Book Review: The Templars and the Assassins

The Militia of Heaven
By James Wasserman
Inner Traditions, Rochester, VT; 318 pp.; 2001

Reviewed by Mark Biskeborn

On 9/11 our sense of national security crumbled. On TV Americans watched one of the most terrifying attacks on U.S. soil and ever since then we’ve been trying to understand the motives behind a motley crew of 19 Muslim terrorists, 15 of which were born, raised, and educated in Saudi Arabia, one of our closest petroleum suppliers. Now we wonder about the history and current circumstances that led to these horrible events.

Over the years since 9/11/2001, the W Bush Administration continues to react to these attacks by misleading the public about the “clash of civilizations,” “the axes of evil,” or “terrorist regimes which harbor WMD’s and leaders of Al-Queda organizations.”

History now reveals that the W Administration used the attacks as a means to their own long since planned political agenda to invade Iraq. The neo-cons jumped at the opportunity as their casus belli, not unlike the 1964 attack on the USS Maddox in the Tonkin River in North Vietnam, or the 1846 attack on U.S. patrol, the Thronton Affair, which President Polk deemed a casus belli in the Mexican American War, or the 1898 explosion (later found to be caused by a design error in the ship) of the USS Maine in the port of Havana which President McKinley deemed a reason for Spanish American War.

It’s a well-established fact that U.S. Presidents gain enormous power and a guaranteed re-election once a war is declared.

Five years later, the wide American public has become aware of how W’s administration misled the people. Despite public opinion and awareness, W’s policies and speeches “hold the course” in twisting reality to suit their purposes.

Reports and official documents have shown that the CIA assessed a the series of attacks (USS Cole, Kobar Towers, World Trade center basement bombing, etc.) and had already forewarned both the Clinton and the W administrations of increased aggression. Attacks were predicted in numerous presidential briefings. Yet they were somehow ignored after transfer of powers between the Clinton and the W administrations.

New Relevance of Islamic History

Wasserman wrote his now relevant book, The Templars and the Assassins—The Militia of Heaven, before the 9/11 attacks, a fascinating, succinct study of how Islam evolved from two main medieval sects. By some extrapolation, we may find the influences and trends to the current conflicts between extremist Islam against the West as well as against the established, corrupt and tyrannical regimes in the Middle East.

It can be too easy and superficial to assume that the ancient attitudes, conflicts, resentments represent just a centuries’ long war “between civilizations.” Differing groups of people, whether by race, religion, or by social class have almost always fed the flames of resentments, jealousies, and, at times, a burning desire to destroy the other group. History books are filled with the stories about raging wars between groups of Christians fighting each other, Jews killing each other, Muslims…not to mention each of these groups and others at war against the other groups.

In the history of Islam, the conflicts often seem complex between the various sects as well as between some radical groups and established governments, such as the Saudi regime or the United States. Yet when looked at in terms of simple human motivations and political objectives, the complexity often boils down to conflicts of inequalities, tyranny over the oppressed, resentments between the haves and the have-nots.

Wasserman’s book reflects an astute portrait of Islamic and European history, its details and human saga. His understanding of these histories seems to have prepared him to answer questions about how tensions inside an oppressive theocratic regime, such as Saudi Arabia, could erupt into the terrorism we now witness in the West.

When asked in interviews about the motives that explain why 15 Saudis (along with 4 other Muslims from neighboring countries) attacked the U.S., Wasserman responded:

While uncounted trillions of dollars have flown into the coffers of the oil-producing lands, the extremists scream colonial oppression. Yet, their greatest grievance is against fellow Muslims. Some Middle Eastern Islamic states are ruled by corrupt oligarchies. The rulers of many Muslim countries that became independent of Western colonial rulership after World War II embraced failed political systems such as socialism in their attempt to modernize. This created central economic planning and bloated bureaucracies that maintained poverty and reliance on the Soviet empire. More recently, the disparity between the ruling classes and masses has motivated governments like the Saudi to encourage the spread of extremism. The purpose of their support is twofold. One is as a form of hush money to mitigate against anti-government rhetoric. The second is a practical program to export domestic troublemakers. Muslim governments are often hard-pressed to crack down on violence, afraid to be perceived as enemies of Islam. Finally, the use of the terrorist groups by states seeking to avoid international consequences is an effective ruse by which they pursue agendas. Thus states like Iran, Libya, Syria and Iraq gladly employ the type of plausible deniability provided by someone like bin Laden.

