The poems of Rumi, the thirteenth-century teacher, scholar, and poet known simply as Mowlana in the Muslim world, have shaped Islamic culture for centuries. They still stand just as vital after eight hundred years. Rumi speaks to us of unchanging spiritual realities and the universal quest for inner peace. His poems make a convincing argument for the central role of love in Islamic texts and traditions. Rumi found in mystical poetry a vehicle for the expression of the endless spiritual bounties of love. This became the center of his faith and practice and his connection with the divine. He pronounced love to be the goal of his life and the only form of true worship.

Love Is My Savior: The Arabic Poems of Rumi

This new volume of Rumi’s works, in Arabic and English, the first-ever English translation of his Arabic poems, will be exciting for the newcomer as well as to readers already familiar with his mystical philosophy. The poems take the reader on a journey of spiritual exploration, erotic longing, ecstatic union, cruel rejection, and mystic reconciliation. Rumi reveals his soul and welcomes everyone witness his spiritual journey.

Rumi’s Arabic verses are straightforward, and his metaphors are intense. It might be thought that in the Arabic we discover the free spirit of Rumi, unbound by the polite and romantic traditions of Persian verse. Many of these poems may appear, to the Western reader at least, to be surprisingly erotic. But those familiar with Rumi’s poems will not be surprised to find frank and open expressions of physical love and sexual desire. The poet fully embraces the language of sexuality to express his love for Shams-e Tabrizi, his dervish teacher, his mystic guide, and his companion, as a metaphor for his love for the divine. In some instances, Rumi’s verses are full-bodied and intimate, as the lover addresses his beloved Shams. All of Rumi’s poems are equally transgressive, celebrating love, wine, drunkenness, madness—even death—as paths to the spirit.

Here we give as an example, the poem “Drunken Brothers”:

You! who make the full moon stand ashamed,

come here and shine your brightest light on me.

You! who pour out nectar for the soul.

Come here! Make me as drunk as drunk can be.

Don’t stop! More! Give me all the wine I claim,

till you and I two drunken brothers be,

back and forth, vying over ecstasy.

Now, I’m so drunk I can’t recall your name

or find your face. I’m filled with mystery,

wine that saves me from spite and misery.

Or these lines from “A Dream,” that celebrate Rumi’s love of fellow mystic Shams al-Din Tabrizi:

You flashed your eyes. O Moon! They pierced my chest.

You spoke the words, and so my heart was blessed.

You filled me with desire, gave me a taste.

When you drew near, I smiled at your embrace.

A beggar, I gave thanks to be so base.

My master, you gave me your noble grace!

Rumi invites us all to his celebration with this poem, “We Are All Drunk”:

Come by our place today! We are all drunk.

Our cups are full of wine, and we’re all drunk.

The cup God gave us, it’s running over.

Give thanks, give thanks—thanks for this charity!

Come by our place. It’s a celebration!

Our longing now made plain for all to see.

Our lovers came to us in the dark of night—

in our hearts they left no shame, no anxiety.

Each held in open palms a generous sea,

and scattered jewels for us abundantly.

—–

Translated by Nesreen Akhtarkhavari and Anthony A. Lee; Rumi’s Love is My Savior is available here

The currently partly unemployed Iraqi governor of Salahuddin Province, displaced from much of his territory by Daesh (ISIS or ISIL), maintains that former Baath vice president of Iraq under Saddan Hussain, Ezzat al-Douri, has been killed by Shiite militias in a firefight north of Tikrit in the Hamrin mountains. The body has been delivered to the US embassy in Baghdad for a DNA test. Al-Douri was one of those wanted officials featured in George W. Bush’s stack of playing cards. The Baath Party of Iraq has denied the reports of his death.

Al-Douri is significant because he was one of the first high Baath officials to turn to a religious group as a power base. This strategy became common after the 2003 US invasion, but al-Douri did it in the late 1990s. The Baath Party had been founded by Christians and was militantly secular, often persecuting religious groups and parties.

Al-Douri, however, became a patron of the Naqshbandi Sufi order in Mosul, northern Iraq. Sunnis in Iraq at that time were still largely traditionalists, and Sufism was part of their tradition. Sufis emphasize mystical experience and are often dismissive of dry legalism (Christians might hear echoes of St. Paul and thinkers like Meister Eckhart). They meet on Thursday (and other) evenings for group chanting, and see God as a divine beloved. Their sensibilities are very different from the Wahhabi-influenced Salafi brand of Sunni Islam, which highlight strict adherence to its conception of Muslim religious law

The “Men of the Naqshbandi” emerged as one of the more effective guerrilla fighters against US and Iraqi Shiite troops in northern Iraq. Al-Douri was said to be behind them, a shadowy figure directing their insurgency. Still, there were some fifty major insurgency cells in northern and western Iraq during the past 12 years, and the Naqshbandis were only one. Some were secular, as most Sunni Arabs in Iraq had a secular mindset. Note that the Naqshbandi order in Turkey, Central Asia and Pakistan and India is not typically militant and that this Iraqi branch only turned to guerrilla activity because of American colonialism.

last spring, the Naqshbandis in Mosul were one of the groups that decided to ally with Daesh or ISIL to throw out the Shiite army. Daesh took advantage of the alliance to arrest leading Naqshbandi figures and ex-Baathist ones, stabbing their new allies in the back. (Daesh is an offshoot of Salafism and hates Sufis under ordinary circumstance).

