Introduction
Soon after the fortieth day of mourning Khomeini's death in 1989, a few clerics and a group of young men in the small mountain town of Kargil came together to lay the foundation for setting up the Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust (hereafter ‘the Trust’). The stated objective of setting up this organization was to keep alive the ‘memory and outlook of Ruhollah Khomeini’. The founders of the Trust had broken away from the Islamia School, the main religious centre of the Twelver Shi‘ites of the region, alleging that its traditional outlook was hampering the progress of the people of Kargil. Situated on the far north of India's de facto border with Pakistan in the province of Kashmir, Kargilis have long felt marginalized and comparatively less developed than their neighbours, the Buddhist-majority Leh and the predominantly Sunni Kashmir Valley. Yet, though remote geographically, politically, and culturally from mainland India, Kargil has been connected with the centres of Shi‘ism in West Asia—Iraq and Iran—through a steady stream of pilgrims and scholars at least since the early twentieth century.
Prior to the partition of the subcontinent in 1947–48, the trans-Himalayan regions of Leh, Kargil, and Baltistan together constituted the Ladakh wazārat (province) under Hindu Dogra rule. From the fifteenth century onwards people in Baltistan and Kargil began converting from Tibetan Buddhism to Islam. Travelling overland via Baltistan, preachers from Khorasan spread Islam through a peaceful and gradual process of proselytization. Most areas of Baltistan and Kargil first became Nurbakhshi under the influence of Syed Mohammad Nurbakhsh's followers in the early fifteenth century. The majority of the population, however, was converted to Twelver Shi‘ism by Mir Shamsuddin Iraqi from the sixteenth century onwards.Footnote 1 At partition Baltistan was incorporated into the Northern Areas of Pakistan, splitting it from Kargil, which fell under Indian-administered Kashmir. Despite this, there continued to be a sizeable population of Muslims (numbering approximately150,000) in Kargil, the majority belonging to the Twelver Shi‘a (Ithna Ashariya) sect.
Before the drawing up of the ‘line of control’ in 1948, which split Kashmir between India and Pakistan, students interested in higher religious education studied informally with individual teachers in the region. Bound to them in a patriarchal relationship, this reflected a pattern of Islamic pedagogy from eighteenth century India.Footnote 2 Some of the more renowned teachers in the region were Balti or came from parts that now lie in Baltistan.Footnote 3 Few students from these regions ventured to Shi‘ite centres of learning such as Lucknow or Hyderabad. Elderly clerics in Kargil today attribute this to the language difference. As speakers of a dialect of Tibetan (Balti), they found training given in Urdu difficult.Footnote 4 Another reason could also have been the absence of any ‘authoritative’ Shi‘a madrasa in India after 1856, given the closure of the first Shi‘a seminary set up in 1843 with the British occupation of Lucknow.Footnote 5 As with Shi‘a students in other parts of India, Kargilis aspiring to become clerics would travel directly to seminaries in West Asia—especially Najaf and Karbala—either overland through Afghanistan or by sea from Bombay to Basra.Footnote 6 Despite being taught in languages they did not know, they were more amenable to learning Persian and Arabic in these centres of Shi‘ite education as this lent their training a stamp of authenticity. Many of the older generation of clerics in Kargil were thus more fluent in Persian and Arabic than in Urdu. The tenuous historical connection with mainland subcontinental Islam is reflected in the vast repertoire of religious poetry in Balti—qasīdas and marsiyas— still extant in this region, many of which start with a line in Persian.Footnote 7
With the drawing up of the de facto border, movement between Kargil and Baltistan became more difficult. The resultant need for a local seminary in Kargil was realized through the establishment of the Islamia School. Founded in the early 1950s, it was spearheaded by a generation of clerics who had studied in Najaf in present-day Iraq. The Islamia School's imposing three-storey building, which today stands at one end of Kargil town's bazaar, was built and expanded from donations made by ordinary people and rich businessmen throughout the Kargil region. In later years it is also said to have received financial support from Iraq-based Ayatollah Khoi through his representatives in India.
As with much of the subcontinent, the majority of people in Kargil have been followers of Iraq-based mujtahids (the highest authority in jurisprudence) such as Ayatollah Khoi followed by Ayatollah Sistani.Footnote 8 However, with the growing influence of Iran, especially since the Iranian revolution in 1979, and the establishment of the Trust, Iran-based mujtahids such as Ayatollah Khamenei have also acquired more followers in this region. Even though the Islamia School continues to enjoy the support of the majority of Twelver Shi‘ites in the region, over the years the Trust has emerged as an alternative religious and political centre. Its experiments with Khomeini's revolutionary ideologies have instigated significant changes in several arenas of the socio-religious and political life of Kargil. Over time this has propelled the Islamia School too to adopt what is widely construed by people in Kargil as a modernist, progressive stance. However, in contrast to the Trust, the Islamia School's ideological positioning has historically been more Iraq-oriented and follows the outlook of Ayatollah Sistani. Both the Trust and Islamia School have built their institutional identities by giving prominence to their symbolic allegiances with Iran and Iraq respectively.
An ethnographic account of contestations between the Islamia School and the Trust lends insights into the pathways, discourses, and sources of funding through which Shi‘i networks of learning operate between India and West Asia. Departing from the predominant focus of scholarship on the subject of networks of learning in South Asia on conversion prompted by trading links and travel, Islamization, and the seminary system (madrasas), I illustrate how networks of religious learning are not just conduits for the transmission of textual and doctrinal knowledge but also for politico-religious ideologies, cultural ideas, and monetary flows that circulate within a wider transnational Shi‘i realm. The rivalry between these two Shi‘i factions in Kargil not only demonstrates how politico-religious discourses that underline broader doctrinal schisms in the transnational Shi‘i world are appropriated to shape political and cultural imperatives in specific locales, but also how they may contribute to sustaining these schisms globally. I suggest that networks of learning thus operate in a circular way, often premised on a time–space disjunction.
