those who are interested in the rise of shia power should check out vali nasr's work, lots of nuggets of data and very accessible. also,

After a couple centuries of colonialism and arbitrarily imposed borders you can’t just expect people to forget their old conflicts to pray at the alter of democracy

just a factual point about 'old conflicts,' from what i am to understand the rise of an arab shia majority in iraq is a function of the settlement of sunni nomad tribes around agricultural canals in the 19th century. prior to that period shiism was still the religion of the shrine cities and the persian diaspora. so, the conflict between shia and sunni arab needs to conceptualized as emerging out of local social and historical circumstances, instead of back projecting a thousand years, since the shia arab clans of iraq were probably mostly sunni before 1800.

p.s. the bhutto family in pakistan is apparently shia, though they keep on the 'down low' about it. an muhammad ali jinnah also came from a shia background (ismaili).

so, the conflict between shia and sunni arab needs to conceptualized as emerging out of local social and historical circumstances, instead of back projecting a thousand years, since the shia arab clans of iraq were probably mostly sunni before 1800.

Thanks for putting this out there quickly and clearly Razib. Framing present day Iraq in terms of an age old, intractable and irrational conflict based on faith is very misleading.

The WSJ had a long front page article on Vali Nasr back in fall '06 in which they essentially said he was becoming increasingly influential with members of the Senate foreign relations committee and other bigwigs. I've watched some of the committee's hearings since then and the dialogue has certainly elevated to where points, like Razib's, are commonplace. The committee still tends to frame the war in simplistic terms but that's expected as they aren't formulating policy. In addition to Vali Nasr, there were these four who testified before the committee and were brutally honest:

Phebe Marr, the preeminent historian of Iraq, will provide a historical overview. By illuminating the past, we can better understand the present. Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution will focus on the numbers: how do we measure the current situation and the trends in terms of security, the economy and public opinion. Yahia Said, the Director of Iraq Revenue Watch, will speak to the political dynamics inside Iraq – who are the main players and what are their interests. Paul Pillar, the former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, will address the dynamics in the region: what do Iraq’s neighbors want and how can they affect the outcome. The goal today, as it was yesterday, is not to discuss policy options – it is to get the facts. We want this Committee and the public to have a strong foundation to evaluate the principal policy options. [link]

It's a valid point to draw connections between larger sectarian tensions particularly in the Middle East and their reverberations in South Asia, but sectarian conflict (esp between Muhajirs and others in Karachi) has been going on in Pakistan for many many years, esp. in places like Karachi, and the Afghan adventure of the 1980s also increased the popularity of conservative Sunni Islamist ideas, which made tensions with Shia worse. Al Qaeda activity in Afghanistan, border Pathans and those with Taliban ties and sympathies in NWFP probably still have more influence on sectarian tension in pakistan today than Iraq does. I'm not sure what you mean by the "muslim belief in the ummah" spreading this fire even further - are you arguing that Sunni/Shia in one place will feel kinship with and take revenge for Sunni/Shia in another? That's more like kin-state intervention; the ummah idea refers broadly and vaguely to the entire global community of Muslims.

In any event, there's a lot of concern in the Middle East right now about rising Sunni-Shia animosity due to the Iraq civil war and irresponsible US/Saudi drumming up of fears about the 'Shia crescent' (see Abu Aardvark's blog). Yitzhak Nakash is well known on the Shia of Iraq, Vali Nasr is good but quite politicised, Juan Cole and Nikki Keddie have also written extensively on Shia political activism (Cole's dissertation/first book, available free online, is on Indian Shia in Avadh, btw)

We midwifed their freedom. They chose civil war

As much as one hates neo-con politics, what is wrong with the above statement, made by Charles Krauthammer in a recent opinion column? If democracy would have come to Iraq through peaceful means (Iraq's version of the Velvet or Orange or whatever-color Revolution) does anybody doubt that the Shia & Sunni (not to mention the Kurds and other ethnicities in Iraq) wouldn't be at each other's throats, in any case? Bush, and the neo-con crowd, can't be excused for dim thinking and faulty planning, but the problem perhaps lies in cultural backwardness, and non-Reformation Islam?

Yeah that must be it. The problem lies in 'cultural backwardness and non-reformation islam'....y'know, the problem that did not begin until AFTER the U.S. got involved in the region. I love how the U.S. wants to find any excuse to blame anyone but themselves. Face it, you got involved for the flimsiest of excuses, hundreds of thousands of innocents died, and now you need to find a way to distance yourself from the mess you left behind ('you' here referring to the proverbial neocon point of view of course). You gave birth to this baby, so take responsibility for it, at least.

Purush, you're right to point to the agency of Iraqis in producing the civil war mess, even though arguably the Sunnis and Shia wouldn't have been at each other's throats quite so much if the Americans hadn't come in and screwed the Sunnis (instead the Sunnis would be screwing the Shia, broadly speaking, via Saddam's regime), and yes, in a peaceful democratisation we might have seen very similar sectarian tensions.

But if you read some of the history I think it suggests the sectarian tensions have much more to do with a repressive minority government mistreating a majority than with any generalised "backwardness" - Iraqis were a very well-educated lot and much more progressive than many others in the region before the sanctions. The politicisation of religion, esp Shiism, did take off with the influence of the Iranian revolution, but this was similar enough to the politicisation of religion in India around the 1930s and 1940s, IMHO. Lots of Iraq scholars are starting to use the "communalism" theoretical frameworks out of India in studying the conflict, btw.

