Non-resident senior fellow, Foreign Policy Institute, John Hopkins University (SAIS)
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Abbas Kadhim is senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University and senior adviser to the UNESCO shair at Kufa University (Iraq). His research interests focus on Iraq, Iran, and Gulf Arab States. Between 2005 and 2013, Kadhim was an assistant professor of National Security Affairs/Middle East Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and a visiting professor at Stanford University. Kadhim held a senior government affairs position at the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, DC from 2013 to 2014. Among his books are: Reclaiming Iraq: the 1920 Revolution and the Founding of the Modern State, Austin: University of Texas Press & Governance in the Middle East and North Africa, London: Routledge. His current research project is focusing on rebuilding Iraq’s political economy.
A Shift Among the Shi'a: Will a Marj'a Emerge from the Arabian Peninsula?
This paper looks at the political implications of the relationship between Shi’a in the Gulf states and Iranian marj‘as, the historical background to these ties, and Gulf states’ concerns surrounding the outflow to Iran of religious taxes. In some Gulf countries, these issues are tied to concerns about the loyalty of Shi’a to the nation. The authors argue that the emergence of a marj‘a who would be based in one of the Gulf states could quell these concerns.The authors identify potential marj‘as from the region and steps that Gulf states must take so that their Shi’a citizens will shift their allegiance from foreign-based marj‘as to domestically based ones.