The US military has a cult of ‘decapitating’ insurgent organizations. But this strategy manifestly has not worked against the Taliban or in Iraq. In part, some of these organizations are led by clans as republics of cousins, and when one leader is killed, his cousin just steps in. In part, they are based on religious ties. Jenna Jordan found that in only 5 percent of her 300 cases of insurgency was a decapitation strategy successful against a religious group. Religious charisma seems to be easily transferable.

So, it probably just doesn’t matter that much if al-Douri was killed (his death has been reported many times in the past). He was old in his 70s, and likely not very vigorous any more. And his earlier successes as an insurgent have turned bitter since his foolish decision to ally with Daesh went bad and the latter displaced him.

One conclusion we can draw is that by destroying the Baath government of Iraq, the Bush administration created a vacuum of power and culture that religious forms of resistance filled. Iraqi Sunnis were among the more secular people in the Middle East. It is desperation that drove them to religious revolt. One man’s death won’t make any difference in that process.

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Related video:

Euronews: “Izzat al-Douri, Saddam Hussein’s right-hand man, ‘killed in shoot-out'”

1. Airstrikes killed 7 and wounded 30 in Mosul on Sunday. But it isn’t clear who was flying the planes! The US denies it was Americans, and the spokesman for the Baghdad government said he did not know anything about it. The Syrian and Iranian air forces are other possibilities. It is likely the Iraqi air force, but it is alarming that you have anonymous airstrikes in a country.

2. 2-3 Iranian military men are now reported by hard line Iranian sites to have died fighting to save the Shiite shrine in Samarra from being destroyed by the so-called “Islamic State”, a radical, violent Salafi group. Here is another such report. Iran initially denied it had boots on the ground, but there are growing reports of such (and small special ops Iranian forces previously operated in the same ways in Syria).

3. Hard line Shiite cleric and politician Muqtada al-Sadr said it would be positive for Iraq if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a contentious figure, steps down. But he said that the new prime minister should be from the Da’wa Party headed by al-Maliki, since it and its small allies won the most seats in parliament under the State of Law rubric. It is not clear that anyone in the Da’wa Party would oppose al-Maliki or who exactly might emerge from the party as PM. Meanwhile, Iran is said to have doubled down on al-Maliki!

4. Although the so-called “Islamic State” has destroyed several Sunni, Sufi and Shiite shrines and places of worship in the past month, probably the most significant is the tomb of medieval saint Ahmad al-Rifa`i (d. 1183 AD). The Rifa`i Sufi order claims him as its founder. Sufis practice meditation and chanting and they seek mystical union with God. There are plenty of Rifa`is in Syria and the order is popular in Egypt, and still has adherents throughout the Muslim world,from Bosnia to Gujarat. IS is not making a good reputation for itself in most of the Sunni world, where there is still respect for mystics like Rifa`i. One of its allies of convenience is the Naqshbandi Sufi order in Mosul, members of which won’t be happy about all this shrine-bashing. This gives you the flavor of how a lot of Sunnis responded:

Absolute filth! ISIS, full of Shayateen! Destroying the grave of one of the greatest Imams, Sayyid Ahmad al-Rifa`i!

— الأمين حسين (@Alzie_93) July 6, 2014

5. Dr. Ibrahim al-Badri of Samarra, who has convinced himself he is a medieval caliph named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, gave a Friday sermon last Friday. He said he was humble and asked for advice and corrections of his behavior. Twitter advised him not to sport a $7000 watch in the midst of the economic depression into which his group has thrown much of Syria and Iraq. Also, he might want to give up the serial killer and mass murderer gigs, which aren’t really appropriate to a holy man. There was other ridicule among the tweeps.

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Related video:

Reuters: “A wall to protect Iraq’s Diyala”

By Aisha Abdelhamid

Rumi: “Behind The Beauty Of The Moon Is The MoonMaker”

Rumi’s eloquent relationship with the natural environment is his signature — his elegantly simple expressions reflect appreciation for both Creation and Creator. And there are so many lessons about both to be learned from this beloved Islamic Scholar, Sufi Master, and brilliantly shining star of timeless poetry:

“Is the sweetness of the cane sweeter
Than the One who made the canefield?

Behind the beauty of the moon is the MoonMaker.
There is Intelligence inside the ocean’s intelligence
Feeding our love like an invisible waterwheel.