Written and published before the recent attacks, the book illuminates some of the history leading up to W’s so-called “war on terrorism.” It reveals some similarities between the modern terrorists and the medieval Islamic warriors. The book sheds light on the societies and their great conflicts.

Centuries of War over the Same God, Same Prophets

This book chronicles the Christian brotherhood, the Knights Templar, prominent during the 200 years of the Crusades (1095–1292), and the Assassins, an esoteric faction of Islam, the underdog, extremist Ismailis, vying for power in the Middle East who began their activities mainly under the leadership of Hsan-i Sabbah decades before the Knights Templar. One can see that the aggressive resistance against the status quo of the Sunnis began with the Qarmatians, an Ismaili sect, which revolted against the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate and caused major disruptions and turmoil, particularly with their seizure of the Black Stone from the sacred Kaaba in Mecca and desecrating the Well of Zamzam with Muslim corpses during the Hajj season of 930 CE.

The first section deals with the history of the Roman adoption of Christianity into a theocracy. “The Council of Nicaea celebrated the marriage of church and state, whose child would become the Dark Ages.”

In the second section, Wasserman jumps straight into the history of Islam, giving us the necessary background. He traces quickly through the first six Caliphs.

“As the caliph is both the religious and secular leader of Islam, the schism between supporters of the caliphate of Abu Bakr and those of the bloodline of Ali was both a political and a religious battle. The ideal form of the Islamic state is a theocracy whose sovereignty is derived from God. The ruler manifests the will of Allah and so directs society as a reflection of the heavenly kingdom. Church and state are one. In a theocratic state, political opposition is apostasy.”

The Islamic theocracy was similar to the monarchies in medieval Europe. Kings ruled by “divine right” as if they held some special connection to God. Fortunately for Europe, the Renaissance opened the minds of people to new forms of politics and religion. By the Enlightenment, a European middle and upper middle class (bourgeoisie) had formed with large numbers of educated and wealthy citizens who pushed for more democratic forums in government, including, eventually separation of church and state. Islam never experienced any such evolution—perhaps a main reason for overall slow social development.

In the beginning, after the death of the Prophet, two branches emerged, each believing in different rights of succession. The Sunnis alleged that Muhammad had chosen as his successor, or Caliph (prince of the faithful), his father-in-law, Abu Bakr. The Shiites believed the Sunnis were abandoning the true teachings in their efforts to build an Islamic empire, and that leadership should be derived through bloodline. They chose Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, as their leader.

The power grab between the battling factions was so fierce that four of the first six caliphs were murdered. By European standards, these raging battles were common between groups struggling to establish more power and territory.

“Ali was succeeded by his profligate son Hasan, who resigned in favor of Muawiya in exchange for a large amount of money. (Hasan was murdered in 669 by one of his wives.) Muawiya made Damascus his capital and succeeded in establishing the Omayyad dynasty that would rule Islam for nearly a century. Muawiya instituted the practices of cursing Ali from the pulpit during the Friday prayers, the first official anti-Shiite policy of the Sunnis.”

The Sunnis increased their domination over the Shiites. When Muawiay died in 680, his son Yazid took over his caliphate. Shortly thereafter, Husayn came to reclaim the caliphate as Ali’s rightful successor. Yazid took four thousand troops and attacked Husayn and his devotees in Karbala. Husayn was slain, mutilated, and desecrated.

This murder of Husayn marked a pivotal point in the establishment of an official birth of Schiism as a separate faith and dogma. The death of Husayn added the themes of suffering, expiation, and martyrdom to Schiism. The author says, “Passion plays of the death of Husayn take place to this day and involve the mass self-flagellation familiar to incredulous Western television viewers. Karbala is still considered a holy city of Schiism.”

The Rise of Schiism as a Reform against the Status Quo

Husyn’s followers grouped under a new leader, Muktar, who called the new group the Army of Penitents. Muktar defeated Yasid’s Omayyad forces, but then died a year later. Despite his short career, Muktar changed Islam forever, by imbuing Shiites with an invincible faith in the power of the Imam and the advent of the Mahdi, savior – two figures unique to Shiism. Muktar also took advantage of the alienated Persians by converting them readily into the Shiite congregation thus expanding its numbers.

