The
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq
Roel
Meijer
(Roel
Meijer is a lecturer at Radboud University
in Nijmegen, the Netherlands and a fellow of
the International Institute for the Study of
Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden.)
| 
A
delegation loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr bids
farewell to Sheikh ‘Abd al-Salam al-Kubaysi
(left) of the Association of Muslim Scholars
at Umm al-Qura mosque, May 22, 2005.
(Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP) |
The
October 15, 2005 referendum on the new Iraqi
constitution, like other stages in the US-sponsored
political transition after the fall of Saddam
Hussein’s regime, drew fresh attention
to the many opponents of that transition and
the US occupation who are not directly involved
in the ongoing insurgency. In keeping with the
pattern in place since the old regime fell, the
global media identified this opposition as “Sunni,” implying
that political attitudes in Iraq are uniquely
determined by religious affiliation. In fact,
these opposition forces are not uniformly Sunni
Arab, and many are secular nationalist—not
sectarian or even religious—in orientation
and identity. Yet it is true that the course
of the post-Saddam political transition, coupled
with the disproportionate representation of Sunni
Arabs in the old Iraqi state and the Baath Party,
and the heavy-handed counterinsurgency campaign
in majority-Sunni Arab areas, have conspired
to concentrate opposition to the new order in
the Sunni Arab community.
By
the early summer of 2003, it was clear that sectarian
and ethnic identity would be a major organizing
principle of post-Saddam Iraqi politics, if not
the most important one. Seats on the Iraqi Governing
Council appointed by US viceroy L. Paul Bremer
were allocated according to a sectarian-ethnic
quota system. Powerful Iraqi actors on the council,
chiefly the Shi‘i religious parties returned
from exile and the twin Kurdish parties, advocated
strongly for the interests of pious Iraqi Shi‘a
and the Kurds, respectively. Zealous “debaathification” of
ministries and the dissolution of the Iraqi army
threw a sizable number of Sunni Arabs, who had
been favored for leadership positions under the
old regime, out of work. In this environment,
and with an insurgency growing, numerous organizations
emerged to advocate for Sunni Arab interests.
“Under
One Roof”
By
far the most important hardline Sunni Arab political
organization has been the Association of Muslim
Scholars (Hay’at ‘Ulama’
al-Muslimin). The Association was founded five
days after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Its headquarters are in the immense Umm al-Qura
mosque in Baghdad, which was built by the old regime
after the 1991 Gulf war and is famous for its minarets
in the shape of Scud missiles. Its leader, Harith
al-Dhari, 64, acquired a degree at al-Azhar University
in Islamic studies and taught at Baghdad University,
before fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime at
the end of the 1990s, returning only after the
regime’s fall. Although the Association claims
to include all Sunnis, “whether Arabs, Kurds
or Turkmen,”[1] in practice it represents mainly Sunni Arab
imams and clerics of mosques and schools in the “Sunni
triangle”—the area of northwestern
Iraq heavily inhabited by Sunni Arabs—but
also in Sunni pockets in the Shi‘i south,
such as in Basra. The Association is well-organized,
with a newspaper named al-Basa’ir and
a sophisticated website, as well as articulate
representatives, such as Harith al-Dhari himself,
his son Muthanna al-Dhari, chief ideologue and
international spokesman Muhammad ‘Ayyash
al-Kubaysi, and domestic spokesmen
‘Abd al-Salam al-Kubaysi and Bashar al-Faydhi.
All of these men are regularly asked to comment
on pan-Arab satellite channels like al-Jazeera
and al-Arabiyya. They travel frequently to neighboring
Arab countries, where they are received by such
figures as Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League,
and they have garnered the explicit support of
prominent Islamist intellectuals like Fahmi Huwaydi.[2]
In
stark contrast to its present role as a major
political force, the Association denies any political
ambitions. ‘Abd al-Salam al-Kubaysi claims
that “We are not a political party, nor
are we a movement.” Rather, the purpose of the
Association is to “bring the Sunni community
under one roof.”[3] Other
Sunni organizations contest the Association’s
aspiration to become the spokesman of the Sunni
community. One of these is the Sunni Endowment
headed by the septuagenarian ‘Adnan Dulaymi.
