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HIGH VISIBILITY, LOW PROFILE: THE SHIʿA IN OMAN UNDER SULTAN QABOOS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Marc Valeri
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If the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 has produced unprecedented consequences for the internal policies of Middle Eastern regimes, this is not related to the upsurge of democratization that was supposed to spread like a contagion through the neighboring countries. Rather, it is due to the increased impact of the Shiʿi issue on the national political agendas of many Arab states. Following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, many observers thus drew attention to the emergence of what they regarded as a Shiʿi “revival” in the Middle East—a perception that the military success of the Lebanese Hizbullah against Israel in the summer of 2006 seemed to confirm.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , May 2010 , pp. 251 - 268
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

NOTES

Author's note: This research was supported by the European Commission under a Marie Curie Research Fellowship (September 2007–August 2009). I thank Tim Niblock and Dale F. Eickelman for their unfailing support and the confidence they both placed in this research and Lindy Ayubi, who made a considerable job of editing. I also express my gratitude to all those who contributed directly or indirectly, by their personal involvement or their encouragement, to the progress of my field research in Oman, as well as to the four anonymous readers for their helpful comments and critiques of earlier drafts of this paper. All interpretations remain my sole responsibility.

1 Nasr, Vali, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: Norton, 2006)Google Scholar.

2 Robin Wright and Peter Baker, “Iraq, Jordan See Threat to Election from Iran: Leaders Warn against Forming Religious State,” Washington Post, 8 December 2004, A01.

3 Fuller, Graham E. and Francke, Rend Rahim, The Arab Shi'a: The Forgotten Muslims (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 53–54Google Scholar.

4 Regarding the marjaʿiyya, see Walbridge, Linda S., ed., The Most Learned of the Shiʿa: The Institution of the Marjaʿ Taqlid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 For a discussion of the relationship between the national agenda and integration into transnational networks in the world of Shiʿi Islam, see Shaery-Eisenlohr, Roschanack, Shiʿite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Fuller and Francke, The Arab Shi'a, chap. 4.

7 Nakash, Yitzhak, Reaching for Power: The Shiʿa in the Modern Arab World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

8 Louër, Laurence, Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

9 Fuller and Francke, The Arab Shi'a, 3. The authors add, relying on the history of Islam, that “. . . the implications, ramifications, and consequences of the status of the Shi'a as rafidha/marfudhun (those who reject and those who are rejected) form the matrices of any study of Shi'ite identity in the Arab world” (19).

10 Nakash, Reaching for Power, 16.

11 Cole, Juan R. I., Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shiʿite Islam (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 173, 179Google Scholar.

12 See Kostiner, Joseph, “Shiʿi Unrest in the Gulf,” in Shiʿism, Resistance and Revolution, ed. Kramer, Martin (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987), 173–86Google Scholar; and Nakash, Reaching for Power, chap. 2. On Saudi Shiʿa in particular, see, for example, International Crisis Group, “The Shiite Question in Saudi Arabia,” Middle East Report 45 (19 September 2005); Ibrahim, Fouad, The Shiʿis of Saudi Arabia (London: Saqi, 2006)Google Scholar. On Bahrain, see Bahry, Louay, “The Socioeconomic Foundations of the Shiite Opposition in Bahrain,” Mediterranean Quarterly 11 (2000): 129–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; International Crisis Group, “Bahrain's Sectarian Challenge,” Middle East Report 40 (6 May 2005); Katja Niethammer, “Voices in Parliament, Debates in Majalis, and Banners on Streets: Avenues of Political Participation in Bahrain,” EUI Working Papers, RSCAS n. 2006/27 (2006).

13 Mudayris, Falah ʿAbd Allah, Al-Haraka al-Shiʿiyya fi al-Kuwayt (The Shiʿi Movement in Kuwait) (Kuwait: Dar al-Qurtas, 1999)Google Scholar; Fuller and Francke, The Arab Shi'a, chap. 7.

