Creating an Alternative umma: Clerical Authority and Religio-political Mobilisation in Transnational Shii Islam

Project Information

ALTERUMMA

Grant agreement ID: 724557

DOI

10.3030/724557

Project closed

EC signature date 25 July 2017

Start date 1 January 2018

End date 30 June 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 952 373,99

EU contribution

€ 1 952 373,99

Coordinated by

LUNDS UNIVERSITET
Sweden

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - ALTERUMMA (Creating an Alternative umma: Clerical Authority and Religio-political Mobilisation in Transnational Shii Islam)

Reporting period: 2022-04-01 to 2023-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This interdisciplinary project investigated the transformation of Shii Islam in the Middle East and Europe since the 1950s. The project examined the formation of modern Shii communal identities and the role Shii clerical authorities and their transnational networks have played in their religio-political mobilisation. The volatile situation post-Arab Spring, the rise of militant movements such as ISIS and the sectarianisation of geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East have intensified efforts to forge distinct Shii communal identities and to conceive Shii Muslims as part of an alternative umma (Islamic community). The project focused on Iran, Iraq and transnational links to Lebanon, Kuwait, Britain, Germany, Turkey and the Caucasus.
In response to the rise of modern nation-states in the Middle East, Shii clerical authorities resorted to a wide range of activities: (a) articulating intellectual responses to the ideologies underpinning modern Middle Eastern nation-states, (b) forming political parties and other platforms of socio-political activism and (c) using various forms of cultural production by systematising and promoting Shii ritual practices and utilising visual art, poetry and new media.
The project aimed at a perspectival shift on the factors that have led to Shii communal mobilisation by
- analysing unacknowledged intellectual responses of Shii clerical authorities to the secular or sectarian ideologies of post-colonial nation-states and to the current sectarianisation of geopolitics in the Middle East
- emphasising the central role of diasporic networks in the Middle East and Europe in mobilising Shii communities and in influencing discourses and agendas of clerical authorities based in Iraq and Iran
- exploring new modes of cultural production in the form of a modern Shii aesthetics articulated in ritual practices, visual art, poetry and new media.

The project aimed at creating a new narrative on the rise of modern Shii communal identities in the Middle East and in Europe. Within the various denominations of Shii Islam, Twelver Shiis are the majority, being dominant in Iran and Iraq and constituting important minorities in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 have shifted the sectarian power dynamics in the Middle East and translated the demographic strength of Shii communities into geopolitical power. Yet, little understanding exists of the historical and socio-cultural processes that mobilised and empowered Shii communities because of a persistent Sunni majoritarian perspective on Middle Eastern history, societies and cultures. The project questioned this majoritarian perspective by illustrating the historical mobilisation of Shii communities in various oppressive contexts and the different stages and factors of their gradual empowerment from the 1950s to 1979, after 1979 and since 2003.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The key findings of the project have significantly advanced the understanding of contemporary transnational Twelver Shii Islam:
- A key concept in contemporary Twelver Shii Islam is the notion of “the guardianship of the jurisconsult” (wilayat al-faqih) which is usually attributed to the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-1989), and has served as the ideological foundation of Islamic Republic of Iran. Research produced by the project shows that the concept was articulated much earlier in the late 1950s by Shii clerics based in Iraq who might have influenced Khomeini during his exile in Iraq.
- The project has also significantly questioned the dichotomy created in academic scholarship between activist and quietist Shii clerics. The most important clerical leader in Iraq, Aytollah Sistani (b. 1930), is usually viewed as quietist and only making political interventions on rare occasions. Previous scholarship has overlooked how Sistani informally and outside of the public view influences Iraqi politics on a constant basis.
- The religious seminaries in the Iranian city of Qom emerged as the key site of clerical opposition to the ruling Pahlavi dynasty in Iran before the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Research on the institutional history of the seminaries before the revolution shows how their clerical leaders ensured the institutional autonomy of the seminaries against state control and thereby provided them with the necessary consolidation to act as a base for oppositional politics from the 1960s onwards.
- The project investigated the relationship between Iraq and its diaspora which emerged during the autocratic rule of the Baath party from 1968. Research of the project has shown how the Iraqi diaspora, in particular political actors exiled to London, played a key role in diapora politics and in the new political order in Iraq after-2003.
- One of consequences of the disillusionment with Islamist politics in the Middle East is the turn towards material culture and aesthetics. Art, poetry and religious rituals are not only means for political mobilisation but the very sites in which counter-hegemonic identities and discourses are formed and expressed.
The project has produced 33 research outputs to date among them 1 monograph, 2 edited volumes, 1 special issue of an academic journal as well as numerous other articles published in journals such as International Affairs, Cultural Anthropology, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Die Welt des Islams and Material Religion. The project organised two major international conferences with around 50 participants each and 4 workshops at Kings College London, the University of Erfurt, Aarhus University and the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project moved beyond the state of art not just in terms of understanding transnational dynamics in contemporary Twelver Shii Islam but within Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies more broadly:
- If we want to understand the politics of resistance in the contemporary Middle East, we need to move beyond conventional forms of political mobilisation and activism around party politics, demonstrations and campaigns.
- As part of these reconsiderations, we need to move beyond the dichotomy between activism and quietism attributed to Twelver Shii clerics in particular. Clerical interventions in politics are more complex, often informal in nature and outside of conventional patterns of political lobbying and campaigning.
- We need to overcome methodological nationalism by taking the central role of diasporic and transnational networks in processes of religio-political mobilisation in the Middle East seriously.
- Finally, we need to consider the centrality of material culture and aesthetics not just as means of political mobilisation but as actual sites of dissenting politics. Counter-hegemonic resistance is not only manifest in ideological discourses and conventional patterns of political mobilization and activism but can be articulated in rituals, art, poetry and material culture more generally. Such "non-political" forms of resistance can prove more effective when conventional politics is viewed to have failed.

Decoration at Shii Religious Gathering in Kuwait