America's distorted view of Islam and the Saudi Sunni Lobby

Submitted by Martin H Katchen (United States), Feb 4, 2013 at 15:01

What you say about Islamism is certainly appropriate. However, this is more true of Sunni Islam than it is of Shia Islam. As you know, Prof. Pipes, Shia Islam never renounced the power of the religious decisor to engage in ijtihad (innovation). And Shia Islam, be it the Twelver Shiite Islam of Iran and Iraq or the Sevener Shia Islam of the Aga Khan in Pakistan has the centralized authority structure through it's Ayatollahs and Hojeteslams and the legitimacy of that authority structure through the institution of marja-i-taqlid (the idea that the mujtahid or ayatollah i(imitation of allah) is a worthy object of imitation) to make innovation stick. What this means is that Shia Islam is capable of reform in ways that Sunni Islam is not, IF REFORMERS CAN RISE TO THE TOP OF THE CLERICAL STRUCTURE.

Sunni Islam, by contrast, can only restate old truths and return to them. Fundamentalist Sunni Islam and Islamism therefore, turns into government by moral panic. Whenever someone attempts to reform Islam, it becomes the duty of the Faithful to kill him or her. As a result, in the Sunni world, there is no real Muslim innovation, only governments in tension with fundamentals of Islam like Saudi Arabia or secular governments run along authoritarian lines by bad Muslims.

The United States, after a promising beginning in 1907, supporting the first Iranian Revolution, unfortunately allowed itself in it's Mideast policy to uncritically follow the British lead in biasing itself in favor of Sunni Islam when it's national interest might have been better served by supporting a more democratic Iran with an open door policy from the start and an even handed policy between Sunni and Shia. The British Sunni bias stemmed from the Indian Colonial Office's cultivation of Deobandi Sunni Islam as a counterweight to Hinduism in India and the Colonial office's expansion into the Persian Gulf which resulted in their cultivation of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud. Added to this, at the time of WWI was the cultivation of the Sharifate of Mecca in an Arab rebellion against the enemy Ottoman Empire by TE Lawrence. Ties with the British Crown were created that worked both ways and resulted in Sunni Muslim lobbies in Whitehall that were not matched by Iran, where the British and Russians simply installed Reza Khan as Shah, overthrowing Iran's constitutional government. The United States, whose view of the Mideast was shaped largely by Christian misisonaries who had to adapt to a Sunni environment in which they were tolerated as long as they did not convert anyone, soon adopted a distortedly Sunni viewpoint as well. Oil was discovered and the Saudis cultivated American oil companies, who brought in the US Government beginning with President Roosevelt in 1943 and establishing a primacy of relationship that exists to this day.

Iran, in the meantime was something of an afterthought, a place whose chief concern in the eyes of the US and the UK was who it was aligned with rather than for it's own sake. Reza Shah was overthrown in 1943 for getting too close to the Nazis and replaced by his son, Mohammas Reza Pahlavi. When a democratic government under Mossadegh overthrew the Shah in 1953, the US, anxious that Iran might fall into the Soviet orbit, restored the Shah to his throne, leading to bad feeling that has persisted to the present day. In hindsight, knowing what we know about Communism and how long it would remain viable, even if Mossadegh would have led to a Communist Iran, the US should not have intervened. But 1953 was a different time and of course, Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers listened to Great Britain and Saudi Arabia as well as oilmen concerned about a rise in the price of Iranian oil.

So the US is still left with a bias that uncritically supports Sunni Islam in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood in this Administration while Iraq, which could have been cultivated as an independent focus for Shia Islam falls into the Iranian orbit. In Afghanistan as well, the US prefers to have Hamid Karzai negotiate with the Taleban (and keep the Pushtun Karzai in power) rather than encourage a controlled breakup of Afghanistan into Tajik, Uzbek, Pashtun and Shia Hazara states that could achieve international recognition and receive legitimate military aid and contain the Taleban, confining them to Shia regions even as an independent Hazarajat with it's own mujtahid Ayatollah would help contain Iran on it's east. Why do we do this when we know when from the start that this is ultimately self-defeating? For all the talk of the Jewish lobby, the Sunni lobby seems far more powerful.

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