And now for some history that should probably have been more prevalent in news media coverage and analysis in 2002 and 2003. JK has repeatedly talked about the importance of understanding the nature of the ongoing conflict into which we have sent American troops. In doing so, he has referred
several times to a book by Vali Nasr, titled "The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future".
In the preface to his book, Mr. Nasr recounts an incident that he observed, which I recall as well, observed through the global eye of television. I interpreted it much differently than he did. Unfortunately for our soldiers, our government did not understand the significance of such an event either.
I was on a research trip in Pakistan in April 2003 when two million Shias gathered in the Iraqi city of Karbala to mark the Arbaeen, the commemoration of the fortieth day after the martyrdom of the Shia saint Imam Husayn at Karbala in 680 C.E. ... On that particular "fortieth day," so soon after the one on which U.S. Marines and jubilant Iraqis had pulled down Saddam's hollow image in Baghdad's Firdous Square, I happened to be on the outskirts of Lahore, visiting the headquarters of a Sunni fundamentalist political group known as the Jamaat-e Islami (Islamic Party). The office television set was tuned to CNN, as everyone was following the news from Iraq. The coverage turned to scenes of young Shia men standing densely packed in the shadow of the golden dome of Imam Husayn's shrine at Karbala. They all wore black shirts and had scarves of green (the universal color of Islam) wrapped around their heads. They chanted a threnody in Arabic for their beloved saint as they raised their empty hands as if in prayer toward heaven and in unison brought them down to thump on their chests in a rhythmic gesture of mourning, solidarity, and mortification. The image was magnetic, at once jubilant and defiant. The Shia were in the streets and they were holding their faith and their identity high for all to see. We stared at the television screen. My Sunni hosts were aghast at what they were seeing. A pall descended on the room.
...The CNN commentator was gleefully boasting that the Iraqis were free at last--they were performing a ritual that the audience in the West did not understand but that had been forbidden to the Shia for decades. What Americans saw as Iraqi freedom, my hosts saw as blatant display of heretical rites that are anathema to orthodox Sunnis. ... "These actions are not right," said one of my hosts. Iraqis--by which he meant the Shia -- "do not know the proper practice of Islam." The Shia-Sunni debates over the truth of the Islamic message and how to practice it would continue, he added, not just peacefully and symbolically but with bombs and bullets. He was talking not about Iraq but about Pakistan.
more... Links to a number of excellent resources.
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