The last time Egypt had an issue with the Shia was when Salaheddin Al-Ayoubi (Saladin) dismantled the Fatimid state as an ideological order and official doctrine. That was about nine centuries ago. Since then there has been no “Shia question” in Egypt; that is, not until after the 25 January Revolution when the Shia re-emerged as a subject of controversy, exposing in the process a number of kinks in the awareness centres of the Egyptian mind set. Suddenly we are hearing the cry for Salaheddin again, but not as the symbol, familiar to all Egyptians, of the liberator of Jerusalem. Rather, these days the call is prompted by the demand to purge Egypt of Shia “scum”, as they were referred to by a band of Salafis during a demonstration they recently staged in front of the residence of Iranian Charge d'affairs in Egypt Mojtaba Amani. The demonstrators were venting their anger against what they claim was a decision by President Mohamed Morsi, who also sports a beard for religious reasons and who has memorised the Quran, to allow “them” (Shias) into Egypt. Although Egypt is home to Al-Azhar, the largest Sunni university in the Islamic world, and although it was founded by the Fatimid Shia a thousand years ago, Egyptians never explicitly defined themselves as “Sunni” Muslims in antithesis to another brand of Muslim. Indeed, if they had a general perception of the Shia in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere, it was that they were Muslims of a different doctrinal stripe. True, perceptions were sometimes marred by folk myths and fables. But such misperceptions, the source of which was ignorance, had never engendered an identity crisis in this largely homogenous country. In fact, marriages between Sunni and Shia Muslims, which were not that rare, did not arouse surprise or consternation. Many Egyptians may not have been aware that president Gamal Abdel-Nasser's wife, Tahiya Kazem, was the daughter of an Iranian merchant. But if they had been, it would not have raised many eyebrows. In like manner, the dailies of the 1930s give no hint of any sectarian controversy in response to the marriage of Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi to Princess Fawzia, the sister of King Farouq. Al-Azhar itself took no part in the Sunni-Shia dispute other than to serve as an agent of spiritual unification and moral solidarity. Towards this end, in 1947 Al-Azhar established the Office of Doctrinal Rapprochement, which engaged the services of such and intellectual figures as Sheikh Mahmoud Shaltout, Abdel-Maguid and Mustafa Abdel-Razek, Mohamed Taqi Al-Qimi and Mohamed Hassan Brogordi. In 1959, the sheikh of Al-Azhar Mahmoud Shaltout, who had established that office, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, sanctioning worship in accordance with the rights of the Jaafari school of religious jurisprudence, to which the majority of Shia subscribe. His fatwa stated, “It is legally permissible to worship in accordance with the Jaafari doctrine, which is known to be the doctrine of the Twelver Shiites, as is the case with the Sunni doctrines. The Muslim people should know this and shed unwarranted bigotry against certain creeds. The religion of God and His Sharia have never been affiliated with or restricted to any one doctrinal order. All who strive to perfect their faith are acceptable to Almighty God, and those who are not qualified to engage in the disciplines of theological and jurisprudential inquiry may emulate and follow the rulings of those that are. There is no difference[between Muslims] in the [basic tenets of] worship and interaction.” Sheikh Shaltout's fatwa emanated from a religious vision that abhors sectarian intolerance and seeks to elevate the faith above puritanical rigidity that presumes only one school of Islamic doctrine is correct and the others deviant. Such exclusionist religious dogmatism, which parades beneath the banner of Wahhabism, began to gain an increasing hold over Egyptian society and politics since the 1970s. Although the Egyptian state had never espoused a sectarian discourse, since it embodied a non-sectarian polity, certain political developments contributed to shaping the prevailing religious outlook and attitudes in society today. When Nasser locked horns with the Shah of Iran in a regional conflict, he did not utilise Al-Azhar as a political weapon or cast the conflict as a sectarian clash between Sunna and Shia. But the situation would rapidly change following the success of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which fired the ardour of both the left wing and Islamist opposition camps throughout the Arab world. President Sadat, who had opposed the Iranian Revolution, hosted the deposed Shah in Egypt, initiating a decades-long rupture in relations between Cairo and Tehran. Yet, in that very year, he closed down the Society of the Ahl Al-Bayt (the House of the Prophet Mohamed), the main Shia institute in Egypt. Henceforward, the Egyptian-Iranian conflict would acquire a salient sectarian dimension. This development was aggravated by the Shia insularism that had begun to permeate Iran's theocratic regime under the system of vilayet-e faqih (rule by clergy) and that rendered the Shia affiliation virtually synonymous with Iranian identity. When Egypt became involved on the Iraqi side of the Iraq-Iran war, Egyptian security services became acutely sensitive to this identity and began to clamp down on all forms of Shia associations in Egypt, regardless of the fact that this community exists on the margins of society which, in turn, was geographically and emotionally remote from that conflict. At the same time, the state had begun to allow the Salafist tide to penetrate society, giving rise to the spread of ultraconservative doctrinal rigidity and the onset of mounting sectarian tensions between Muslims and Copts. Salafism is a movement that presses for “purity” of the creed, which in turn demands loyalty to its pundits and the elimination from the community of true believers of all who differ. As this movement gained ground in Egypt, so too did attitudes that reject the “deviant” other, whether Muslim or not, as though the faith could not be complete without victims to condemn as evil and heretic. Although initially the Shia question had not featured strongly in Salafist rhetoric, it was not remote. When Egyptians rejoiced at the Hizbullah victory over the Israeli