14 Peterson, John E., Oman's Insurgencies: The Sultanate's Struggle for Supremacy (London: Saqi, 2007)Google Scholar.

15 Anderson, Lisa, “Absolutism and the Resilience of Monarchy in the Middle East,” Political Science Quarterly 106 (1991): 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Valeri, Marc, Oman: Politics and Society in the Qaboos State (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

17 Ibn Khaldun's notion of ʿaṣabiyya, usually translated as “group feeling,” is understood as populations linked by blood ties or behaviors acting as a group or defining themselves as such. See Khaldun, Ibn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Rosenthal, F. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), chap. 2Google Scholar.

18 Eickelman, Dale F., “Identité nationale et discours religieux en Oman,” in Intellectuels et militants de l'Islam contemporain, ed. Kepel, Gilles and Richard, Yann (Paris: Le Seuil, 1990), 117Google Scholar.

19 Estimates of religious allegiance among the Omani population are not based on official data, because the authorities never mention figures for religion and tribal or ethnic groups. According to my own calculations, based on the results of the 2003 census, Ibadi Omanis appear to constitute 50 to 55 percent of the population, Sunnis 45 to 50 percent, and Shiʿa 3 to 4 percent.

20 Allen, Calvin H. Jr., “The Indian Merchant Community of Masqat,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 44 (1981): 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Ibn Ruzayq, Al-Fath al-Mubin fi-Sirat al-Sada al-Busaʿidiyyin (The Glorious Conquest in the History of the al-Busa'idi) (Muscat: Ministry of National Heritage and Culture, 2001 [1858]), 314.

22 Calvin H. Allen Jr., “Sayyid, Shets and Sultans: Politics and Trade in Musqat under the Al Bu Sa'id” (PhD dissertation, University of Washington, 1978), 118ff.

23 The vast majority of the remaining Ismaʿili Lawatiyya appear to have emigrated to Pakistan for good during the 1960s. See Allen, “The Indian Merchant Community,” 51.

24 Interview with one of the inhabitants of the sūr, 22 February 2006. Historically the area south of the sūr (Takiya and Nazimuja quarters) was inhabited by families serving the Lawatiyya. See John Gordon Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, ʿOmân, and Central Arabia, 3 vols. (Gerrards Cross, U.K.: Archive Editions, 1986 [1915]), 2:1198–199.

25 Barth, Fredrik, Sohar: Culture and Society in an Omani Town (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 212Google Scholar.

26 Interview with a businessman, Muttrah, 28 January 2008.

27 Allen, “The Indian Merchant Community,” 51–52; Field, Michael, The Merchants: The Big Business Families of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States (Woodstock, N.Y.: The Overlook Press, 1985), 158Google Scholar.

28 In Oman, the notion of “tribe” is usually conveyed by the term qabīla. The tribe is headed by a shaykh qabīla who belongs to its noble branch.

29 The leading company is WJ Towell, which today is involved in more than forty sectors (including wholesale, motors, telecommunications, construction, computer engineering, and insurance). Two other holding groups (Mustafa Sultan and Jawad Sultan) owned by the al-Sultan family and their participation in joint groups (Hussain & Taki, Genetco) show the family's economic dynamism. For a detailed family tree of Muhammad Fadl's descendants, see Valeri, Oman, 114.

30 Interviews with a foreign diplomat, Muttrah, 21 January 2003, and an Omani government official, 13 February 2006.

31 If very few Lawatiyya appear in the security and intelligence sectors, this has less to do with questions of discrimination or sect sensitivity than to the perpetuation under Qaboos of an old sharing of roles, according to which the sultan of Muscat relied for his security on Baluchi-native Omanis, ʿAjam, and a few inner Oman tribes (Hawasina, Maʿamari, Bani Kalban, etc.).

