Response to Juan Cole

I am a big fan of Juan Cole's blog but there are times where I question some of his assessment. I asked Najam Haider, doctoral student at Princeton in Islamic studies, to respond to one of Juan Cole's entry for our qunoot blog. His entry is below.

ps: if you want to submit something for the blog, please email: info@qunoot.org

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Juan Cole can usually be counted on to offer an intelligent analysis of world events on his popular blog aptly entitled ‘Informed Comment.’

This is hardly a surprise as Professor Cole is an established Professor of History at the University of Michigan with an impressive array of scholarly achievement characterized by a deep understanding of the Middle East and, in particular, Shi‘i communities. Bearing this in mind, I was deeply disappointed to wake up this morning to a rather confused blog on the recently released letter allegedly written by Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi.

Specifically, Prof. Cole says:

My gut tells me that the letter is a forgery. Most likely it is a black psy-ops operation of the US. But it could also come from Iran, since the mistakes are those a Shiite might make when pretending to be a Sunni.

Now this is a quite a claim and we should expect an authority of Prof. Cole’s stature to provide rock solid evidence. In fact, what he argues is that the terminology in the letter would never be used by a Sunni since it accords the Family of the Prophet an exalted status. He states:

Adding to the salutation "the peace and blessings of God be upon him [Muhammad]" the phrase "and his family" would be an insult to Zarqawi and to the hardline Sunnis in Iraq.

While it is true that Shi‘ism emphasizes the almost exclusive authority of the Family, this argument utterly fails to comprehend the Sunni position (both traditional and Salafi). In particular, every Sunni polemicist from the 3^rd/9^th C has emphasized the particular significance of the Prophet’s family side by side with the Companions. Sunni (and especially Salafi) scholars repeatedly criticize the Shi‘a not for their love of the Prophet’s family but for their dismissal of the Companions.

Prof. Cole’s assertion that the phrase, “Peace and Blessing be upon the Messenger of God and his family and his companions,” is a Shi‘i attempt to be Sunni would come as a shock to Sunni prayer leaders throughout Syria, Turkey, and Morocco (to name just those countries where I have witnessed it directly) that invoke the exact phrase in their Friday sermons. The fact that Prof. Cole “never, ever heard a Sunni Muslim add ‘wa alihi’ (his family) to the salutation” is utterly incomprehensible coming from a scholar of his standing.

Prof. Cole’s statement that a Sunni would never refer to Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet, “as al-Imam al-sibt” (the Imam, the grandson) is equally puzzling as the terminology is found in a wide array of classical historical sources dating back to the medieval period. Any visitor to Istanbul would be hard pressed to not notice the exact phrase enshrined in all the Grand Mosques where both grandson’s of the Prophet are accorded equal standing with the first four Caliphs. The argument is again indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of the Sunni conception of the Prophet’s family.

All of this aside (and it constitutes the entirety of Prof. Coles’ substantive argument), Coles concludes with the claim that:

I do not believe that an Egyptian like al-Zawahiri would use this phraseology at all. But he certainly would not use it to open a letter to a Salafi. Sunni hardliners deeply object to what they see as Shiite idolatry of the imams or descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, for whom they made shrines such as Ali's at Najaf and Husayn's at Karbala. In fact, hard line Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia attacked and sacked Karbala in 1803.

The crux of the argument is reduced to a rather far-fetched logical inference. Specifically, Prof. Cole takes Sunni-Salafi opposition to visiting tombs (deemed idolatry) and extends it to encompass an opposition to respecting the Prophet’s family in a simple invocation!

In truth, there are problems associated with asserting the authenticity of the letter. Prof. Cole is write is ascertaining the lack of a personal relationship between Zawahiri and Zarqawi. He writes:

The letter then says how much Zawahiri misses meeting with Zarqawi. Zarqawi was not part of al-Qaeda when he was in Afghanistan. He had a rivalry with it.

Prof. Cole apparently missed the line at the end of the letter when Zawahiri writes, “If by chance you’re going to Fallujah, send greetings to Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi” which would have satisfied much of his unease. At least one academic confided to me that the letter was clearly not intended for Zarqawi at all but rather for Abu Mus`ab al-Suri from whom it was seized by the US Armed Forces.

This post is not intended to disparage Prof. Cole as he remains one of the most intelligent and insightful commentators on events pertaining to the Middle East. I harbor an immense respect for him as a scholar and an analyst. In this case, however, he is clearly wrong. This letter (if it is in fact authentic) is as much a product of Shi‘i machinations as the epistles of Ahmad b. Hanbal (who uses the greetings Prof. Cole finds so puzzling) or the Ottoman constructed Blue Mosque in Istanbul.