Sectarianism has become the framework for understanding a range of conflicts in the Middle East, going even beyond the sphere of Syria and Iraq where the sectarian narrative has most potency in media and academic discourse. Policy makers and international relations experts in Turkey and beyond assume that solutions to regional problems must lie in non-sectarianism since it is through the prism of “sect” that they understand issues in the first place. The Sunni-Shia binary is the paradigm par excellance, applied wherever possible, and behind which the Iranian-Saudi proxy war must be lurking. But just how accurate is this framing? What do we mean by sect and sectarianism? Are we favouring sectarianism by using it as the prism du jour for understanding the Middle East?
If we take Syria, the Assad government has come to be described in media and academic discussion of the Syrian civil war as Alawi (Nusayri), a sectarian regime. There are different groups fighting the Assad regime including the Free Syrian Army, Al-Qaeida-based groups such as the Nusra Front and ISIS. Is it correct to use the rather wide and undefined category “Sunni” to identify them all? For a start, are those fighters who came from Europe “Sunni” in the sense that the word might be understand in various parts of Syria or Iraq? Is Sunni a sectarian form of identification in the way that Alawi or Shia is? I would argue that it is not.
Sunni is sometimes applied to refer to areas where there are no Shia, or, in Turkey, it might be assumed as a term relevant for all Arabs because of the view that Shiaism equals Iran. For those claiming to represent Sunnism or Shiaism, these terms serve to strengthen their sense of identity vis-à-vis the other.
In theological terms, Sunnism is a tradition that includes different internal divisions, but the most salient I would argue are in fact those of jurisprudence and theology. The legal schools regulate relations between family and state, from marriage to tax, and include the Hanafi, the Maliki, the Shafii and the Hanbali. The theological trends try to explain philosophical and ethical issues of Islam, from conceptualisations of God to notions of the universe and our place in it. In the main these schools are the Ash’ari and Maturidi. In other words, Sunnism is a general term which includes all these structures; rarely are any of them referred to as “sect” yet they are critical in the Sunni Islamic tradition.
Up to the 19th century, Sunnism was clearly understood in these terms. They were not political forms of identification, more correctly they were what we might call epistemic groups. Sectarianism turns on the issue of takfir – the sectarian identification implies, if it does not state it bluntly as in the Salafi case, that the Other is not part of Islam at all due to the absolutism nature of sectarian claims. Takfir was not a major theme of Sunni traditions at all; quite the opposite. The theological majority view held that no Muslim could be declared kafir (infidel/unbeliever) for their sins. The Sunni tradition was broad and inclusive.
Sunnism began to shift with the Muslim revivalist movements of the 19th century. These intellectuals began to think across the traditional jurisprudential and theological categories, leading to a more rigid conceptualisation of what Sunni means. Ultimately it led to the situation we have today whereby Sunnism has come to mean in analytical discussion “non-Shia” and Shiaism is rendered as non-Sunni. Almost no group among the conflicting parties in Syria, Iraq and the Gulf today refer to the classical “sects” of legalism and theology. There is no group fighting in Syria that champions Maturidism or Hanafism. But this brings us to the question of Salafism, which does claim to fight in the name of a jurisprudence (Hanbali, filtered often through Wahhabism) and the Salafi theology, which diverges from the Ash’ari while rejecting the Maturidi.
Salafism came to be considered a sect or trend within Sunnism from the late 19th century. Salafism as a term appears to have entered with Wahhabism, the puritanical Saudi-sponsored movement that emerged in central Arabia in the 18th century, into the Middle East. The Ottoman religious scholars recognised Wahhabism as a movement based on Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas, but considered it a political sect outside the bounds of normative Sunni discourse. But with the occupation of the Muslim holy places, Makkah and Medina, Wahhabism came to make its mark.
This reduction and streamlining of the Sunni tradition has been effected over the past century through structuring organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jamaat-e Islami, but a qualitative leap took place in the evolution and promotion of Salafi thought with the Afghan jihad in the 1980s. The centres of Islamic education of the Islamic world today, from Medina to Islamabad and Cairo to Istanbul, are as likely to be suffused in Salafism as concerned with traditional questions of law and theology.
Modern jihadists do not simply fall from the sky. They emerge from a set of strongly held, developed beliefs: how were they radicalised? In what sense was it “sect” that caused this radicalisation? “Sunnism” is not an ideology that helps us explain this. Sunnism is an umbrella concept, not a political ideology. Sunni sects are epistemic communities. If we want to defeat radicalism we need to investigate the difference between Salafism and Sunnism. Salafist ideology is the most powerful force in mainstream Islamic education today. ISIS and other groups like al-Qa’ida feed from Salafi religious ideology. This ideology has evolved over a century and is embedded in a range of groups engaging charity work, social support networks and religious education.
So while Middle East conflicts may be partly motivated by sectarian concerns, the ongoing conflict is better understood as a struggle for power between two diverse coalitions, both of which incorporate a wide range of Salafi and Shi’ite elements. Today the ascendant actors in the regional chaos are not sects. Sunnism per se does not have the charismatic religious leaders and religious centres to be a political actor in the Middle East. The real crisis in the Middle East is the collapse of the traditional centres of Sunnism, of which the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was a part, and the emergence of political ideological movements such as revolutionary Iran and the Saudi Salafi nexus in their place. Moreover, the Western powers have no plan to reconstruct the Sunni centre and that in some ways makes difficult to stabilise the region. New ideologies, intersecting with new state entities, have helped reformulate our notions of what Sunni Islam even is.
Prof. Dr. at the Faculty of Divinity, Hitit University, Turkey.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.