Shiites and their “proxies”
Since the time of Khomeini, the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites has been raging in the Middle East. However, at this moment, it is the Shiite Iranians and their allies who are siding with the Palestinians of Gaza, all Sunnis, while the Sunni world has practically remained on the sidelines.
So let’s try to understand who the Shiites are.
The Shiite faction was born out of the dispute over the succession of the Prophet Muhammad. Upon his death in 632, three caliphs (successors) were appointed, none of whom were relatives of Muhammad, but a portion of the faithful believed that the succession should have gone to Muhammad's blood relatives (Ahl al-Bayt, the people of the house), represented by Alī ibn Abi Tālib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, having married his daughter Fatima, and by their descendants. In 656, Alī was indeed appointed as the fourth caliph, but he was assassinated shortly after: power then passed to the Umayyads, governors of Syria. One of Alī's sons, al-Ḥusayn, tried to claim power but was killed along with 72 followers at Karbala in 680: the event is commemorated through Ashura.
Other descendants followed, claiming succession, in total twelve “imams” starting from Alī, the last of whom was Muhammad ibn al-Hasan, known as al-Mahdī (the guided one), who is believed not to have died in 874 but to have been concealed in occultation to return to earth to establish God's kingdom at the end of time.
However, the schism is not just a simple dynastic struggle: the Shiites developed their own intriguing doctrine that in many ways resembles St. Augustine’s “City of God.” They maintain that after Muhammad, a truly “just” community cannot exist on earth according to the dictates of God’s law. The death of al-Ḥusayn is not merely an episode of a mundane dynastic struggle but carries universal and metaphysical significance: it demonstrates that good cannot triumph on this earth, and al-Ḥusayn, who chooses to die with his followers rather than surrender to evil, is the ultimate martyr, bearing witness to the wickedness of men, which prevents the creation of a truly just society. Hence the doctrine of “occultation”: only at the end of time will al-Ḥusayn return to earth to establish the truly just society.
We thus have a pessimism similar to that of St. Augustine: in the world, there is evil; it will always be inextricably intertwined with good until the end of time when the world will be redeemed by the return of al-Ḥusayn (in St. Augustine's view, by the return of Christ who will separate good from evil). In this doctrinal framework, Ashura is not merely the commemoration of a historical event that happened many centuries ago, but it is a mourning for the evil in the world, now as then, and in each of us: the painful penance through flagellations and wounds is the expiation of evil, the penance. Similarly, on our Good Friday, we remember not only the passion of Christ but the evil in the world that calls for penance: in medieval traditions, which have survived in some places to this day (e.g., Guardia Sanframondi), there are flagellations similar to those of the Shiites: the penitent expiates the evil that is also within himself, in his own sins.
In this ideological framework, the state is necessary to repress the evil that is in man (“remedium carnis,” as St. Augustine said) but cannot establish a truly just society. From this, it follows that civil power must be distinct from religious power; only with the return of the “imam” al-HUsayn will the two powers be united in one person, sent by God. Shiites, therefore, like St. Augustine and also Luther, lean towards obedience to the state even though it is, by its nature, imperfect. Currently, the evil to be fought is identified with the West, and the Palestinian conflict is just one moment of this struggle, which will end with the victory of the believers when God wills it (inshallah).
Khomeini asserted that, even if the state cannot be perfect, it is possible for it to approach good, and for this reason, he superimposed on political power, which assumes a modern democratic guise, a religious authority that should judge whether its actions conform to the law of God or not.
From the perspective of political institutions, the Iranian constitution is roughly similar to the American one: the president of the republic is elected by direct suffrage, appoints ministers, and his power is counterbalanced by a parliament also elected by universal suffrage with a single-member district system. But this order is overlaid with an element that profoundly changes everything: the “Velayat-e faqih" (guardianship of the jurist), that is, a religious authority that oversees the conformity of the actions of political bodies to Islamic laws: this is the original principle that makes the Iranian system unique in the Muslim world, even in the Shiite world.
It should not be thought, as is commonly believed, that the Iranian regime corresponds to an Islamic tradition: it is instead an original construction of Khomeini.
The Velayat-e faqih is actually made up of a Supreme Leader (Rahbar), assisted by twelve experts. It might correspond to our Constitutional Court but has a much more invasive power: it controls the elections by deciding who can and cannot participate in them based on greater or lesser religious reliability; it enters above all into all political decisions, determining what is Islamic and what is not: foreign policy, alliances, nuclear program, internal politics, and everything else; in practice, it is the real political power.
The schism is widespread throughout the Middle Eastern region but not elsewhere. In fact, Iran became entirely Shiite relatively recently, in the 1600s, under the Safavid dynasty. They are particularly present in Iraq, where they make up the majority of the population, in Azerbaijan, where they are almost the entire population, and in Pakistan, where they constitute a significant minority. They have intervened in the Gaza conflict only in Lebanon, where they form the Hezbollah movement (Party of God) led by Nasrallah.
The other group that has intervened for Gaza is the Houthis: in reality, the movement is formed by a religious group, the Zaydites. Zaydism refers to Zayd ibn ʿAlī, one of the sons of the fourth imam who rebelled against the Umayyad power in Kūfa in 740 AD, after the massacre of Karbala, but was defeated and killed. However, his followers staunchly opposed the Umayyads and developed an interesting program of social equity and defense of the weakest. They did not, however, adopt the beliefs of the Shiites regarding the return of the imam nor their specific religious practices, and therefore they are not very different from the Sunnis, but nonetheless, their religious confession determines a community identity that proudly distinguishes them from their Sunni neighbors. For 30 years, they have been in conflict with the Sunnis of Arabia, which, according to UN estimates, has caused 600,000 deaths, 15 times those of Gaza, but in total indifference from world public opinion. In this conflict, currently suspended, they are supported by Iran, even though they are not Shiites but are still enemies of the Sunnis.
Without directly entering the conflict, Syria, governed by Bashar al-Assad's Alawites, is also strategically important for supplies. The Alawite faith has a character that we would call initiatory, and therefore little is known about its beliefs and practices, but it has some doctrines far removed from Islam: belief in the transmigration of the soul, reincarnation, the divinity of Alī ibn Abi Tālib – the fourth caliph and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad – and a holy trinity that includes Alī, Muhammad, and one of the prophet's companions, Salman al Farsi. In the Arab world, in general, they were persecuted until the French mandate, which replaced the Ottoman Empire in 1918. At that time, the Alawites, like other minorities (e.g., the Maronites of neighboring Lebanon), overcame traditional marginalization and also began a march towards hegemony and power, favored by the fact that, by force of circumstance, they are supporters of secularism, which coincided with the Nasserian type of nationalism. So, nothing in common between Alawites and Shiites, but, as with the Zaydites, being in conflict with the Sunnis in revolt, they have been strongly supported by the Iranians.
In the Middle East, alliances and conflicts are always difficult for us Westerners to understand.