01/07/16 – Najam Haider – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
We're live here on the weekdays from noon to two on the Liberty Radio Network, LibertyRadioNetwork.com.
Our first guest today is Najam Iftikhar Haider, and it says here he is Assistant Professor of Religion at Bernard College of Columbia University, and is currently a member of the Institute for Advanced Studies.
He's the author of the book, Shia Islam, An Introduction to the Origins of the Shia.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm great.
How are you, Scott?
I'm doing really good.
Very happy to have you on the show here.
You have an uphill mission here on the show today to teach us a lot of what we don't know, but what you have going for you, at least, is that virtually everyone listening knows better than the common tropes that, oh, you know how they are, always killing each other over their religion and whatever.
This is all George W. Bush and the Ayatollah and Osama's fault, Zarqawi and Zawahiri, and the neoconservatives and the Iranians and the Bata Brigade, and everybody knows that, that they're not fighting about who believes what.
They're fighting over power and land, same as everything.
We know that.
You can dispel that, but you don't have to feel like you're talking to a bunch of right-wing idiots who know nothing but what Donald Trump told them or anything like that.
I don't know whether you want to start with what's a Shia or if you want to start with the current contrapts between the Saudis and the Iranians or what, but I'm just happy to sit back and listen to you.
Oh, well, thank you.
I think that there are a couple of points that we should understand.
The first is that there are differences between Sunnis and Shias, and those differences are theological differences, and they go way back, many centuries back, but they don't really define many of the conflicts that we see today.
You can look at the entire Middle East and you can see within each of the individual conflicts that seem to be sectarian, the power politics that serve to underwrite it.
We make this assumption that Iran is connected to Syria because Syria is Shia and Iran is Shia, but in reality, Iran's support of Syria is political and it's within its own national interests.
We see the same thing playing itself out in a place like Yemen where, again, one side is seen as being supported by Iran because they're Shia and the other side is seen as being supported by the Saudis because they're not.
In all of these conflicts, in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen, and throughout the Middle East, sectarianism becomes sort of a code.
It becomes an easy fallback on the basis of which we can explain what's going on in the Middle East.
The thing is this.
We like simple explanations.
Everybody likes simple explanations.
We like to have that one lens through which we can understand everything that's going on in the Middle East and really in the world.
For a long time, it was communism.
You know, it was the communists are out to get us, it's this, it's that.
And then once that threat was gone, we had to find another way to explain things.
And in the Middle East, what's in vogue these days is explanations that are based on sectarianism.
Now, I mean, I'm happy to talk about each of these conflicts individually.
I'm also happy to explain to you what the actual differences are between Sunni and Shia with the understanding that those explanations are just informational.
They're not explanatory.
Sure.
Yeah.
Actually, let's do some of that because, you know, of course, we cover the current events all the time.
And I think, you know, again, the audience actually has a pretty good idea of which side the different players are on, the so-called Shiite crescent that now includes Iraq and, of course, the Saudis and their allies and that kind of thing.
But yeah, so please do, you know, and we can get back to that in the second segment.
But maybe for the rest of this one, you could talk a little bit more about the split and how it happens and what it means now.
Well, I mean, OK, the split, the split is ascribed to an event that happened at the death of the prophet where you had one group of people who believe that his son-in-law and cousin Ali was the rightful successor in that group we think of today as the Shia.
And the other group felt that the leadership of the community should be inherited by other members of the community.
So they chose a different line of succession.
And those individuals are today thought of as Sunni.
Now, that's the history that we remember.
That's the history that Sunnis and Shias project back upon the lifetime of the prophet.
In reality, though, these two communities are just, they have two very unique theological twists on the exact same original source materials for Islam.
So the source materials for Islam, the canon, if we were going to use that word, the canon is the Quran and the lifetime of the prophet.
And so the question is, when you take the Quran and you take the lifetime of the prophet and you view it through one theological lens, then you get Shiaism.
And you view it through a different theological lens, you get Sunnism.
So there are real fundamental theological differences, even though both sides agree on the same canon.
They agree on the same sources.
Now, in reality, the way these two communities separated themselves off really took place about 100 to 200 years after these events, the lifetime of the prophet, when these two different theological communities began to manifest in different ways.
So in places like Baghdad in Iraq and in what we think of today as Saudi Arabia, these two identities began to emerge and these identities became rooted in a particular view of the past.
So how we remember the past is impacted by what we believe.
