Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (Columbia/Hurst) Review

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Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (Columbia/Hurst) ReviewLaurence Louer's "Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf" is one of several books published in recent years to explain the Shia as the "Shia issue" has become of more than academic interest since 2003. I have read most of these books and done a fair amount of research in the original sources - mainly in Iraq and Saudi Arabia - and I consider Louer's to be the best. It is focused primarily on Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia with significant background material on Iraq, so readers who are new to the topic might find Vali Nasr's "The Shia Revival" better as an introduction. But you will want to read this book if you are interested in either contemporary Shia politics or the Persian Gulf.
The book is divided into four parts of two chapters each, working more or less chronologically, jumping back and forth from Bahrain to Kuwait to Saudi Arabia interspersed with tie-ins to Iraq, where all the most influential contemporary Shia political movements originated. Louer is a researcher at the Centres d'Etudes et de Researches Internationales in Paris, and her primary sources are Arabic works written by Shia writers and extensive personal interviews. I don't think she makes good use of the online Arabic sources available - especially in the case of the Saudi Shia - and I question some of her judgments, but I've given the book five stars because it is easily the best book on the topic.
Part one, "The Shias and the State in the Gulf," mainly focuses on Bahrain and Kuwait. There was a time when what is now modern Bahrain and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia were politically united, and this historical memory is important, although few Shia open openly support it's revival. Louer also reviews the historical memory of the Shia of Kuwait.
Part two, "Centre and Periphery," deals mainly with Iraq and how the Iraqi Shia movements - mainly the Karbala-based Shirazis and the Islamic Dawa Party - spread their networks. The Shirazi school (followers of the Ayatollah Muhammad Shirazi, d. 2001) gets a lot of coverage throughout the book.
Part three, "In Between the Transnational and the International," deals with Arab Shia movements in the wake of the Islamic revolution in Iran. Both Dawa and the Shirazis originally supported Khomeini, and then both - especially the Shirazis -fell out with the state he founded, unwilling to surrender their autonomy for the sake of Iranian support.
Part four, "The Autonomization of Politics," discusses two paradoxes of modern Shia political movements, at least those not tied to Iran. One is that while the increased use of the internet for Shia religious and political propagation as well as the invasion of Iraq have expanded possibilities, nevertheless they have largely become domesticated, accepting the modern state and looking to senior clerics in Iraq for authoritative reference but not direct political management. The second paradox is that while Arab Shia Islamist movements which base themselves on the authority of senior clerics have increased in influence, Louer describes how they have become "secularized" as their leadership has fallen into the hands of non-clerical professionals who expect to make political decisions themselves.
I have four comments I'd like to add to Louer's work:
One, readers should understand that the Shirazis are overemphasized here. Louer does note that their critics say that they have such a strong web presence to compensate for their lack of followers, and have suffered some major "defections" to Sistani, most notably Hassan Saffar in the KSA. It seems that her sources do come disproportionately from the Shirazis, so this is probably unintentional.
Two, with regard to Saudi Arabia I wish she had made a broader sweep, instead of focusing almost entirely on Hassan Saffar. Saffar is most important, of course, but there are two pro-Iranian networks, Walfajr (http://www.walfajr.net/) and Minar al-Wilayah (http://www.m-alwelayah.net/), with various clerics associated with each, and the traditionally dominant Shirazi faction is of course still there. Saffar is getting a lot of criticism because of his conciliatory approach right now, and it will be interesting to see what if anything these two groups might do to take advantage of that.
Three, I read the shift in Iran's foreign policy in the late 1980s differently. Whereas Louer suggests that the shift was due to a difference in ideology, I think that - especially with Khamenei, less so Rafsanjani - there was little ideological change but simply a recognition of reality. She says that Iran turned from "interfering in other states' internal affairs" but then drops a footnote to say "Except of course in Lebanon and Iraq." But every theory is valid if you put aside contrary instances. I think Iran stopped supporting the overthrow of the Gulf states because they realized that potential cost in terms of all-out war with the U.S. and the Arab world vastly outweighed the slim likelihood of success. I think they today intervene in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine because - for different reasons in each case - Khamenei views such intervention as serving the interests of the Islamic revolution, not just Iran as a state.
Four, in the context of a conclusion about the domestication of Shia movements from clerical authority, in the last sentence of the book Louer states that "In no way should the possible Iranian influence on the Shia communities and movements outside of its borders be analyzed as a modality of the exercise of religious authority." I do disagree with this. If one reads the two pro-Iranian Saudi Shia sites I've noted, they directly proclaim their religious loyalty to Iran's supreme leader, consistently referring to him as "Imam Khamenei" or "the leader." There is certainly no benefit in Saudi Arabia of being a follower of the Khomeini Line so I must say I think they are sincere. I consider the Lebanese Hizbullah to be equally loyal to Iran. This is not true of the Iraqi groups Iran supports, all of which are at pains to say that they follow Iraqi or Iraq-based authorities. So while I think that Louer's broad argument about the domestication/autonomization of Arab Shia groups is correct, I don't think it is true of all of them.
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