There is a skill to making cooking oil from animal fat.
Consider now the knack that makes eyesight
From the shining jelly of your eyes. . .”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

The Enigmatic Life of Rumi, 1207 – 1273 CE

Mawlana Jalal al Din Muhammad Rumi was born in Balkh province, which is now the border region of Tajikistan and Afghanistan, where his father was an appointed scholar of Islam. In the time of Rumi’s birth, this area had only recently been conquered by Muslims from the Byzantine, or eastern Roman Empire, and was commonly known as “Rum,” a transliteration of the word “Rome.” People originating here were commonly called “Rumi,” meaning “Roman,” or citizen of Roman-controlled land. In Muslim countries, Jalal al Din is not generally nicknamed “Rumi,” rather he is more commonly known as “Mawlana,” meaning “our Guide,” or “our Master.”

Studying the life of Rumi is as enigmatic today as in his own lifetime. Clearly he was enigmatic to those around him, for Rumi writes about himself:

“Study me as much as you like, you will not know me,
for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be.
Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself,
for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.”

“Truth Lifts the Heart, Like Water Refreshes Thirst.” ― Rumi

In the English speaking world Rumi is currently enjoying huge popularity. He was recently described by the BBC as the “Best-Selling Poet in The U.S.” His works were originally written in Persian and his “Mathnawi,” or “Masnavi,” is considered a crowning glory of the Persian language. Rumi’s writings are very popular internationally and have been widely translated into many of the world’s languages, as they enjoy a timeless influence transcending national and ethnic borders by singing in the language of the soul. His lyrical verses ring with the beauties of the Natural World, with Rumi’s uniquely profound sensitivity to the environment that God created for His creatures:

“Be like the sun for grace and mercy.
Be like the night to cover others’ faults.
Be like running water for generosity.
Be like death for rage and anger.
Be like the Earth for modesty.
Appear as you are.
Be as you appear.”

Rumi’s Early Immigration to the City of Love

When the Mongols invaded Central Asia sometime between 1215 and 1220 CE, Rumi’s father, Baha adDin Walad, with his family and band of disciples, set out westwards. On this journey it is believed that Rumi encountered one of the more famous mystic Persian poets, Attar, in the Persian city of Nishapur. This meeting had a lasting effect on Rumi, then eighteen, providing much inspiration for his works, as he mentions later in a poem,

“Attar has traversed the seven cities of Love / We are still at the turn of one street.”

From Nishapur, Baha adDin and his entourage traveled to Baghdad, meeting many of the Islamic scholars and Sufis of the city. From Baghdad they went to Hijaz and performed the pilgrimage at Mecca. The migrating caravan then passed through Damascus, continuing until finally settling in Karaman. In 1225, Rumi married Gowhar Khatun, producing two sons, Sultan Walad and Ala’ adDin Chalabi. Read how the natural environment clearly influences his poetic expression of marriage and childbirth:

“Each has to enter the nest made by the other imperfect bird.”

“Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing.
It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose,
Looking at the night and seeing the day.
Lovers are patient and know
That the moon needs time to become full.”

“This is what love does and continues to do.
It tastes like honey to adults and milk to children.”

When his wife died, Rumi remarried and had another son, Amir Alim Chalabi, and a daughter, Malakeh Khatun. There was perhaps no more profound experience suffered by Rumi than the loss of loved ones. This theme cycles and recycles through the life of this famous Sufi Master and accomplished Whirling Dervish.

“You think because you understand ‘one’ you must also understand ‘two,’
Because one and one make two. But you must also understand ‘and’.”

“I will soothe you and heal you,
I will bring you roses.
I too have been covered with thorns.”

Rumi’s Rise to Eminence Begins at Age 25

When Baha adDin died, Rumi, then twenty five, inherited his father’s position as the Islamic Molvi (Islamic teacher). Under Burhan adDin, a former student of Rumi’s father, Rumi practiced Sufism for nine years until Burhan adDin’s death. Rumi’s public life then began in earnest, becoming an Islamic Jurist, issuing judgements and giving sermons in surrounding mosques, while continuing to teach in his madrassa.

Rumi is an excellent Professor of the Natural World, teaching respect for nature by highlighting the wonders of the natural environment. Muslim scholars refer to nature as “the Book of the Universe,” and Islam teaches that this book is entrusted to humans to protect it. Humans must treat nature respectfully and lovingly, by preserving it, not wasting it, and studying it carefully as God’s Viceregents, to recognize and respect the Creator behind the creation. Rumi never allows his students, nor his readers, forget that the universe guides us to higher knowledge of our Creator and Sustainer:

“Little by little, wean yourself.
This is the gist of what I have to say.
From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,
Move to an infant drinking milk,
To a child on solid food,
To a searcher after wisdom,
To a hunter of more invisible game.

Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say, ‘The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
And orchards in bloom.

At night there are millions of galaxies,
And in sunlight the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.’

You ask the embryo why he, or she,
Stays cooped up in the dark with eyes closed.

Listen to the answer.

