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A Shi‘a Debate on Arabism: The Emergence of a Multiple Communal Membership

2013; Routledge; Volume: 40; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13530194.2013.790288

1469-3542

Elisheva Machlis,

Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies

Abstract This article evaluates the approach of Shi‘i clerics of Arab origins towards Arabism, concentrating on the writings of Muammad usayn Kāshif al-Ghiā’ (c. 1876/1877–1954), the prominent Iraqi mujtahid of his time. Arabism was a key component of the Iraqi Shi‘is’ cultural heritage. Yet in the transition to the twentieth century, Shi‘i affiliation with Arabism signalled a more multiple sense of group membership, in a new interplay between a core sectarian identification and an emerging interaction with Iraqi nationalism, Arabism and pan-Islam. Kāshif al-Ghiā’ invested Arabism with a new understanding as a bridge towards the wider Arab-Muslim society and as a manifestation of a nascent sense of political activism among Shi‘i clerics. Consequently, Kāshif al-Ghiā’ illustrated how an emphasis on a shared progressive worldview could—in theory—lead to a transformation in inter-communal dynamics. Notes 2 Muammad usayn Kāshif al-Ghiā’, al-Dīn wa'l Islām (Sidon, Lebanon: Maba‘at al-‘Irfān, 1911), p. 12. 1 There is a debate among researchers over defining the period of the Constitutional Revolution. Some demarcated it as 1905–1909, from the approval of the Constituent Assembly to the securing of the constitution, while others defined it as 1906–1911, from the escalation of the nationalist protests to the annulment of the Majlis (the Iranian parliament). See Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982); Mangol Bayat, Iran's First Revolution: Shi‘ism and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1909 (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Janat Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy and the Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 3 Muammad usayn Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja'āt al-rī ānīya [ iwār fikrī, adabī, ‘aqā'idī bayna al-Imām Kāshif al-Ghiā’ wa-majmū‘a min al-‘ulamā’ wa-al-udabā’: ya‘ūdu al- iwār ila sanat 1913 M/1331 H], 2 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Hādī, 2003). 4 Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire 1908–1918 (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 82–115; Stanford J. Shaw & Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey Vol. II: Reform Revolution and Republic. The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 260–287. 5 Abrahamian, Iran between two Revolutions, pp. 62–88; Bayat, Iran's First Revolution, pp. 106–138, 260–267; Richard R. Cottan, Nationalism in Iran. Updated through 1978 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979), pp. 12–19. 6 During World War I, Iran was bankrupted by loans from Russia and debts to Britain. See Meir Litvak, Shi‘i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq: The ‘Ulama’ of Najaf and Karbala’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 35–38, 173–176. See also Cyrus Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah: From Qajar Collapse to Pahlavi Power (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), pp. 6, 52. 7 Nā'inī's treaty demonstrated an acceptance of some Western notions of governance, justified by linking constitutionalism to the laws of the Shari‘a. See Fereshte M. Nouraie, ‘The Constitutional Ideas of a Shi‘ite Mujtahid: Muhammad usayn Na'ini’, Iranian Studies, 8(4) (1975), pp. 234–247; Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 50–51. 8 On the nature of the shrine cities, see Litvak, Shi‘i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq. 9 For a more detailed account of this perception, see for example Etan Kohlberg, ‘From Imāmiyya to Ithnā-‘Ashariyya’, in Etan Kohlberg (ed.), Belief and Law in Imami Shi‘ism (Aldershot: Variorum, 1991), pp. 521–534; Saïd Amir Arjomand, ‘The Crisis of the Imamate and the Institution of Occultation in Twelver Shi‘ism: A Sociohistorical Perspective’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28 (1996), pp. 491–515. 