The Forgotten Founders of Modern Iraq
How Iraq’s Shia went from reluctant revolutionaries to sidelined partners in a nation still searching for unity
The late Iraqi anthropologist Faleh Abdul Jabar argued that the nation-state is less an organic product of history than an invention of 19th-century industrial capitalism. Before then, “nation” in European usage referred not to the mass political community we recognize today, but to smaller groups, often minorities. In his book Defeated Modernity, Abdul Jabar recounts an episode from the French Revolution: a fleeing nobleman, hearing a mob cry “Long live the nation!” after days of shouting “Long live the king!”, asked, “What is the nation?” The crowd admitted they did not know. For Abdul Jabar, this ambiguity illustrates that nations are not timeless entities but political and economic constructs that matured in the 19th and 20th centuries.
From this perspective, one may ask: Were Iraq’s Shia deliberately excluded from the creation of the modern Iraqi state? Was there a formal plan to build a nation without them? The answer is no. Yet structural factors, combined with the political choices of both British authorities and Shia leaders, marginalized the Shia in Iraq’s formative years.
The Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920 was a decisive moment. Shia clerics, led by Sayyid Muhammad Taqi al-Shirazi, were among the uprising’s most prominent figures. But its suppression left behind a deep-seated mistrust. The clerical establishment saw Britain as an occupying enemy; Britain viewed the clerics as obstacles to state-building. While Shia clerics did not issue blanket religious prohibitions against political participation, many distanced themselves from the emerging political order.
Shirazi died in August 1920, just six weeks after the revolt began, depriving the movement of its unifying figure. His successor, Sayyid Abu al-Hasan al-Isfahani, declined to recognize the new state or send representatives to parliament, though he did not explicitly ban participation. Sheikh Muhammad Hussein al-Na’ini, author of The Awakening of the Nation, supported constitutionalism (the political philosophy and practice of establishing and maintaining a government whose power is derived from and limited by a body of fundamental law) but refused to recognize King Faisal’s legitimacy.
These positions deepened Shia political isolation without formally codifying it.
King Faisal I sought to integrate Shia leaders into the nascent state, but their limited participation was also a function of structural disadvantage. Four centuries of Ottoman neglect left the Shia with little experience in administration, education, or the military.
Nonetheless, Faisal made symbolic efforts:
In 1922, Ja’far Abu al-Timman was appointed Minister of Commerce and Economy.
In 1923, Abdul Mahdi al-Muntafiki, a tribal figure more than a bureaucrat, became Minister of Education.
But these gestures could not overcome the broader imbalance in political experience and opportunity.
The case of poet Mohammed Mahdi al-Jawahiri revealed the sectarian sensitivities of the era. In 1926, as a school supervisor, he penned a poem praising Iran. Baghdad’s education chief, Sati’ al-Husri, dismissed him for “anti-national” sentiment. The affair risked inflaming sectarian tensions until Faisal himself intervened, appointing al-Jawahiri to the royal court. The episode exposed both the fragility of Iraq’s national identity and the persistent undercurrents of sectarian rivalry.
Despite his origins in Hijaz, Faisal embraced an Iraqi identity and worked to foster a sense of unity. He expanded Shia educational opportunities and sponsored students to study abroad. Yet privately, he despaired. In a confidential memorandum of March 7, 1932, he wrote:
“I say with a heart full of sorrow that there is still no Iraqi people. There are only human masses devoid of national spirit, saturated with religious traditions and myths, without any unifying bond, dominated by sectarian differences.”
Faisal’s sudden death in 1933 ended unification efforts. Under his son Ghazi, sectarian representation dwindled to little more than token appointments.
By the late 1930s, sectarianism gave way to ideological struggles. Arab nationalism and communism supplanted religious identity as organizing principles. Shia politicians rose to prominence—Salih Jabr (prime minister in 1947), Muhammad al-Sadr (1948), and Fadhil al-Jamali (1953)—as politics became less explicitly sectarian.
The 1958 revolution brought Abdul Karim Qasim to power. Of mixed Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish heritage, Qasim championed a secular nationalism that sought to transcend divisions. He elevated Shia representation in the military and bureaucracy, aligned with leftist and communist forces, and pursued social reform. Yet his rejection of Arab nationalism alienated powerful opponents, leading to his overthrow and execution in 1963.
Qasim’s embrace of communists alarmed the Shia religious establishment. By 1960, communist rallies in Najaf and Karbala dwarfed the numbers at religious gatherings such as the Arbaeen pilgrimage. Alarmed clerics, including Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and Mohsen al-Hakim, responded forcefully. Al-Hakim’s fatwa—issued due to his “Communism is atheism and unbelief”—provided justification for a crackdown after the Ba'athist coup of 1963.
The 1963 coup brought Arab nationalists to power, dominated by the Sunni elite. Sectarian language diminished, but Shia society remained ideologically distant from Arab nationalism. Under Abdul Salam Arif, communists were suppressed, and the regime cooperated selectively with Shia clerics.
Religious revival persisted at the popular level. In 1962, the Shah of Iran donated a golden grille for Imam Hussein’s shrine, carried in a mass procession across Iraq in a vivid display of Shia religious identity.
By the late 1960s, the Arab world was reeling from the 1967 defeat by Israel. Secular nationalism was discredited, and political Islam surged. In Iraq, the Islamic Dawa Party and other Shia Islamist groups joined Sunni movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood in offering an alternative. Clerical institutions, flush with resources, fueled this revival.
The Ba'athist coup of 1968 set the stage for a prolonged confrontation between the secular nationalist state and Islamist movements. This conflict would dominate Iraqi politics in the decades that followed.
The history of Iraq’s Shia—from reluctant revolutionaries in 1920 to sidelined partners in the formative decades of the state—lays bare the fragility of national unity when sectarian mistrust and structural inequality go unaddressed. A century later, those same questions haunt Iraq. The protests of 2019, led largely by disenfranchised Shia youth in Baghdad and the south, echoed the frustrations of earlier generations who found themselves excluded from meaningful political participation despite their demographic weight. Today, as Iraq grapples with corruption, foreign influence, and the challenge of building inclusive institutions, the legacy of these “forgotten founders” endures as a defining legacy.
King Faisal’s lament in 1932 that there was “still no Iraqi people” but only sectarian and tribal masses remains a warning. While Iraq has weathered dictatorship, foreign occupation, and civil war, the task of forging a truly shared identity remains unfinished. The Shia, once marginalized and later ascendant after 2003, now face their own crisis of legitimacy as ordinary Iraqis demand a politics that transcends sect and delivers justice, opportunity, and dignity. In this sense, the story of Iraq’s Shia is not simply one of exclusion, but of an ongoing struggle to turn sacrifice into citizenship and revolution into a durable national project.
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