كيفما تكونوا يول عليكم

I think the reason July in Iraq has had so many revolutions is because it's so insanely hot that it drives people ape-crazy. Just look at this, now I don't know what these guys did to the Iraqis at the time, but I'd bet it'd be only a fraction of what Saddam and his boys did, so you can imagine the pulp he'd have been if THIS is the fate of the comparatively-civil Hashemites and their minister al-Said, the only thing that escaped Saddam Sahil Carnival was...the presence of the Americans, and to top it off, the lucky bastard had a fantastic execution he could only dream of thanks to sectarian stupidity. These are from Zeyad's, but he was a gentleman at the time and did not publish them in the post itself, linking to an outside source while warning you that they are gruesome, I'm posting them full-on, you need to see this and appreciate the work of God's creation, it's nice to know the world isn't so nice.
Looking at this, I must say that Saddam was indeed a product of his environment.

Isn't this eerily familiar?

Some of previous American contributions to democracy in the Middle East, this is tragically funny:

"US and UK relations with Iran have a long history. Both states have been considered imperialist states by Iranians and have a long history of interference in Iran's internal affairs. In 1907, the Anglo-Russian Agreement between Russia and Britain divided Iran into spheres of influence, challenging Iran's moves toward independence. At the height of the Cold War, the administration of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a joint British-American operation to overthrow democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, in the pretext that his nationalist aspirations would lead to an eventual communist takeover. The information from CIA that became unclassified decades later proved that the only objective of this was to secure oil interests for the United States and Britain. The operation was code-named Operation Ajax. At first, the military coup seemed to fail, and the Shah fled the country. After widespread rioting -- and with help from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence services -- Mossadeq was defeated and the Shah returned to power, ensuring support for Western oil interests and snuffing the perceived and largely unfounded threat of communist expansion."

NOTE: If you're too stupid to figure it out (like the last time I posted a double-entendre post), the text tells the story in 1953, and the links tell it in 2003. you can just hover over the links to read what they really mean.

The Shia Arab Question, Prologue

PROLOGUE

Azadi, The Persian Baathist

NOTE: Read this first and pretend the links don't exist, then read it with the links.

Glorious Persia,

How I have wished to live in you 200 years ago, under the rightful rule of the Sassanids, blissful in the abode of your lovely domains, I would choose to be anything, details are of no concern to me, let me be a lowly porter in the dirty streets of Shiraz, or a loyal servant of the royal chamber in Ctesiphon. What matters is that I would breathe in every minute the air of your magnificence, the eminence of your culture, that I hold my high high, basking in the power of your empire. The land of the Aryans, destined to rule the world, home of the proud and the noble Persians.

How grave is the insult, devastating the injury, then, to see your domain desecrated by those lizard-eating Bedouins, to see those uncivilized nomads, united in an inexplicable fashion, devouring your terrains and eradicating your legacy, how can I be calm when I see those people which we used to rule in [Iraq], Yemen and the [Persian] Gulf destroy the foundations of your beauty and rule, to see foolish peasants embrace their religion, sometimes welcoming them with wide open arms, celebrating what they claim is release from our tyranny and repression!?! How shameful, it is to see our own brave men abused and sold as second-hand slaves, our women and daughters kept as concubines and spoils of war, how much I had rejoiced at the death of their cursed head, Umar, by the patriotic martyr, Abu Lu'lu', they tried to pretend they came with equality, tolerance and respect in the eyes of their religion in the beginning, but their warped intentions soon became evident, the new rulers, the Umayyads, are actively disrespecting us, shunning us from all public posts and claim that this is the payback for the "inequality" that we used to treat them with, those uncouth scum! We treated them with more than they deserve in the first place, but this is how the vermin Arabs repay kindness, scum remains scum.

Persia,

For many centuries your enemies have surrounded you from all sides, since time immemorial you have been destroyed a thousand times, many times had they tried, from Alexander the Terrible and his barbarians in the north, to this army of darkness, but you have always managed to come back again, stronger, more powerful, and with a greater sense of pride and duty than ever before, never shall we surrender to the swords of the Barefoots, and now the chance is ripe, now the bounty is at hand ; now it all comes to head, Hussein bin Ali has been killed, now his sympathizers and kin are angry and regretful, even people who were fooled by the Arabs are quickly realizing their gross mistake, everyone is intent on attaining freedom again, and we, of all nations, plan to strike back, the idea of revolution is quickly finding ground all over your lovely terrains, the Arab domain is collapsing, their dynasty is rife with turbulence, and Abu Muslim al-Khurasani is now rallying your dedicated citizens for the great cause, we shall fight them everywhere, and we shall never surrender, and soon Persia would be alive again, its language, its culture, its greatness, are all immortal and will never be gone ; it may be different, but one way or another, Persia will live on.

