Persecution Of Shi'a Islam

Anti-Shi'ism, also known as Shiaphobia, is hatred of, prejudice against, discrimination against, persecution of, and violence against Shia Muslims because of their religious beliefs, traditions, and cultural heritage. The term was first used by Shia Rights Watch in 2011, but it has been used in informal research and written in scholarly articles for decades.

The dispute over who was the rightful successor to Muhammad resulted in the formation of two main branches, the Sunni, and the Shia. The Sunni, or the "followers of the way", followed the caliphate and maintained the premise that any member of the Quraysh tribe could potentially become the successor to Muhammad if he was accepted by the majority of Muslims. The Shia instead consider the Ahl al-Bayt (household of Muhammad) and maintain the view that only God can decide who His hujjah (proof) can be. This is due to many reasons, including every successor to a prophet being chosen by God from Adam all the way to Muhammad. This includes leaders (Qur'an 5:12), Prophets, messengers, Imams (Qur'an 2:124) and righteous woman (Qur'an 3:42). It is believed that Ali ibn Abi Talib was chosen by God through Muhammad (Hadith of the pond of Khumm) which is also known as Ghadir Khumm where he becomes the Muhammad's successor, thus Ali became the religious authority for the Shia people. Militarily established and holding control over the Umayyad government, many Sunni rulers perceived the Shia as a threat – to both their political and religious authority.

The Sunni rulers under the Umayyads sought to marginalize the Shia minority. Throughout the history of Islam, the persecution of Shias by their Sunni co-religionists has often been characterized by brutal and genocidal acts; the most recent case of religious persecution by Sunni Muslim militants involved the genocidal massacre, ethnic cleansing and forced conversion of Shias to Sunni Islam by ISIL in Syria and Iraq (2014–2017). Comprising around 10% of the entire world's Muslim population, to this day, the Shia remain a marginalized community in many Sunni dominated countries and in those countries, they do not have the right to freely practice their religion or establish themselves as an organized denomination.

On the other hand, Sunni and Shia Muslims have lived together in peace over the years. In many countries, they have prayed in the same mosques, while having distinct rituals. Shia identitarianism was based on victimhood narrative of alleged intolerance from mainstream Sunnis who historically questioned their loyalty and Islamic credentials as well as over verdicts of ''Takfir'' from hardline Sunnis who denounces all Shias as apostates.

Historic persecution

Umayyads

The grandson of Muhammad, Imam Hussein, refused to accept Yazid I's rule. Soon after in 680 CE, Yazid sent thousands of Umayyad troops to lay siege to Hussein's caravan. During the Battle of Karbala, after holding off the Umayyad troops for six days, Hussein and his 72 companions were killed, beheaded, and their heads were sent back to the caliph in Damascus. These 72 included Hussein's friends and family. The more notable of these characters are Habib (Hussein's elderly friend), Abbas (Hussein's loyal brother), Akbar (Hussein's 18-year-old son), and Asghar (Hussein's six-month-old infant). On the night of Ashura (which is called Sham-e-Gharibaan), the army of Yazid burned the tents which Hussein's family and friends had lived in. The only occupants of the tents after the war were the women, children, of Hussein's companions along with Hussein's last ill son named Zain-Ul-Abideen (who became the next Imam after Hussein). During the raid, Yazid's forces looted, burned, and tortured the women and children. They then took the heads of the dead, planting them on spearheads to parade. The women's shawls and headdresses were also stripped and they were forced to march beside their men's heads all the way to Damascus. They stayed in prison there for about a year. While Imam Hussein's death ended the prospect of a direct challenge to the Umayyad caliphate, it also made it easier for Shiism to gain ground as a form of moral resistance to the Umayyads and their demands.

Ghaznavids and Seljuks

In 1029 Mahmud of Ghazni conducted a brutal campaign against the city of Rayy. As a stauch Sunni orthodox, he crucified a large number of Ismailis together with Mazdakites and burned many Shi'ite books whose teachings he considered heretical. The poet Farrukhi Sistani wrote two related qasida poems, in which he depicted Rayy as a worthy target for a ghazi raid and those who disobey God to be infidels or heretic (''kafirs'', ''babd-madhhabi''). During the rule of the Seljuks, large numbers of Ismailis are thought to have converted in hopes of evading persecution.

Siege of Baghdad

After the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258, prejudice against Shias became more frequent, reminiscent of blaming Shias for every problem. One statement states that a Shia minister had betrayed the empire by exposing their weaknesses to the Mongols.