32 Peterson, John E., “Oman's Diverse Society: Northern Oman,” Middle East Journal 58 (2004): 44Google Scholar.

33 The shaykh rashīd is paid as a state employee (by the Ministry of the Interior or the Municipality of Muscat) and acts as intermediary between individuals and the government administration. He officiates in a geographical district and performs multiple duties aimed at facilitating relations between individuals and the state apparatus, such as certifying a person's lineage in order to deliver a passport and solving minor disputes. The shaykh rashīd must give regular accounts of his actions to the wālī.

34 Interview with a businessman, Muttrah, 13 February 2006.

35 International Herald Tribune (Paris), 9 February 1976.

36 Interview with an imam, Muttrah, 7 February 2006.

37 Interviews in Oman, February 2006.

38 Allen mentions the early existence of “an elected shaykh and council of elders which governed communal affairs.” “The Indian Merchant Community,” 51.

39 A Bahrani businessman explained that “the Lawatiyya are much more organized than we are. For us, the shaykh is not so important. We agreed to appoint as shaykh the person who was the least reluctant. Nobody wanted to be shaykh!” Interview, 13 February 2006.

40 Many Lawatiyya still refuse to use this patronym.

41 Eickelman, Identité nationale, 120.

42 After the Iranian Revolution, the Shirazi movement took its current name: the Organization of the Islamic Action. For details on the origins and structure of the movement, see Faleh A. Jabar, The Shiʿite Movement in Iraq (London: Saqi Books, 2003), chap. 12. Hadi and Muhammad Taqi al-Mudarrisi played a leading role in organizing the political arm of the Shirazi movement in the Gulf monarchies, while Hadi al-Mudarrisi founded the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain in 1979. Sixty members (including one Omani) were accused of plotting against Bahrain's ruling dynasty and arrested in Manama in December 1981. For more information on the activities of the Shirazi movement in the Gulf monarchies, see Louër, Transnational Shia Politics, 120ff.

43 Interview, Muttrah, 22 February 2006.

44 For further details on this movement, see Peterson, Oman's Insurgencies.

45 Louër, Transnational Shia Politics, 134ff.

46 Personal communication from Laurence Louër, 11 January 2006.

47 Eickelman, Identité nationale, 127.

48 al-Lawati, Shabib, Shababna ila Ayn? (What Future for Our Youth?) (Qum, Iran: Dar al-Ansar, 2003)Google Scholar; also Hadhihi Usul Dinaka al-Khamsa (Here Are the Five Pillars of Your Faith) (Qum, Iran: Dar al-Ansar, 2004).

49 Al-Daʿwa (the Call) party, founded in Najaf in the late 1950s, gained followers in the early 1970s and became one of the major opposition parties to the Iraqi Baʿthist regime. See Jabar, The Shiʿite Movement, chaps. 3 and 4. Nuri al-Maliki, the current Iraqi prime minister, belongs to al-Daʿwa, and prominent Bahraini Shiʿi opposition personalities close to al-Wifaq party, such as shaykh ʿIsa Qasim, also come from this movement.

50 Abdallah, Salem, Omani Islamism: An Unexpected Confrontation with the Government (Washington, D.C.: United Association for Studies and Research, Occasional Papers Series 8, September 1995)Google Scholar.

51 Interviews with government officials and businessmen, Muttrah and Seeb, August 2004 and February 2006.

52 In Oman, the term “sayyid” is reserved for members of the royal family. Sayyid Shihab bin Tariq is Sultan Qaboos's paternal cousin.

53 The number of Fadlallah followers in Oman today is difficult to establish but is estimated to be from 500 to 1,000 individuals. Interview with an imam, Muttrah, 16 June 2008.

54 Fakhro, Munira A., “The Uprising in Bahrain: An Assessment,” in The Persian Gulf at the Millenium: Essays in Politics, Economics, Security, and Religion, ed. Sick, Gary G. and Potter, Lawrence G. (New York: St Martin's Press, 1997), 167–88Google Scholar.