Your Son,
Azadi.

عمر بشكست پشته هجبران عجم را برباد فنا داد رگ وريش جم را
اين عربده وخصم خلافة زعلي نسيت با آل عمر كينه قديم أست عجم را
*
ميت و المعزيات موش امهاته
ما يبجن على المات يبجن شماته

Ali al-Wardi 3: Intercession

Some of the foundations of religious faith at that time were based on intercession, meaning that when people claim to hold to the prophet’s companions or household, then it does not mean following their way of life, but to get their intercession on judgement day. People believed that life is mortal, and is not worthy of human interest but must one must tend to the afterlife instead, most importantly by performing religious duties on one hand and to get the intercession of those favored by God on the other. As for morals and good treatment and so forth then they are not important as all sins in their regard may be forgiven by the intercessors whom God loves extremely. It is clear that this principle of ‘intercession’ has roots in the composition of the governing state in old times, people are used to see that the person who is close to the sultan is able to save someone’s neck or grant rewards, this was reflected on their religious faith. This also explains many contradictory social patterns in Ottoman-era Iraq as the people (government and commons) were extremely focused on rebuilding shrines and mosques at times where oppression and thievery was common between people, as the government oppresses people who oppress each other, all believing in a seat of heaven once the intercessors speak their words.

One of the most controversial cases in Sunni-Shiite debates is the succession of Prophet Mohammed, any researcher looking into the case through modern objective lenses will feel that the case is one of the far past and has no exclusive relationship to the present, Iraqis opinion was different, as they believe the person who succeded the prophet will be their intercessor and could rescue him from damnation.

The foundations of intercessions is common in all major religions in one form or another, but we could argue that its effects are subdued earlier on, as people pour their interest in performing righteous deeds more than indirect intercession, however as time takes its course people revert to their old social pattern, immersed in life and far away from religion, they find themselves drowning in sins and has no hope for salvation unless by a guided figure who will be their ticket to God. They do not ask God directly, for their example is the one of a criminal being led to the court, finding no other solution but to seek a ‘middle man’, so he dedicates his effort to this ‘middle man’, thinking that his heart must soften and be moved by dignity to come to his aid, people extend this principle to what happens before the afterlife as well, when someone is ill, had a relative dead, is in heavy debt, or is surrounded by plague, they would hurry to a shrine of a saint or imam and would cry and beseech him. They rarely address God himself, for he is like the Sultan who is unreachable due to his high esteem and regard.

Hasan Kibreet:

The story of Hasan Kibreet is a very fitting example for the social values dominant at those times, Kibreet was a shaqi in al-Kadhimiya district of Baghdad who lived at late Ottoman, early-British period. The many tales people weave around him depict him as a bloodthirsty butcher of the sort that kills a man and then walks in his funeral the next day, others relate incidents which could only be interpreted as sadistic, as he takes pleasure in bloodshed and pain, when he participated wit the Mujahideen in al-Sha’eeba incidents during World War I he would not only kill enemy soldiers but would decapitate them and bring their heads to clerics who were with the Mujahideen, who were sickened by his deed and would reproach him without any effect.

Someone asked Kibreet about the number of his victims and how he shall face his creator, he said that he killed a lot of people but he is hoping for the intercession of Fatima al-Zahraa, saying that one day while he went with a number of Baghdad shaqis to rob rich houses there, he passed the Sheikh Ma’roof cemetery in Kadhimiya, and he heard the sound of a pleading girl who is crying for Fatima al-Zahraa’s mercy, Kibreet realized that she was about to be raped while still a virgin, so he decided to add one more victim to his list for ‘Fatima al-Zahraa’, killing him and returning the girl to her parents safely. It is highly likely that Kibreet died while being certain that he will get that intercession, and many people of Iraq are still following his footsteps, killing, looting and assaulting, and then doing something by which they seek the intercession of a saintly figure close to God.

They are not to blame, as they are forced to do this due to their conditions, as they have grown up with the morals of Jahiliya, and have taken a custom to it and cannot deviate from it, on the other hand, they fear the punishment of God and hellfire, so they must reach a solace to pacify the catch-22.