Persecution in the Ottoman Empire

In response to the support of Alevis and Alawites to the Shia Safavid empire, who were converting the Sunni Iran to Shia along with cursing the first three Rashidun caliphs and burning the tombs of Sunni saints,Iran: a short history : from Islamization to the present, By Monika Gronke, pg.90 the Ottoman Empire persecuted Alevis in Anatolia. Tens of thousands of Shias were killed in the Ottoman Empire, including the Alevis in Turkey, the Alawis in Syria and the Shi'a of Iraq and Lebanon.

Sack of Shamakhi

The Sack of Shamakhi took place on 18 August 1721, when 15,000 Sunni Lezgins, of the Safavid Empire, attacked the capital of Shirvan province, Shamakhi (in present-day Azerbaijan Republic), massacred between 4,000 and 5,000 of its Shia population and ransacked the city.

Wahhabi sack of Karbala

On 21 April 1802, about 12,000 Wahhabi Sunnis under the command of Abdul-Aziz bin Muhammad, the second ruler of the First Saudi State attacked and sacked Karbala, killed between 2,000 and 5,000 inhabitants and plundered the tomb of Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of Muhammad and son of Ali ibn Abi Talib, and destroyed its dome, seizing a large quantity of spoils, including gold, Persian carpets, money, pearls, and guns that had accumulated in the tomb, most of them donations. The attack lasted for eight hours, after which the Wahhabis left the city with more than 4,000 camels carrying their plunder.

Indian subcontinent

While Shias and Sunnis have lived side by side in the subcontinent for almost fifteen centuries, anti-Shia violence has been growing consistently for the past three centuries. Anti-Shi'ism has two aspects: shiaphobic literature and hate-crimes. The anti Shia literature that portrays Shias as religiously heretic, morally corrupt, politically traitors and lesser human beings sets the ideological framework for the violence against them. In the medieval period, the Middle East saw bloody clashes between both sects but the Indian subcontinent remained safe and peaceful because of the secular policy of Mughals. Until the end of the seventeenth century AD, only two anti-Shia books were written in India: ''Minhaj al-Din'' by Makhdoom-ul Mulk Mullah Abdullah Sultanpuri and ''Radd-e Rawafiz'' by Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi.
Sirhindi also wrote this treatise in order to justify the slaughter of shias by Abdullah Khan Uzbek in Mashhad. In this he argues:

Since the Shia permit cursing Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and one of the chaste wives (of the Prophet), which in itself constitutes infidelity, it is incumbent upon the Muslim ruler, nay upon all people, in compliance with the command of the Omniscient King (Allah), to kill them and to oppress them in order to elevate the true religion. It is permissible to destroy their buildings and to seize their property and belongings.

As far as armed violence is concerned, the medieval period has only few examples of Shias being killed for their beliefs, most notable incidents are the killing of Abdullah Shah Ghazi in 769 AD, the destruction of Multan in 1005 AD, the persecution of Shias at the hands of Sultan Feroz Shah (1351–1388 AD),Sirat-i Firozshahi, facsimile ed. of Patna MS, 1999, pp. 117–22. As cited in: S. A. N. Rezavi, "The Shia Muslims", in History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, Vol. 2, Part. 2: "Religious Movements and Institutions in Medieval India", Chapter 13, Oxford University Press (2006). and the target killing of Mullah Ahmad Thathavi in 1589 AD.S. A. A. Rizvi, "A Socio-Intellectual History of Isna Ashari Shi'is in India", Vol. I, pp. 233–234, Mar'ifat Publishing House, Canberra (1986). However, the killer of Mulla Ahmad Thathavi was served justice by Emperor Akbar.S. A. N. Rezavi, "The State, Shia's and Shi'ism in Medieval India ", Studies in People's History, 4, 1, p. 32–45, SAGE (2017). The death of Syed Nurullah Shushtari seems to be politically motivated as Emperor Jahangir disliked his father who did not consider him suitable for the throne, and persecuted men of his court, as an eighteenth century editor of ''Jahangirnama'' puts it, "the new sovereign possibly wished to draw a line under the rule of his father and all those associated needed to be sidelined".Sajjad Rizvi, "Shi'i Polemics at the Mughal Court: The Case of Qazi Nurullah Shushtari", Studies in People's History, 4, 1, pp. 53–67, SAGE (2017). The region of Srinagar in Kashmir is an exception in Middle Ages with ten bloody Taraaj-e Shia campaigns.Zaheen, "Shi'ism in Kashmir, 1477–1885", International Research Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 4(4), 74–80, April (2015). Shias faced severe persecution in India in Kashmir for centuries, by the Sunni invaders of the region which resulted in the killing of many Shias and as a result most of them had to flee the region. Plunder, looting and killing virtually devastated the community. History records 10 such Taraajs between 15th to 19th century in 1548, 1585, 1635, 1686, 1719, 1741, 1762, 1801, 1830, and 1872, during which the Shia habitations were plundered, people killed, libraries burnt and their sacred sites desecrated. The community, due to their difficulties, went into the practice of Taqya in order to preserve their lives.