Historically, Shi‘i scholars from India constituted a sizeable presence in seminaries in present-day Iraq. The erstwhile kings of Oudh (Awadh) instituted the ‘Oudh Bequest’ and were important patrons of the shrine city of Najaf.Footnote 9 They financed canal construction to bring water to a perpetually dry Najaf.Footnote 10 Conversely, emigrants from Iraq and Iran were a significant presence in Murshidabad and Lucknow. Although the numbers of Iranian scholars in northern India had declined by the early nineteenth century, physicians, poets, and architects continued to come and settle in these places.Footnote 11 Ideas and movements in Iran, such as the impact of the millenarian Shaykist movement in the early nineteenth century, echoed through Shi‘i heartlands in India. Despite this historical legacy, there is scant literature on Shi‘i networks between India and West Asia today.Footnote 12 It has been noted that there was an ‘absence of reference to events in Najaf or elsewhere within much of the Shi‘a Urdu public sphere’ in colonial India.Footnote 13 In contrast, the contemporary public sphere in Kargil is replete with symbolic and discursive reference to ideas, trends, and movements within a transnational Shi‘ite realm. This is particularly striking given its sensitive border location; any transnational Islamic linkages render Muslims in Kashmir particularly susceptible to being viewed with suspicion by the Indian state in the context of its post-colonial politics of sovereignty.
In what follows, I first sketch the formation of religious networks between Kargil and West Asia, discussing the changes that have taken place in their organization and operation. This forms an essential background to understanding how networks of religious learning became conduits for the transfer of socio-political ideologies. I then go on to discuss how travel and appropriation of socio-political discourses from Iran and Iraq shaped contestations between the Trust and the Islamia School, provoked by what might be poetically construed as the Trust's experiments with Khomeini's revolutionary ideologies.
From Najaf to Qum: formation and operation of networks
The majority of the older generation of clerics in Kargil studied in the seminaries of Najaf, which, along with Karbala, emerged as a stronghold of Shi‘ism in Iraq from the mid-eighteenth century.Footnote 14 As in India, here too students were affiliated to individual teachers and depended on the patronage of a particular mujtahid for their stipends. According to one such Kargili cleric, who had studied in Iraq, usually those students from Kargil who could not afford the passage from Bombay to Basra in the early to mid twentieth century would seek education in other parts of India such as Uttar Pradesh. Shaykh Ahmad Muhammadi (d. 2012), the head of the Islamia School in Kargil, for instance, studied in Najaf for nearly 15 years at the same time as renowned mujtahids such as Ayatollah Burujerdi, Agha Syed Mohsin Hakim, and Khomeini himself were resident there. He studied Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) under Ayatollah Mohsin Hakim. Recalling his time in Najaf, Shaykh Muhammadi related, ‘Ayatollah Hakim was very famous. He challenged the communists in the era of Saddam Hussein, pronouncing a fatwa against them. When he died, Saddam was in power in Iraq. The clerics living in Iraq were expelled and had to return to their home countries by force.’ Having returned to India in 1966, Shaykh Muhammadi himself was not affected by Saddam's crackdown on clerics. However, with the expulsion of foreign clerics from Iraq in the late 1970s, most of the younger generation of Kargili scholars too started studying in Qum and Mashhad in Iran, which emerged as centres of Shi‘ite learning.Footnote 15
Even today most Kargili scholars prefer to go to Iran to pursue higher religious learning after they have completed their initial studies in Kargil at the Islamia School or, in some cases, in seminaries outside Kargil, usually in the Kashmir Valley or further afield in Mumbai or Uttar Pradesh. Students these days usually combine religious and secular education, often studying in government schools until matriculation (class 10), before going to West Asia to pursue higher religious learning. While the older generation of scholars from Kargil would study in West Asia at their own behest, after the Iranian revolution of 1979 students began to be systematically admitted to seminaries in Iran only after they had passed an examination administered by the Iranians in certain places in India. According to a few girls from Uttar Pradesh studying in Bint al-Huda, one of the two all-women's seminaries in Qum, the examination consisted of multiple-choice questions. It sought to assess the examinees' ‘attitudes, objectives and plans for the future’ and was followed by a viva. While Kargili students had to take the examination in the Kashmir Valley, Iranian representatives also directly administered the examination in Kargil, in some years through the Islamia School.
The majority of scholars initially fund their own passage and visa costs. Once they are in Iran and have enrolled at a seminary, they begin to receive student stipends. It is common for students to marry after two to three years in Iran, as payments for families are higher. The system of disbursing stipends in Iran has been streamlined, and the changes instituted in the overall seminary structure are part of larger attempts to modernize religious education over time. Students are no longer dependent on the patronage of individual teachers as in the past and their stipends are disbursed through a centralized bureaucracy. A Kargili scholar in Qum explained that the modernization of the seminary system is reflected in the renaming of Jahan-e markaz to Jamiat al-Mustafa or Al-Mustafa International University, which has been accorded the status of a university that can award degree certificates. This bestows a parallel but equivalent qualification to that which students outside the seminary system receive in the university system. Jamiat al-Mustafa is the overall coordinating institution for all foreign students in Qum. There are several seminaries to which only foreign or non-Iranian students are admitted. In the last few years it has become compulsory for male students to study Persian first for six months at the Madrasa al-Mahdi before choosing a seminary. Women are admitted directly to seminaries such as Jamiat al-Zahra and Bint al-Huda, where they are also taught Persian.
Some Kargili scholars from the early generation settled down in Iraq and Iran after completing their studies, sometimes marrying local women. Some would pass an examination which allowed them to legitimately become part of the seminary system, while others would simply stay on after their visas had expired. Today, though, it is increasingly difficult for foreign students to remain in Iran after completing their studies for both legal and socio-economic reasons. Unlike in the past, Indian students in Iran have to renew their residents' visas every year, which entails paying a fee, making it an expensive proposition. A Kargili cleric living in Qum complained that life in Iran is also becoming difficult due to the rising costs of living. Further, since Jamiat al-Mustafa has started awarding diplomas and degrees, it can be quite lucrative for its graduates to return to India. There they can apply for posts to teach Arabic and Persian in state-run schools and colleges. For some clerics, changing aspirations thus underlie the move back to India: along with socio-economic development in Kargil and the increasing availability of government jobs, coveted for both the long-term financial security and prestige they provide, many clerics want their children to receive a ‘modern education’ in English in India. Those receiving only a religious education are seen as ill-equipped to work in other secular spheres. Even those who aspire to become clerics prefer to combine Islamic and secular education. Becoming a cleric is no longer a matter of maintaining a family genealogy but is viewed as a profession, just as any other. Besides, as one cleric put it, ‘Common people also support us monetarily for imparting religious education.’ Thus, both choice and compulsion are driving more clerics to return to India sooner rather than later these days.