The Sunni Endowment was established subsequent
to the Coalition Provisional Authority’s
decision to split the Ministry of Religious Endowments
(awqaf) into a Shi‘i and a Sunni
section. Although financially stronger than the
Association, the Sunni Endowment is politically
weaker. Because its head is a government official,
he can be fired; after Dulaymi criticized the
draft constitution in July, he was succeeded
by Ahmad al-Samarra’i. The second major
competitor is the Iraqi Islamic Party, particularly
those members of the party close to ‘Abd
al-Muhsin Hamid, who served in the CPA’s
Iraqi Governing Council. Like the Association,
the party springs from the Muslim Brotherhood,
but it has taken a much more accommodating attitude
toward cooperation with the US. It also maintains
close relations with Saudi Arabia.
The
main strategy the Association has adopted to
counter its Sunni competitors is to claim to
be a Sunni counterpart to the Shi‘i marja‘iyya (religious
authority) in Najaf, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani. As the marja‘iyya does
for the Shi‘a of Iraq, the Association
aspires to act as a power broker behind the scenes
in the Sunni community of Iraq, laying down the
main political guidelines and strategy for the
whole community, interfering in day-to-day politics
only when necessary. Another strategy the Association
has adopted is to claim to speak for those engaged
in anti-occupation struggle. The exact nature
of the Association’s relations with the
insurgency is unclear, and it is unknown which
groups it represents, but its influence is apparent
from the role it played in securing the release
of foreign hostages in 2004. The choice of so
many guerrillas to lay down their arms for the
October 15 referendum is also partly attributable
to the Association’s call, though some “former
regime elements” also called for quiet
so that people could vote no in peace. The fact
that the Association has developed such a broad
ideology shows that it tries to represent a broad
spectrum of insurgent groups.
The
Association’s rise to political prominence
dates from the April 2004 Falluja crisis,
when the Iraqi Governing Council, under US pressure,
condoned the US military’s assault. The
Association owes its popularity to the fact that
it was the most important self-identified Sunni
organization to oppose the attack. Not only did
it defend the rebels and mobilize its wide mosque
network to collect food and aid for the besieged
inhabitants of Falluja, but through its intellectual
input, the association also provided the insurgency
with a more sophisticated political platform.
Reflecting the highly mixed character of the
insurgency, ranging from conservative ‘ulama’ in
Falluja to jihadis in Ramadi, as well as the
Baathist officers who may be the most organized
leadership, the Association mixed an ideological
cocktail to justify the rebels’ fight.
Apart from numerous interviews with its spokesmen,
the best concise expression of the Association’s
ideology is found in a series of 20 articles
by Muhammad ‘Ayyash al-Kubaysi collected
as the Jurisprudence of Resistance (Fiqh al-muqawama).[4] Through these writings, the Association aimed
to counter the constant US effort to denigrate
the insurgency as nothing, to use the words of
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but “thugs,
gangs and terrorists.”
Resistance
or Jihad
Initially,
the political platform of the Association was
based not on Islam, but on universal rights mixed
with nationalism—namely the natural right
of every people, Muslim or non-Muslim, to resist
occupation (ihtilal), as had been the
case with the Vietnamese. As the right to defend
oneself is a natural human right, Muhammad ‘Ayyash
al-Kubaysi said in a December 2004 debate
on al-Jazeera, it was not necessary to call for
a jihad or issue a religious edict (fatwa)
to sanction the Iraqi struggle for independence.