However, in the eighteenth century AD, the number of polemical writings started to increase.S. A. A. Rizvi, "Shah Abd al-Aziz", p. 255, Ma’rifat Publishing House, Canberra, (1982). It started with Aurangzeb's discrimination against the Shias. The sixth Mughal emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir hated the Shias; he abolished the secular policy of Akbar and tried to establish the superiority of the Sunni sect. He supervised the compilation of an encyclopaedia of religious rulings, called fatawa Alamgiri, in which Shias were said to be heretics. The spiritual leader of Bohra Shias, Sayyid Qutb-ud-din, along with his 700 followers were massacred on the orders of Aurangzeb. He banned the tazia processions. In the century following his death, polemical literature and sectarian killings increased.

Aurengzeb heavily persecuted many Shi‘a communities. ‘Ali Muhammad Khan, whose father accompanied Aurengzeb during his Deccan campaigns, reports:

During the reign of the late emperor, tremendous emphasis was placed on matters of the '' shari‘a'' and on refuting various on-Sunnischools of thought. No efforts were spared in this regard. Many people thus emerged who maintained that, for God's sake, their very salvation lay in this. Because of religious bigotry, which is the bane of humankind, they placed a group under suspicion of Shi‘ism (''rafḍ''), thus destroying the very ramparts of the castle of their existence .e., having them killed while others were thrown into prison.

Shah Waliullah (1703–1762 AD) was among those Sunni clerics who were patronized by the Sunni elite. He started his career by translating the anti-Shia track of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, ''radd-e-rawafiz'', into Arabic under the title of ''al-muqaddima tus-saniyyah fil intisar al-firqa te-sunniya (المقدمۃ الثانیہ فی الانتصار للفرقۃ السنیہ).'' He continued to criticise the Shias in his books like ''Qurat-ul Ainain'' (قراۃ العینین), ''Azalah-tul Khafa (ازالۃ الخفا)'', ''Fayyuz-ul Haramain'' (فیوض الحرمین), etc.Khaled Ahmed, "Sectarian War", pp. 12 – 14, Oxford University press, (2012). Other Sunni polemics include ''Najat al-Muminin (نجات المومنین)'' by Muhammad Mohsin Kashmiri, and ''Durr-ut Tahqiq (درالتحقیق)'' by Muhammad Fakhir Allahabadi. In a letter to Sunni nawabs, Shah Waliullah said:

Strict orders should be issued in all Islamic towns forbidding religious ceremonies publicly practised by Hindus such as the performance of Holi and ritual bathing in the Ganges. On the tenth of Muharram, the Shias should not be allowed to go beyond the bounds of moderation, neither should they be rude nor repeat stupid things in the streets or bazars.

When on his and Rohilla's invitation, Ahmad Shah Abdali Durrani conquered Delhi, he expelled Shias.S. A. A. Rizvi, "A Socio-Intellectual History of Isna Ashari Shi'is in India", Vol. 2, pp. 55–60, Mar'ifat Publishing House, Canberra (1986). Shias of Kashmir were also massacred in an organised campaign after Afghans took power. In Multan, under the Durrani rule, Shia were not allowed to practise their religion.Gazetteer of the Multan District, p. 120, (1924).

Shah Waliullah's eldest son, Shah Abd al-Aziz (1746–1823 AD), hated Shias the most. He compiled most of the anti-Shia books available to him, albeit in his own language and after adding his own ideas, in a single book ''Tuhfa Asna Ashariya (تحفہ اثنا عشریہ )''. Although he did not declare them apostates or non-Muslims, but he considered them lesser human beings just like what he would think about Hindus or other non-Muslims. In a letter he advises Sunnis to not greet Shias first, and if a Shia greets them first, their response should be cold. In his view, Sunnis should not marry Shias, avoid eating their food and the animals slaughtered by a Shia.S. A. A. Rizvi, "Shah Abd al-Aziz", pp. 207 – 208, Ma’rifat Publishing House, Canberra, (1982).  