Typically, most Kargili scholars study jurisprudence (fiqh) and few reach or go beyond dars al-kharij, an advanced level of study, ‘outside the texts’, under an individual master teacher. At this level, those students with the ability to become mujtahids are sifted out from the others.Footnote 16 For a few years, either during their studies or after finishing, scholars are entitled to apply for proselytization (tabligh) positions. They can either join existing Qur'an schools and madrasas or propose initiatives of their own. These positions are usually for a duration of three years. Students have to pass an examination in Iran before they return to India to apply for them. A separate entity called Sāzemāneh Madāris, which now functions in conjunction with Jamiat al-Mustafa, coordinates the dispatch of trained teachers to preach in other countries, typically their homelands.Footnote 17 These preachers are given a salary and a ticket. The salaries are disbursed through the Iran Cultural House in Delhi.Footnote 18 In the early years after the Iranian revolution, Khomeini actively sought to ‘export’ the ideology of the revolution with a view to establishing the leadership of the Islamic Republic over Twelver Shi‘a across the world through a variety of mediums.Footnote 19 Besides a new wave of published literature and using the hajj as an occasion for disseminating the ideas of the revolution, sending scholars who had trained in Iran back to their home countries for proselytization was also an important way of exporting the revolution.Footnote 20 After three months these preachers have to send an application to the Iran Cultural House in Delhi describing what they have done thus far by way of tabligh; only then are they paid. In 2008, according to Kargili scholars, their salary was approximately Rs. 4,000–5,000 (approximately100 USD) a month.
Clerics are often sent to other parts of India, particularly to places with a shortage of religious teachers. Kargili scholars, for instance, can be found in Mumbai, along with clerics from Uttar Pradesh, where the long-term Khoja Ithna Ashariya community has been primarily mercantile and produced few religious leaders of its own. The example of Shaykh Zakiri of Islamia School is illustrative of a generalizable pattern of movement of many scholars after they finish their studies in West Asia. Shaykh Zakiri studied in the madrasa Hujjetiya in Qum for six years in the early 1970s and returned to India as the Iranian revolution started. On his return from Iran, he taught at a local Qur'an school in Karkichu village in Kargil district for a salary that was most likely paid by people in the village. After that he taught in the South Indian state of Karnataka where he earned a salary of Rs. 5,000 a month, which corresponds to the salaried positions paid through the Iran Cultural Centre. Unable to adjust, however, to the hot southern climate and food, he decided to return to Kargil where he found a job in a private school. After teaching there for a few years he joined the Jaffaria Academy, a school for modern education run by the Islamia School, where he continues to teach Persian and Arabic.
Besides the long-term salaried positions for proselytization, students also return to their home countries to preach during the holy months of Ramadan and Muharram. Such short-term preaching is funded through the offices of individual mujtahids, in part from the corpus built up from the collection of khums.Footnote 21 According to some clerics in Kargil, in the past preachers were given air tickets and expenses for travel, but now only an air ticket is provided. However, people in Kargil donate generously to bring clerics trained in West Asia to their majālis (religious gatherings) which makes up for the shortfall in funding. It is a matter of prestige in villages in Kargil to host a cleric from their own village who has trained in West Asia to preach during Ramadan and Muharram and preside over various ritual events. Clerics trained in Iran and Iraq hold a privileged status in Kargili society.Footnote 22 Besides imparting doctrinal knowledge and offering ritual services, since the 1980s they have also been conduits for social change in Kargil. This has been underpinned by ideological positions and discourses circulating within a transnational Shi‘ite realm.
The rise of the Trust: a modernist reform movement
The setting up of the Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust in 1989 attests to what I suggest can be seen as the partial success of the export of Iranian revolutionary ideology and the institutional apparatus put in place to disseminate it outside Iran. The Trust's experiments with Khomeini's revolution to effect social change in Kargil held traction at a particular moment in the region's history. This was a time when its people perceived a need to carve out an identity characterized by a ‘modern’ outlook that would bring it on par with its neighbouring regions, the Kashmir Valley and Buddhist Ladakh. The Iranian revolution was widely credited with instilling confidence among the Shi‘a, of raising awareness about not being passive recipients of what fate bestowed upon them, and thereby taking responsibility for life in ‘this world’.
By the 1980s people in Kargil were increasingly exposed to the world beyond the confines of the mountains that surrounded them through television, travel, education, and the wider availability of printed religious literature. In other parts of India with substantial Muslim populations, printed material circulated widely from the nineteenth century onwards to counter the influence of Christian missionaries and a rising Hindu consciousness in the public arena.Footnote 23 But geographical remoteness, differences in language, and the late arrival of literacy meant that printed material only came to have an impact in Kargil much later and is said to have become widely available after the Iranian revolution. When asked what the impact of the Iranian revolution was on Kargil, the most common response was that it imparted confidence to Shi‘a around the world—but I was also often told that after the revolution, more literature became available and that it increased awareness. The thoughts of key ideologues behind the Iranian revolution of 1979, like Murtaza Mutahhari and Ali Shariati, became available in Urdu via printing presses in Delhi, Mumbai, and Lucknow. Some individuals thus began to think about Islam independently, through their own readings of the available literature. Though rare, clerics in the Islamia School began to be questioned on religious matters such as the rendition or reading of certain hadith or why particular religious injunctions were incumbent upon Muslims and among the Shi‘a, unlike the Buddhists, for instance. Some of the more outspoken young men also became more critical of clerics’ discouragement of change in key areas of life which were perceived to be necessary for much desired ‘progress’ and ‘development’, of wanting to be ‘modern’. An issue that struck a chord across the board (judging by how many people related it to me when recalling those times) was older clerics deeming modern education (often used as a euphemism for an education in English) to be harām (prohibited). Several people mentioned how older clerics would discourage people from learning English, saying, ‘Are you going to read a,b,c,d at your father's grave?’ While this in all likelihood reflected the influence of a historical resistance to English, the language of the colonizers,Footnote 24 it was also perceived by the younger generation as a ploy by clerics to sustain their power by keeping people uneducated. However, as some young men told me, the Iranian revolution had shown them that modern education was legitimate, saying, ‘Khomeini said that a person should acquire education from the cradle to the grave.’
