Transgressing boundaries

By Omayma Abdel-Latif
It is said that Shi'ites have a "different" Qur'an, called the Qur'an of Fatima, and that they believe the angel Gabriel made a mistake in bestowing the prophecy on Mohamed instead of Ali. Shi'ites are also said to slander the first three Rightly-Guided Caliphs -- Abu Bakr, Omar and Osman -- in their prayers, and practise Mut'a marriage (temporary marriage for pleasure). These are only a few items in an arsenal of misconceptions about Shi'ism, the outcome of centuries of dissension and mutual misunderstanding between the two major branches of Islam.
In a bold break with tradition, Sunnis and Shi'ites came together last week to address contentious issues in their respective belief systems and close the gap that has divided them for so long. Not coincidentally, the meeting was hosted by Iran, the bastion of Shi'ism and witness to the first self-consciously Islamic revolution of the 20th century. A high-level delegation from Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam's most prestigious institution, represented the Sunni side at the Tehran conference, which paid tribute to two scholars, Sheikh Hussein Al-Barogudy, a Shi'ite, and Sheikh Mahmoud Shaltout, a Sunni, for their efforts in promoting rapprochement.
Sheikh Mahmoud Ashour, who headed the Al-Azhar delegation, described the event as "a major breakthrough" in the relation between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Noting that the real differences are in fact "minor and inconsequential," Ashour told the Al-Ahram Weekly: "The two are united in essential belief and there are no fundamental differences in jurisprudence."
Traditionally, the Shi'ites are descended from the party that supported Ali Ibn Abi Taleb, the fourth of the Prophet Mohamed's successors, in his war against the Umayyads in the eighth century. There are several Shi'ite sub-groups, the most important of which are the Ismailis, the Alawis, and the Ja'faris or Ithna 'Ashariya (Twelvers) -- followers of Imam Ja'far, founder of the Shi'ite school of law. Shi'ites make up an estimated 10 per cent of Muslims in the Arab world.
Ashour, who visited the Shi'ite holy sites in Qom and met with the country's supreme religious leader, Ali Khamenei, and a number of religious officials, said the trip to Iran served to put many of the issues disputed by Sunnis and Shi'ites in perspective. "We realised that almost 95 per cent of Shi'ite jurisprudence is the same as Sunni," he said.
Al-Azhar is no stranger to attempts at reconciliation between Shi'ites and Sunnis. According to Fahmi Howeidy, a columnist for Al-Ahram whose work on Iran is seminal, it was Al-Azhar that took the first steps towards reconciliation. Howeidy dates the first attempts at establishing common ground to the early 1930s. In 1947, a committee was established to forge a rapprochement between the two schools of thought. For 14 years, the organisation put out a magazine titled The Message of Islam, which addressed many controversial issues. The culmination of these efforts was a 1961 fatwa (authoritative opinion) issued by Sheikh Mahmoud Shaltout, then the sheikh of Al-Azhar, declaring that Al-Azhar recognised Shi'ism as a valid branch of Islam. Calls for improved relations have often been associated with the prevailing political position on Iran in the Arab world. Howeidy, who was the first Arab journalist to report on the Islamic Revolution, recalls that the war of words between Iran and most Arab countries in the aftermath of the revolution tarnished the image of Shi'ism. During the Gulf War, too, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein played to the Sunni world's historical suspicion of Shi'ites in order to win support.
"Politics have either given the process of spiritual reconciliation a push forward, or put it on hold," Howeidy told the Weekly. True enough, Sheikh Ashour disclosed that in discussions with top Iranian officials, politics inevitably played a role. "In Iran, it is very difficult to separate politics from religion, and while we were there, the issue of political ties naturally came up," he said. The ongoing Palestinian Intifada was also a key issue, and delegates agreed on the need to form a united stance against Israeli atrocities. On future developments between the two branches of Islam, Ashour was optimistic, saying he hoped that "what was corrupted by politics would be fixed by religion," and that the sheikhs of Al-Azhar would play a role in reviving ties with Iran. This goal figured prominently in the talks between Egypt's Grand Mufti Nasr Farid Wassel, and Iranian President Mohamed Khatami, who received the delegation on the conference's last day. Khatami, according to a source attending the meeting, expressed a strong desire to bolster relations with Egypt. Al-Azhar has always been invited to meetings organised by the Tehran-based Islamic Supreme Council for Reconciliation, but it always turned down the invitation. This time, however, according to one Azhar official, "it was given the green light to accept." The goal, of course, is to restore unity to the ranks of Islam.
In a gesture of goodwill, for the first time Al-Azhar has allowed books on Shi'ite thought to be displayed at the Cairo International Book Fair, due to open on 24 January. Some 8,000 books dealing with various aspects of Shi'ite doctrine will be available to the public. The move, which received little attention from the Egyptian press, made headlines in Iranian newspapers. The presence of the Azhar delegation in Tehran also received widespread coverage in the Iranian press. "It is an attempt to look for common ground between Shi'ites and Sunnis," Howeidy noted. "And for this, the legitimacy of Egypt and Al-Azhar is needed."
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