The Culture Beat

The news coming out of Iraq has made another interesting week for Rend Al-Rahim.

“All of the weeks are interesting now,” she said during a phone conversation on Thursday, sighing at the enormous understatement. “I could use some weeks that aren’t.”

Al-Rahim (pictured), a native Iraqi and naturalized American citizen, is executive director of the Iraq Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization she co-founded in 1991 to promote democracy in Iraq. From November 2003 to December 2004, she served the transitional government as Iraq’s ambassador to the U.S.

She also served as co-chair at a recent seminar in Salzburg, Austria, that addressed the topic of “reconciling religion and culture in a constitutional framework,” which is where we first met.

Reconciling anything in Iraq, especially religion, is a daunting prospect. The situation is complex (“We can’t do it justice with a few broad brushstrokes,” Al-Rahim cautioned), but there’s no understanding Iraq apart from its religion, which these days is dominated by the ongoing clash – some call it civil war – between the two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shiite, which costs hundreds of lives each month.

The factions date back to 632, when the Prophet Muhammad died and his followers literally battled over who would assume his leadership role. Some wanted to select the leader, or caliph, by consensus; they came to be known as Sunnis, or followers of the “sunna,” or “path” of the prophet. Others favored a hereditary line, beginning with Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali. They were known as “the party of Ali,” or “shiat Ali.”

“It was really about political authority, not interpretation of religion,” Al-Rahim said. “But gradually … it evolved into a divergence of interpretation of religion.”

While Sunnis and Shiites indeed differ in some beliefs and practices, these groups agree on core tenets of Islam and have lived in peace. Iraq itself was barely segregated in the past, according to Al-Rahim. Shiites and Sunnis lived next door to each other, sent their children to the same schools and even intermarried. Al-Rahim herself had a Shiite father and Sunni mother. (She does not consider herself a devout Muslim.) She sees less difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims than between Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians.

That’s not to say tensions don’t exist. Making up about 85 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims, Sunnis have always been politically dominant, sparking occasional Shiite uprisings.

Iran and Iraq are notable exceptions, where Shiites form the majority; in Iran they have ruled for 600 years. Iraq, about 60 percent Shiite, was ruled by Sunnis until the overthrow of Saddam Hussein – and that is a significant detail.

“In a sense, the Shiites always felt they got a raw deal,” Al-Rahim explained. “They were second-class citizens … regarded with suspicion. They always had a grievance. It’s important to know there’s this sense of injustice and injury.”

Even so, what’s happening in Iraq is new. “It doesn’t arise from grassroots hatreds or a desire for revenge against neighbors,” according to Al-Rahim. “The conflict is more from political leaders and parties.”

It’s almost impossible to separate religion from Iraqi politics, since almost every political party – and there are dozens – has some religious dimension.

“One of the problems we fell into after 2003 is that political identification became sort of the same as ethnic and religious identification,” Al-Rahim said. “The political parties that took over had the militias and funding to exert influence, and they identified with a religious sect or ethnicity. We got into identity politics.”

That process started under Saddam, who was able to set Shiite against Sunni as never before, a strategy to divide his enemies. But in the post-Saddam free-for-all, leaders on both sides exploit those divisions, playing not only on their followers’ religious beliefs but also on their resentments about the past and fears about any future if their opposites rule.

For now, political leaders on both sides believe their best interest is to keep the situation in chaos, to prolong the turmoil until they can grab an advantage. They will use religion or any other means to do that.

“Not to use (religion) as a political tool is the really important thing,” said Al-Rahim. “The clerics on both sides – their Friday sermons are pure politics now. The imams, the sheiks – they don’t talk about how to live your life, about faith. It’s all about politics.”

(First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 2 Dec 2006.)