‘There is no ‘other world.’
I only know what I’ve experienced.
You must be hallucinating.’”

Rumi’s Final Companion Predicts the Fame of His Master’s Writings

Rumi’s scribe and favorite student, Hussam eChalabi, was the final companion in Rumi’s life. One day Hussam said to Rumi, “If you write a book like the Ilāhīnāma of Sanai or the Mantiq utTayr of Attar, it would become the companion of many troubadours. They would fill their hearts from your work and compose music to accompany it.” Smiling, Rumi showed Hussam a paper with the first eighteen lines of his Masnavi written on it:

“Listen to the reed and the tale it tells,
How it sings of separation…”

Delighted, Hussam begged Rumi to continue writing. Rumi spent the next twelve years in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of his profound masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam. To the end of his life, Rumi never left his deep love for the natural environment, always expressing his ideas through the use of graphically described images from nature to illustrate his message:

“With what work are you occupied,
And for what purpose are you purchased?
What sort of bird are you,
And with whose digestion are you eaten?
Pass up this shop of hagglers
And seek the shop of Abundance
Where God is the purchaser [Quran 9:111].
There Compassion has bought
The shabby goods no one else would look at.
With that Purchaser no base coin is rejected,
For making a profit is not the point.”

Rumi’s Doctrine of Unity

Rumi died on December 17, 1273 in Konya; his body was buried beside his father, and the Green Tomb, today known as the Mevlâna Museum, was constructed over his burial place. His epitaph is inscribed:

“When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.”

Happily, the hearts of men still carry the essence of Mawlana Rumi. The 13th-century Mevlâna Mausoleum, with its mosque, dance hall for the religious whirling, dervish dormitories, school and tombs of leaders of the Mevlevi Order, continues today drawing pilgrims from all over the Muslim and non-Muslim world.

The doctrine of Rumi advocates unending tolerance, unconditional charity, unlimited kindness, and deeply compassionate awareness of life through the visionary eyes of love, focused on the natural beauties of the environment. To him and his disciples, it seems that all religions are ultimately interested in the same goal because there is only one Creator — because God is One.

“Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine and practice, but there’s really only one work.”

Looking with this visionary eye upon everyone equally, Rumi’s peaceful and tolerant teaching has appealed to people of all countries, sects, and creeds for over 800 years. However, his contemporary portrayal in the West usually stops there, well short of the fact that Rumi was first and foremost a devout Muslim. Rumi lived every moment of his life with his profoundly sensitive heart, soul, and conscience trained on the One True God as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (God’s Peace be upon him) in the Holy Quran:

“I am the servant of the Qur’an as long as I have life. I am the dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen One.”

“Behind The Beauty Of The Moon Is The MoonMaker” ― Rumi

Behind the beauty of the moon, the MoonMaker is always shining in the light of Rumi’s eyes, guiding him as he guides us through the Natural World, lighting our way as we follow in the footsteps of the Mawlana:

“God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note is a need coming through one of us,
A passion, a longing pain.
Remember the lips
Where the wind-breath originated,
And let your note be clear.
Don’t try to end it.
Be your note.”
― Rumi

Mirrored from Eden Keeper

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0

The two great branches of Islam coexist in Iraq across linguistic and ethnic groups. There are Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs, Sunni Kurds and (a tiny minority of) Shiite Kurds. Arabs are a linguistic group, speaking a Semitic language. Kurds speak and Indo-European language related to English.

Sunnism and Shiism as we know them have evolved over nearly a millennium and a half. But the difference between them begins after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD (CE) in in western Arabia. Muhammad, the son of Abdallah, had derived from the noble Quraysh clan. Those who became the Shiites insisted he should be succeeded by Ali, his cousin and son-in-law (and the next best thing to a living son). This dynastic principle was rejected by the group that became the Sunnis. They turned for leadership to prominent notables of the Quraysh, whom they saw as caliphs or vicars of the Prophet. The first three caliphs were his in-laws, but Sunni principles said that they needn’t have been– any prominent, pious male of the Quraysh would have done.

There is a vague analogy to the split between Catholicism and Protestantism, on the difference between seeing Peter as the foundation of the Church and of seeing Paul as that.

Iraq was part of the medieval caliphates– the Orthodox Caliphs, then the Umayyad Arab kingdom, and then the Abbasids. In 1258 the invading Mongols (themselves Buddhists and animists) sacked Baghdad and executed the last caliph. It is said that they were warned that it was very bad luck to shed the blood of a caliph, so they rolled him up in a Persian rug and beat him to death with hammers.

Parts of what is now Iraq were ruled by the Mongol Il Khanid state (which gradually became Muslim), and then by fragmented small principalities until the rise of the two great Middle Eastern empires of the early modern period, the Safavid and the Ottoman. The Safavids, based in Iran, were Shiites and ruled Baghdad 1508-1534. Then the Ottomans, Sunnis based in what is now Turkey, took Iraq in 1534 and ruled it, with the exception of a couple of decades of Iranian reassertion, until World War I.

