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| The Shi’a and Sunni: An Islamic or a Secular Approach? |
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Although some Shi'a scholars discouraged involvement in politics and ruling, recent examples being the marjah16 Ayatullah Khoei (d. 1992) and his student and successor Ayatullah Sistani, their view does not equate to rejecting Islam as a political system. It is a temporary stance, which asserts that Muslims should avoid ruling until the return of the twelfth Imam because only he has the competency and right to rule. It is an enforcement of core ithna ashari doctrine: the rulers and spiritual guides of the Islamic community are infallible and divinely appointed, coming only from the bloodline of Ali and numbering twelve, the twelfth of which will re-appear at the point of his choosing. Until then, during the period of the final Imam's absence (ghaybah), the proposal is not that Islam is apolitical, but that none can assume his role as a ruler over temporal matters.
The Shi'a attitude towards politics and ruling during the ghaybah has however been a point of debate amongst Shi'a scholars exactly because de facto, it presented the possibility of rule by non-Islam: if none can rule during the ghaybah, someone else will and there is no guarantee they will do so according to Islam. The challenge to the traditional stance of political caution in the absence of the twelfth Imam gathered particular relevance under Safawid rule, a debate whose logic arguably provided the justification for the Iranian marjah, Ayatullah Ruhullah Khomeini (d. 1989), to lead the Iranian revolution in 1979. Whilst residing under the Caliphate, the issue had little relevance; the rule was managed by Sunnis but was broadly Islamic and could be reconciled with political passivity during the ghaybah, although the Shi'a stance before the ghaybah had been different.17 As the Safawid rulers courted the advice and opinions of Shi'a scholars, Shi'a thinking began to expand and formalise beyond its traditional scope.18 Key elements of the current Shi'a hierarchy were developed and formalised under Safawid rule, particularly the formality of talib-ul-ilm (student) progressing to hujjat-ul-Islam (teacher) to Ayatullah, following the establishment of centres of learning at Isfahan and Najaf.19 The Shi'a thinking developed to afford the marjiyyah greater power and rights previously considered the reserve of the twelve Imams, such as the right to collect charity, adjudication in certain civil cases and issuing legal opinions on important political issues.20 The marjiyyah were increasingly considered proxies of the twelfth Imam through which they were afforded greater responsibilities.
It was during this period therefore that the notion of Wilayat ul-Faqih - the governance of the jurist - formally emerged, particularly through the writings of Mullah Ahmad al-Naraqi (d. 1829), although in somewhat limited form. The expanded powers of the marjiyyah came under this banner but still did not include all functions of ruling. It was only until Ayatullah Khomeni's publication of al-Hukumat al-Islam Wilayat ul-Faqih (Islamic Government: Wilayat ul-Faqih) that it came to include the right of a fallible but upright jurist to govern as a proxy to the twelfth Imam in the Imam's absence.21 Khomeini challenged the notion that Islam should be absent from ruling even if it be a temporary measure until the return of the twelfth Imam, stating, "From the time of the Lesser Occultation down to the present (a period of more than twelve centuries that may continue for hundreds of millennia, if it is not appropriate for the Occulted Imam to manifest himself), is it proper that the laws of Islam be cast aside and remain unexecuted, so that everyone acts as he pleases and anarchy prevails? Were the laws that the Prophet of Islam laboured so hard for twenty-three years to set forth, promulgate, and execute valid only for a limited period of time? Did God limit the validity of His laws to two hundred years? Was everything pertaining to Islam meant to be abandoned after the Lesser Occultation?"22 His proposed Wilayat ul Faqih therefore reconciled the period of the ghaybah with the belief that the Islamic political order could not be suspended. By arguing that the Shi'a must accept a fallible individual to rule as a proxy to the Imams, Khomeini filled the gap in a potential Islamic political deficit that arose from a literal interpretation of the ithna ashari doctrine. Shi'a who subscribe to Wilayat ul-Faqih draw on a number of historical works such as those of Shaykh al-Muffid (d. 1022) to highlight that it has strong precedent in Shi'a thought and that had previous Shi'a scholars confronted a world without Islamic rule and did not experience persecution they would have arrived at a similar conclusion.23
Khomeni was not the first senior Shi'a however to challenge the doctrine of passivity in a world without Islamic rule. Arguably, one of the strongest Shi'a advocates of Islamic political rule during the ghaybah, at least in the twentieth century, was the Iraqi marjah Ayatullah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr (d. 1980). Forming the movement Hizb ad-Da'wah (Party of the Islamic Call), he opposed communist influences in Iraq and engaged in open political opposition to the secular Baathist regime with a view to establish, not an Iraqi, but an Islamic state that encompassed the whole of the Islamic world. Baqir al-Sadr, uncle of Moqtada al-Sadr the hostile opponent of U.S. presence in Iraq, wrote a number of key works on various elements of an Islamic political order, including titles such as Our Economics, Sources of Power in the Islamic State and a series of essays later called al-Islam Yaqwud al-Hayat (Islam Governs Life). In so doing, he challenged the traditional political seclusionism of some Shi'a in the Hawza al-Ilm (religious institution) of Najaf where he was a student, teacher and granted status as marjah. He declared while under house arrest because of his opposition to Baathism and non-Islamic rule in Iraq, "The only thing I have sought in my life is to make the establishment of an Islamic government on earth possible"24 and before his execution at the hands of Saddam in 1980, "It is incumbent on every Muslim…to liberate themselves from this inhuman gang, and to establish a righteous, unique, and honourable rule based on Islam”.25
For the Sunnis, Islamic political authority-termed the 'Caliphate'-is well-established and its existence dominates Islamic history. It is regarded as a continual obligation and its absence, even if temporary, deemed unacceptable. Sunni jurists have written extensively on the Caliphate system as a whole, from the writings of al-Mawardi (d. 1058) to an-Nabhani (d. 1977), as well as detailed works on various elements of its apparatus written by scholars across all schools of Sunni thought from as early as Shaybani's Kitab al-Siyar (The Islamic Law of Nations), Qadi Abu Yusuf's Kitab al-Kharaj (relating to land taxation) and numerous others. The principle difference between the Shi'a and Sunni is over the virtues and qualities of those who rule, not whether Islam should rule in the first instance. Disagreements over the criteria for selecting a head of state is an area of legitimate difference of opinion (ikhtilaf); whilst the Sunnis hold at least seven core conditions26, the Shi'a during the absence of the twelfth Imam insist on his credentials as a jurist (faqih).
Both Shi'a and Sunni therefore hold identical conceptions of Islam: that Islam is a spiritual and a political system. Not only does this belief run counter to a secular outlook, but it has been the emergence of secular forces in the Muslim world and the demise of Islamic rule that have triggered the Islamic political conscience amongst both Sunni and Shi'a to reassert the need for Islamic governance. Particularly since the onset of the ghaybah period for the Shi'a, the Shi'a and Sunni have articulated the Islamic ruling in very similar terms (a point expanded later). Indeed, following the destruction of the Caliphate in 1920s Turkey, Sunnis advocating its restoration have worked with Baqir al-Sadr and made contact with Khomeni.27
Had Khomeini's post-Iranian revolution constitution matched his earlier writings on the subject of Wilayat ul-Faqih, Sunnis and Shi'a were ready to recognise his rule as genuinely Islamic as an open letter published after the revolution, mudhakkira min Hizb ut-Tahrir hawl al-Dustur al-Irani, declared.28
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