In times of conflict, being impartial does not necessarily translate into neutrality: silence in such circumstances may signify taking a side. This is indeed the Shiite clergy’s narrative about the violence in Syria. Thousands of Muslims are killed by an Alawite government backed by the ayatollah-led Islamic Republic of Iran. The number of Muslims who have lost their lives during the course of the last two years of crackdowns in Syria greatly exceeds the number of Arabs killed by Israel in the last thirty years.
The clergy’s silence doubtlessly helps Bashar Al-Assad justify his aggressive policy toward his opponents, but understanding the position of the clerics is not so simple. It requires an understanding of the internal politics of the Shi’a clergy — especially the dynamic between the two main seminaries, at Qom and Najaf — which are complicated by history, politics, and geography. These tensions have been building since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and were exacerbated by the rise of the Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979. In this context, the silence of the Shi’a clergy towards the violence perpetrated by an Alawite against his (predominately Sunni) citizens is merely another symptom of a system that encourages silence from the clerics unless they are under direct attack…
Mehdi Khalaji is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute.
Majalla
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