favored building bridges with Sunni Muslims
with respect to law and doctrine, his success was
seen as a political threat by Sunni leaders in Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, and Iraq. Indeed, these govern-
ments, together with that of Pakistan undertook
repressive measures against Shii organizations
and subjects, and Iraq entered into an eight-year
war of attrition with Iran in 1980–88, supported
by an alliance of Sunni Arab governments. At the
same time, although Shii militant and political
organizations favored the establishment of Islamic
governments based on the sharia, many did not
accept Iranian-style rule by the mullahs.
In Iraq, Shii authorities had cooperated with
the Ottomans in the 19th century to promote
tribal settlement and agricultural development,
one result of which was conversion of many of
these Arab tribes to Shiism. Iraqi Shiis joined with
Sunni tribes in 1920 to oppose the British occupa-
tion and mandate authority that they established
at the end of World War I. The revolt failed, and
the British retaliated by giving the Sunnis political
dominion of the country and engaging in policies
designed to alienate Arab Shii ulama from their
Iranian co-religionists. The rise of socialist and
Marxist movements in Iraq and Iran attracted
urban Shii youth, especially after World War II
and the end of British colonial influence. The
Iraqi Shii clergy, experiencing a decline in status,
regarded leftist movements and secular national-
ism with suspicion and countered by organizing
their own religio-political parties and movements,
the foremost of which are the daaWa party and
the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in
Iraq. These organizations were persecuted by Sad-
dam Husayn’s Baathist government, and many of
their leaders were imprisoned and executed.
Lebanon became another center of Twelve-
Imam Shii political activism, particularly through
the influence of a young Iranian Shii mullah from
Najaf, Musa al-Sadr (d. 1978), who won Leba-
nese Shii support among those who had become
disenchanted with secular Arab nationalist and
leftist movements. In 1975 he formed the Amal
militia, which became a Shii fighting force in the
Lebanese civil war and which trained other Islamic
militias, including the Revolutionary Guards of
Iran. Another Shii militant organization, hizbUl-
lah, superseded Amal in the 1980s and remains a
leading force in Lebanese politics today. In addition
to its militancy and political strength, which were
inspired by Khomeini’s success in Iran, it has also
become active in providing needed social services
and financial aid to Lebanese Shiis. It operates one
of the major Arabic language satellite television
stations in the Middle East. However, several gov-
ernments, including those of the United States and
Israel, regard it as an Islamic terrorist organization.
When the United States and coalition forces
overthrew the Baathist government of Saddam
hUsayn in 2003, they created conditions that
made it possible for Iraq’s Shii majority to estab-
lish the Arab world’s first modern Shii state, which
is now in the hands of competing, and sometimes
clashing, political parties. The wider Middle East
region as a consequence is witnessing significant
Shii political activism and Iranian influence, as
well as violent confrontations with Sunni govern-
ments and Islamist groups such as al-qaida and
the taliban. These conflicts are already spilling
beyond the Middle East to Afghanistan and Paki-
stan, and they are likely to complicate efforts to
stabilize the region for years to come.
See also aUthority; batin; colonialism; commU-
nism; constitUtion; Fadlallah, mUhammad hUsayn;
ghadir khUmm; gUlF states; gUlF Wars; husayni-
y ya; imam; mUJahidin-i khalq; politics and islam;
reneWal and reForm movements; sayyid; tafsir.Further reading: Kamran Scot Aghaie, ed., The Women
of Karbala: Ritual Performance and Symbolic Discourses
in Modern Shii Islam (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2005); Said Amir Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the
Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change
in Shiite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1987); William C. Chittick, ed.,
A Shiite Anthology (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1981); Heinz Halm, Shia Islam: From Religion toTwelve-Imam Shiism 681 J