A key aspect arose to distinguish Shiism: because it included themes of expiation, suffering, and martyrdom, it attracted many of the poor and Arabs and Persians whom the Sunnis often treated as outcasts or second class citizens. Thus the Shiites carried an attractive benefit to its growing number of members; disaffected Arabs and Persians were attracted to the spiritual and political reformist and revolutionary messages. As Wasserman says, “Shiism thus became a haven for many forms of political and spiritual dissent.”

Because Shiism grew from so many converts from other religions and creeds, its new members enriched its theological principles. People from Christian, Jewish, Persian theologies joined the Shiites. Shiism absorbed concepts from pre-Islamic beliefs of Persian and Babylonian mysticism, Greek religion and philosophy, Manichaean dualism, Gnosticism, and Sufism.

The Abbasid caliphate grew by obtaining support from the Shiites. However, once established as a ruling group, it turned its back on the Shiites in favor of a Sunni caliphate. This betrayal only fueled the Shiite frustration, making them withdraw from the Islamic mainstream.

This led to a period when the Shiites became more extremist as well as when they developed more spiritual self-examination. The cult in the holy man intensified—the Madhi—as well as the Imams and dais (the Imams’ direct representatives). The Abbasid betrayal caused a desire among the Shiites to set standards for a unifying Imamate. Shiites looked for a rule of thumb to determine who their Imam should be. Some believed the Imam should follow the lineage of the Prophet’s own tribal clan, the Banu Hashim. The majority of Shiites settled with Ali’s lineage.

Wasserman runs quickly through a line of Imams to the fifth, Muhammad al-Baquir, who distinguished himself for his “charismatic role of authoritative and inspired teacher” as Wasserman puts it. “He introduced the important Shiite survival skill known as taqiyya, the dissimulation, concealment of one’s true inner beliefs without entering into a state of sin, thus preventing martyrdom at the hands of hostile authorities,” such as the oppressive Sunnis.

Al-Baquir’s son, Jafar al-Sadiq, became the sixth Imam and expanded many of the theological concepts of his father such as the nass or spiritual designation of an Imam’s successor, and the concept of quiescent political stance which freed the Shiite Imam from taking a political stance vis a vis the Sunni authorities, thus avoiding the need for a constant revolt. When al-Sadiq died, the Isaimli sect arose from a dispute over succession and the seventh Imam.

Al-Sadiq had two sons: Ismail who leaned toward the extremist line of Shiism, and Musa al-Kazim, who was more moderate and recognized as the seventh Imam by most Shiites.
Musa’s line of Imams continued through to the twelfth, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who disappeared in 873. The majority Shiites still await the reappearance of the twelfth Imam at the end of the world, in triumph as the Mahdi. This moderate branch of Shiites has been the official religion of Iran and Iraq since the sixteenth century.

“Those who supported the Imamate of Ismail and his son Muhammad became known as Ismailis, also referred to as the Severner Shiites.

Ismailis – the Rebels with a Mission

“The Ismaili Imams, working in relative secrecy and isolation for over a century, had developed a coherent body of theological teachings that resonated with intellectual and emotional appeal. …after the middle of th ninth century, they began to emerge from their obscurity with an energetic preaching. The Ismaili mission is known as the dawa, or “summons” to allegiance to the Imam. …the dai, or “summoner,” who spreads the teachings of the faith through his propagandizing and missionary efforts.”

The Ismailis intensified the Shiite theme of well-organized opposition movement that attracted more of the politically disaffected. Peasant revolts arose among the poor who were attracted to the Ismaili movement through its promise of universal justice under Mahdi.

“In Iraq, the leadership of the Ismaili dawa had been in the hands of Hamdan Qarmat since 870. His followers were known as “Qarmatis.” …Hamdan’s dawa spread through Iraq, Persia, Transoxiana, Syria, Bahrain, yemen, Sind, and North Africa. …His revolutionary political teachings attracted many who were disaffected with Abbasid rule and the lack of any organized opposition among the more numerous Twelver Shiites.”