Tob Abu Khuzama:

After Ottoman Sultan Murad re-liberated Baghdad from the hands of Iranian Saffavids in 1638, he left one of his heavy cannons to be put at the gate of the fortress, the cannon grew in the eyes of Baghdad’s peasants, Sunnis in particular, to hold something of a sanitly essence by which people are blessed and myths are spun around. The cannon was named ‘Tob Abu Khuzama’, allegedly because there was a small crack at its rim which legend has it that the cannon was at heavens when Baghdad was being laid siege to, and that God ordered Gabriel to descend to Earth to aid Sultan Murad to liberate Baghdad, so Gabriel descended, leading it by the rim. Other legends speak of the pattern of fish on its sides, saying that they stuck to the cannon while it crossed the ‘sea of power’ in its heavenly descent, and that the cannon picked up dirt and transformed it into bombs by the will of God. Other stories mention that Sultan Murad once became angry at the cannon and struck it by his fist, causing the crack as a testament to his physical strength. Another story talk about the cannon itself becoming angry (perhaps by the Sultan’s punch), so it hurled itself in the Tigris which forced Murad to pull it from its rim.

Those legends escalated into saintly proportions, women would bless their children by it, and would swear by it and hold promises near it, custom has it that the newborn in Baghdad is brought at his 7^th day, circled around the cannon, and have his head inserted inside the cannon three times, this continued until it was moved to the war museum prior to World War II, people forgot it and its saintly essence, not so long ago, the cannon was returned to al-Madyaan square, and is today an artifact without any divine value. (Konfused Kid - It was pulled out after 2003 by bandits who probably tried to make good use of its copper)

In conclusion, We cannot understand religious rites in Iraq and other similar societies unless we understand how prevalent and far-reaching the principle of intercession is in the hearts of people, people would deny this sometimes but they are still under sway unconsciously, for without that they would feel astray.

Konfused Kid: I had no intention to translate the passages regarding intercession as most of them were related to a principle which I felt wasn’t relevant to modern times, at least not as powerful as al-Wardi envisions it to be here , but after re-reading it casts very illuminating lights on the contradictory values of religion in Iraqis, it could explain how people who are supposed to be devout can go about their daily life while knowing that they have shed so much blood and destruction. Today, the principle of intercession has faded from the forefront of Sunnis, who claim to ‘ask God alone’. Perhaps influenced by Wahaabism, anyway, it is clear from al-Wardi that a few centuries Sunnis were just as attached to intercession as Shiites. Ironically, Saddam Hussein carried out many of the practices pointed at by al-Wardi here, I cannot remember how many gigantic mosques has he built in the last years of his reign.

Ali al-Wardi: Social Glimpses of the History of Modern Iraq

Ali al-Wardi is often considered the 'Godfather' of Iraqi sociology, A secular-styled writer of Shiite lineage, al-Wardi has written what many considered to be the definitive books on the history of Iraq and the psychology of its unfortunate inhabitants. His neutrality, which rejected both Marxist communism and Pan-Arab nationalism (the two major sparring factions at the time) put him at great troubles. I have long searched for his books and by a stroke of luck managed to find them online. I have been reading in this book 'Glimpses' for quite a while, in the following series of posts I am going to translate what I felt is relevant and crucial for those who want to understand why is this going on in Iraq. This book was published in 1951, but it didn't take it long for me to be dumbfounded by how little we progressed, and how much we stepped back. Take a look and see for yourself. al-Wardi, like my least favorite bloggers Iraq The Model unfortunately agree with me, is a must-read for anyone who even thinks of breaking it into understanding Iraq. This is for all the people who think 'Iraq' is still related to those distant civillizations we like to trumpet every now and other: The Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadains, even our own Islamic civillizations of Kufa, and Harun al-Rashid's Abbasid Baghdad, have nothing to do with the Ottoman-Saffavid foundations this bastard Iraq was built upon.



Ali al-Wardi,
Glimpes in the Social History of Modern Iraq
Published in 1951.

To study Iraqi society, an interest which I have become fascinated by for quite a substantial amount of time, I realized that I cannot understand society at present unless I understand the conditions by which it passed in its past decades, as each event must have left an impact, large or small, on the current behavior and thinking of people.

I would also like to point out a dilemma which always plagued me enormously in previous books, the question of neutrality and objectivity. Many delicate subjects will be discussed in this book regarding the viewpoints of many Iraqis, and those people are quite taken to view history the same way one would view a multi-faceted pyramid, as each group focuses on one side while omitting the others altogether.