A few clerics in Kargil became champions of ideologies that generally came to be associated with Khomeini and the Iranian revolution of 1979. They found an audience among young men who were frustrated with the ‘close-minded attitudes’ of older clerics in the Islamia School. According to Shaykh Husayn Zakiri, the leading cleric who founded the Trust, the resistance to English and modern education was reflected in the obstacles encountered when the Mutahhari Public School was started in Kargil. Opened in 1984, a few years prior to the Trust's founding, it was the first school of modern education started by clerics in Kargil. In his rendition of the story, when the idea was first mooted, some clerics at the Islamia School were not easily persuaded as to its merits. We now turn to Shaykh Zakiri's own story, which might account for his apparently relatively progressive way of thinking. What were the backgrounds of the ideologues who were pushing to experiment with Khomeini's revolutionary discourses in Kargil?
Ideologues
Shaykh Zakiri is an apt example of ‘ulama who are not just custodians of religious tradition and learning but respond to changing times.Footnote 25 He had started pushing for change within the Islamia School in the early 1980s. Even though he did not study in Iran, Shaykh Zakiri had a proclaimed predilection for the thinking that crystallized in the Iranian revolution of 1979. In 2008, he was living in an area called Bagh Khomeini, formerly Pratapgunj, a relic of Dogra rule in the region, across the Suru River, above the Kargil bazaar. In the context of his own life, he described to me at great length why Khomeini's revolutionary ideology appealed to him.
Born to a poor family in 1940, with an elderly father, the burden of running the household fell upon Shaykh Zakiri's shoulders at an early age. He started working as a labourer at the age of 12. He was deeply influenced by his father, who though largely illiterate, knew both Persian and Arabic and had, as the Shaykh put it, a ‘lot of compassion for people’. He wanted his son to acquire a religious education, a wish that Shaykh Zakiri was able to fulfil only after his father's death. After collecting money by selling the trees on their land, Shaykh Zakiri left for Najaf in 1965. However, his education was cut short by financial difficulties and illness, and he was forced to return to Kargil after two years. Remembering his return, Shaykh Zakiri related:
I had acquired a certain way of thinking from my father and started observing how people in Kargil led their lives, the status of education there. I began to feel great pity for common people and the difficulties they faced being blindly led by mullahs and oppressed by the rule of the rich. I had in the meanwhile taken up work as a contractor and my financial situation improved. I told people—raise your head and look beyond these and see the world, which has moved ahead.
Shaykh Zakiri tried his hand at politics for a while, but disillusioned by the hypocrisy of politicians, he returned to imparting religious education to children and raising awareness among people about the need for social change. He worked at the Islamia School for many years. Continuing with his personal story, which simultaneously traced the background to the rise of the Trust, he recalled:
Whenever I got the opportunity, I used to give speeches and talk about the world. In 1979, the revolution took place in Iran and people started recognising my personality and a lot of youth started supporting me. The mindsets of people started changing. I persuaded the Islamia School to support a candidate for the Indian Parliamentary elections and floated the idea of setting up a private school for modern education. In the beginning people used to laugh at the idea of a mullah (cleric) running a private school and the clerical command of the Islamia School were opposed to the idea. When they kept delaying making a decision, I delivered an ultimatum. Scared that the matter was slipping out of their hands, they finally relented. The Mutahhari School was set up in 1984.
Even after the Mutahhari School was set up, the Shaykh continued to voice long unspoken grievances that many people held against the Islamia School: that it was run like a ‘dictatorship’, elections for the post of president had not been held, the use of funds was not transparent, decisions were taken without widespread consultation, younger scholars were seldom given space to speak. Shaykh Zakiri was allegedly expelled from the Islamia School when he started raising some of these issues. Some years later, in 1989, during the mourning of Ayatollah Khomeini's death, a group of young people and a few other clerics supported him in setting up the Trust.
One of these young men was Azgar Ali Karbalai who became one of the most vociferous of the Trust's supporters and later the political face of this organization. As his name indicates, Karbalai was born in Iraq, where his father was studying to be a cleric in the 1970s. He studied at an Iranian school for modern education until his family was forced to return to Kargil in the late 1970s. The early years of his childhood spent in Iraq left a strong impression on Karbalai. He recalled, ‘In Iraq we studied in coat and pant but when I returned to Kargil we were not allowed to wear this. We were told by religious leaders in Kargil to dress in the pathān suit [long tunic worn in northern India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan] and not keep hair.’ These memories of Iraq led to an appreciation of the modernity of post-revolution Iran, which he praised at any given opportunity. Karbalai had learned Arabic and Persian in Iraq, which he continued to practise even while studying in a government school in Kargil. Thus, as an adult he was able to read religious literature without the mediation of local clerics, unlike many of his peers in Kargil. His knowledge of Islam helped him to acquire legitimacy among the Trust's followers when he later became a politician. His early career, however, was spent as a schoolteacher. Although he had not studied beyond matriculation, Karbalai was recruited by Shaykh Zakiri to teach at the first Mutahhari Public School.
It is worth noting, in the context of our discussion on the ‘export of Iranian revolutionary ideology’, that two individuals critical to sustaining the Trust—Shaykh Husayn Zakiri and Karbalai—were neither educated in Iran nor had they spent significant periods of time there. Yet they plugged into a wider transnational network manifest through the travel of ideas. Besides attesting to the power of ideas to acquire a momentum of their own, this suggests that the explicit appropriation of Iranian revolutionary ideology was facilitated through linkages developed with Kargili scholars returning from Iran for proselytization and sustained contact with the Iran Cultural Centre in Delhi. Networks of religious learning thus do not operate in a linear manner, but manifest a disjunction between time and space when it comes to the transmission of socio-cultural and political ideas and ideologies. In Kargil individuals who lived in Iraq in the pre-Saddam Hussein era connect with scholars who have experienced post-revolution Iran. However, this disjunction was glossed over in Kargil as the Trust's factional identity in opposition to that of the Islamia School was wilfully reified over time. As the Trust looked to Iran for an ideological apparatus to shore up its own identity, the Islamia School became oriented towards Iraq. Their linkages with these centres of Shi‘ism in West Asia appear to be partially mediated through the Iran Cultural Centre in Delhi and the Najafi house in Mumbai, respectively, in public discourse in Kargil. It is important to note, however, that neither the Trust nor the Islamia School negate the importance of Iran or Iraq, indicating the rhetorical quality of their professed transnational allegiances.