10 Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 52–53, 60–66. 11 Existing studies focus on the development of the Iraqi nation state and its impact on the communal affiliation of the Shi‘is. These studies delineate a process of social change among Shi‘is of Iraq during this period which contributed towards their integration into the new nation state and their exposure to contemporary currents of thought, including Arabism. Yet this research does not provide an in-depth understanding of how this process was linked to wider and intertwined currents of thought. On the existing literature, see for example Orit Bashkin, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 157–169; Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq. 14 Al-‘Irfān, 42 (1954–1955), p. 113. 12 For a more detailed biography of Kāshif al-Ghiā’, see Silvia Naef, ‘Un Réformiste chiite—Muammad Husayn Âl Kâšif al-Ġiâ’, Die Welt des Orients, 27 (1996), pp. 51–86. See also al-‘Irfān, 42 (1954–1955), pp. 113–115. 13 See Martin Kramer, Islam Assembled: The Advent of the Muslim Congresses (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 132–133, 166–169. 15 Other Shi‘i clerics in the Arab world who introduced change to Imami thought during this period included: Shaykh Muammad Mahdī al-Khāliī (an Iraqi cleric who was deported to Iran in 1923); Sayyid ‘Abd al-usayn Sharaf al-Dīn al-Mūsawī (Lebanon); and Sayyid Musin al-Amīn al-‘Āmilī (originally from Jabal ‘Āmil who moved to Damascus to become the spiritual leader of the local Shi‘i community). 16 Litvak, Shi‘i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq, pp. 30–35. 17 On the development of Arabism, see for example Israel Gershoni, ‘Rethinking the Formation of Arab Nationalism in the Middle East, 1920–1945: Old and New Narratives’, in James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni (eds), Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 3–25; entry ‘Arab Nationalism’ in Avraham Sela (ed.), Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East (Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Publishing House, 1999), pp. 117–122. 18 For a description of the Salafi movement, see David Dean Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 124–144. 19 See, for example, Muammad usayn Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Jannat al-ma'wa (Beirut: Dār al-Uūl, 1988), p. 127. 20 See Sylvia Haim, ‘Introduction’, in Sylvia Haim (ed.), Arab Nationalism: An Anthology (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 3–74. 21 Sami Zubaida, ‘The Fragments Imagine the Nation: The Case of Iraq’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 34 (2002), pp. 205–215. 22 During the same period as Kāshif al-Ghiā’ was conducting this cultural exchange, Hibat al-Din al-Shahrastānī (1884–1967), another Shi‘i reformer from Iraq, expressed an affinity with Sunni reformist notions. See Orit Bashkin, ‘The Iraqi Aghanis and ‘Abduhs: Debate over Reform among Shi‘ite and Sunni ‘Ulama’ in Interwar Iraq’, in Meir Hatina (ed.), Guardians of Faith in Modern Times: ‘Ulama’ in the Middle East (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2009), pp. 141–169. 23 Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī was the mouthpiece of the Damascus Salafis in the late nineteenth century. He promoted the reform of Islam through a revival of ijtihād and urged Muslims to unite over the fundamentals of Islam. Yūsuf al-Dajawī was an Azhar scholar who also belonged to Salafi circles. He accused the Shi‘is of distorting the Qur'an. See Commins, Islamic Reform; David Dean Commins, ‘Religious Reformers and Arabists in Damascus, 1885–1914’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (1986), pp. 405–425. 24 See entry ‘al-Rayhani, Amin’ in EI 2 , VIII, pp. 470–471; entry ‘Zaydan, Jurji’ in Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East (New York: Macmillan Reference, 1996), pp. 1950–1951. 