The elite of Iraq was Sunni since the medieval period, though there were always significant Shiite movements. In the course of the late 18th and the nineteenth centuries, under Ottoman rule, the tribes of the south of Iraq gradually converted to Shiite Islam. This may have been a form of protest against Ottoman oppression. It was in part influence from wealthy Shiite states in India after the fall of the Mughal Empire in the 1700s and before the imposition of British direct rule over all of North India from 1856. The Indian Shiite potentates or Nawabs gave money for the building of water canals out to the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, which suffered from lack of water. Once the canals were built, tribes irrigated off them and settled near the holy cities, the residents of which proselytized them into Shiism.

The elites of Mosul and Baghdad, however, tied to patronage from the Ottoman Sultan, resisted this conversion movement and remained Sunnis, recognizing the four Orthodox Caliphs. From about 1880, Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II started claiming to be a caliph, on the medieval model. This claim wasn’t universally accepted but it was popular among Muslims in colonized British India in particular. The British, French and Russians defeated the Ottomans in World War I, after which the empire collapsed. In 1924 the new secular Republic of Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Attaturk abolished the caliphate. Sunnis became like Protestants, organized by country and lacking a central node of authority. Some fundamentalist Sunnis refused to accept this situation and dreamed of reconstituting the caliphate as a center of authority that could unite 1.5 billion Muslims and deliver them from their divided estate and consequent weakness in the face of the West.

When the British took Iraq during World War I, after the Ottomans unwisely allied with Germany and Austria, they mainly turned to the Sunni elites as partners in building a new “Mandate” or colony recognized by the League of Nations. When the Iraqis revolted in 1920 against the prospect of British colonialism, desiring independent statehood instead, the British brought in Faisal as king. He was the son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, and a Sunni, who had allied with the British (think Lawrence of Arabia) to revolt against the Ottomans during the war.

Faisal lacked roots in Iraq, and turned, in order to rule the country, to the Sunni mercantile and bureaucratic elites of Baghdad and Mosul. He also picked up the remnants of the Ottoman-trained officer corps to constitute his new military, almost all of them Sunnis (the Sunni Ottomans were skittish about 12er Shiite officers).

Although the Shiites were a majority in Iraq, Sunnis predominated in positions of power and wealth throughout the twentieth century. When the Baath Party, a secular, socialist and nationalist movement, came to power in 1968, it was dominated by Sunnis from the area north of Baghdad. The Baathists created a one-party state and repressed religious Shiites (and also religious Sunnis who mixed in politics). The high generals, bureaucrats, entrepreneurs and politicians were Sunni. There were Shiites in the Baath Party, but they had less status than the Sunnis. After the Gulf War of 1990-91 when the US and allies pushed Iraq back out of Kuwait, the Shiites of south Iraq rose up. The US had urged them to do so, but stood by while the Baath massacred the Shiites. The Shiite religious parties interpreted this spring 1991 repression as sectarian genocide. Belonging to the main Shiite religious party, the Da’wa (Call or Mission) Party, was made a capital crime by the Baath already in 1980 and members were often killed and put in mass graves.

In the 1990s when Iraq was under severe US and UN sanctions, some lived on smuggling oil and other goods out to Jordan. The Jordanian form of modern Sunni fundamentalism, or Salafism, made inroads into Iraq along truck stop towns like Fallujah and Ramadi. The Baath Party, although hostile, winked at this development because sanctions made it weak. At the same time, Baath leader Izzat Duri developed ties of patronage with the Naqshbandi Sufi order in Mosul. Sufism or Muslim mysticism is the opposite of fundamentalism, valuing rituals and saints and mystical experiences of God. Both Salafism and Sufism had a revival in the 1990s.

The US overthrew Saddam Hussein of the Baath Party in 2003 in alliance with Shiite groups primarily. Those Shiite groups wanted revenge on the disproportionately Sunni Baath Party. They carried out a program of “de-Baathification,” in which they fired tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs from their government jobs as bureaucrats and even teachers. They hired Shiite clients instead. The Neocons hated the state-owned industries, and closed them down as inefficient without putting anything in their place. The Bush administration backed Shiite supremacism and debaathification to the hilt. Its proponents likened it to de-Nazification after WW II in Germany, but actually former Nazis below the top level in Germany typically kept their jobs.

In the new Iraq, Sunni high status was turned upside down. The Sunnis had been the top graduates of the officer training academies, the equivalent of West Point. They disproportionately dominated the officer corps. They were at the top of the Baath Party. They were the rich entrepreneurs to whom lucrative government contracts were given. Now they were made unemployed, or given menial jobs, while the goodies went to the members of Shiite religious parties. Massive unemployment swept the Sunni cities in 2003-2004.