Another reason for not adopting Islamic terminology
was that it might scare off non-Muslims who feel
outrage at the occupation of Iraq.[5] Instead
of the term “jihad,” the Association
preferred the more neutral term “resistance” (muqawama),
which it borrowed from Hamas. Implied is that
the United States plays the same role in Iraq
that Israel does in the occupied Palestinian
territories. On a higher level, the struggle
is cast as part of a overall civilizational war
between “crusading” forces of evil
bent on destroying the Iraqi nation—to “sequester
its mind, thought, social relations and way of
life,” said Kubaysi on al-Jazeera—and
the heroic resistance which defends the “land,” “honor” and “religion” of
Iraq.
However,
despite its defense of armed resistance as both
a human right and a national right, the Association
was ultimately unable to withstand the lure of
calling for a jihad and adopting a discourse
that resembles that of the jihadi salafis in
its praise of violence. Most of its defense of
armed resistance is directed against “moderate ‘ulama’”—a
code word for its rivals who have been more flexible
toward the US presence. Muhammad ‘Ayyash
al-Kubaysi states that the present crisis leaves
no room for moderate political means. All efforts
should be subordinated to waging a jihad because “the
call to Islam is the call to jihad, because jihad
is Islam.”[6] Like
the jihadis, he regards resistance as a personal
duty (fard
‘ayn) that is ignored at the risk of
denying tawhid, the unity of God.[7] In
fact, Kubaysi states that joining the muqawama and
taking up arms is a “duty of the times” that
takes precedence over duties like fasting and
even prayer.[8] On the other hand, Kubaysi and the Association
have on numerous occasions denounced the use
of indiscriminate violence against Iraqi civilians,
such as that attributed to Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi’s
al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia organization.[9] Even attacks directed against
the Shi‘i-dominated National Guard are
condemned, because, as Kubaysi argues, Islamic
law stipulates that criminals can only be convicted
in a court of law. His statement, “You
cannot execute them without legal proceedings;
an Iraqi is not an occupier but a citizen of
the nation,” demonstrates that the real
distinction is not so much a classical legal
one between Muslims and infidels as a nationalist
one between citizens and occupiers. While citizens
are protected by law, Iraqis have a national
as well as a religious duty to fight occupiers.[10]
That
this nationalist struggle is the main defining
feature of being an Iraqi and acquiring a citizen’s
rights is underscored by the general attitude
of the Association toward the Iraqi Shi‘a.
Shi‘ism in itself is not condemned, as
is the case with the salafis who regard Shi‘a
as “rejectionists” (rafida)
of Islam, but participation in the resistance
is the main criterion for inclusion in the nation.
In this regard, the Association even lays claim
to the legacy of Imam Hussein. His choice to
die an exemplary martyr’s death and establish
a “school of martyrdom” (madrasat
al-Husayn al-istishhadiyya), instead of capitulating
to the “tyrant of the age” (taghut
al-‘asr), has been betrayed by the
Shi‘i leadership itself. If it were not
for the US and their continuous attempts to instigate
sectarian strife (al-fitna al-ta’ifiyya)
by deliberately playing the sectarian card (al-waraqa
al-ta’ifiyya), the Association argues,
Iraq would now be in better shape. The division
of the nation and the weakening of the state
itself through the introduction of federalism
have been successful because the US has convinced
the Shi‘i leadership that they head an
oppressed sect (ta’ifa mazluma).[11] Consequently, the Shi‘i
leadership adopted the US policy to base the
interim political system on proportional representation,
which enhanced the ethnic and religious divisions
in Iraq. As “true democracy is impossible
under occupation,”
the Association has decided to boycott all Iraqi
political institutions as long as the US does not
agree to a timetable for withdrawing its troops
from
Iraqi soil.
A
Fleeting Alliance
The
high point in the Association’s power occurred
between April 2004 and March 2005,
when it succeeded in mobilizing the myth of a “national” insurgency
to promote all-out political boycott as the only
means to defend the interests of the Sunni community.
It outmaneuvered its rivals because Sunni Arabs
(and many other Iraqis) were outraged by the
destruction of Falluja in April and November 2004
and the massive US counterinsurgency campaign
in the Anbar province in the following months,
while that summer they found a Shi‘i ally
in the firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia
rose up against the US in several towns in the
south. Against this background, any attempt by
Sunni moderates to join the “democratic
process” offered by the January 30,
2005 elections would have meant committing suicide.