55 An anecdote related to the majlis al-shūrā (Lower Chamber) elections reveals the many contradictions surrounding this issue. When universal suffrage was introduced in Muttrah in 2003, failure to reach agreement on grouping all the Lawati forces around a single name meant the community's vote was split; as a result, no Lawatiyya were elected to the Lower Chamber. A few days later, the sultan appointed two Lawatiyya to the State Council (Upper Chamber) to compensate for this. The lesson was remembered four years later, in 2007. This time the Lawatiyya organized primary elections within the community among seven applicants in order to ensure their representation in the majlis al-shūrā, while the notables canvassed to participate in the vote. Even in these conditions, it proved hard to convince the candidates who came second and third in the primaries to withdraw, because the community is not immune to internal fault lines and especially to social disparities and tensions.

56 In October 2005, a scandal in the electricity sector—in which several Lawatiyya, including a State Council member and the undersecretary for Electricity, were convicted of misappropriation, bribery, abuse of position, and forgery and sentenced to various jail terms—was certainly interpreted as such by many Omanis. All the accused were pardoned by the sultan in July 2006.

57 Interview with a civil servant, ʿIbri, 15 March 2008.

58 Interview with a senior government official, Bawshar, 31 August 2003.

59 See, for example, the arrest of two intellectuals (Muhammad al-Harthi and ʿAbd Allah al-Riyami) in the summer of 2004 for casting doubt on government commitment to political reform (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=11922 [accessed 25 November 2004]), and the prosecution in March 2007 of the founder of the main Internet discussion forum of Oman, who was charged with spreading wrong information about the economic activities of some members of the government (http://www.omania2.net [accessed 10 April 2007]).

60 Currently three ministers are Shiʿi: Ahmad Makki, minister of national economy, Maqbul al-Sultan, minister of commerce and industry, and Rajiha bint ʿAbd al-Amir, minister of tourism. The chairman of the Muscat Municipality, ʿAbd Allah bin ʿAbbas, was dismissed by the sultan's decree in September 2008, following widespread popular criticism over the management of Muscat's devastation by cyclone Gonu in summer 2007 and over the lack of urban planning to deal with the city's increasing traffic-congestion problems.

61 Interview with a civil servant, Muttrah, 19 February 2006.

62 Interview, 15 February 2006.

63 This same quest for origins is currently pursued by Khojas in Zanzibar. See Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, “Controcorrente? Il caso della comunità khogia di Zanzibar,” Oriente Moderno 1–6 (1995): 153–70.

64 Interview, 13 February 2006. Many specialists, relying on the widely accepted idea that Lawatiyya are Hindus converted to Islam, adopt this lexical distinction between “Indian Shiʿa” and “Arab Shiʿa.” See, for example, Allen, “The Indian Merchant Community”; Wilferd Madelung, “Khodja,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 5:25–26; Peterson, “Oman's Diverse Society,” 41.

65 Interview with a historian, Muttrah, 7 March 2003.

66 The use of this term has no moral connotation; it simply designates the process of “restudying history in order to correct it,” pursued by some Lawatiyya scholars in answer to historical interpretations that regard them as originally Hindu people converted to Islam.

67 Allen, “The Indian Merchant Community,” 49.

68 al-Khaburi, Jawad, Al-Adwar al-ʿUmaniyya fi al-Qara al-Hindiyya: Dur Bani Sama bin Luʾay—Ahl Lawatiyya (The Omani Role on the Indian Continent: Role of the Bani Sama bin Luʾay—the Lawatiyya) (Beirut: Dar al-Nubalaʾ, 2001), 47ffGoogle Scholar. This book has provoked many debates among the Lawatiyya, especially concerning the reliability of the sources used by the author.

69 Interviews with a historian, Muttrah, 25 March 2003; with a businessman, Seeb, 16 September 2003; and with a businessman, Muttrah, 20 February 2006.

70 Interview with a businessman, Muttrah, 16 September 2003; see also Allen, “The Indian Merchant Community,” 49.

71 Louër, Transnational Shia Politics, 10 and 46–57.

72 Madawi al-Rasheed, “The Shiʿa of Saudi Arabia: A Minority in Search of Cultural Authenticity,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 25 (1998): 121–38.