As the rising tide of sectarian violence in Iraq pits Sunni against Shi’a, many in the West struggle to understand why religion plays such a part in the violence. In the fourth of a series of special reports on life within Iraq, Barnabas Fund looks at some aspects of Islam that insurgents are using to place a low value on the lives of Christians.

22nd January 2007; a bomb rips through the market in Karada, a mixed Sunni-Shi’a and Christian area of Baghdad. Tit-for-tat reprisals follow in the exclusively Shi’a area of Sadr city and the Sunna district of Adhamiya. The attacks seem indiscriminate – Sunni and Shi’a Muslims attacking fellow Muslims, Christians and anyone else who happens to be in the region.

It is hard to see how religion can be a part of this bloodletting. Yet a look at the motivations behind the attacks reveals that the extremists are using the justification of religion for their atrocities.

Religious tolerance and religious freedom in Iraq

Relations between Christians and Muslims in Saddam’s Iraq were relatively peaceful. Although a Muslim, Saddam ruled Iraq as a secular state, and was more concerned with cementing his own wealth and power than promoting an Islamic way of life. However the rise of Islamism since his overthrow has seen many Muslims turn against their Christian neighbours.

On one level the violence meted out to innocent Iraqi Christians stems from the perception of the current war being the product of the ‘Christian’ West. You find many examples of Iraqi Christians who have been called ‘Crusaders’ and threatened on that basis. Yet the full extent of anti-Christian feeling stretches back long before the current war, to the position of Christians in classical Islamic thought.

Muslims have always recognised the Christian religion – indeed, Jesus is mentioned in the Qu’ran as one of the prophets that preceded Muhammad – and in classical Islam Christians received state protection. However, Christians were viewed as inferior to Muslims in every way, in part because of the belief that their faith was an aberrant form of the ‘true’ faith, and that Islam had superseded Christianity.

Christians and Jews were known as ‘dhimmi’. In order to claim state protection Jews and Christians were required to submit to a raft of humiliating discriminatory laws, including paying a special tax called ‘jizya’. They were required to demonstrate in their clothes, their buildings, their form of transport and many other ways their subservience to Muslims, and could never have authority over Muslims.

The modern legacy of the ‘dhimmi’ laws is a general attitude of contempt for non-Muslims. Even in modern secular Muslim states that have constitutionally guaranteed equal rights to all citizens, non-Muslims are discriminated against in numerous ways. It is worth bearing in mind that radical Islam, with its desire to hark back to the Islamic practice of the 7th to 9th centuries, includes a desire to accord Christians their ‘proper place’ in society – in other words, below that of Muslims.

Christians marked out by appearance and practice

In many ways Islam is a religion that is defined by external appearances and is conducted largely in the public domain. Islam defines every aspect of a person’s conduct, from their mode of dress, to the way their day is structured around prayer, even to their position within the hierarchies of communities within the state. It is thus a religion that lends itself to state control in a way that Christianity, with its emphasis on internal belief, does not.

Iraqi extremist Muslims prescribe strict modes of dress for all, Christians and Muslims alike. Iraqi Christians, with their differing practices and modes of dress, would stand out from the crowd. This alone could mark them out for persecution, especially any women who do not cover their hair or who tend to western modes of dress. Some also stand out as being fair-skinned.

Violence against Christians

Despite the classical Islamic teaching that Christians are a protected minority, allowed to live in the Islamic state and keep their Christian religion, many Islamic militants in Iraq today are going beyond what Islam teaches and attacking the ‘protected’ Christians. Some claim that Christians are no longer protected people of the book but infidels for having rejected Islam for so long. Others claim that Christians have broken their dhimmi pact by ‘assisting’ the Western Christian enemies of Islam as well as by claiming equality in a Muslim state.

9th February 2007 – IRAQ

Islamic theology and Iraqi Christians – Part II

As the rising tide of sectarian violence in Iraq pits Sunni against Shi’a, many in the West struggle to understand why religion plays such a part in the violence. In the fifth of a series of special reports on life within Iraq, Barnabas Fund looks further looks at some aspects of Islam that insurgents are using to place a low value on the lives of Christians.

Split between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims

The sectarian divisions in Islam date back initially to the seventh century and arguments over who should succeed Muhammad as leader of the Islamic community. The Sunni and Shi’a branches of Islam now account for the majority of the Muslims in the world, with many further divisions within each sect.

It is relevant to note that this divide arose out of a dispute over who should wield power over the Muslim world as Muhammad’s legitimate successor. History has of course seen the split become more entrenched as theological justifications were later formulated for each position. Violent confrontations over long periods of time added to the bitterness. Divisions today are rooted in theology, history and politics. Islamists in both camps are seeking to dominate the new Iraq and shape it forcibly into their image.