army in 2006, Salafi sheikhs moved to avert the perceived threat to Sunni Egypt from the admiration of the victory, and produced a battery of recordings and lectures warning of the looming Shia tide. This drive coincided with an official rhetoric on the part of the Egyptian government, which at the time was engaged in a war of strategic balances against Iran and its allies, in alliance with the governments of the Gulf that are the chief sponsors of the Salafist movements in the Arab world. Following the revolution and after decades of having built up an influential presence in society, Salafis entered the political fray on the basis of the same ideological platform. Together with other political trends, they contributed to shifting the post-revolutionary political conflict to the domain of identity politics, diverting the thrust of political activity from the pursuit of the revolution's democratic social and political aims to the preservation of “Egyptian identity” (as they define it) as a chief criterion for political legitimacy. Nevertheless, over the course of the two years since the revolution, the Salafis succeeded in developing political organs that have shown a considerable ability to be pragmatic and to temper their fundamentalist discourse, leaving the more vitriolic strains of rhetoric to their throngs of supporters in political battles against their and their allies' adversaries. Against this backdrop it is clear why the Salafis have led the charge against the Shia presence in Egypt and the restoration of relations with Iran. Moreover, on this issue even the most pragmatic of Salafi leaders have spearheaded the campaign against Iranian “encroachment”, hurling charges that the Shia insult the companions and wives of the Prophet and are bent on disseminating Shiism in Egypt. The decision to restore relations with Iran was taken by the regime that the Muslim Brotherhood now controls. In view of its totalitarian nature and the fact that it is an expression of the religious characteristics of Egyptian society, the Muslim Brotherhood did not originally define itself on the basis of Muslim doctrinal divides. Nevertheless, since the 1970s when it found itself in competition with the Salafis over the apportionment of the Egyptian societal pie, it also began to veer toward Salafism. The sensitivity of the doctrinal conflict with the Shia was one of the reasons it had severed connections with the Iranian regime with which it had initially established ties immediately following the victory of the Iranian Revolution. The speech that Morsi delivered in Tehran last August and that alluded heavily to the Sunni-Shia divide was clearly intended to outbid the Salafis at home by playing on the mounting sectarian sensitivities in Egyptian society. The recent wave of incitement against the Shia and Iran is clearly connected with this Muslim Brother-Salafist rivalry, which has not yet reached the stage of overt antagonism. While the Muslim Brothers are managing a conflict with the Copts, the Salafis are championing the battle to safeguard Egypt's identity, which they define as Sunni Muslim, by waging anti-Shia campaigns. It is precisely here where the Salafis' pragmatism reached its optimal level: they needed a cause to safeguard the legitimacy of their existence and to sustain the zealotry of their ranks, which are terrified of any threat to Egypt's identity as they perceive it. They found the perfect answer in the Shia question. Suddenly, Salafi leaders began to organise conferences and broadcast sectarian hate tirades so as to create an imaginary enemy with the purpose of strengthening their legitimacy at a time when they are morally floundering as a result of their slippery political alliances. The new and ominous development is that Al-Azhar has also been struck by the sectarian virus. When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Cairo and met with the rector of Al-Azhar and other heads of that institution, the tension between the two sides, which emanated from incidents in which Al-Azhar had no hand, was so palpable that none of the courtesies of protocol could hide it. Indeed, it surfaced visibly in a statement in which Al-Azhar insisted that Tehran promulgate legislation prohibiting offending the Companions of the Prophet. But the signs of the new direction inside Al-Azhar were visible before this. In June 2012, the dean of the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Al-Azhar University issued a fatwa diametrically opposed in substance and spirit to that issued of Sheikh Shaltout in the late 1950s. This one prohibited worship in accordance with Al-Jaafariya and condemned anyone who insulted the Companions of the Prophet or Aisha or other wives of the Prophet as a heretic. That same year, Al-Azhar magazine published a book on the Shia and Al-Azhar featuring the opinions of Al-Azhar scholars on the Shia sect and the question of doctrinal harmony. The introduction of that book was written by Mohamed Amara, who supervises the publication of the magazine and who epitomises the drift towards Salafism in Al-Azhar. Not surprisingly, he cautioned against Shia expansionism and held that doctrinal rapprochement was impossible. The climate in Egypt is thick with sectarian poison. This is the most deleterious result of identity politics as practised by the political Islamist movements through the religious dogmatism and jingoism they unleashed into a society battered by decades of backwardness and despotism and now reeling under the conditions of a stalled revolution. Currently, as Coptic-Muslim tensions mount, another pointless and debilitating tangential battle is being waged on the part of those promulgating fear of Shia expansionism and who now cite the Syrian revolution as cause to reject restoring relations with Iran. One can understand why some far away from the complexities and tragedies of the war and revolution in Syria might be driven by religious and, perhaps, humanitarian sympathies to feel this way. However, such thoughts are as remote as can be from the minds of Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood leaders who cynically exploit such issues for the purposes of manipulating opinion and mobilising support to further their ends in their struggle for power, indifferent to the fact that the social and economic causes of the first revolution remain un-remedied and threaten to explode again.