So if we look at biographies, for example, of Lincoln over time, we'll see that the biographies change as our belief structures change.
So history is like that, it's malleable.
Memory changes as your belief changes.
And so once these communities of Sunni and Shia really became crystallized some centuries after Muhammad, then they began remembering their past in different ways.
And that's not to say that that early history wasn't important, it's to say that how history is remembered is important.
So these two communities emerge with very different memories of the past.
And they've existed and they've coexisted in most of the Muslim world for the last thousand years.
Well, there's great diversity within, I guess, more diversity within the Sunni movement than the Shia movement.
But there's even, I guess, people often compare the Shia side, at least just in form, to like the Catholic split versus the Protestants, where it's more like one chain of command.
But that's not even really right.
There are different chains of authority, even within Shia Islam, right?
Well, I would go even one step back in what you were saying.
And there's as much diversity within Shiaism as there is within Sunnism.
The Shia that we find in Turkey are quite different from the Shia that we find in Syria.
The Alawite leadership is very different from the Shia we find in Lebanon and Iraq and Iran, which are, I would say, the majority in terms of number.
And in Yemen?
And in Yemen, they're completely different.
I mean, these are groups that, in some cases, differ more fundamentally amongst themselves than they do between themselves and Sunni groups.
So the diversity is quite extreme within both of these groups, Sunni and Shia.
And this idea that Shiaism is closer to Catholicism is usually seen as being a shorthand to help understand the fact that there are religious leaders within the Shia community in Iran and Iraq, the Twelvers, as they're called, that exert a greater authority, that hold a greater authority than anything you would find within Sunni Islam.
But even that idea of hierarchical leadership by religious scholars only really goes back to the end of the 19th century.
So I mean, I think every time we try to draw those sort of parallels with Christianity, we fail.
We fail to understand what's actually happening here.
So there's an extreme diversity, both within Shiaism and within Sunnism.
And I guess, on some level, you could say that contemporary Twelver Shiaism, that's the Shiaism that is predominant in the world today, these are the Shia who are in Iran and Iraq and Lebanon, many of these Shia communities have hierarchical leadership.
So in that way, they're closer to Catholicism.
But I think that that comparison itself is highly problematic.
All right, well, listen, we're about to have to stop and take this break.
It'd be nice if I timed one of these well for a change.
So we'll stop here.
But when we get back, I want to ask you all about the Wahhabis and the Salafis and how much dominance they have and what those terms really mean.
And of course, again, around here, we all know better than to think that this is the cause of terrorism, although it does seem to be the identity of those behind the terrorism.
So we've got to get into some of that, too.
It's Najam Iftikhar Haider, assistant professor of religion at Barnard College at Columbia University.
We'll be right back, y'all.
Hey, Al Scott here.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show.
Scott Horton Show.
Talking with Najam Iftikhar Haider, he's assistant professor of religion at Bernard College at Columbia University.
And he's the author of Shia Islam, an introduction.
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
I messed this up.
These are two separate books.
Pardon me.
Shia Islam, an introduction and the origins of the Shia.
And actually, is it worth explaining the difference between the Shia and the Shia?
You use them to describe the same group of people, I think.
Right.
He is usually the adjective.
Shia is the noun.
Oh, I see.
Boy, do I have a lot to learn.
Shiites and Shia, I never heard she at all before.
And we're only a decade and a half into this thing.
I haven't learned nothing yet.
All right.
Well, so, yeah.
Now we got to talk about the Sunni side of this war here, the Saudi side of the war.
And of course, could you please, you know what the hype is.
Please differentiate for us the difference between the hype and the truth about the Wahhabis, the Salafis, the talk theories and what all that stuff means.
And how dominant they are inside Sunni Islam and and whether they're all going to come and chop our heads off.
Well, I'll say this, that, well, first of all, I'll say this, that, you know, the Wahhabis don't see themselves as Sunni.
They see themselves as separate from Sunni.
So we conflate those two terms, but they really refer to two very different things.
Now, they all go back to, you know, to about the 17th century, 18th century.
Wahhabism was part of a movement that that was called Salafism.
Now, Salafi is from an Arabic word.
It means Salafi means like predecessors.
It's like the early sources.
So what the Salafi movement wanted to do in in the 17th century, in the 18th century was go back to the original sources of Islam and re-engage them.
So they were worried that the law schools that dominate Sunni Islam, there are four major Sunni law schools, that those law schools had been corrupted by human interpretation.