Social Hypnosis

Iraqis are not different from other human beings, to be subjective is a natural human trait that could be weak or strong according to circumstances, a person undergoes in his social life a hypnosis that we could call ‘social hypnosis’, as society exerts on man since early childhood various impulses in values, morals, beliefs, and social considerations and by so puts man’s thinking in certain moulds that are hard to break. Thus, a person born in a certain environment is usually personified by the environment’s religious, political and emotional definitions. He believes that he took up those patterns by his own free will and choice while not realizing that he is merely the making of his own social environment.

Hypnosis can affect human beings to a degree that he could see white as black or to think that a particularly repulsive odor is quite pleasant.

Iran and Shiism

It is a common mistake to think that Shiism began in Iran, as all modern historical research shows us that it started in Iraq and then extended into Iran. Scholars agree that Iranians were Sunnis until the advent of the 16^th century, with the emergence of the Saffavid state. Prior to that, Shiites were not few in numbers there, but were only in a few cities. At the Saffavid era, Asfahan became the capital of the state and the center of Shiite learning, after the collapse of the state that center moved into the Iraqi city Kerbala and remained there until the end of the 18^th century, where it relocated into Najaf and settled there, apparently for good. (Konfused Kid- not really, Qom is now a rival center that is just as powerful as Najaf.)

What we wish to extract from all this is that Iran, after becoming Shiite, began affecting the Iraqi society considerably, as ties between the Iranians and Iraqi Shiites grew by the days. Therefore, a unique social condition was established in Iraq, The majority of Iraq’s population were Shiite Arab while their scholars were Iranians. Iranian students come into Iraq to take lessons in Najaf or Kerbala, some return home and some stay. It is only natural that those who stay remain connected to their homeland, bringing influence of any political and religious disputes back home, the disputes between clerics in Iran would spread in Iraq this way, going as far as affecting the general population, such examples are the cases of the Tinbak in 1890, and the Mashrootiya in 1906, and many others. This unique condition would have been unimportant had Iraq been a part of the Iranian state, but destiny had it that Iraq becomes part of the Ottoman state, so the Iraqi society had a very severe identity crisis, as its government was linked to Turkey while the majority of the population was linked to Iran.

Sectarain Escalations:

Ottoman State has appeared in Turkey since the 7^th Hijri century, but it expanded Westward first towards Europe, and never headed East towards Iraq and other Arab states before the emergence of the Saffavid state in Iran, ever since then Iraq becomes the grounds for violent clashes between the Iranian and Ottoman states, something that will last for three centuries. From here the famous Iraqi saying: “be nil ajam wil room balwa ibtilayna” (Between the Ajam (Persians) and Room (Turks) we fell into tragedy), this ‘balwa’ in Iraq came because the Iranian State adopted Shiism as a slogan while the Ottoman picked up Sunnism, escalating sectarian tensions in Iraq unbearably. Sectarain tensions existed in Iraq since early Islam, as Abbasid-era Baghdad witnessed battles between Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in which many were killed, houses were burned, and religious places violated. The clash reached its apex only when Iraq became between the rock of the Persians and the hard place of the Ottomans, as the talk of the town for Iraqis consisted merely of the news of the two states, with each sect beseeching God to grant victory to their compatriots. Iraqis knew nothing then of modern political ideas such as patriotism, nationalism or independences. All that filled their thinking was religious sentiments represented by sectarian extremism. By this, they did not consider Iranians or Turks as foreigners who sought to occupy the land and its wealth, but as a protector of the sect and a rescuer of the subjects. This view was widespread until very recent times, an example of this is the veneration given to a canon known as ‘Tob Abu Khuzama’, this canon was brought by Ottoman Sultan Murad the Fourth to liberate Baghdad, and then left it there. The population used to bless with the canon and its flag in spite of it just being a tool to ‘occupy’ Iraq and ‘colonize’ it according to modern-day standards.

Sectarain war, on its outward appearance, is based on the clash between those who adhere to the prophet’s household and those who adhere to his companions. As a matter of fact, both Ottoman and Iranian states were both similar in being as far as possible from the principles of both the Prophet’s household and companions. Both were in the vein of traditional imperialist countries which bore little resemblance to the Islamic State witnessed in the days of the Prophet and his Rashidun Caliphs. Ottoman-era Iraqis knew nothing of this, as all that was important to them as that the state be of their sect, so their Imams shrines are venerated and their religious practices and festivities are taken proper care of, the state then is free to do as it pleases as its affairs does not concern them and they believe it is of little concern to their religion.

Continued.