In 2005 the US was maneuvered by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and his allies, all Shiites, into having parliamentary elections. Because of the US military attack on Sunni Fallujah, the Sunnis of Mosul, Ramadi and elsewhere boycotted that election. Sistani had insisted that the parliament also function as a constituent assembly to draft the constitution. There were almost no Sunnis in the first 2005 parliament, so the constitution was crafted by the Shiites and the Kurds. They Sunnis rejected it in their provinces by a solid majority (by 2/3s in two provinces).

Sunnis all along were nervous about the Shiite-Kurdish government erected under the Americans and some turned to guerrilla warfare. When guerrillas blew up the Golden Dome shrine in Samarra in February 2006, a site sacred to Shiites, it kicked off a civil war. In summer of 2006 3000 people were being killed a month. Shiite militias ethnically cleansed Sunnis from mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad. When Gen. Petraeus conducted his troop escalation (‘surge’), he disarmed the Sunni militias first, inadvertently leaving Sunnis in the capital vulnerable to threats and night raids. The Sunnis ran away to Syria and Jordan or to Mosul. After a while there were few mixed neighborhoods and it was harder for Shiites and Sunnis to get at one another, so the violence subsided.

In the one-chamber Iraqi parliament, Sunnis would always be a minority. When they stopped boycotting they typically got 56 seats. The Shiites and Kurds typically allied against them so that they lost all important votes. In 2010, they united behind the Iraqiya Party of ex-Baathist Ayad Allawi, which became of the largest single party in parliament, with 91 seats. But Allawi could not find Shiite or Kurdish allies to bring his total up to 51% and so could only have headed a minority government open to being toppled at any time by a vote of no confidence. In contrast Nouri al-Maliki of the Da’wa Party put together, with Iran’s help, a Shiite majority and allied with the Kurds for a super-majority. President Jalal Talabani therefore appointed al-Maliki to a second term.

Secular groups like the 1920 Revolution Brigades and the Army of Muhammad, and Sufi ones like the Men of the Naqshbandiya, formed cells to fight the American occupation. Another of the Sunni insurgent groups was al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He was killed in 2006, but it made no difference to the movement, which continued to blow things up. When US military officers in the field in 2005 tried to reach out to disaffected Sunni tribes, Condi Rice is said to have stopped them, lest Washington offend its Shiite allies in Baghdad. Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia later started styling itself the Islamic State of Iraq. It engaged in extensive terrorist operations in a bid to stop the new Shiite-dominated government from establishing itself. When the revolution in Syria turned violent in late 2011, its fighters went there and the organization became the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or Iraq and the Levant). It is said to have received money from rich private businessmen in Kuwait who support the fundamentalist Salafi form of Sunni Islam, and which typically hates Shiites. ISIS became the best fighters and they captured Syrian Baath military bases and took towns like Raqqa and Aleppo neighborhoods.

From 2011 when there was a ‘Sunni Arab Spring’ in Iraq, with urban youth demonstrations and demands for an end to discrimination, the al-Maliki government heavy-handedly repressed it. If it instead had accommodated those moderate young people in their demands, it might have avoided losing the Sunni areas to religious extremists.

In the 2014 elections, the Sunnis did poorly and it was clear that they would continue to be marginalized in parliament by Shiites and Kurds. The Shiite-dominated government provided them with few services or jobs. Although Iraq is an oil state, you can’t tell it. I was in Baghdad last year this time and it was dowdy and nothing like Abu Dhabi or Dubai. In Mosul, residents complained of electricity outages and lack of services or jobs. Shiite troops often put up Shiite insignia to humiliate Sunnis. They frisked Sunnis at checkpoints. Sunnis felt as though they were frozen out of meaningful power and treated as though under Shiite occupation. This situation derived in part from the invidious Bush policies of backing the Shiites against the Sunnis.

ISIS, having gained fighting experience and a taste of urban administration in Syria, expanded its cells back in Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul in western and northern Iraq. Last January it took over Fallujah and parts of Ramadi west of Baghdad. Last week it took over Mosul and most other towns in Ninevah Province. This was not primarily a military conquest but a coordinated urban uprising against Iraqi security forces, in coordination with other Sunni groups, including secular ex-Baathists. ISIS also tried to advance into Salahuddin and Diyala Provinces, though it seems to have been checked there by the Iraqi army and Sunni tribal and urban allies. At the moment, ISIS is a force in al-Anbar and Ninevah Provinces, which are mostly Sunni Arab. But they are demographically vastly outnumbered by the Kurds and Shiites, who could well riposte militarily.

Sunni Iraqis had been in the 20th century cosmopolitan and often modernists. Many were liberals yearning for democracy. From 1968 they turned to more of a Soviet model, a strongly secular one. They have turned in desperation to rural fundamentalists who want a medieval caliphate only because of the vast reversal in their fortunes resulting from the Bush invasion and occupation, and the unfair policies of the Shiite government, which has turned them from an elite into an underclass. They are capable, trained, educated people. They aren’t going to put up with that, and if turning to al-Qaeda is the only way to avoid that fate, they are often willing now to do it.

