shia A Shiite is, first of all, a rabid oppositionist.

At first the Shiites were a small group of the friends and backers of Ali, the son-inlaw of Mohammed and husband of the Prophets beloved daughter Fatima. When Mohammed died without a male heir and without designating his successor, the Muslims begin struggling over the Prophets inheritance, over who would be caliph, or leader of the believers in Allah and thus the most important person in the Islamic world. Alis party (Shia means party) supports its leader for this position, maintaining that Ali is the sole representative of the prophets family, the father of Mohammeds two grandsons Hassan and Hussein. The Sunni Muslim majority, however, ignores the voices of the Shiites for twenty-four years and chooses Abu Bakr, Umar, and Utman as the next three caliphs. Ali finally becomes caliph, but his caliphate ends after five years, when an assassin splits his skull with a poisoned saber. Of Alis two sons, Hassan will be poisoned and Hussain will fall in battle. The death of Alis family deprives the Shiites of the chance to win power, which passes to the Sunni Omayed, Abassid, and Ottoman dynasties. The caliphate, which Mohammed had conceived as a simple and modest institution, becomes a hereditary monarchy. In this situation the plebeian, pious, poverty-stricken Shiites, appalled by the nouveau-riche style of the victorious caliphs, go over to the opposition. All this happens in the middle of the seventh century, but has remained a living and passionately dwelt-on history to this day. When a devout Shiite talks about his faith he will constantly return to those remote histories and relate tearfully the massacre at Karbala in which Hussein had his head cut off. A skeptical, ironic European will think, God, what can any of that mean today? But if he expresses these thoughts aloud, he provokes the anger and hatred of the Shiite. The Shiites have indeed had a tragic fate, and the sense of tragedy, of the historical wrongs and misfortunes that accompany them, is encoded deep within their consciousness.

shia The world contains communities for whom nothing has gone right for centurieseverything has slipped through their hands, and every ray of hope has faded as soon as it began to shine these people seem to bear some fatal brand. So it is with the Shiites. For this reason, perhaps, they have an air of dead seriousness, of fervent unsettling adherence to their arguments and principles, and also (this is only an impression of course) of sadness. As soon as the Shiites (who constitute barely a tenth of all Muslims, the rest being Sunnis) go into opposition, the persecution begins. To this day they live the memories of the centuries of pogroms against them, and so they close themselves off in ghettoes, use signals only they understand, and devise conspiratorial forms of behaviour. But the blows keep falling on their head. Gradually they start to look for safer places where they will have a better chance of survival. In those times of difficult and slow communication, in which distance and space constitute an effective isolator, a separating wall, the Shiites try to move as far as possible from the center of power (which lies first in Damascus and then in Baghdad). They scatter throughout the world, across mountains and deserts, and descend step-by-step underground. So the Shiite diaspora, which has lasted until today, comes into being. The epic of the Shiites is full of acts of incredible abjuration, courage, and spiritual strength. A part of the wandering community heads east. Crossing the Tigris and Euphrates, it passes through the mountains of Zagros and reaches the Iranian desert plateau. At this time, Iran, exhausted and laid waste by centuries of war with Byzantium, has been conquered by Arabs who are spreading the new faith, Islam. This process is going on slowly, amid continual fighting. Until now the Iranians have had an official religion, Zoroastrianism, related to the ruling Sassanid dynasty. Now comes the attempt to impose upon them another official religion, associated with a new and, whats more, a

shia foreign regimeSunni Islam. It seems like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. But exactly at this moment the poor, exhausted, wretched Shiites, still bearing the visible traces of the Gehenna they have lived through, appear. The Iranians discover that these Shiites are Muslims and, additionally (as they claim), the only legitimate Muslims, the only preservers of a pure faith for which they are ready to give their lives. Well fine, say the Iranians but what about your Arab brothers who have conquered us? Brothers? cry the outraged Shiites. Those Arabs are Sunnis, usurpers and our persecutors. They murdered Ali and seized power. No, we dont acknowledge them. We are in opposition! Having made this proclamation the Shiites ask if they might rest after their long journey and request a jug of cold water. This pronouncement by the barefoot newcomers sets the Iranians thinking along important lines. You can be a Muslim without being an establishment Muslim. Whats more, you can be an opposition Muslim! And that makes you an even better Muslim! They feel empathy for these poor, wronged Shiites. At this moment the Iranians are poor and feel wronged. They have been ruined by war, and an invader controls their country. So they quickly find a common language with these exiles who are looking for shelter and counting on their hospitality. The Iranians begin to listen to the Shiite preachers and finally accept their faith. In this adroit manoeuvre one can see all the intelligence of the Iranians. They have a particular talent for preserving their independence under conditions of subjugation. For hundreds of years the Iranians have been the victims of conquest, aggression, and partition. They have been ruled for centuries on end by foreigners or local regimes dependent on foreign powers, and yet they have preserved their culture and language, their impressive personality and so much spiritual fortitude that in propitious circumstances they can arise reborn from the ashes. During the twenty-five centuries of their recorded history the Iranians have always, sooner or later, managed to outwit anyone with the impudence to try ruling 3

shia them. Sometimes they have had to resort to the weapons of uprising and revolution to obtain their goal, and then they pay the tragic levy of blood. Sometimes they use the tactic of passive resistance, which they apply in a particularly consistent and radical way. When they get fed up of an authority that has become unbearable, the whole country freezes, the whole nation does a disappearing act. Authority gives orders but no one is listening, it frowns but no one is looking, it raises its voice but that voice is as one crying in the wilderness. Then authority falls apart like a house of cards. The most common Iranian technique, however, is absorption, active assimilation, in a way that turns the foreign sword into the Iranians own weapon. And so it is after the Arab conquest.