A key to understanding the enmity of Sunni to Shi’a lies in the fact that some in each side view the other as apostates – i.e. those who have turned their back on the ‘true’ faith. In classical Islam the penalty for apostasy is death. This fact, combined with factors such as influence from radical global networks such as al-Qaeda, from other Sunni and Shi’a countries in the region – particularly Sunni Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and Shi’a Iran respectively – and ongoing retaliations for offences committed under the brutal reign of Saddam, all add fuel to the fire of warfare between the militia of both sects.

Importance of power and authority

It is difficult to overestimate the role of power and authority in classical Islamic thought. Islam itself means ‘submission’, and the faith requires complete submission to the will of Allah. This covers every aspect of life at every level of society from individuals to states.

Classical Islam divides the world into two parts – Dar-al-Islam, the ‘House of Islam’, and Dar-al-Harb, the ‘House of war’. According to classical Islam, it is the duty of every Muslim to work towards turning all parts of the world from Dar-al-Harb into Dar-al-Islam – where power is wielded according to Islamic law and everything is in submission to Allah.

One key aspect of Dar-al-Islam is that it is ruled by Islamic law, known as Shari’a. This all-encompassing legalistic structure for Muslims prescribes what is and is not acceptable in all aspects of life. Although based on the Qu’ran and traditions of Islam (known as ‘hadith’) there are several different schools of Shari’a law.

The position in Iraq is further complicated by the fact that Sunni and Shi’a follow different interpretations of Shari’a. This has implications when, for example, framing the laws for the new Iraq, since there exist sharp divisions between the two groups.

Classical Islam views religion and the state as inextricably linked. This concern to extend the reach of faith into all aspects of life, including the political realm, goes some way to explaining why Sunni and Shi’a government ministers in Iraq are now staffing their ministries entirely with members of their own sect. Whereas under the previous secular administration some Christians held high positions, due in part to their predominately middle-class status and good education, they now find it increasingly difficult to find employment within ministries that are now either Sunni or Shi’a fiefdoms. Furthermore, classical Islamic theology holds that non-Muslims should not have positions of authority over Muslims.

Sacred space

Another doctrine that impacts upon the intensity of sectarian fighting and the situation of Christians is that of ‘sacred space’. Under this idea, any land that is occupied by Muslims becomes Islamic for all time. It is strictly forbidden to give up any claims to such land. This is worth bearing in mind when looking at the scale of fighting between insurgent groups and coalition forces in sectarian areas, with the insurgents determined not to cede ground to the ‘occupiers’. It is also relevant with regard to campaigns to drive Christians away from their homes. Once Christians leave and the militia groups move in, there cannot be any return for those Christians to the towns where they were born and grew up.

Jihad

The final concept of importance is jihad. Jihad literally means ‘struggle’ and it applies, in classical Islamic thought, to every aspect of life. It can mean the struggle for piety, or the struggle to look after family and community. However its predominant meaning has been that of war for the sake of God and Islam. There is a duty on Muslims to rise up in defence of their fellow Muslims if they are threatened or attacked. Muslims also have a duty to struggle in the cause of Islam, that is, to work towards converting their non-Muslim neighbours to the Islamic faith and their society to an Islamic state.

When the insurgent attacks against the coalition forces first began, the war was seen inside Iraq as a form of jihad against the outsiders. For some insurgents jihad included attacks on Iraqi Christians who were assumed to be allies of the invading forces from ‘Christian’ countries such as the US and UK. Now, many in Iraq will tell you that the struggle is not against Western ‘unbelievers’, but against Muslim ‘heretics’ with whom they differ over doctrine and practice. What began as a defensive ‘holy war’ has become an internal struggle for power and territory.

Standing up for their faith

The nuances of the Islamic theology may be hard to discern, but its practical effects are everywhere to see in Iraq. Refugee flows are reaching record levels, with one in eight Iraqis forced out of their homes. For the Christian minorities that remain in Iraq – and there are some, located in the Kurdish North, in Baghdad as well as in specific areas in the south – the pain of seeing the homeland torn apart as their former neighbours seek to destroy each other is further heightened by the knowledge that they might be next on someone’s list. When that happens, the real question is where the Christians of Iraq can go to be safe.

Having survived for almost two thousand years as a distinct community in Mesopotamia (Iraq), Christians now face a threat to their very survival in this Biblical region. However hard they try to please their Muslim compatriots, the radicals always find justifications to attack them. Only conversion or expulsion seem to be the terms on offer from the radical Sunni and Shi’a groups. Committed to remain true to their faith and traditions, the Christians in Iraq are in a terrible quandary from which they can see no escape unless their homeland is to lose its Christian presence altogether.

http://www.barnabasfund.org/news/archives/article.php?ID_news_items=243

Related Articles:

• Greece: can you believe this/them?
• Syria February 2012: Two Perspectives
• EGYPT: THE GROSS INSECURITY OF THE DHIMMI
• Female Circumcision in the Maldives, the Islamic Movement and Islamophobia
• Australia Day message

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.