Pointing
to Sadr, who stressed the Arab character of the
Shi‘a in his clash with the formerly Tehran-based
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI) and the Da‘wa Party, the Association
seemed justified in arguing that Iraq’s
problems Iraq were political, and not religious
or ethnic, in nature. The Shi‘a, in their
view, were working with the US because they sought
political gain within the proportional system
that favored their numerical majority, not because
they were against the Sunnis as such. Moreover,
Muhammad ‘Ayyash al-Kubyasi argued, not
only Shi‘a, or Kurds for that matter, had
suffered from Saddam Hussein’s repression.
In the new myth of the nation extolled by the
Association, all groups had suffered equally.[12] To underscore cross-sectarian
solidarity, the Association organized a rally
at Umm al-Qura during the first attack on Falluja
in April, in which, according to some reports,
up to 200,000 Shi‘is and Sunnis participated.[13] At the same time it participated in the establishment
of several joint Sunni-Shi‘i organizations
to “encourage unity and end the division
between the sects that has sprung up.”
The
Association of Muslim Scholars did not succeed,
however, in convincing a critical mass of Iraqis
to adopt its view of the strategic picture. Their
gestures toward pan-Iraqi solidarity petered
out after Sistani’s acceptance of the elections
scheme in October 2004. In a mirror image
of the Association’s platform denouncing
the January elections as the fruit of an illegal
occupation, Sistani proclaimed that voting in
the elections was an “individual duty.” Announced
on the eve of the second invasion of Falluja
and that city’s destruction in November,
this decision by the highest Shi‘i religious
authority in Iraq was regarded by the Association
and others as a stab in the back. With the end
of Sadr’s rebellion and the buildup of
the National Guard, the political clash between
Iraqis over cooperation with the US increasingly
assumed the cast of a sectarian-ethnic conflict.
The
sectarian-ethnic dividing lines were especially
clear-cut on January 30, when the combination
of boycott calls and rampant insecurity kept
Sunni Arab turnout extremely low—as little
as 2 percent in the Anbar province. Moderates
and hardliners alike stayed home. As a result,
Sunni Arabs were not represented in numbers proportionate
to their share of the population in the transitional
national assembly, and their inclusion in important
political decisions has occurred only at the
sufferance of the victorious Kurdish and Shi‘i
religious parties.
Toward
Engagement
Soon
afterward, moderate Sunni Arab leaders seized
the initiative from the hardliners. At the forefront
of this movement stood Dulaymi, head of the Sunni
Endowment. He argued that the boycott of the
January elections had been a disaster and that
the Sunni Arab community should take part in
the “political process.” Otherwise,
they would be completely and perhaps permanently
marginalized, politically and economically. Dulaymi
urged his co-religionists to offer input to the
committee appointed by the transitional national
assembly to draft a permanent constitution for
Iraq.
Other
Sunni Arab leaders, including the Iraqi Islamic
Party and Ahmad al-Samarra’i, imam of the
Umm al-Qura mosque, warmly welcomed this turn
toward engagement with the nascent state. On
April 1, al-Sammara’i issued a fatwa,
signed by 64 prominent Sunni clerics, many of
them members of the Association, in which he
urged Sunni Arab young men to join the National
Guard. The Guard’s recruitment among Shi‘a
meant that, increasingly, the clash between the
US and insurgents was turning into an intra-Iraqi
confrontation with clear sectarian overtones.
The fatwa demonstrated that the Sunni
leaderhip was deeply disturbed by the Shi‘i
and Kurdish takeover of the state, which they
feared would further damage Sunni interests.
The appointment of Bayan Jabr Solagh, a former
high-ranking official in SCIRI’s Badr Brigades,
as minister of interior confirmed their worst
suspicions.