25 John A. Haywood, Arab Lexicography: Its History and Special Place in the History of Lexicography (2nd edn) (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965), pp. 22–23; see also Reider Visser, ‘Proto-Political Conceptions of “Iraqi” in Late Ottoman Times’, International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, 3(2) (2009), p. 151. 26 See ‘Inād Ismā‘īl Kubaysī, Al-Karmilī wa-majallat Lughat al-‘Arab wa-dawruhumā fī al- adātha (Baghdād: Dār al-Shu'ūn al-Thaqāfīyya al-‘Āmma, 2002); Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja'āt al-rī ānīya, vol. I, p. 118, f. 1; Halla Fattah, ‘“Wahhabi” Influences, Salafi Responses: Shaikl Mahmud Shukri and the Iraqi Salafi Movement, 1745–1930’, Journal of Islamic Studies, 14(2) (2003), pp. 136–137. 27 See Muammad usayn Kāshif al-Ghiā’, al-Taw ī: bayān mā huwa al-injīl wa mā huwa al-masī (Tehran: Maktabat al-Najā, 196-?); see also Ataullah Siddiqui, Christian-Muslim Dialogue in the Twentieth Century (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1997), pp. 3–22. 28 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja‘āt al-rī ānīya, vol. I, p. 138. 29 Muammad usayn Kāshif al-Ghiā’, A l al-Shī‘a wa-u ūluhā (9th edn) (Najaf: Maktabat al-Najā, 1962), pp. 7–12. 30 On these developments, see Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 52–55; William I. Shorrock, ‘The Origin of the French Mandate in Syria and Lebanon: The Railroad Question, 1901–1914’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1(2) (1970), pp. 133–153; Edward M. Earle, Turkey, the Great Powers and the Baghdad Railway: A Study in Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1923); Muammad ‘Alī Kamāl al-Dīn, al-Najaf fī rub‘ qarn (Beirut: Dār al-Qāri’, 2005), pp. 115–121. 31 See Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 52–55. 32 Hisham Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West: The Formative Years, 1875–1914 (Baltimore, MD & London: The John Hopkins Press, 1970), pp. 63–65. 33 See, for example, Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Jannat al-ma'wa, p. 127. 34 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja'āt al-rī ānīya, Vol. I, pp. 64, 114–116. 35 Arnold Hottinger, ‘Amin Al-Rihani: The Self View of a Modern Arab’, in Marwan E. Buheiry (ed.), Intellectual Life in the Arab East, 1890–1939 (Beirut: American University of Beirut, Center for Arab and Middle East Studies, 1981), pp. 105–109. 36 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja'āt al-rī ānīya, vol. 1, p. 83. 37 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja'āt al-rī ānīya, vol. 1, pp. 81–111. 38 Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West, pp. 59–63. 39 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja'āt al-rī ānīya, vol. 1, pp. 114–116. 40 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja'āt al-rī ānīya, vol. 1, p. 222. 41 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja‘āt al-rīānīya, vol. 1, pp. 81, 114. 42 Etan Kohlberg, ‘Imam and Community in the Pre-Ghayba Period’, in Said Amir Arjomand (ed.), Authority and Political Culture in Shi‘ism (New York: State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 25–53; Andrew J. Newman, The Formative Period of Twelver Shī‘ism: adīth as Discourse between Qum and Baghdad (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000), pp. 69–93; Amir Arjomand, ‘The Consolation of Theology: Absence of the Imam and Transition from Chiliasm to Law in Shi‘ism’, Journal of Religion, 76(4) (1996), pp. 548–571. 43 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja‘āt al-rīānīya, vol. I, p. 138. 44 For example, he condemned Jurjī Zaydān for disregarding the role played by prominent Shi‘i figures in the development of Muslim and Arab thought, in his book Ta'rīkh adāb al-lugha al-’arabiyya [The history of the Arabic literature]. See Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja‘āt al-rīānīya, vol. II, pp. 213–217. On Jurjī Zaydān's literature, see Roger Allen, Essays in Arabic Literary Biography 1850–1950 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), pp. 382–392. 