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Related video:

Euronews: “Iraqi government tries to rally support as Sunni militants threaten north of Baghdad”

Related book:

The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East

Ahmad Hadi gives the background at Niqash.org

Members of an extremist Shiite Muslim militia have been recruited to fight Sunni Muslim rebels and militias in Iraq’s Anbar province. But for some Baghdad-based fighters the battle is taking place too close to home: They’re being forced to fight friends and family.

Like many other young men who live in the low-income Sadr city district of Baghdad, Sijad Abdul-Haq couldn’t find a job. So he went on the payroll of a mainly Shiite Muslim religious militia known as the League of Righteous.

The League is designated a terrorist organisation internationally and it remains one of the most feared extremist groups in Iraq; even noteworthy Iraqis, like Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, as described the league as criminals and murderers.

And in recent months, the League has been recruiting new members – particularly among poor and unemployed Shiite Muslim men – simply by offering them a decent monthly wage. It’s a form of social welfare but one that comes at a cost, as has been previously reported by NIQASH.

Many of the young men who sign on with the League of Righteous just because they are unemployed end up being trained to fight, and then possibly, end up taking an active part in the militia’s more violent activities. The League of Righteous recently ran for office in Iraq’s general elections and is known to support Iraq’s current Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

And recently the League has been demonstrating that support in more physical ways: By joining the Iraqi army as it fights to regain control of Iraq’s Anbar province, where Sunni Muslim protests have turned into a pitched battle for control over the mostly Sunni Muslim province.

And Abdul-Haq was one of the young men given orders by the League to go and join the fight in Anbar. But like several other men that NIQASH interviewed, Abdul-Haq had a problem with this. Because his father is a member of the Shiite Muslim Bahadil tribe but his mother comes from the powerful Dulaim tribe in Anbar, which is a Sunni Muslim kinship group.  And Abdul-Haq was only too well aware of the fact that his uncles and cousins were fighting in Anbar and that as a member of the League of Righteous militia, he might be forced to fight against them.

The Iraqi army in Anbar apparently called the League of Righteous militia in to help them in their fight in Anbar because they needed the help of Shiite Muslim militias who had already had experience fighting in Syria and therefore, had fought against Sunni Muslim extremist militias, like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, before. This group is well known for former affiliations with extremist organization Al Qaeda and is present in Anbar too.

“I was given orders to go and fight in Anbar but I felt terrible about it,” Abdul-Haq told NIQASH, sitting in a Baghdad café; he refused to give his real name or allow his photograph to be taken. “They might kill me if they know I talked about this, or that I talked about going to Anbar.”

Abdul-Haq also convinced his friend from the militia to talk about his experiences in Anbar.

Zine al-Abidine is 32 years old and graduated from the University of Basra. But even with a degree he was unable to find a job and he too joined the League of Righteous. He too was recently sent to Anbar to fight with the Shiite Muslim militia and he too went with mixed feelings.

First, he says, he fought in the Abu Ghraib district and then he went to fight in the Sajar neighbourhood in Fallujah.  In Sajar, al-Abidine found himself next to the corpse of one of the Sunni Muslim fighters. Upon turning the body around, he realized it was someone he knew.

“I took out the man’s ID and I started to cry: ‘this is Nabil Hashoush, this is Nabil Hashoush’,” al-Abidine says.

From 2000 onwards, Hashoush and al-Abidine had shared a dormitory at university for four years. “I will never forgive myself for participating in that battle,” al-Abidine concludes.

“Everybody knows that the Shiite militias are driven to fight by their beliefs,” one of the League of Righteous’ senior members told NIQASH. The interview took place in another café and although this man was dressed like a villager, under his civilian clothes, everyone could see the butt of his pistol. “They fight to defend the Shiite doctrine and to protect their fellow Shiites. But,” he admitted, “some of our members do have Sunni cousins or friends and often they come from Anbar province, because it’s near Baghdad.”

The League of Righteous leader described several instances where this had happened, including one young man under his command who had been trained to fight in Iran but after fighting in two different parts of Anbar, he refused to fight in a third. “When he was ordered to go to Khalidiya he refused and said he wanted to quit the war,” the man told NIQASH.  “I couldn’t understand why but then his father called me to tell me that he had eight brothers in Khalidiya and that his son had spent most of his life there. So we accepted the young man’s objections and we sent him back to Baghdad.”

Although the militia members say they are not the only ones feeling anguish about fighting in Anbar, the League leader was quick to explain away the young men’s stories. “Sijad Abul-Haq is a well trained sniper so we couldn’t afford to let him off his duty,” he said. “Zine al-Abidine just had some bad luck and the other young man was lucky in that he had a high ranking relative inside the League who helped him get back to Baghdad. On the whole though, we won’t allow our members to disobey our orders – even if they have mixed Sunni-Shiite blood.”

