Being Shia

Us Shia people are in the news a lot lately. What with the groups and countries that are directly resisting Israel outside of Palestine being Shia, and Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City being Shia as well. And since it's the start of the Islamic Month of Muharram, which is an incredibly important time for us. It's a good time to talk about what that means.

Now admittedly I am not a very orthodox Shia, I wrote a novel about a Muslim Matriarchy that's complaint with Islamic Law and that's not a standard Shia outlook at all, but I am Shia nevertheless and familiar with the core difference between Shia and Sunni philosophy.

It's important to note that in terms of core beliefs Shia Islam and Sunni Islam are identical and are also remarkably similar in terms of ritual practice as well.

The difference between the two comes from the succession crises that happened after the Prophet Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him, died.

There is some dispute about when tensions arose among the early Muslims after the passing of the Prophet. Sunnis hold the view that these arose later than Shias do, but it is undeniable that there were civil wars fought, and fought between people who personally knew the Prophet and were his close companions. For Shias the conflicts came to a climax when the second emperor of the Umayyad Empire, Yazid, cornered the family caravan of the second grandson of the Prophet, Hussain Ibn Ali Peace Be Upon Him, and massacred him and most of his caravan, throwing the survivors into captivity. The massacre itself happened on the tenth of the month of Muharram in the Islamic calendar which is why it is such an important month of mourning for us.

The crux of the conflict was Hussain's insistence that Yazid was a tyrant unfit to rule, and that his appointment to power by his father, the first Umayyad emperor Muawiya, was illegitimate. As far as Shias are concerned Yazid's actions proved Hussain right and just as Yazid has become a symbol of a power mad tyrant, Hussain is the paragon of resistance to tyranny no matter the cost, and resistance to oppression no matter how powerful the oppressor may be. I have recently heard Shiism be referred to as a 'liberation theology' and that is certainly flattering.

There are a lot of details that I've skipped over here of course, but the level of importance given to the events of Muharram in the year 61 AH is a very core part of it. It is a religious tradition that has a lot of relevance in the here and now as we grapple with the horrific oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza that has been livestreamed to us for close to two years now and wonder how the horror can be ended. Are we willing to give up even something as small as our feelings of personal comfort to speak out against it?

Death, Death to the IDF.

So there's a suddenly very popular chant going around, that's a follow up to "Free Free Palestine", and it is "Death, Death, to the IDF."

Now of course, whole music festivals worth of people obviously agree with it and are chanting it. It is fairly safe to assume there are billions of people around the world with similar sentiments.

The question becomes, of course, why is there such a disconnect between all of these humans and the comparatively few others who are horrified by it.

And it all comes down to the question of how much you consider the IDF guilty of committing war crimes, and not just war crimes but the crime of crimes, genocide.

Because of course, if you think the IDF is committing genocide, then military intervention to stop it, becomes completely justified. The end completely justifies the means. And that, of course, terribly, involves death.

And frankly I think the people horrified by the chant are either completely delusional or are pretending to be for ugly and selfish reasons.

Reclaiming martyrdom and jihad

One of the benefits of being born Shia, is growing up immersed in the story of Imam Hussain who exemplifies standing up against tyranny and standing up for what is right, even at great personal cost. And so for the next few days, at a time where we mourn his martyrdom in service to that cause. I will do my tiny bit by reclaiming some concepts that are deeply demonized in the West to justify tyranny against Muslim majority countries and casting Muslims in general as being worthy of suspicion and persecution.

The first is martyrdom. It is bizarre to me that Westerners have no problem with understanding the power of a phrase such as "Give me liberty or give me death." and then turn around and attempt to demonize Palestinians, secular and otherwise, for giving their people, murdered by the genocidal apartheid state of Israel, dignity in that death. For just being Palestinian is an act of resistance against Zionism, and being murdered for it, is to have given their lives in resistance. What else would that be if not a martyr? It is far past time that we moved to Liberty for Palestine, rather than Death.

Another is jihad. The way this term is demonized is fairly interesting in that, the first step is invariably to equate it with some vaguely defined political ideology that is fuzzily Muslim and completely evil. A 'jihadi' is one who holds to this ideology of 'jihadism' which is so terrible that it must be resisted at all costs.

The absurdity is that jihad has never been a political ideology. It is one component of a greater moral framework and a beautiful one at that. Because what jihad actually means is the struggle to do the right thing. Something as simple as holding on to litter to toss it into the right bin rather than dropping it on the ground is a jihad.

Now what these right things are, and what forms of struggle are legitimate in accomplishing them, those are where differing groups of Muslims have different ideologies. To deal with these in good faith requires addressing these groups separately and specifically, but the bad faith we are immersed in lumps all of us together and paints the very concept of jihad with the worst brush of groups like Boko Haram or Daesh.

The absurdity of saying anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism

Recently a Zio came at me with the old claim that Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Kind of hilariously, they used the argument that calling for the destruction of France, would make one anti-French.

Quite famously, the French themselves destroyed France in the French Intifada.... I mean French Revolution. Which shows why equating a state to a peoples is absolute BS. And so why being Anti Israel is not being Anti-Semitic. That argument becomes even weaker when you realize Zionism isn't even a state. It's a political ideology. Being against an ideology, and being against a state, has nothing to do with being against a people, and Zionism and Israel are no exceptions to this.

Western hypocrisy on Iran and Israel.

From what I can see, Israel and Iran wish to do the exact same thing to each other. which is to replace an opposing hostile government with one that isn't hostile and maybe even friendly. It’s just that in Western culture Israel's desire is seen as ‘Western sponsored regime change’ and worthy of funding and arming, while Iran's is seen as a far more scary ‘destruction’ by Muslims and worthy of unilateral attacks on unarmed civilians and nuclear facilities. This just shows how completely compromised the West is by Christian Zionist elites with absurd double standards, which increasingly obviously, fail to justify imperialism.