Shia strife in history. I give you a couple of quotations regarding Safavids and the Ottoman Empire’s wars and battles in the following to illustrate it:
“The major impact of the Safavid-Ottoman conflict on Iraqi history was the deepening of the Shia-Sunni rift. Both the Ottomans and the Safavids used Sunni and Shia Islam respectively to mobilize domestic support. Thus, Iraq`s Sunni population suffered immeasurably during the brief Safavid reign (1623-38), while Iraq`s Shias were excluded from power altogether during the longer period of Ottoman supremacy (1638-1916). During the Ottoman period, the Sunnis gained the administrative experience that would allow them to monopolize political power in the twentieth century. The Sunnis were able to take advantage of new economic and educational opportunities while the Shias, frozen out of the political process, remained politically impotent and economically depressed. The Shia-Sunni rift continued as an important element of Iraqi social structure in the 1980s ,“ (Iraq: Historical Setting, Library of Congress Country Study, The Ottomon Period 1534- 1918).
Another extract is as follows:
“If we look back at the history of Islam and to the Shia-Sunni strife that broke out at in the first chapter of Islamic history following the death of the Prophet of Islam, and that ruptured in a bloody way in the battle of the Great Sedition between Ali and Muawiyyah and continued to divide the Muslim memory into two parts, we can see that nothing has changed since that era—matters calm down and flare up pursuant to the balance of powers between the two parties.
Political strife together with direct threat is the key motivator of sectarian literature, and history has much to relate in this regard. An example is the bloody conflict between the Ottomans and the Safavids that began with the famous Battle of Chaldiran in August 1514 between the Safavid Shah Ismail, the founder of the Safavid state and who was devoted to Safavid culture, and the Ottoman Sultan Selim I, who was prompted to fight this battle to restrain the Safavid ``Empire`` that had expansive ambitions under the slogan of Shia sectarianism….. Ardebili, was a Sunni Sufi mystic. Gradually and due to special complexities, steps were taken towards the conversion to Shia Islam until we reach the era of the Safavid Shah Ismail.
Shah Ismail was extreme in Shiism, in oppressing the Sunnis and in spreading Shia Islam in Iran. He had ambitions in Iraq and in the territories that bordered Iran in the east and north. His ambitions in Iraq were justified—it is home to the holy shrines.
What is also interesting about the story is that the father of Sultan Selim I, Bayezid, corresponded with the Safavid Shah and was interested in poetry and philosophy. He did not feel that he had to fight the Safavids. When news was confirmed about the Shah`s suppression of the Sunnis, the Ottoman Sultan, out of responsibility for his subjects, advised him to be kind to the Sunnis and refrain from being aggressive towards them. However, Sultan Selim I had a different view and believed that the Safavid Empire posed a real danger to the Ottoman Empire and that the Shah`s zealous promotion of the hardline version of Shia Islam was part of Ismail`s endeavor to provide an appropriate cultural ground for the expansion of the Safavid state. Here, the political considerations intertwine with the religious and social ones. Originally, perhaps the cause, or one of the causes for Ismail`s ancestors to choose Shia Islam and Ismail`s consolidation of the Shia doctrine was the political concern in the framework of creating a cultural identity for the new empire, an identity that is based on denominational distinction, differences in historical references, and collective local memory to complete the components of a different identity. We should not be surprised by this as the man`s ambitions, though profuse, were limitless when coupled with power.
In any case, the Ottomans managed to confine the Safavid extension within its present borders, however, the open border for conflict remained in Iraq; at one time the Safavid Shah entered Baghdad torturing the Sunnis, and at another point in time the Ottoman Sultans entered, torturing the Shia and reconstructing the tomb of Abu Hanifa,” (Mshari al-Zaydi, Sectarianism and Forms of Politics, Ashraq al-Awast).

I really do not understand where our discussion is heading to. We seem to have lost the basic point of the article. If we are at two different pages and do not understan each other`s point of view, this discussion is pointless. Be well,

Mohammad Gill

Of course there have been a minor schism between Shia and Sunnis in places like Lucknow for centuries -- that usually exacerbated during Muharram -- but what is happening in Iraq is something else.

the Americans bear the direct responsibility for these bloody encounters massacres and ethnic cleansing -- it is something they started by doing themselves in Fallujah -- and by arming sectarians of one community against the other -- the whole premise of American aggression and diabolical misadventure in Iraq were based on the devious premise -- that the Shias will welcome the Americans with garlands against the `Sunni` Dictator Saddam Hussein.

The same American game is being played in Syria -- that the dastardly American `liberators` will have Sunni garlands waiting for them if Bush invades `Sunni`` Syria ruled by a `Shia` son of a ruthless `Shia` Dictator Assad.

in reality the two dictatorship were NEVER based on the Shia Sunni divide. It is an entirely -- Made In USA -- counterfeit product.

The Shia-Sunni massacres have been started by the Neocon vermins of George Bush -- by playing one against the other and then becoming a pious `arbiter` between the two -- the old trick of the occupiers against the occupied that always worked -- as it worked `wonderfully` for the ethnic cleansing that happened in Punjab post independence.