Syed Ahmad Barelvi and Shah Ismail Dihlavi took up arms to enforce their puritanical views and migrated to Peshawar region to establish an Islamic Caliphate. They were the pioneers of anti-Shia terrorism in the subcontinent. Barbara Metcalf says:

"''A second group of Abuses Syed Ahmad held were those that originated from Shi’i influence. He particularly urged Muslims to give up the keeping of ta’ziyahs. The replicas of the tombs of the martyrs of Karbala taken in procession during the mourning ceremony of Muharram. Muhammad Isma’il wrote,

‘a true believer should regard the breaking of a tazia by force to be as virtuous an action as destroying idols. If he cannot break them himself, let him order others to do so. If this even be out of his power, let him at least detest and abhor them with his whole heart and soul’.

''Sayyid Ahmad himself is said, no doubt with considerable exaggeration, to have torn down thousands of imambaras, the building that house the taziyahs''".

These attacks were carried out between 1818 and 1820. Rizvi has given more details about time, places and circumstances in which these attacks were carried out.

With the start of direct Crown control after 1857, religious institutions and scholars lost most of the financial support they enjoyed previously. They now had to rely on public funding, the ''chanda''. Secondly, when the colonial government decided to introduce modern societal reforms, and everybody became ascribed to a singular identity in census and politically importance in voting. Thus, politicisation of religion and marking boundaries of the spheres of influence became a financial need of the religious leaders. They started to describe everybody belonging to their sect or religion as one monolithic group of people whose religion was in danger. The third important social change was the printing press which made writing and publishing pamphlets and books easy and cheap. The fourth factor was the railways and postal service; it became easy for communal leaders to travel, communicate and build networks beyond their place of residence. This changed the religious discourse drastically and gave birth to communal and sectarian violence. The puritanical wahhabists had already excluded Azadari from the Sunni Islam, and Arya Samaj and Shudhis started to ask Hindus to refrain from Azadari.

By the start of the 1900s, the majority of Sunnis still observed Muharram. Molana Abdul Shakoor Lakhnavi devised a clever plan to widen the gulf between the Shias and Sunnis. He started to advocate a celebration of victory of Imam Hussain over Yazid. He established a separate Sunni Imambargah at Phul Katora and asked Sunnis to wear red or yellow dress instead of black, and carry a decorated charyari flag instead of the traditional black alam-e-Abbas. Instead of honouring the Sahaba on their birthdays, he started to arrange public meetings under the banner of bazm-e-siddiqi, bazm-e-farooqi and bazm-e-usmani, in the first ten days of Muharram to revere the first three Caliphs and named it Madh-e-Sahaba. He would discuss the lives of the first three Caliphs and attack Shia beliefs. Shias saw it an attempt to sabotage the remembrance of the tragedy of Karbala and started to recite ''tabarra'' in response.

After the failure of the Khilafat movement in the 1920s, the political ulema had lost their support in public and Muslims started to follow modern minds like Muhammad Ali Jinnah. To keep themselves relevant, the ulema established a militant Deobandi organisation, Majlis Ahrar-e-Islam, in 1931. They came from neighbouring Malihabad, Kanpur, Delhi, Meerut and from as far as Peshawar.Mushirul Hasan,
Traditional Rites and Contested Meanings: Sectarian Strife in Colonial Lucknow
, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 31, No. 9, pp. 543 – 550 (1996). This organisation can be considered as predecessor of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). They first agitated against the Ahmedis in Kashmir and now they were looking for an opportunity. It was provided by Molana Abdul shakoor Lakhnavi's son Molana Abdul Shakoor Farooqi. He was a graduate of Darul Uloom Deoband and he had established a seminary in Lucknow in 1931 right on the route of Azadari, called Dar-ul-Muballighin. Molana Abdul Shakoor Farooqi wrote many books and pamphlets. Shias responded by writing rejoinders. As paper had become available in plenty, these writings spread all over subcontinent and caused incidents of violence, though negligible compared to what was happening in UP. Dhulipala says:

The problem broke out with renewed vigour in 1936 on Ashura day when two Sunnis disobeyed orders and publicly recited Charyari in the city centre of Lucknow. They were arrested and prosecuted, but then on Chhelum day more Sunnis took part in reciting Charyari and fourteen were arrested. This led to a new agitation by the Lucknow Sunnis in favour of reciting these verses publicly, which came to be known as Madhe Sahaba.V. Dhulipala,
Rallying the Qaum: The Muslim League in the United Provinces, 1937 – 1939
", pp. 603 – 640, Modern Asian Studies 44, 3 (2010).

