by FAISAL DEVJI
Ambulances carry the bodies of Ismaili Shia Muslims, killed by Sunni fanatics, to a graveyard for burial in Karachi, Pakistan, May 14, 2015 PHOTO/Newswala
In the Muslim world, in other words, the Ismailis have been linked neither with pro- nor anti-Iranian politics, despite their presence as an insignificant minority in the Islamic Republic. But while they don’t quite fit into contemporary anti-Shia narratives, with their invocation of the Magians or Safavids, the presence of Ismailis in Syria, and their historical allegiance, like other minorities, to the regime there has led to attacks by ISIS.
It was this Levantine rhetoric that informed the Karachi massacre, as evidenced in statements left behind by the killers. In a cruel irony, this homogenization of Ismailism, by putting together two very different populations and histories, served as a perverse recognition of the sect’s own efforts to create a uniform global identity — not least by identifying with a single and religiously defined name in Arabic, rather than the varied ethnic and linguistic appellations of the past.
Cutting against such uniformities, however, is an emerging pan-Shia identity that isn’t premised upon homogenization. Going back at least two decades, this identification is bringing hitherto separate communities together in a network of mutual recognition. Relations between the Shia of Iran, Iraq, or Lebanon and the Alawites in Syria or Houthis in Yemen, for example, have expanded for obvious political reasons. And, in the wake of the Karachi killings, Iran’s foreign ministry also laid claim to the Ismailis in a statement, though their Iranian members still aren’t recognized as an official minority. Such identifications, of course, are also negative in part, deriving from an anti-Shia narrative that puts these groups together by deploying polemical categories like batini (esoteric), historically used to describe Ismailis, for mainstream Shia groups as well.
One reason the globalization of Ismaili identity by their enemies has come as such a shock, especially in Karachi, is that the sect has always been represented in that city by a trading caste of Hindu background, called the Khojas, which shared almost nothing of the sectarian history that defines its coreligionists elsewhere. Originating in western India, and scattered across East Africa, Western Europe, and North America in immigrant communities, Khojas represent the single most numerous ethnic group among the Ismailis. Having lived in secure and relatively open societies, they are also the wealthiest, running many institutions dedicated to education, health, finance, and culture. And yet, despite their dominant position within Ismailism, the Khojas and similar if smaller castes such as the Momnas, who were victims of the Karachi attack, now find themselves identified by the histories of those on its margins.
Their syncretic or even “Hindu” practices, which had once earned them criticism from Muslim neighbors, have become irrelevant as Khojas and Momnas are defined by the more “Islamic” characteristics of their coreligionists in the Middle East. Given attempts by the Khoja leadership, over a few decades now, to claim a Muslim identity, this isn’t surprising. Whether it was to gain the trust of their neighbors, or with the grandiose ambition to set them an example of what “modern” and “progressive” Muslims looked like, these Khojas reworked an Ismaili identity for themselves with paradoxical consequences. No longer a merely local group with local peculiarities, the Khojas have for the first time become identified with a Middle-Eastern heresy in Pakistan, while in India they are also for the first time seen by a large number of Hindus as Muslim.
During the anti-Muslim riots of 2002 in Gujarat, Ismailis found themselves attacked by Hindus for the first time, but were still treated differently from the rest. Their property was destroyed, but their lives were spared as if in a recognition of their “modern” and “progressive” character. This difference was also evident in that Khojas weren’t accepted by many of their alleged coreligionists as Muslims; long before the riots, they would complain that their businesses faced boycotts from both Hindu and Muslim groups. More recently, their spiritual leader, the Aga Khan, who manages his community’s institutions from a chateau outside Paris, was given one of India’s highest civilian honors by its Hindu nationalist government for his many contributions to health, education, and rural support there.
Los Angeles Review of Books for more
(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)