So they were basically saying that let's get rid of the law schools altogether and reformulate what Islam should be in a contemporary context.
You know, what would be appropriate for the 17th century?
So that was the movement.
The movement was a movement to go back.
It was a revivalist movement.
And part of that revivalist movement, so one Salafi group, were the Wahhabis.
And the Wahhabis were quite literalist in their reading of the sources.
So they didn't really, they tried to minimize human interpretation as much as possible.
So the Wahhabi movement was very much about the literal reading of the Qur'an and accounts of the Prophet.
So Salafism and Wahhabism differ in that way.
Salafis are a larger group that wants to go back to the original sources and differentiate itself from Sunni Islam.
And Wahhabis are a Salafi group that took root in Saudi Arabia.
Now the Wahhabi movement became allied with the Saudi family.
So there's a difference between Saudis and Wahhabis.
So the Wahhabi clerical establishment in Saudi Arabia supports the Saudi family.
And the Saudi family is allied with the Wahhabi clerical establishment.
But they are two very different things.
So there's a differentiation in that way to bear in mind.
So that's the first thing to bear, to understand.
Now Takfiris, these are the groups that, you know, you see beheading people and these are groups that, the word Takfir itself means to declare someone a non-believer.
So these groups are very much identified with the idea that they take other Muslims, declare them non-believers.
And by declaring them non-believers, they feel like it's within their rights to execute them for apostasy.
Now the Wahhabis are a Takfiri group, but they are different at the same time.
They have a completely different ideology.
So, you know, it's complicated is what I'm getting at.
So Salafism, Wahhabism and Takfiris are three very different manifestations of revivalist movement that work in opposition to Sunni Islam as much as some of them work within the context of Sunni Islam, but many of them separate themselves out.
If you were to go to a Wahhabi cleric in Saudi Arabia and say, are you Sunni?
They would say no.
They would say we are Muslim.
We go back to the original sources.
So bear this in mind when we talk about sectarian divide between Sunni and Shi'i and we put the Saudis firmly within on the quote unquote the Sunni side.
That's not even a straight.
I mean, that's not straightforward.
That's not obvious.
And that's not how the Wahhabis would classify themselves.
They would differentiate themselves away from Sunnism.
Very interesting.
And first time I've ever heard anybody explain it in that way.
And so, OK, now, why is it that when 95 percent or more of the entire population of the Arabian Peninsula wants American combat forces off of there, it's these most tuck fury guys are the ones who actually commit terrorist acts against the United States over Islam makes them do it.
They're they're radical Islam.
Or or what makes them different from the people who don't do suicide attacks against Western targets?
I think what you have to bear in mind is that that the case of American troops on the Arabian Peninsula is historically quite explosive.
And what I mean by that is that there is an account ascribed to the prophet that says that only Muslims should be allowed on in Arabia.
So there's this account that most people agree with that say non-Muslims are not permitted in Arabia.
And in fact, if you're a non-Muslim, you can't go to Mecca or Medina.
So this account exists now.
At the same time, the Saudi family is closely allied with the United States and they get lots of military support from the United States.
So the Saudis allow American troops on to Saudi soil.
And they did so really as early as the first second Gulf War.
So after the invasion of Kuwait by by Saddam.
And so what happens is that there's a broad opposition to the presence of American forces.
And so that presence is translated or that tension, that unease is translated into attacks against Western targets.
Now, there's a second aspect of this that one needs to bear in mind, and that is that groups like Al-Qaeda and people like Osama bin Laden, they didn't see the U.S. as their primary enemy.
They never did.
And in fact, if you read the translations of Osama bin Laden or you read, I mean, there's a whole book that has translations of his statements or you read Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, where he talks about Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and their origins.
What you find is their real opposition was to their own home governments.
So you find the theories, you find these these folks who are who are particularly attacking American targets or European targets.
You find them in Egypt mostly, and you find them in coming out of Saudi Arabia.
And that's because these states are supported by the U.S.
So in the beginning, these groups wanted to overthrow their own governments.
That was their motive.
That's what their public statements were about.
It was all about getting rid of their own governments and reforming them to some extent.
What they found is that they were unable to overthrow these governments, partly because of military aid from the United States and Europe.
So what they felt was that in order to actually overthrow Saudi Arabia or in order to actually overthrow the Egyptian government, first, we have to get sever the tie, the links, the aid that they get from the United States and Europe.