It is neither clear nor easy nor perhaps even necessary to procure information on the extent of actual funding that these organizations receive either from mediating institutions or directly from Iran and Iraq. However, there is a flow of finances through indirect channels and help in kind. In the case of the Trust, examples include the donation of books and equipment such as computers by the Iran Cultural Centre in Delhi. The Islamia School receives support from Najafi House in Mumbai, which supports an extensive network of madrasas across India. Set up by a representative of Iraq-based Ayatollah Khoi in 1981 under the aegis of the Imaan Foundation, it also runs several charitable organizations managed by the Alimaan Charitable Trust, which is led by a representative (wakīl) of Ayatollah Sistani. He has been given permission to collect and distribute religious tithes (khums) on the Ayatollah's behalf for charitable activities.Footnote 26
Nearly every individual in Kargil is today allied with either the Islamia School or the Trust, even though they may publicly disavow this. While the majority of people are aligned with the Islamia School, the Trust's support base has gathered strength through the sheer conviction of its followers, who sometimes explain their allegiance as a matter of creed (‘aqīda). Followers pay khums to the faction they are aligned with as well as make generous donations so that they can extend invitations to clerics from Iran and support the organization of other ritual events, especially during Muharram and Ramadan. Although over the years both organizations have converged in their vision for the development of the region and the social change this necessitates, the Trust's selective, but explicit attribution of their agenda for change to Khomeini's revolutionary discourse instigated intense factional politics within the Islamia School. As we shall see, this factionalism was played out through the appropriation and exaggeration of socio-religious ideological schisms circulating within the transnational Shi‘ite realm. These harnessed the attention and energy of the people of Kargil, against a background of a perceived urgency for social change, which had become mired in intense competition between the two factions and intensified the need for transnational symbolic markers of institutional identity. A brief glimpse into this offers a necessary background for the discussion of local contestations deriving from, and perhaps abetting, transnational schisms.
Experiments with Khomeini's revolution: an agenda for social change
The Trust's broad goals, as stated in its manifesto, included: spreading Islāmī akhlāq (Islamic morality and ethics) and adab (grace and manners); putting an end to non-Islamic social practices, such as existing marriage customs (music, dancing, and ostentatious display during weddings); increasing brotherhood and unity among ordinary people; fostering compassion; promoting an Islamic culture; using the modern means of new technology to spread a revolutionary (inqilābi) outlook; supporting the poor, widows, and orphans; and removing educational backwardness. Change was to begin at the level of the individual. Nurturing moral and pious, rational, socially active, and aware individuals would ensure collective well-being and the progress of society. Young people had been the foundation of the Trust's birth, and emphasis continued to be placed on the young as the harbingers of change. Educated individuals would become the building blocks of society.
Though reflecting a general modernist Islamic reformist agenda, which was also later pursued by the Islamia School, especially through its Youth Wing, the Trust's manifesto referred to the different ideological strands that had made up the discourse of the Iranian revolution as a source of inspiration and legitimacy. Selectively appropriating some of these strands, it set about creating an agenda for social reform, targeting three areas: the economy, education, and women's empowerment, and, later, active political participation. Each targeted specific sources of perceived injustice or inequality within Kargil that were seen to be hindering the progress of the qaum (used interchangeably to refer to both community and region). Each also addressed the aspiration for an ever more modern life that bore the stamp of Islamic legitimacy, which was widely desired, if not always articulated thus, among people in Kargil.
In the arena of education, as mentioned above, the Trust takes credit for opening the first school for modern education at the behest of clerics. The school took its name and vision from Shahid Mutahhari, a student of Khomeini, who had called for ‘ulama to respond to the demands of changing times lest they become redundant.Footnote 27 Some years later, in competition with the Trust's Mutahhari Public School, the Islamia School started its own private school—the Jaffaria Academy for Modern Education, named after the Sixth Imam, Jaffar Sadiq, revered by the Shi‘a as a great Islamic scholar and scientist.
When it came to addressing economic issues, the first problem the Trust sought to tackle was the ‘state of the bazaar’. The Zoji-la pass, the main lifeline of the region for commodities, is closed for six months every year due to heavy snow. Taking advantage of this, some traders and businessmen in Kargil would hoard commodities and sell them at exorbitant prices when stocks ran out. The Trust sought to challenge their monopoly on the market by setting up a cooperative society funded through the corpus of an Islamic bank. Money was collected from individuals with disposable income such as government employees. It drew upon the work of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (1935–1980), a philosopher-cleric best known for his work on Islamic economics, which lays out detailed rules for Islamic banking. The Islamic bank collapsed in the late 1990s due to embezzlement of funds. Even though the Trust lost some followers as a result, this incident did not drastically affect their support base.
Finally, the agenda for women's empowerment too drew upon post-revolution Iran's clerical discourse. According to this, women make important contributions to society and can legitimately take on various professions as long as they fulfil their primary role as nurturers of the household and adhere to the hijab. Only if women wear the hijab in a ‘proper,’ that is, ‘Iranian’ way, can they freely go out in public. Emphasis was placed on educating women as an educated mother is able to give her children a proper upbringing thus contributing to the progress of society and the nation. Although this ignored the changes in post-revolution Iran, when many women were divested of the public roles they had occupied before the revolution, such as judges, high-level administrators, and cabinet ministers, the selective appropriation of this discourse enabled the Trust to challenge the views of traditionalist clerics in Kargil who had historically discouraged women's education. This reformist agenda opened up public space to women in new ways in Kargil. Mimicking Iran, the Trust started organizing special events for women such as the annual celebration of the birthday of Fatima Zahra—the Prophet's daughter—as ‘Women's Day’ (Yaum-e khawātīn). This imitated the designation given to the occasion in post-revolution Iran.Footnote 28
The Trust began to organize several annual public symbolic events to mark its institutional identity and also display and renew its links with Iran. Besides the celebration of the birthday of Fatima Zahra/Women's Day, the traditional ritual calendar has been expanded to include annual state-endorsed, post-revolution ritual events from Iran such as the commemoration of the anniversary of Khomeini's death, referred to as his barsi.
These links are perhaps most visible in Kargil on the occasion of the anniversary of Khomeini's death. This is commemorated every year at a big public function organized by the Trust. A replica of the much larger event in Iran in which thousands of people participate every year, representatives from the Iran Cultural House are invited to grace the event as chief-guests while a small group of men from Kargil, regardless of factional affiliation, receive sponsorship to travel to Iran for the occasion. Even though the Iran Cultural House in Delhi focuses mostly on promoting ties between India and Iran based on their shared cultural heritage, its patronage of such events also makes it a conduit for disseminating Khomeini's revolutionary ideology. This is suggested by the discursive content of these events.