45 See, ‘Abd al-usayn Sharaf al-Dīn al-Mūsawī, al-Fu ul al-muhimma fī ta'līf al-umma (7th edn) (Beirut: Dār al-Zahrā’, 1977), pp. 7–8. 46 Sharaf al-Dīn al-Mūsawī, al-Fu ul al-muhimma fī ta'līf al-umma. For a similar debate, see Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon (Princeton, NJ & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006). 47 As mentioned, Kāshif al-Ghiā’ created a linkage between ‘dīn wa wa an’ in his treatise al-Dīn wa'l-Islām. 48 Thomas Phillip, ‘Language, History and Arab National Consciousness in the Thought of Jurji Zaidan (1861–1914)’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 4(1) (1973), pp. 3–22; see also Donald Malcolm Reid, ‘Cairo University and the Orientalists’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 19 (1987), pp. 51–75. See also Birgit Schaebler, ‘Civilizing Others: Global Modernity and the Local Boundaries (French/German, Ottoman and Arab) of Savagery’, in Birgit Schaebler and Leif Stenberg (eds), Globalization and the Muslim World (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004), pp. 3–29. 49 See Schaebler, ‘Civilizing Others’. 50 On 20 April 1920, the Shi‘is of Jabal ‘Āmil convened the Wadi Hujayr Conference at which they declared their allegiance to Syrian unity and rejected any control by France. See Tamara Chalabi, The Shi‘is of Jabal ‘Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and Nation State, 1918–1943 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 77–81. 51 Mūsawī continued: ‘… Love them like you love yourself and safeguard their souls and their property like you would do so for yourself. In this way you will thwart the conspiracy, suppress discord and apply the teaching of your religion and the sunna (tradition) of your Prophet…’. See ‘Abd al-usayn Sharaf al-Dīn al-Mūsawī, Bughyat al-rāghibīn fī silsilat al-sharaf al-dīn: ta'rīkh ajyāl fī: ta'rīkh rijāl kitāb nasab wa- ta'rīkh wa-tarājum II (Beirut: Al-Dār al-Islāmī, 1991), p. 440. 52 The timing of Mūsawī's message was not coincidental. At the time, an inter-communal conflict raged between Christians and Shi‘is in the Jabal ‘Āmil region. The discord had erupted at the end of World War I, amid wider disturbances triggered in the region by a chaotic transition from Ottoman to French rule. 54 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja'āt al-rī ānīya, vol. II, pp. 5–6. 53 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja'āt al-rī ānīya, vol. II, pp. 8, 78–103. 55 A rational current and a traditional trend existed in Shi‘ism from the tenth century. The rational school known as the Uūlīs regained their dominance during the eighteenth century. See Etan Kohlberg, ‘Aspects of Akhbari Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in Nehemia Levtzion and John O. Voll (eds), Eighteenth Century Renewal and Reform in Islam (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), pp. 133–153: Robert Gleave, Inevitable Doubt: Two Theories of Shī‘ī Jurisprudence (Leiden, Boston & Cologne: Brill, 2000). 56 The contribution of the Salafis was less in their rejection of judicial stagnation, since recent scholars have questioned the prevailing view that in the Sunni world, the gates of ijtihād were closed starting from the tenth century. Their novelty was more in applying ijtihād to current circumstances in an attempt to modernise Islam. See Itzchak Weismann, ‘Between ūfī Reformism and Modernist Rationalism—A Reappraisal of the Origins of the Salafiyya from the Damascene Angle”’ Die Welt des Islams, 41(2) (2001), pp. 206–237; Wael B. Hallaq, ‘Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 16(1) (1984), pp. 3–41. 57 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja‘āt al-rīānīya, vol. II, pp. 79–91. 