Saudi Sunnis, Indian Shiites, and Israeli Jews Meet in India

Our hosts were the leaders of the Shiite community in Lucknow, the Raja of Mahmudabad, Amir Khan, his son Ali Khan, intellectuals, and teachers of the local madrassa. It was an extraordinary meeting of Jews from Jerusalem, Saudi Sunnis from Mecca and Medina, and Indian Shiites from Lucknow.[img nocaption float=”none” width=”640″ height=”360″ render=”<%photoRenderType%>”]25137[/img]

For me the visit to Lucknow was a dream come true. I first heard the name Lucknow at a conference that the Dayan Center convened at Tel Aviv University in 1984. It was during the first Lebanon War and Israel’s various intelligence services were groping in the dark in all matters dealing with Shiites, in general, and Lebanese Shiites, in particular. One of the conference topics was about the Shiites of Lucknow.

The second time I came across Lucknow was in the early 1990s while I was writing my dissertation about Lebanese Shiites’ radicalization. I found an amazing description by James Finn, the British Consul in Jerusalem between 1845 and 1863, about his unusual meeting with a Persian exile named Nasrallah Khan, a member of the royal Qajari family exiled in southern Lebanon when a group of visitors arrived from Lucknow in India. The meeting took place in the home of Hamed Bey, the Shiite governor of Jabal ‘Amil, in the village of Tebnine.

Now I was actually in Lucknow, an hour’s flight from Delhi, India’s capital. The Raja of Mahmudabad and his son Ali Khan received us warmly. It was clear they wanted to share with us information about the proud Indian Shiite community that represents 18 percent of the large Indian Muslim minority numbering more than 170 million believers, more than in all of Muslim Pakistan. The Raja of Mahmudabad was very familiar with the Shiite world outside of India, and was not bound by borders or nationalities. In the 1960s he spent two months in Tyre in southern Lebanon as the guest of the Iranian imam, Musa al-Sadr, who had just arrived in Lebanon and was on his way to becoming the leader of Lebanon’s Shiite community. The Raja also got to know Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, who became the most prominent religious leader of Shiite radicalism in the Arab world and whose speeches and writings nourished leaders of Hezbollah. The Raja also knew the Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al–Sadr, a Shiite leader in Iraq who was executed by Saddam Hussein in April 1980. Moreover, the Raja was familiar with the relationships that existed with religious leaders in Iran, including the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his successor, Ayattollah Ali Khamenei.

Many students from Lucknow went to Najaf, the most important Shiite center in Iraq until Saddam Hussein took over Iraq. The Iraqi Ba’ath regime’s persecutions of the Shiites in the early 1970s forced Lucknow’s Shiite students to study in Qom, Iran, which quickly became the center of Shiite studies. Others like Ali Khan went to study in the Sayyidah Zaynab Shiite center near Damascus. There he studied Arabic, which he speaks fluently. Today, he watches events in Syria with great fear over the fate of the Shiite madrassas and compounds in Sayyidah Zaynab.

Lucknow has great respect for Iran. The religious and cultural ties between the two are very strong. The devoted visit the holy places in Iran, especially Mashhad, where the Eighth Imam is buried; nearby are the graves of Raja Mahmudabad’s parents.

“For us, Iran is the source of our religious and cultural identification, and it’s more important to us than any other Islamic center in the world,” the Raja stressed. At the same time, the Shiites of Lucknow do not recognize the principle of guardianship of the jurist, or the ruling principle of the Islamic Republic that invests all religious and political authority in one person, the supreme leader. Lucknow’s Shiite community separate the Iranian leader’s political standing from his religious authority. The premier religious authority for the devoted in Lucknow is not Khamenei, buti Ayatollah Ali Husayni Sistani of Najaf. This is not just a religious issue; it also has significant political ramifications. The devoted see Iran as the source of religious and cultural identification, but they don’t see themselves subservient to the political authority of the Iranian leader or his religious authority to issue religious decrees. Moreover, the financial tithes paid by the devoted are transferred to their religious authority, the marja taklid, in Najaf. This reflects the Shiite duality in its essence, fully expressed in the belonging and identification stretching beyond political borders.

We visited the Imambaras shrine (pictured above), which contains models of mosques in the Shiite holy city of Karbala that allows visitors to feel as if they are in Karbala itself, the place where Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad was killed in 680 CE. We also visited two impressively beautiful hussainiyat, Shiite congregation halls, where the Shiite devout gather to mourn the death of Hussein, a central moment in the Shiite faith. On a raised seat reached by high steps, the Raja of Mahmudabad sits, reciting the lamentations for Hussein and telling stories of the bravery at the battle of Karbala.

The meeting in Shiite Lucknow with Saudi Sunnis from Mecca and Medina stimulated a delicate dialogue with restrained tension. The Raja expressed his opinion that all religious extremism in Islam in this era began with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the Saudi Arabian kingdom. He contended that the Saudis supported Islamic movements that became extremist and violent over the years. Dr. Eshki, the chief Saudi guest, respectfully contended that as a devoted Muslim, he saw great importance in bridging the Islamic sects. Indeed, he believed that the presence of Jewish guests from Israel was evidence of a huge advancement in the mutual understanding necessary for solving the many problems in the Middle East. One morning, Sunnis and Shiites gathered as one for a joint morning prayer, without allowing the religious differences between Sunnis and Shiites to interfere. The commitment to Allah dominated all differences at that moment. It’s also worth noting that Dr. Eshki visited Jerusalem this year and led Muslim prayers in the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira is a senior research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.