The Motivational Emotions of the Jihad Fatwa

On June 13, 2014 Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the foremost Shi'i Muslim Leader in Iraq announced his jihad edict (fatwa) against ISIS. This fatwa resulted in hundreds of thousands of his followers and other Shia Muslims to mobilise and violently resist the terrorist organisation's onslaught on Iraqi territory and its threats to destroy some of the holiest shrines of Shia Islam in Najaf and Karbala. These numbers that were mobilised are a confirmed empirical fact. However, what is not addressed by pre-existing literature are the emotions that were unleashed through the fatwa. Intuitively, for a fatwa to galvanise people into action there must have been an incitement of significantly emboldening emotions to help people overcome the dispiriting emotions that prevented them action up until June 12, 2014.

Moreover, this paper seeks to conceptualise and elaborate upon the emotional climate prior to Sistani's jihad fatwa and locate the specific emotions that paralysed Sistani's followers' willingness to mobilise against ISIS. These emotions can be understood as anxiety, confusion, worry, and more importantly, existential fear. Thereafter, the paper highlights the emotions that the jihad fatwa unleashed to overcome these debilitating emotions. Such emotive configurations include the hope and joy of martyrdom and divinely ordained victory, hope of righteousness, pride of participation, shame and regret of nonparticipation, and outrage at ISIS's crimes. To do this, the paper utilises 40 semi-structured interviews (conducted in 2022) with Sistani followers, networks, and seminary and academic personalities in Najaf, Karbala, and Kufa. These interviews will assist in understanding how people emotionally reacted to the myths, memories, values, and symbols embedded within the fatwa that gave rise to the aforementioned emotions. In doing so, this paper elucidates upon the intimate interplay between the charismatic authority of Sistani, the emotions and religious identity of the followers, and the fatwa's content.