Mirrored from Niqash.org

Jalalu’d-Din Rumi, 53 Secrets from the Tavern of Love: Poems from the Rubaiyat of Mevlana Rumi, Translated by Amin Banani and Anthony Lee (White Cloud Press, 2014)

Truth

In your wild dreams, what are you looking for?

In tears and blood, what are you looking for?

You—from head to foot—you are the Truth. You

can’t find yourself! What are you looking for?

Love

The candle inside your heart: Let it burn!

That gap keeps you from the Friend: Let it turn!

Hey! Don’t you know about pain and burning?

Love comes like that. It’s not something you learn.

Rose Garden

Find the water of life, drink, and be healed.

Find the Friend in the rose garden—no thorns.

They say there’s a window from heart to heart.

But, why a window?—there are no walls here.

Don’t Think

Go throw your clothes in the street. Be clean!

Cover your shame with Joseph’s shirt, and dream!

A little fish can’t live without water.

Don’t think! Throw yourself naked in this stream.

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Available at Amazon.com

Early last week political activists affiliated with Bahrain’s opposition groups delivered a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki moon calling for his office to take a stand against Bahrain’s systematic targeting of the Shia community.

Al Jazeera English

Ever since Bahrainis rose against the government in 2011, emboldened by the Arab Spring, to demand social and judicial reforms be implemented, the state has targeted the Shia community, using repression and oppression to silence calls for freedom and social justice. Threatened by Bahrain’s Shiite majority, the ruling family, who are themselves Sunni Muslims, have transposed their fear of change onto the people, keen to ignite anti-Shia sentiment as they believe only this strategy will allow them to maintain their grip on power.

What the regime has failed to understand is that activists are not seeking to use their faith as a springboard for political advancement. What they have tirelessly campaigned for, however, is complete social inclusion, beyond race, political affiliation or faith. Home to an estimated 361,696 Shia Muslims (which represents over 85% of Bahrain’s total population) the state simply cannot continue to hold an entire people under such shackles of fear. Persecuted by the security forces, vilified by the media, Bahrain’s Shiite community is awaiting vindication.

The human rights group, Shia Rights Watch, based in Washington, has called on the international community and all GCC countries to immediately intervene in Bahrain by demanding that Al Khalifa be made to answer to allegations of torture and human rights abuses. SRW said in a statement: “Bahrain Shia community has been made to live in fear since 2011. An entire people have been unlawfully…How many people will have to die before the world choses to take a stand against anti-Shiism?”

Opposition leaders are eager for comprehensive and meaningful dialogue with the government: “We appreciate the UN efforts to achieve international peace and security and respect for human rights. We are particularly grateful for the UN’s willingness to find a solution for the Bahraini crisis since its eruption in 2011. Today, the Authority is still unwilling to solve the political crisis. The Authority’s misuse of power is threatening the majority of citizens on political and sectarian grounds. We fear that Bahrain may turn into a regional sectarian battle ground due to the Authority’s practice of religious and political persecution wrapped in security agreements.”

Determined to shed light on the real crisis which has plagued Bahrain since 2011 when activists first confronted the regime by calling for reforms, opposition leaders shed light on the issue of anti-Shiism, Bahrain’s own dirty little secret. They noted in the letter, “The Bahraini Authority has imported security forces on a sectarian basis to repress the citizens demanding democratic transition. This has produced regional polarization through categorizing victims on each side by their sect…The systematic religious persecution practiced against Shia citizens, and non-Shia dissidents demanding reform, is a serious threat to regional peace and security and fuels sectarian conflict.”

Activists in Bahrain are said to be disappointed and somewhat bewildered that the international community has so far not taken any real action or even condemned the government for its barbaric methods against its own people. Regardless, the opposition has vowed to persevere in their calls for structural change regardless of the dangers. This is in keeping with their desire to see a responsive and vibrant democratic state where all individuals’ inherent human rights are respected.

For the past 7 years Catherine Shakdam worked as a political risk analyst for Wikistrat – a geostrategic analysis firm – and commentator for the Middle East with a special focus on Yemen. Her writings have appeared in The Russian International Affairs Council, Tehran Times, IRIB, Majalla, Press TV, Foreign Policy Association, Yemen Post, Yemen Today, The Oslo Times, YourMiddleEast, Guardian UK, the US Independent and many more.

Mirrored from International Policy Digest

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Related video:

from May 5: The Stream – Tensions Escalate in Bahrain

The most famous rendering of the qawwali in his honor is that of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (d. 1997).

Jhoole Jhoole Lal Nusrat Fateh Ali khan Live At Rivermead Festival 1994]

Lyrics.com has this:

“English Translation:

Intoxicated, intoxicated
Upon My breath and in my intoxication is the great Qalander.
My worship and upon my breath is the name of Ali.
I am intoxicated with the beloved Qalander
I am intoxicated with Jhoole Laal who is intoxicated with Qalander
Keep repeating his name you follower of Ali
You Ali !!! Keep saying his name.”

The shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Pakistan: