Declarations of mutual tolerance by religious leaders are important and necessary, but they may have limited impact in quelling sectarian violence because its roots are political, not religious. Nor is it caused by “ancient hatreds.” In spite of doctrinal differences, peaceful coexistence between the Shi`i and Sunni communities of Iraq has been the norm. The present situation is the product of developments during the past half century, which were exacerbated by the American invasion and occupation.

The Shi`a (the singular is Shi`i or in its Anglicized form Shi`ite) are some ten to fifteen percent of all Muslims worldwide. They are the majority in Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain, the largest sect in Lebanon, and form important minorities in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. Their forebears believed that, after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the Muslim community and polity he founded should be led by a member of the Prophet’s family. Their candidate was Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law and his closest male relation, but he was passed over in favor of others. Nevertheless, the Shi`a regarded Ali and his descendants as the true Imams or leaders, and followed their opinions in matters of faith. The majority of Muslims, eventually known as Sunni Muslims, accepted the leaders who actually wielded power. For a millennium and a half most Muslim rulers have upheld the Sunni version of the faith.

An exception to that pattern occurred in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, when much of the Mediterranean and eastern Islamic lands were ruled by dynasties adhering to rival Shi`i sects. In the sixteenth century, Iran’s rulers adopted Shi`ism as the religion of state. For most of the rest of Islamic history, the Sunni religious establishment could count on state patronage and in turn they upheld the legitimacy of the rulers. The Shi`a, usually lacking state support, invested great authority in their Imams. After the disappearance of the twelfth Imam in the late ninth century, the majority of the Shi`a invested this authority in the top Shi`i clergy. The modernizing reforms begun two centuries ago in the Ottoman Empire thus tended to reduce the influence of state-dependent Sunni clerics, providing an opening in the twentieth century for lay-led Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Less dependent on the state, even in majority Shi`i Iran, the Shi`i clergy have played a more prominent role as social and political leaders in modern Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq.

Although Iraq is home to a major Shi`i educational center in Najaf and important shrines in Najaf, Karbala, and elsewhere, its Shi`i majority emerged a little over two centuries ago as a result of nomadic tribesmen settling and taking up agriculture near the holy cities. Under Ottoman rule, however, the Shi`a remained politically marginal.

The British, too, ignored Iraq’s Shi`i majority in creating the modern state, installing a non-Iraqi and Sunni monarch who created a largely Sunni-dominated government. Successive military regimes since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958 were also Sunni-dominated, but that did not stir Shi`i religious activism and opposition so much as the broader challenge of secularism, both as a process of change and an instrument of state policy. As urbanization advanced and education spread, Iraq’s Communist Party attracted younger Shi`a, Kurds, and others on the political margins. The rival, but equally secular, Ba`th Party also sought Shi`i recruits. In addition to these challenges, Shi`i clerical opposition was aroused by a new family law in 1959 that expanded women’s rights. The Da`wa Party, founded two years earlier by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, sought to develop a modernist version of Islam and to apply it in creating an Islamic state. Unlike Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who believed that the clerics themselves should rule, al-Sadr envisioned a parliamentary government guided by Islamic principles as articulated by the clergy.

The Ba`thist regime of Muhammad Hasan al-Bakr and Saddam Husayn that took power in 1968 destroyed the Communist Party. Though seeking to recruit individual Shi`a into party ranks, it looked upon the Shi`i religious leadership with suspicion, which became outright hostility with the Iranian revolution and the rise of Khomeini in 1979. Saddam became president later that year and invaded Iran soon afterward. As many as 200,000 Shi`a of supposed Iranian origin were deported. Al-Sadr and his sister Bint al-Huda, also a prominent scholar, were murdered by the regime in 1980. Da`wa party members were driven underground or into exile in Iran. Other exiles in Iran formed the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), led by Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, who adopted Khomeini’s views on clerical rule. A third Shi`i movement arose among rural migrants living in the poor neighborhoods of eastern Baghdad and elsewhere. Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, cousin of the martyred leader of al-Da`wa, organized this movement, asserting the Khomeinist view of the necessity of clerical rule. He and two of his sons were killed by the regime in 1999, leaving the youngest son Muqtada (Moktada) al-Sadr, who now heads the movement.

In addition to these activist leaders with their organizationally modern movements—all have militias—other religious Shi`a followed the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Najaf, a cleric more in the traditional mold. The most influential of four scholars comprising the senior religious leadership or marja`iyya, he was pragmatically quietist during the Ba`thist repression, but emerged as an influential figure in post-invasion Iraq, offering guidance in social and political matters but opposing Iranian style clerical rule.

Pre-invasion Iraq was not Sunni dominated in the religious sense. The regime was secular and anti-Iranian, which put it at odds with the Da`wa Party and other Shi`i organizations. Yet Saddam ruled through an inner circle consisting mainly of trusted family and kinsmen, who were Sunni, and Ba`th Party cadres were largely Sunni as well. In 2003, Sunni political insecurities were aroused by the removal of this regime; the disbanding of the Iraqi army and “de-Ba`thification;” the appointment of a Shi`i and Kurdish dominated interim Iraq Governing Council; and the assertiveness of the Shi`i organizations.

The Sunni insurgent groups see themselves as fighting on two fronts: against the American occupation and against the enemy within, namely Shi`i domination. The insurgency is largely Sunni Arab and Iraqi, including the so-called al-Qaeda in Iraq, and during 2005 the several insurgent groups seem to have agreed upon a common nationalist and Islamist rhetoric, though they have yet to proclaim a political program. The most prominent voice claiming to speak for Sunni Arab interests is the Association of Muslim Scholars, led by Shaykh Harith al-Dhari, which is neither an insurgent group nor a party, but considers its role as guiding and representing the Sunni community like the marja`iyya does for the Shi`a. Its relationship with the insurgent groups is unclear. It has supported what it considers legitimate resistance to occupation while not condoning attacks on the Shi`a. It accuses the U.S. of fomenting sectarian strife, and in 2004 forged a temporary alliance with Muqtada al-Sadr during the U.S. attacks on Falluja. However, its inflexible attitude toward the occupation limited its ability to mobilize Sunnis to participate fully in the new political system. Sunni Arab political parties willing to participate in the political process have a foot in the door, but only barely: in the December 2005 elections the Shi`i parties won nearly half of the parliament’s seats, and together with the Kurdish parties they command a majority. A notable feature of that election was the virtual disappearance of parties not organized on a sectarian or ethnic basis.

At this writing in late November 2006, the sectarian divide was widening. In one day, Sunni insurgents besieged the Ministry of Health, controlled by al-Sadr’s supporters, for two hours, and later set off several bombs in the Shi`i neighborhood of al-Sadr City, killing more than 200. Shi`i militants responded by attacking Sunni mosques in Baghdad and other towns, and the government issued an arrest warrant for al-Dhari, alleging his ties with Sunni insurgents. If the Sunnis see themselves struggling to avoid marginalization by Shi`i organizations allied with Iran—and indeed, all of the latter receive Iranian support—the Shi`i organizations have contrasting political visions and are competing with one another, occasionally violently, for power. The civil war is a multifaceted struggle over who will have the upper hand in the new Iraq, and even whether there will be an Iraq, once the Americans depart. The sectarian violence is part of this process. Sunni and Shi`i militants alike appear to have resorted to “ethnic” cleansing to consolidate their control of territory.