58 In criticism of Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Amīn al-Rayanī described the use of this repetitive style as excessive, impeding upon the argument and creating a muddled train of thought. See Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja‘āt al-rīānīya, vol. I, pp. 128–132. 59 See Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja‘āt al-rīānīya, vol. I, pp. 167, 176–179. 60 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja‘āt al-rīānīya, vol. I, p. 167. 61 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Al-Murāja‘āt al-rīānīya, vol. II, pp. 78–96. 62 On this debate over Arab culture, see Elias Khoury, ‘The Unfolding of Modern Fiction and Arab Memory’, The Journal of Midwest Modern Language Association, 23(1) (1990), pp. 1–8. 63 See Litvak, Shi‘i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq, p. 29; Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 142–149, 246. 64 Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 142–149, 246; Litvak, Shi‘i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq, p. 29; Bashkin, The Other Iraq, pp. 170–177; Ja‘far al-Shaykh Bākir Maūba, Mā ī al-najaf wa- ā irhā (Beirut: Dār al-Awā', 1986), pp. 387–396; Yitzhak Nakash, ‘An Attempt to Trace the Origin of the Rituals of ’Āshūrā’’, Die Welt des Islams, 33 (1993), pp. 161–181. 65 See Nakash, ‘An Attempt to Trace the Origin of the Rituals of ‘Āshūrā’’, pp. 166–167. 66 On the evolvement of Shi‘i literature, see Talib Sinjari, ‘A wā’ min al-adab al-Shī‘ī (Beirut: Dār al-Tayyār al-Jadīd, 1993). 67 On the 1920 revolt, see Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 61–72. 68 Phebe Marr, ‘The Development of a National Ideology in Iraq, 1920–1941’, The Muslim World, 75(2) (1985), pp. 85–101. 69 Zubaida, ‘The Fragments Imagine the Nation’; Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (2nd edn) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 51–52. 70 Thus, for example, the Shi‘i journal al-Hātif, edited by the renowned Iraqi Shi‘i intellectual Ja‘far al-Khalīlī, published several articles in praise of the Arab revolt and also pledged support for the Palestinian cause. See Bashkin, The Other Iraq, pp. 122, 127–140, 151–152, 169–177; Shmuel Moreh, Studies in Modern Arab Prose and Poetry (Leiden & New York: E.J. Brill, 1988), pp. 154–160; Elie Kedourie, ‘The Iraqi Shi‘is and their Fate’, in Martin Kramer (ed.), Shi‘ism, Resistance and Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), pp. 135–157; Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 81–116. 71 On the development of this journal, see Tarif Khalidi, ‘Shaykh Ahmad ‘Arif al-Zayn and al-‘‘Irfan’, in Buheiry, Intellectual Life in the Arab East, pp. 110–124; Chibli Mallat, ‘Shi‘i Thought from the South of Lebanon’, Papers on Lebanon 7 (Oxford: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1988), pp. 10–11. On al-‘Irfān's support for Arabism, see, for example, ‘al-Qawmiyya al-thā'ira’, al-‘Irfān, 28(6) (1938), pp. 580–586; ‘Filasīn fī minatihā’, al-‘Irfān, 35(6) (1948), pp. 802–803. 72 Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Ba'thists, and Free Officers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 23–36; Silvia Naef, “Shī'ī-Shuyū'ī or: How to Become a Communist in a Holy City” in Rainer Brunner and Werner Ende (eds.), The Twelver Shia in Modern Times: Religious Culture & Political History (Leiden; Boston, Köln: Brill, 2001), pp. 255-267; Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 111–113, 125–126. 73 Muammad Mahdī al-Jawāhirī, the well-known Iraqi poet, exemplified the Shi‘i intelligentsia and its evolving communal identity. Another example is the Shi‘i poet Bādr Shākir al-Sayyāb, who devoted his literature to pan-Arab and socialist issues. See ’Abd al-usayn Sha'bān, Al-Jawāhirī: Jadl al-Shi'r wa'l- ayyāt (Beirut: Dār al-Kunūz al-Adabīyya, 1997), pp. 122–123, 282–285; Muammad Mahdī al-Jawāhirī, Dhikrayātī (Damascus: Dār al-Rāfidayn, 1988), pp. 51–55, 85–87; Muhammad Mahdi al Jawahiri FO 481/8, Iraq: Confidential Print, Jan–Dec 1954; Naef, Shī‘ī-Shuyū‘ī, pp. 255-267; Bādr Shākir al-Sayyāb, ‘Amāma bāb Allah’ [Before the Gate of God], in An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry, selected, edited and translated by Mounah A. Khouri and Hamid Algar (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 82–87. 