Meanwhile,
and despite promises to the contrary, the leadership
of the transitional government did not exactly
bend over backwards to locate Sunnis to serve
on the constitution drafting committee. Only
after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited
Baghdad in May to push Prime Minister Ibrahim
Jaafari and President Jalal Talabani to include
the Sunni Arabs did their numbers on the 55-member
constitutional committee increase from the original
two to 15. Their participation, however, proved
an enormous disappointment. By the time they
were included in June, the Kurds and Shi‘a
had already tailored the draft constitution to
their liking. Due to the intense pressure exerted
by the US to reach an agreement before the deadline
of August 15, the negotiations brought out
the differences between the groups instead of
bringing them closer to each other.
As
the contents of the draft constitution leaked
out in July and August, Sunni Arab leaders registered
especially strong objections to three components.
They regarded the inclusion of an article outlining
procedures for ongoing “debaathification” of
the Iraqi state as a gross insult and, de facto,
a way of excluding Sunni Arabs from the government.
They resented the clause reading that “the
Arab people of Iraq are part of the Arab nation,” which
seemed to imply that Iraq as a whole is not part
of the Arab nation. Third and foremost, they
rejected the sections allowing Iraq’s transformation
into a federation in which provinces might acquire
rights over future oil finds instead of the central
state. The majority of Sunni Arab leaders argued
that voters should take part in the referendum,
but only to vote no. Six insurgent organizations
issued the same call, and some offered to protect
the ballot boxes during the referendum.[14] This newfound unity was, however, undermined
two days before the referendum when the Iraqi
Islamic Party and the Sunni Endowment, in return
for concessions from the government, especially
a major revision of the debaathification article,
urged their followers to vote yes. Hardliners
emerged to denounce this step immediately. The
Baghdad headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party
was bombed and its Falluja office was set on
fire.[15]
Aspirations
Unrealized
For
its part, the Association of Muslim Scholars
retained its rigid attitude toward the post-Saddam
political transition during the constitution
drafting process, refusing to send a member to
the Sunni delegation on the constitutional committee.[16] The group’s Sunni rivals were more flexible, joining
the process belatedly and turning the negotiations
to somewhat to their advantage by depicting the
negotiators of the Kurdish and Shi‘i religious
parties as intransigent and self-interested.
Even after the draft constitution was rejected
by the Sunni negotiators, instead of calling
for a mass mobilization to vote no in the referendum,
Muhammad
‘Ayyash al-Kubaysi issued a fatwa formulated
in the most negative terms, calling upon the Association’s
followers to vote against the constitution, but
only with the utmost reluctance. While he upheld
Association dogma that it is illegal to vote under
occupation, he argued that under present “exceptional
circumstances” one could break this rule.
As one’s survival depended upon political
participation, it had become a “necessity” (darura),
provided that participation did not hamper the
jihad against the US or lead to “cooperation” (muhadana)
with the enemy.[17] In an open letter, the Association was even more negative.
While condemning the draft constitution, the letter
left it to voters themselves to decide whether
to vote no or to boycott the referendum, warning
them that, if they opted to vote, politicians could
mislead them.[18] It
is clear that the Association, although it is not
anti-parliamentarian in principle and rejects the
constitution because it does “not present
the will of the people,” has not contributed
much to disseminating democratic concepts.
The
Association of Muslim Scholars has constructed
an ideology on the basis of resistance to the
US occupation, and its relations with other groups
in Iraq are seen entirely from this perspective.
Consequently, the Association does not realize
that a shift in power has taken place from the
US to the Shi‘i and Kurdish parties in
the transitional government. In this respect,
its most redeeming project, the search for allies
among the Shi‘a, has not been very successful.