Azadari in UP was no more peaceful; it would never be the same again. Violence went so far that on Ashura 1940, a Deobandi terrorist attacked the Ashura procession with a bomb. Hollister writes:

"Conflicts between Sunnis and Shias at Muharram are not infrequent. Processions in the cities are accompanied by police along fixed lines of march. The following quotations from a single newspaper are not usual. They indicate what might happen if government did not keep the situation under control: ‘adequate measures avert incidents’, ‘Muharram passed off peacefully’, ‘All shops remained closed in ... in order to avoid incidents’, ‘Several women offered satyagraha in front of the final procession ... about twenty miles from Allahabad. They object to the passing of the procession through their fields’, ‘the police took great precautions to prevent a breach of the peace’, ‘as a sequel to the cane charge by the police on a Mehndi procession the Moslems ... did not celebrate the Muharram today. No ta’zia processions were taken out ... Business was transacted as usual in the Hindu localities’, ‘Bomb thrown on procession’. Not all of these disturbances spring from sectarian differences, but those differences actuate many fracases. Birdwood says that, in Bombay, where the first four days of Muharram are likely to be devoted to visiting each other's tabut khanas, women and children as well as men are admitted, and members of other communities – only the Sunnies are denied ‘simply as a police precaution".

China

Most foreign slaves in Xinjiang were Shia Ismaili Mountain Tajiks of China. They were referred to by Sunni Turkic Muslims as Ghalcha, and enslaved because they were different from the Sunni Turkic inhabitants. Shia Muslims were sold as slaves in Khotan. The Muslims of Xinjiang traded Shias as slaves.

The Sunni Muslim cleric Yusuf Ma Dexin who had traveled throughout the Ottoman Empire, picked up anti-Shia views and after returning to his homeland Yunnan, staunchly preached against Shiism and Sufism, including while he was supporting the Panthay rebellion. He describing Iran as a Shia country and used the derogatory term Rafidah for Shia Muslims and also criticized Sufi orders among the Hui as like Rafidah, calling for them to be abolished.Wang, Jianping."The Opposition of a Leading Akhund to Shi’a and Sufi Shaykhs in Mid-Nineteenth-Century China."Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review
vol. 3 no. 2, 2015, p. 518-541. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/ach.2015.0015. This rhetoric was partly due to the growing marginization of the Hui Muslims within China and calls for unity and defense against the increasing dominance of Han society.

Modern times

Bangladesh

There is limited documentation regarding violence against Shias in Bangladesh in English. For example, on 24 October 2015 a bomb exploded at a Shia mosque, resulting in one person dead and many more injured. Another deadly attack took place at Haripur in Shibganj, in Bogra. The Muezzin was shot dead at a Shiite mosque, and at least four other men, including the imam, were injured.

Bahrain

A sizeable minority of Bahrain's population are Shia, with around 42% of the population. They were previously the majority, accounting for about 50–70%. However, due to increased naturalization of Sunni migrants, their numbers have decreased significantly, which has altered the country's demographics.

The ruling Al Khalifa family, who are Sunni Muslim, arrived in Bahrain from Qatar at the end of the eighteenth century and persecuted the Shias. The Shias believe that the Al Khalifa failed to gain legitimacy in Bahrain and established a system of "political apartheid based on racial, sectarian, and tribal discrimination." Often, Shias are declared non-Muslims and persecuted. Vali Nasr, a leading Iranian expert on Middle East and Islamic world said "For Shi'ites, Sunni rule has been like living under apartheid".

2011 uprising

Since the 2011 uprising, an estimated 1,000 Bahrainis have been detained and accused of being non-Muslims or heretics. Bahraini and international human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases in which Shia detainees have been tortured and abused. According t
csmonitor.org
the government has gone beyond the crushing of political dissent by resorting to what "appears" to be an attempt to "psychologically humiliate the island's Shiite majority into silent submission."Bahrain campaign to humiliate Shiites goes beyond politics
, By Caryle Murphy / csmonitor.com / June 7, 2011

Apartheid

Discrimination against Shia Muslims in Bahrain is severe and systematic enough for a number of sources ( ''Time'' magazine,Aryn Bake

"Why A Saudi Intervention into Bahrain Won't End the Protests" March 14, 2011, Time Magazine. Vali Nasr, Yitzhak Nakash, Bahrain Centre for Human Rights

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