In 2008, when I was able to attend the barsi, several speeches reiterated the importance of the institution of the velayat-e faqih (rule of the jurisprudent). Developed by Khomeini to actualize his discourse that politics and religion are not separate spheres of life, the velayat-e faqih embodies both the spiritual and political power to guide and manage the affairs of the Twelver Shi‘a in the absence of the Twelfth Imam, who is believed to be in occultation. As one speaker proclaimed at the barsi, ‘The velayat-e faqih is necessary to keep the injunctions of Islam alive.’ Representatives from the Iran Cultural Centre in Delhi reiterated the importance of Khomeini's outlook embodied in the velayat-e faqih concept for all Shi‘a, regardless of nationality. The transnational appeal of Khomeini's message was illustrated using the example of Hizbullah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah as able to ‘win the war against Israel’ because they followed Khomeini's path.Footnote 29
A few years after its establishment, the Trust started espousing Khomeini's views on the relationship between religion and politics more openly. Put simply, Khomeini's revolutionary ideology urged a shift away from a soteriological outlook in living life. He argued that religion and politics couldn't be disassociated, and called for the shedding of a passive attitude towards the experience of injustice and awaiting the return of the Twelfth Imam from occultation to bring justice. Exemplified by the 1979 revolution, it encouraged a new brand of activist Shi‘i Islam. Political action came to be redefined through the Karbala paradigm (which recounts Imam Husayn's battle against the unjust rule of the Ummayad regime), as an active struggle for justice and freedom from oppression.
Drawing upon this discourse, the Trust argued that without political power, the oppressors of Kargili society (the traditional elite and big businessmen) could not be removed from their entrenched positions of power. It proclaimed a mission of fighting for ‘the public’ and creating the conditions for a ‘good life'—a life of justice, a life free of oppression. The mission translated into active participation in the elections for the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council-Kargil.Footnote 30 Azgar Ali Karbalai left his job at the Mutahhari Public School to contest the Council elections in 2003.
In Kargil, following a historically quietist stance, the clerics of the Islamia School had eschewed active political involvement, at least in theory. The earlier generations of Kargili clerics like Shaykh Muhammadi claimed to follow the political quietism of Ayatollah Husayn Burujirdi, the last of the unanimously accepted marja‘ (the most learned and supreme exemplar for emulation). However, the rise of the Trust and its appropriation of Iranian revolutionary ideology forced a shift away from the traditionalist stance of the Islamia School. Using a similar vocabulary of fighting against injustice and oppression, it too entered the political arena in order to keep its followers, many of whom had started to feel disenchanted that the School was not keeping up with changing times.
Between doctrinal disputes and politicking
I will now turn to three issues that became extremely contentious and deepened the rift between the Trust and Islamia School over time. Each of these issues illustrates certain doctrinal disputes in the transnational Shi‘i world that were appropriated by the two factions to further mark their identities.
The rule of the jurisprudent
Although both the Trust and Islamia School engaged in political action, each legitimized its stance with reference to a wider schism on the issue of the rule of the jurisprudent or velayat-e-faqih in the transnational Shi‘ite universe. After the revolution in Iran, the entwining of religion and politics was articulated and put into practice through Khomeini's concept of the velayat-e faqih—the guardianship of the jurist. The supreme jurist became the direct and legitimate inheritor of both the political and religious authority of the Prophet and the Imams.Footnote 31 The velayat-e faqih had a direct role in politics and the day-to-day running of the state. In the Islamic republic of Iran, Khomeini first took up the position, followed by Khamenei. As seen in the brief discussion of the speeches given on the commemoration of the anniversary of Khomeini's death, the Trust explicitly endorsed the velayat-e faqih as a way to promote the stance that religious leaders, who are the spiritual heads of a community, have a legitimate part to play in politics. While never openly critical of Khomeini and Khamenei, the Islamia School, on the other hand, claimed to follow the clerical leadership in Iraq to legitimize its entry into politics.
Shaykh Muhammadi from the Islamia School explained to me, ‘Sistani believes that a government (hukūmat) ought to be Islamic, but not directly.’ For Sistani the legitimacy of a government in Iraq rests upon both popular sovereignty and the approval of the grand ayatollahs of Najaf. He does not see the shari'a and popular sovereignty as being contradictory.Footnote 32 In his view, clerics have a role to play in politics but not as direct electors to government. Sistani rejected Khomeini's model of a theocratic government and velayat-e faqih. The Islamia School argued that the concept of velayat-e faqih could only work in a country like Iran, which has an Islamic regime, but cannot be applied in non-Islamic states. While the Trust's supporters immediately extolled the revolution and Khomeini, the School's supporters were less enthusiastic. As a cleric from the School argued, ‘There had always been a religious link between Iran and Kargil even before the revolution. More good books became available after the revolution. But what can be achieved by following Iranian politics here? The law of the land is different. Some people are just using the revolution to sow discord among the people of Kargil.’
While both the Trust and Islamia School's stances on velayat-e faqih reflect a wider transnational schism, in the context of Kargil its evocation became a way of marking factional identity rather than having any practical implications or perhaps even truth-value to it. Ideological debates underlined by doctrinal disputes transformed into rhetoric in the case of both factions. This is evident from the fact that clerics aligned with the Islamia School stood directly for elections, thus not quite adhering to Sistani's view. And in the case of the Trust, it was well aware that the commands of the velayat-e faqih could only be implemented in Iran and not in a secular state like India. When it came to locating themselves within the nation-state, both factions overtly endorsed Indian secularism, praising India for the freedom its people had to practise their faith.Footnote 33 This became particularly clear after the overt absence of such discussions or disputes in other parts of India with substantial Shi‘a populations.Footnote 34 Thus, I agree with Pinault that Iran is not attempting to exert any overt political influence on the Indian Shi‘a, but is primarily seeking to establish its role as spiritual leader, even in the post-Khomeini era.Footnote 35 Yet attention to such local politicking is valuable for revealing wider transnational schisms.