The alliance with Sadr would reemerge only during
negotiations over the draft constitution a year
later, when Sadr organized mass demonstrations
against federalism in close cooperation with
the leaders of the Association and possibly former
regime elements as well. In Ramadi and other “Sunni
triangle” towns, demonstrators hoisted
pictures of Sadr next to those of Saddam Hussein.[19] Sadr
also intervened on behalf of the Association
when the latter accused the Badr Brigades, operating
under the guise of security forces, of waging
a campaign of terror against Sunni clerics, particulalry
members of the Association.[20] From the time of the invasion until the end of September 2005,
an Association report claims, 107 ‘ulama’ have
been assassinated and 163 arrested, and 663 Sunni
mosques have been destroyed or taken over.[21] The Association’s leadership has not
been spared, and both Harith al-Dhari and Bashar
al-Faydhi lost a brother to assassins’ bullets
during the turmoil of the past two years.
The
Association’s concentration on the most
radical Shi‘i groups and its obsession
with the occupation and armed resistance has
not only alienated SCIRI and Da‘wa, but
also the more neutral figure of Sistani, who
has also criticized the federalism provisions
in the new constitution. Meanwhile, Sunni organizations
that are willing to act like political parties,
like the Iraqi Islamic Party, have partly transcended
the confines of the Sunni Arab minority, an achievement
the Association still only aspires to. Although
its demand for a timetable for the withdrawal
of US troops has been popular, the Association
for Muslim Scholars’ inflexibility has
prevented it from becoming accepted as the Sunni
equivalent to the marja‘iyya. Its
future influence will depend on the success of
other Sunni organizations in mobilizing Sunni
Arabs to take part in the December 2005
elections.
Endnotes
[1] Interview
with ‘Abd al-Salam al-Kubaysi, al-Sabil [Amman],
October 7, 2003.
[2] Al-Sharq
al-Awsat, February 2, 2005.
[3] Al-Sabil,
October 7, 2003.
[4] Most
of the issues of the series have been published
in abridged form by al-Sabil, the Islamist
weekly commonly associated with the Jordanian
Muslim Brotherhood, between February and August
of 2005. The Association’s website has
now migrated to http://www.iraq-amsi.org/.
[5] “Li-madha
muqawama wa laysa jihadan?” Min fiqh
al-muqawama, part I, published in al-Sabil,
February 22, 2005.
[6] “Mujahidun
am du‘ah,” Min fiqh al-muqawama,
part XI, published in al-Sabil, May 4,
2005.
[7] “Al-Muqawama
wa ‘aqidat al-tawhid,” Min fiqh
al-muqawama, part III, published in al-Sabil,
March 1, 2005, and “al-Muqawama WA
al-maslaha al-‘amma,” Min fiqh
al-muqawama, part XVIII, June 26, 2005,
accessed online at http://www.iraq-amsi.org.
[8] “Al-Muqawama
wa wajib al-waqt,” Min fiqh al-muqawama,
part X, published in al-Sabil, April 26,
2005.
[9] See,
for instance, Communiqué 91, February 12,
2005, and Communiqué 94, February 19,
2005, available on the Association’s website.
[10] Interview
with Muhammad ‘Ayyash al-Kubaysi in al-Sabil,
February 1, 2005.
[11] “Al-Muqawama
wa al-waraqa al-ta’ifiyya,” Min
fiqh al-muqawama, part XII, May 11,
2005, accessed online at http://www.iraq-amsi.org.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Guardian,
April 10, 2004.
[14] IslamOnline.net,
August 22, 2005.
[15] New
York Times, October 15, 2005.
[16] Interview
with ‘Abd al-Salam al-Kubaysi in al-Sabil,
June 28, 2005.
[17] For
the full text of the fatwa, issued on
August 19, 2005, see http://www.thisissyria.net.
[18] The
open letter was published on Elaph.com, September 8,
2005. See also Communiqué 148, August 24,
2005, accessed online at http://www.iraq-amsi.org.
[19] Al-Sabil,
August 23, 2005.
[20] Al-Sharq
al-Awsat, May 19, 2005. For the role
of Muqtada al-Sadr, see Elaph.com, May 21,
2005.
[21] IslamOnline.net,
September 25, 2005.