74 Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 121–125; Tripp, A History of Iraq, pp. 82–83; Liora Lukitz, Iraq: The Search for National Identity (London: Frank Cass, 1995), pp. 58–71. 75 Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 253–262. 76 New laws and regulations emphasised Iraq's national orientation and strengthened the status of Iraqi-Arab nationals. See Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 75–88, 100–108. 77 Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 84–88, 109–111, 120–122. 78 See Naef, ‘Un Réformiste chiite’, pp. 59–69. 79 See Kramer, Islam Assembled, pp. 132–133. 80 Kāshif al-Ghiā’ promoted inter-Muslim reconciliation through judicial dialogue, as demonstrated in his publication Ta rīr al-majalla (a commentary on the Ottoman civil code, known as the Mecelle). This treatise provided a comparison between Sunni and Shi‘i jurisprudence in the field of commercial law in an attempt to place Imami jurisprudence on a par with Sunni law. See Muammad usayn Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Ta rīr al-majalla, 5 vols (Najaf: al-aydariyya, 1359/1940). See also Rainer Bruner, Islamic Ecumenism in the 20 th Century: The Azhar and Shiism between Rapprochement and Restraint, translated from the German by Joseph Greenman (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2004). 81 His meeting was an attempt to gain US and British support for a joint struggle against Communism, which was gaining ground among the Shi‘is of Iraq during this period. This was also the period in which these Western powers were seeking defence treaties in the Middle East against the Communist threat. See Chibli Mallat, The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr, Najaf and the Shi‘i International (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 9; Batatu, The Old Social Classes, pp. 422–469, 679–689. 82 In his publication that followed this meeting, Kāshif al-Ghiā’ declared: ‘Palestine is at the heart of the Arab countries. It is theirs and it was in their possession already for thousands of years before Islam and after it…’. See Muammad al-usayn Kāshif al-Ghitā, Mu āwarat al-Imām al-musli Kāshif al-Ghiā’ al-Shaykh Mu ammad al- usayn ma‘a al-safīrayn al-Barīānī wa-al-Amrīkī fī Baghdād bi-munāsabati ziyāratihimā li-samā atihi fī madrasatihi fī al-Najaf (Najaf: al-Maba‘a al-aydariyya, 1954), pp. 18–20, 28–34. For his attack on British imperialism, see Chibli Mallat, The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr, Najaf and the Shi‘i International (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 8–11. 83 Naef, ‘Un Réformiste chiite’, pp. 66–67; al-Muammad al-usayn Kāshif al-Ghiā, al-Muthul al-‘ulyā fī al-Islām lā fī Bi amdūn [The Exalted Ideals are in Islam not in Biamdūn] (Al-Najaf al-Maba'a al-aydarīya,1954). 85 Muammad usayn Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Qa īyat filas īn al-kubra: fī khu āb Mu ammad al- usayn Kāshif al-Ghi ā’ (Najaf: Dār al-Ni‘mān, [1969]), p. 13. 84 See Amatzia Baram, Case of an Imported Identity: The Modernizing Secular Ruling Elite of Iraq and the Conception of the Mesopotamian-Inspired Territorial Nationalism 1922–1992 (Middle East Studies Association of North America, Conference Paper, 1992). 86 Kāshif al-Ghiā’ advanced his political agenda in the following publications: Fī'l-siyāsa wa'l- ikma(Beirut: Dār al-Tawjīh al-Islāmī, 1981); Mu āwarat al-imām al-mu li Kāshif al-Ghi ā’ ma‘a al-safirayn al-Barītānī wa'l-Amīrkī fī Baghdād bi-munāsabat ziyāratihimā li-samā atihi fī madrasatihi fī'l-Najaf (al-Najaf: al-Maba‘ah al-aydarīyah, 1954); al-Muthūl al-‘ulyā’ fī'l-Islām lā fī Bihamdūn (Al-Najaf al-Maba‘ah al-ay arīyah [1954]). 87 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Qa īyat filas īn al-kubra, pp. 11–12. 88 Kramer, Islam Assembled, pp. 132–133. 