The politicization of emulation (taqlīd)
Choosing a mujtahid for emulation is incumbent upon all Twelver Shi‘a. It is a matter of personal choice based either on a reading of his manual (risālāh), which lays out injunctions for religious practice based on his legal interpretations, or people choose to follow their parents. Historically, the standoff between the Islamia School and the Trust arose from a dispute over whether a particular mujtahid, Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Shirazi (d. 2001), was worthy of emulation. During the Muharram preaching season one year, the Trust-aligned Kargili cleric visiting from Iran accused the Islamia School of misleading people to take up the emulation of an ‘illegitimate marja’’. He challenged Islamia School clerics to an open debate to prove him wrong, claiming that even Ayatollah Khoi had declared that Shirazi was not a marja’.Footnote 36
Today this is no longer an issue, for the ayatollah in question is dead. However, its importance in the rise of factional politics is evident in the reticence with which people discussed the matter many years later. The account I provide here is sifted from the intense polemics and distortion surrounding its recollection by each of the factions in Kargil. According to the narrative: the dispute is usually traced to the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988) when Khomeini is said to have issued a fatwa making it incumbent upon all Iranian nationals to rise to the defence of their country. Any offensive action was not permitted in accordance with the belief that only the Twelfth Imam can command this. There was broad agreement about this across Iran until at some point in the war Iranian forces attacked Basra in retaliation for missile strikes from across the border. Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Shirazi, based in Qum and who had a massive following across the Shi‘i world, raised an objection to this, deeming it an offensive action. Khomeini accused Shirazi of being anti-national and placed him under house arrest. Shirazi's ijtihād (reinterpretation of Islamic texts through independent reasoning) and by extension his status as a marja’ began to be questioned by some in Iran.
There was said to have been tension between Khomeini and Shirazi even before this incident. Shirazi was among the clerics who had rejected the doctrinal legitimacy of Khomeini's concept of velayat-e faqih. Further, Shirazi is said to have been more open to engagement with the West (specifically the United States) to get rid of Saddam Hussein, unlike Khomeini's strident and unequivocal anti-Western position. Upon Khomeini's death, several clerics, including Shirazi, were critical of the elevation of Khamenei to the status of marja’-e taqlīd. Over the years after Khomeini's death, many Trust supporters shifted their emulation to Ayatollah Khamenei, and the Trust is alleged to have blacklisted Shirazi. The Islamia School, on the other hand, did not discourage the emulation of Shirazi among its constituents. Even though over time this issue slipped into the muted space of tension between the two factions, the silence surrounding it and the reticence with which it was mentioned reflected the discomfort that people felt about the politicization of matters of faith in Kargil. However, this issue is again illustrative of the appropriation and reproduction of transnational disputes in local contexts.
Rationalization of religious practice
The most visible symbol of factional identity in Kargil is the issue of flagellation during Muharram. Unlike more esoteric discussions on the rule of the jurisprudent, it strikes a deep emotional chord among the less politically conscious too. People of other faiths have condemned bloody flagellation during Muharram throughout the ages. In response to this negative image, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa in 1994, forbidding the shedding of blood during lamentation. Regardless of whether they emulated Khamenei, Trust supporters immediately adhered to the fatwa. Islamia School supporters, however, continued to shed blood during Muharram, as is the case in Iraq and several other parts of the Shi‘i world. They argued that this was an age-old Shi‘i tradition and has not been banned by other mujtahids. An emotive issue for lay believers, this practice became the most visible and perhaps dramatic marker of factional identity in Kargil. Criticizing supporters of the Islamia School who flagellate themselves with chains, a young man following the Trust remarked, ‘If people really want to shed blood, rather than flagellating themselves and spilling it all over the place, especially in this age of AIDS, they should donate it to a blood bank instead.’
This young man's remark reflects the rationalization of religious practice advocated by a Khomeinist strand of modernist Shi‘i reform. It is underlined by a discourse that emphasizes the use of ‘aql (rational faculty). The concept of ‘aql constitutes the very foundation of Islamic belief. Referring to the ‘rational soul’ or the ‘faculty of moral discrimination’ it represents the higher self of man, which a Muslim struggles to achieve throughout his life.Footnote 37 On the level of everyday life, ‘aql is cultivated through correct religious practice, that is, adherence to ritual injunctions (ahkām). As the Usuli school of jurisprudence gained ascendance in Iran from the mid-eighteenth century, the exercise of ‘aql acquired an enhanced status, from being essential to the control of the nafs (base self) by an individual to being a basis for pronouncing judgement based on independent reasoning or a source of law.
On a more theological level, the discourse on ‘aql lies within the intellectual tradition of philosophical reflection known as falsafa in Islam. It brings up questions on the place of reason and personal opinion that are very similar to the ones raised by Western philosophers of the Enlightenment. However, ‘aql, as understood by young Kargilis, was not always articulated either as moral discrimination or falsafa. Although deeply rooted in religious discourse and seeking legitimacy through it, ‘aql acquired more quotidian meanings of using one's mind or exercising one's intelligence. It amounted to not accepting everything with blind faith. For lay believers influenced by modernist reform, the exercise of ‘aql had undergone a subtle shift in meaning from simply adhering to the basic moral injunctions of Islam—through the habitual practice of ritual injunctions—to conscious and continuous reflection on the appropriate conditions for these actions. There is a shift from the ‘what’ of an action to the ‘when’ and ‘why’ of it. As a modernist cleric explained to me, some of the more educated youth in Kargil are now slowly beginning to ask questions of falsafa: ‘Many of these arise from their knowledge of and discussions with peers from other religions.’
The views of Kargili clerics on falsafa not only lend further insight into factional politics in Kargil but also into changes that have taken place in the seminary system in West Asia, particularly in Iran, over time. Interestingly, regardless of whether they were aligned with the Islamia School or the Trust, the older generation of clerics in Kargil were not particularly supportive of the study of falsafa. As a younger cleric who had studied in Qum explained to me, ‘In Najaf reading falsafa was harām. Anyone who did so was declared to be nājis. This happened to Khomeini himself.’ He added:
In Najaf only Islāmī tā‘līm was imparted, while in Qum, this was combined with siyāsi (political) information. There are two types of Islamic knowledge: Fiqhi and Aqīdati. Fiqhi knowledge deals with the dastūrāt (customs) of being Muslim. Aqīdati knowledge on the other hand raises questions of ‘aqā’id—questions like why are we Muslim, where did God (khudā) come into being from etc. These are all falsafi matters. The older ‘ulama in Kargil do not entertain such questions. In Iraq there was a focus on fiqh and not ‘aqā’id. Emphasis was placed on these in Qum. This happened more after the Revolution—when falsafa began to be given importance.
