After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam (2009) by Lesley Hazleton2/8/2018
After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars "How had it come to this?" "The shock wave was deafening. In the first few seconds after the blast, the millions of pilgrims stood rooted to the spot. Everyone knew what had happened, yet none seemed able to acknowledge it, as though it were too much for the mind to process. And then as their ears began to recover, the screaming began. . . . There were nine explosions in all, thirty minutes of car bombs, suicide bombs, grenades, and mortar fire. Then there was just the terrible stench of burned flesh and singed dust, and the shrieking of ambulance sirens." Lesley Hazleton is describing the March 4, 2004 terrorist attack by Al Qaeda Sunni terrorists on Shia pilgrims to the holy city of Karbala in Iraq to commemorate the holy day of Ashura, to pay homage to the martyrdom of Muhammad's grandson Hussein and his other male descendants, who'd been massacred there 14 centuries earlier by fellow Muslims. What happened in 680 AD, less than 50 years after Muhammad died, and what happened in 2004, provoked the same question: How had it come to this? The answer is what Hazleton explores in her excellent book After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam (2009). Her book tries to explain what happened in 680 and its persisting ramifications. This is important to understand today because what happened to Hussein and his family and followers in Karbala in 680--history to Sunni Muslims, sacred history to Shia Muslims--is the foundation of their persisting division. "It has not just endured but gathered emotive force to become an ever widening spiral in which past and present, faith and politics, personal identity and national redemption are inextricably intertwined." It is, Hazleton says, an epic story. "If there is a single moment when it all began, it was that of Muhammad's death." Human nature being what it is, it is tragic but not so surprising that despite having been "the prophet of unity who spoke of one people and one God," when he died without a son Muhammad was followed by what would become the "terrible, unending, bloody legacy of division between Sunni and Shia." Muhammad's multiple widows and their fathers, his son-in-law Ali and his two sons, various clan and tribal leaders, all involved in a struggle for power and control of the faith and the people . . . Hazleton makes us care about the people involved in the history, especially Muhammad's favorite new wife Aisha, his cousin and son-in-law Ali, and his grandson Hussein, and writes so well about things she knows so well that her history is entertaining, moving, and absorbing. She presents many key events fundamental to the division that have over time become stories with their own titles, including: The Episode of the Necklace The Episode of the Pen and Paper The Secret Letter The Day at the Palace The Battle of the Camel She presents interesting details like about the origin of the hijab or the origin of Islamic fundamentalism. Or like Arabic being "a subtle and sinuous language" in which the same word can mean different things, depending on context, like jihad, which can mean an internal or external fight or struggle, and fitna, which can mean trial, temptation, intrigue, discord, or civil war, and always implies chaos. She incorporates cool quotations, like this one from a Muslim chieftain who didn't want to participate in the Battle of the Camel: "I would rather be a castrated slave herding nanny goats with lopsided udders than shoot a single arrow at either of these two sides." Or this one from a sociology scholar who partly inspired the Iranian Revolution: "Religion is an amazing phenomenon that plays contradictory roles in peoples' lives: destroy or revitalize, put to sleep or awaken, enslave or emancipate, teach docility or revolt." She herself writes plenty of neat lines, like "There is nobody as righteous or as blind to reason as the reformed sinner," or "As with Yazid in the 7th century, so with George Bush in the 21st, history is often made by the heedless." She reads her book perfectly, with a deep, husky, ironic, and compassionate voice and manner. She assumes no accents and doesn't try to sound like a man or a woman, and instead just naturally sounds wise, savory, and androgynous. The book is illuminating and fascinating, especially to someone like ignorant me who hadn't known what happened after Muhammad died, or who Aisha, Ali, and Hussein were (or why their names are so popular). I have heard that Hazleton is biased against Sunni Islam in favor of Shia, but, although she does stress the nobility of Ali and Hussein, she also admires the chutzpah of Aisha and respects the cunning of Muawiya (the 5th Caliph) and sees the whole vast tragedy with sympathetic and objective eyes. Anyone interested in the history of Islam and the division between Sunni and Shia or in compact, potent, informative, and well-written history whose personages and events connect with our own lives today, should like this book. View all my reviews
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