Abhi,

Democracy was not imposed on Pakistan like the other Arab countries. They chose to be democratic in 1947, but had a succession of dictatorships, as you know. The problems in Pakistan began with the US, but not with GWB. It began with Reagan and his tacit support for Zia-ul-Haq and his Islamization scheme. M. J. Akbar, the Indian editor has written eloquently on Zia in one of his many books.

SP, my larger point is that instead of blaming all kinds of reasons (and yes, the American misadventure in Iraq smacks of colonial hubris and has been the prime instigator of the chaos in which this kind of sectarian violence finds violent purchase), it's time for moderate Muslims, and indeed wider society, to start clamoring for an Islamic Reformation. If relatively civil, educated societies like Iraq, as pointed by you, can't get over millennia old blood feuds between its Shia and Sunni communities, after years of secular rule by Saddam (brutal, grotesque and bloody rule but nevertheless of a secular nature as compared to, say, the political structure of Saudi Arabia), then what hope for the wider Muslim world? In surveys by the Pew Research Center, the support for things like the depraved practice of suicide bombings is actually higher in Islamic non-radicalized societies, as understood by us, like Lebanon and Jordan, and that too amongst the educated of it's citizens. This is a nightmare scenario...coupled with the ease with which Islam seems to lend itself to intolerant and violent interpretation and practice, this is a recipe for calamitous disaster.

Another reason why Partition was the worst mistake in Indian history...please stop blaming the West for domestic Muslim problems and accomodating to Muslims' invalidated inferiority complex-it just strikes of patronizing behaviour, thinking that Muslims aren't advanced enough as human beings to recognize their own faults and problems...a person can and should have more than one over-arching identity.

Purush,

Agreed. Islam seriously needs a reform movement, but it's almost like this is impossible for the very fact that the west has already gone through an enlightenment. A reform movement would then make Islam indistinguishable from the current tame version of Christianity, and essentially put Muslim countries on the same path toward secularism as the West as gone down. I think that consciously or subconsciously Muslims are incapable of doing something that like betraying their principles, principles that after all have served them well up to around the 1700s.

Gazsi

[quote] Another reason why Partition was the worst mistake in Indian history[/quote]

typical psec logic
it's like telling the british - i think colonialism was a huge mistake.
or telling the rapist - your rape was huge a huge mistake.

Purush,

Considering the way you're talking about it, do you have any idea what the Protestant Reformation was about?

This is from wiki:

The Reformation was a movement in the 16th century to reform the Catholic Church in Western Europe. Soon, the reformers split from the Church altogether, founding several new branches of christianity branching from Catholicism.
Many Catholics were troubled by the way the Church abused its power. The Church allowed the sale of indulgences (substitutes for confession that had to be bought) and allowed people to buy the titles in the church such as priest, bishop, etc. The Church even went so far as to allow people to buy more than one title, a man could be both a priest and a bishop. Luther's timely protest against the church led to the reformation. Since many people were troubled by the corruption in the Church they readily joined Luther's cause. Some even started their own religions.

What in God's name does any of this have to do with what is going on in Iraq currently, or even the wider Muslim world?

There was no civil war before in Iraq before Americans invaded and basically helped to destroy the infrastrucuture of the country. This was the current American administrations fault. LOL at blaming the victims.

I wasn't going to say anything about the Reformation issue because it's a bit of obvious nonsense that has circulated long enough in American discourse about Islam that it's become self-referential...but a) there was a major reform movement in Islam in the late 19C and early 20C, read Ibrahim Abu Rabi' or Albert Hourani on this, and the Baath was quite socially and religiously progressive, whatever its other faults may have been; and b) Reformations don't necessarily make for calmer or more reasonable politics, look at what followed the Protestant Reformation (Michael Walzer's Revolution of the Saints is great on this for a historical reality-check). Anyhoo, those who believe strongly in the reformation business tend to be rather ideological about it, so I don't engage people in debate about it any more.

I haven't read the entire New York Public Library book catalogue but anybody can make out that if Islam already has had a Reformation that either it wasn't a very good one (If the top 3 things that an educated guy in, say, Lebanon likes is Nasrallah's beard, the sexy new abaya that shows a little of nose and suicide bombers then we're in deep trouble) or that the religion itself is resistant to a proper Reformation. I don't think it is...check this out. Baathism was a bastardized verison of Socialism, with Islam, thrown into the mix for good measure. And I already made the point: If decades of Baathist rule (bloody,violent and partisan but secular) still has people thinking of themselves as Shia, Sunni, Kurd etc to this great an extent where they murder each other en masse just for being from the an alternative branch of Islam, then that society has a long way to go.
This is not, perhaps, the proper forum to bring it up but the Protestant Reformation was successful, not inasmuch it prevented medieval wars and savagery, but because, in a nutshell, it gave rise to competing kingdoms backing alternative versions of Christianity, with it's attendant Church and all that that entails, for the religious and social legitimacy that it would confer on these kingdoms. This led to the encouragement of secular trades and businesses because if Kingdom A, with it's particular Christian Church, wanted to upstage Kingdom B on the battlefield or whereever, it needed to have wealth to finance itself and this could only be generated through the creativity and hard work of it's populace, working in material and non-theological professions. Islam's Reformation cannot follow a similar trajectory of course, but at least it could acknowledge that divine sanctity goes hand in hand with material and emotional happiness.