Although the majority of students in the seminaries of Iran, including Kargili scholars, still prefer to study fiqh, those who choose falsafa have begun to be accorded greater respect. This in turn is a reflection of a broader restructuring of the seminary curriculum in Qum. As Shaykh Ahmad Muhammadi explained:
In Iran, things change according to the times. In Najaf this is not the case. Even now it is the same as before. There is a lot of depth in this. But in Iran, one book is taught this week and another some other week. In Najaf students have to undertake a thorough study of any book, in every subject. In Iran, on the other hand, in one week, one day mantiq (logic) is taught, another day usūl (basic principles of Islam) and then on yet another day fiqh. As a result a student acquires general knowledge but does not go into the depth of any subject.
Shaykh Ahmad Muhammadi's views are typical of an earlier generation of clerics trained in Najaf. As the primary task of clerics as ‘guardians of orthodoxy’ was to train jurists, this often led to a hostile attitude towards teaching philosophy.Footnote 38 Although few clerics study falsafa at higher levels even today, the restructuring of the curriculum in Qum, combined with the desire to align religious education with the system of secular education, has made falsafa a less sensitive issue.
At higher levels of study (the level prior to dars al-kharij), students in Qum now have to choose a specialization on which a thesis has to be submitted. Besides regular subjects like mantiq (logic) or tafsir (exegesis of the Qur'an), students are also encouraged to study subjects like sociology.Footnote 39 This appears to have led to a proclaimed broadening of students’ minds more generally, which includes for some a greater appreciation of those who study falsafa.Footnote 40
Topics chosen by Kargili students in Qum for their theses reflect concerns that emanate from their lives in India, such as living and interacting with people of other faiths. However, the choice of topics and the general awareness also owe much to a wider transnational Shi‘ite concern with correcting the association between Islam and fundamentalism in the world today, to mark themselves as distinct from the Wahhabis. An organization called the World Islamic Network, based in Mumbai,Footnote 41 for example, translates and prints the work of Shi‘i scholars around the world on diverse topics of contemporary concern. A central impetus behind this initiative is to correct widespread misperceptions about Islam. Although local to Mumbai, its literature is circulated extensively to other parts of India with significant Shi‘i populations. Such organizations are important mediators of religious knowledge.
There is an ever-greater demand among young people in Kargil for Islamic knowledge to relate to changing times. Often frustrated by the discourse of older clerics, they seek out independent knowledge through literature published by organizations such as the World Islamic Network or on the internet. Networks of religious learning and knowledge thus go beyond the domain of the clerical establishment today. Further, regardless of whether they are aligned with the Islamia School or the Trust, the younger generation of clerics is being compelled to respond to contemporary concerns which are often expressed through the use of ‘aql in the more quotidian sense of the term.
Conclusion
It is not just in the realm of politics (active participation in the Hill Council elections) that the Trust's activities in Kargil forced the Islamia School to change. The latter has opened the Jaffaria Academy of Modern Education which competes with the Trust's Mutahhari Public School. Pushed by popular demand from young people, the Islamia School too has started inviting preachers to talk on subjects that address the concerns of contemporary life. It has also started organizing special gatherings for women during Ramadan. Thus today there is a convergence between the two factions when it comes to working for the progress of the community and region, as each proclaims.
In tracing the rise of factional politics and changes over time, this paper has attempted to illustrate how networks of learning act as conduits not only for the dissemination of religious knowledge but also for socio-political discourses and ideologies from West Asia, where Kargilis have had strong historical ties. Certain strands of Khomeini's revolutionary discourse were appropriated by the Trust to instigate significant changes in the socio-religious and political life of Kargil.
During Khomeini's reign the ideological discourse of the Iranian revolution was actively exported to other parts of the Shi‘i world. Today, however, this ‘export’ appears to have been diluted. This is reflected in a reduction of funding for proselytization, for instance. However, because the demand for clerics trained in Iran has increased in Kargil and is funded by the people themselves, networks of learning continue to be an important pathway through which ideas, ideologies, and discourses from West Asia travel to the Shi‘a in India. Although it is unlikely that the Iranians seek to exert political influence over the Shi‘a in India, they continue to maintain a link through assistance in kind. Donations of books and equipment to small local libraries and madrasas or sponsorship for people to travel to Iran for the anniversary of Khomeini's death or his return to Iran from exile in France attest to this. Further, the Iranians have also attempted to build linkages with the Islamia School. This suggests the continuing importance of places like Kargil in the competition among ayatollahs to building constituencies for Iran and Iraq through mediators such as the Iran Cultural House in Delhi.
I have also argued that the ways in which factional identity is marked symbolically and through discursive debates is not just about local politicking but also reflects and, to some extent, reproduces wider doctrinal and political schisms at the centres of Shi‘i learning and power in West Asia. Despite a convergence in the agenda for social reform between the Trust and Islamia School, their overt symbolic orientations remained different. The Iranian orientation was much more evident in the open spaces of the Trust. While the Trust displayed posters of Khomeini and Khamenei, Islamia School processions and spaces were adorned with photographs of Ayatollah Sistani. Supporters of both factions gave khums and other religious donations to the one to which they are allied. Thus symbolic reiteration of the velayat-e faqih or the politicization of taqlīd, while certainly a matter of local politicking, also fed into the corpus of support for different ayatollahs.
Finally, although not described in detail, I have also indicated that networks of learning are expanding beyond the physical presence and movement of scholar-clerics between India and West Asia. Young, educated people now access religious knowledge through other avenues such as printed literature from other parts of India. Digital media and the internet enable them to bypass local clerics to connect directly with well-known clerics in Iran and Iraq. To the extent that mediating sites, both physical and virtual, will continue to rise and proliferate in the future, networks of learning will undergo a transformation, but continue to remain significant to maintaining connections between different parts of the Shi‘i world. In fact, virtual mediating sites allow for a certain time–space disjunction, which makes networks of learning more capacious conduits of socio-political discourse, spilling beyond the domains of the curriculum and religious knowledge. Experiments with Khomeini's revolution to bring about social change in Kargil may have lost some of their original ideological impetus, as clerics became professional politicians. However, the politicking itself derives sustenance by searching for new avenues of religious and moral legitimacy that are seen to lie in West Asia.