89 Twelver scholars, particularly among the Shi‘i communities outside Iran, emphasised a remote rather than an imminent justice of God, which would be achieved on the Day of Judgement with the return of the vanished Imam. 90 Denis McEoin, ‘Aspects of Militancy and Quietism in Imami Shi‘ism’, Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), 11(1) (1984), pp. 18–27. See also Ann K.S. Lambton, ‘A Nineteenth Century View of Jihād’, Studia Islamica, 32 (1970), pp. 181–192. 91 Ja'far Kāshif al-Ghiā’ laid out his position in his book Kashf al-ghi ā’, through which the family received its name. Other clerics of the time also legitimised defensive jihād in a collection of fatwas entitled Risāla-yi jihādiyya. See Lambton, ‘A Nineteenth Century View of Jihād’; E. Kohlberg, ‘The Development of the Imāmī Shī‘ī Doctrine of jihād’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 126 (1976), pp. 64–86; Abdul-Hadi Hairi, ‘The Legitimacy of the Early Qajar Rule as Viewed by the Shi‘i Religious Leaders’, Middle Eastern Studies, 24(3) (1988), pp. 271–286. 92 Ja'far Kāshif al-Ghiā’ gave permission to Fat ’Alī Shāh, the Qajari leader, to declare jihād against the enemies of God. The Shāh needed approval for the war from the clerics, while the clerics of the time understood the political significance of the Shāhs and therefore gave them permission to declare jihād. 93 In an earlier manifestation of such solidarity, the Shi‘i mujtahids declared a jihād against Italy in 1911, following its invasion of Libya. See Meir Litvak, ‘A Failed Manipulation: The British, the Oudh Bequest and the Shī‘ī ’Ulamā of Najaf and Karbalā’’, The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 27(1) (2000), p. 15. 94 Thus, for example, in A l al-Shī‘a wa-u ūluhā [The Principles of the Shi‘a, and its Basis], Kāshif al-Ghiā’ sought to prove the compatibility of Shi‘i principles with Islamic orthodoxy in order to further inter-sectarian reconciliation. See Kāshif al-Ghiā’, A l al-Shī‘a wa-u ūluhā. 95 For the historical discourse on jihād, see David Cook, Understanding Jihād (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 2005); entry ‘Djihād’ in EI 2 ; Rudolph Peters, Jihād in Classical and Modern Islam: A Reader (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996), pp. 103–148. 96 On the modern understanding of jihād, see Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihād in Modern History (The Hague & New York: Mouton, 1979). 97 See Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Qa īyat filas īn al-kubra, p. 148. See also his publication al-Muthūl al-‘ulyā’ fī'l-Islām lā fī Bi amdūn. 98 Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Qa īyat filas īn al-kubra, p. 149. 99 During the second half of the twentieth century, Shi‘i intellectuals such as ‘Ali Shari'ati further transformed the image of Imam usayn. See, for example, Ali Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shari'ati (London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998), pp. 305–309. 100 Hibat al-Din al-Shahrastānī portrayed a similar discourse in his Nahdat al- usayn, a publication which was endorsed by Kāshif al-Ghiā’. See Bashkin, ‘The Iraqi Afghanis’, pp. 154–164. 101 On his approach to clerical political participation, see Kāshif al-Ghiā’, al-Muthūl al-‘ulyā’ fī'l-Islām, pp. 71–72. 102 See entry ‘Wilāyat al-faqīh’ in John L. Esposito (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, vol. 4 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 320–323. 103 On this idea, see Amira K. Bennison, ‘Muslim Universalism and Western Globalization’, in A.G. Hopkins (ed.), Globalization in World History (London: Pimlico, 2002), pp. 74–97. 104 See Mūsawī, al-Fu ūl al-muhimma, pp. 46–48. 105 Thus, for example, Kāshif al-Ghiā’ strongly defended the Shi‘i belief that Imam Husayn's head spoke on the spear after the Imam was martyred, arguing that the denial of the occurrence of miracles is a precursor to challenging religion itself. Kāshif al-Ghiā’, Jannat al-ma'wa, p. 313.