So they've shifted their focus now on onto the United States and Europe, not because they want to spread sharia in the United States.
It's that they want the U.S. to stop supporting militarily governments that they are opposed to because they feel that after that happens, they can overthrow the government.
Now, the really messed up part of this, Scott, is that it makes these groups, these luxury groups that are attacking U.S. targets and European targets.
It makes them in the eyes of some, although not even close to a majority, some, it makes them represent the position that that that asks for self-representation.
You see what I'm saying?
I mean, they are the ones who are defending this idea that we should govern ourselves and we need to get rid of our authoritarian states.
And it puts the U.S. in a position where we are the supporters of authoritarianism.
So we think of ourselves as supporters of democracy.
And we think of these groups as quite radical.
And they are.
But because of our policy, we are seen as supporters of authoritarianism and they are seen as supporters of self-representation.
So the dynamic gets shifted in the public sphere.
Yeah, exactly.
And and any fool or moderately informed person who didn't have a vested interest could have told you that before the entire terror war.
I hear a bunch of lunatics screaming, screaming on a street corner that the end is nigh and we need to kill anybody lives between Canada and Mexico and all this.
But why would anybody pay attention to them?
And then here comes American bombers setting them on fire from the sky, as George Carlin would say.
And all of a sudden, the guy predicting disaster seems right.
And the guy and the only guy saying we ought to defend ourselves from this because the leadership are all bought off.
Well, and that's the theory.
But let me focus for a second on Yemen, because I think Yemen is understudied here.
In Yemen, you have a group called the Houthis.
They are a type of Shia, Zaydi Shia, who are very rationalist in their theology.
They're very much into rational engagement there.
They are, you know, we would find them quite familiar in many of their positions.
Now, the Houthis are are the opposition.
They're they're in charge right now, but they're being opposed by the Saudis.
And the Saudis are dropping cluster bombs on hospitals and they're dropping cluster bombs on not just hospitals, but on on lots of civilian installations.
And those cluster bombs are being purchased from the United States.
And just last month, I believe the U.S. agreed to sell them more cluster bombs because the Saudi coalition had run out of cluster bombs.
So here we have a group that potentially we could have ties to.
They're a Shia group.
They're you know, they're quite rationalist in their in their perspective.
They are opposed to Al-Qaeda in southern Yemen.
I mean, these are our natural allies.
But instead of us, you know, trying to reach out to them in some way and building some sort of connection, we sell, you know, cluster bombs to the Saudis who then bomb these these individuals who are opposed to Al-Qaeda, who are opposed to the Qatari groups.
And it drives them into a camp that that that doesn't want to, you know, he doesn't want to reach out to us at all.
It alienates them completely.
So our policy, especially with respect to Saudi Arabia, it really produces opposition in in places where we shouldn't even have opposition, where where we have natural allies on the ground.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's well, I don't know about being allies with the Houthis, but, you know, as we covered on the show with an actual former DOD official yesterday, it was, you know, American backed Saleh's war against the Houthis.
Four or five, six failed attempts to attack them did nothing but make them stronger to the point where they were able to sack the capital city.
And, you know, of course, the whole time that he was accepting all that money and weapons in the name of fighting Al-Qaeda, and at the same time, America is fighting Al-Qaeda with the robots and still just making more of them by bombing them.
So whether we're flying as their Air Force or whether we're fighting against them with our Air Force, either way, we're doing nothing but help the bad guys in Yemen this whole time.
Those who who by bad guys, I mean, those who are declared sworn loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri still, just like al-Nusra in Syria.
We just make bad policy decisions because we don't understand what's in our best interest and because we're tied so closely to the Saudis.
And, you know, the problem is this, that, you know, there are states in the Middle East that we have natural interests that our interests align with.
And if we want stability or if we want democracy or we want people to live in a particular, you know, we want there are certain things we want that we can get in the Middle East if we were to to to work with people who have similar interests.
But instead, we always work with the Saudis and the Saudis always work both with us and against us at the same time.
And it's just the policy doesn't make any sense.
Absolutely right.
All right.
Well, listen, I'm sorry we're way over time and out of time, but I really appreciate you coming on the show today.
No, thanks for having me.
All right, y'all.
That is Najam Haider, Najam Iftikhar Haider.
He is assistant professor of religion at Bernard College of Columbia University.
He's the author of Shi'i Islam, An Introduction and the Origins of the Shia.
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