The Fatimid Caliphate –another Betrayal

In 909, the Ismailis achieved what seemed at the time to be their greatest success, when the Hidden Imam Ubayd Allah proclaimed the Fatimid caliphate in North Africa, mainly Egypt, asserting the Alid lineage, validating the Ismaili sect.

Then Ubayd Allah decided that he to announce himself as the living Imam and proceeded to trace his lineage back through the Hidden Imams of the last one hundred and fifty years to Jafar al-Sadiq and, thus, he rejected the Mahdiship of Muhammad ibn Ismail.

Hamdan Qarmat’s reaction to this betrayal was to refuse to acknowledge Ubayd Allah and his revision of the Imamate. Soon afterward Hamdan Qarmat disappeared from history.

Wasserman tells us that, “No overall leader of Hamdan’s abilities arose to lead the disaffected anti-Fatimid Ismailis, yet dissident groups remained throughout Ismaili territories.”

The Qarmatis continued to await the reappearance of Muhammad ibn Ismail. During this time members of the Abbasid court continued to persecute Shiites, especially the rebellious Qarmatis and Ismailis. They arrested one celebrated mystic Mansur al-Hallaj, a Qarmati. He was martyred as a heretic, and his disciples founded a number of mystical Sufi orders.

Hasan i-Sabah and the Assassins

A further schism in 1094 led to the emergence of the Nizari Ismailis, popularly known as the Assassins. The Ismailis were a group of revolutionaries, mystics, and political visionaries who abjured the organized state religion, such as the Abbasid and the later the Fatimid caliphs. Hasan i-Sabbah led the Persian Nizari Ismaili resistance against the Fatimid caliphate, believing the status quo caliphates to be irredeemably corrupt.

The mystic and political visionary Hasan-i-Sabah became leader of the Nizaris until his death in 1124. His rise to power was marked by an ironic mixture of astute spiritual leadership as well as trickery, political strategy, and assassination.

As the Fatimid caliphate was “shattered from within,” a reinvigoration of the Sunni Abbasids took place. Wasserman writes that the Ismails loathed both the Fatimids and the Abbasids as corrupt political and spiritual authorities.

“In fact, changing circumstances during the period from 765 to 900 brought a general weakening to both Sunni and Shiite political and cultural power. From the mid-ninth-century onward, the Turkish palace guards in Baghdad had become the de facto leaders of the Abbasid government. Wine, lechery, pederasty, and love of luxury so weakened the Abbasid dynasty that the empire dwindled, as region after region seceded from their authority. Oppression became common as renegade leaders usurped the power of appointed Abbasid administrators. So severe was Abbasid neglect that the elaborate irrigation systems throughout the Near East –the lifeblood of its food supply—ceased to be maintained.”

Sufis

Wasserman’s coverage of the Sufis, (like that of Bernard Lewis in The Assassins) exposes an embarrassing dearth on the subject. Contrary to Idries Shah’s studies that the Sufis arose from pre-Islamic philosophical and mystical groups, Wasserman seems only vaguely to cover the Sufis and does so by implying that they were somehow innately Islamic and even more erroneously that the Abbasids embraced their way of thinking.

“The Sufis were allowed to pursue their religious explorations by the Abbasids. While the tolerance they extended to the Sufis helped to strengthen the Sunni revival, Sufi emphasis on spirituality could only have served to highlight Abbasid spiritual bankruptcy. The fervor with which the Ismailis approached their religious goals, on the other hand, compared favorably to the spiritual characteristics of the Sufi movement.”

Four pages earlier in his text, Wasserman writes about how the followers of the celebrated Ismaili mystic, Mansur al-Hallaj, founded “a number of mystical Sufi orders.”

Wasserman’s coverage of the Sufis begs for clarification. The author fails to explain that the Sufis were a group of free thinking mystical philosophers who had little use of organized religion and used it merely as a shield, a disguise of conformity in some social settings allowing them to pass as law abiding, complacent citizens. It was simply a means of survival in oppressive theocratic regimes, as Idries Shah explains in many of his books on Sufis. Meanwhile the Sufis privately enjoyed their more refined, enlightened ways of thinking that stressed individual freedom against the backdrop of constrained, conformed organized religion.

It’s a shame that Wasserman and Lewis pass over with a slight of hand this fascinating subject of the Sufis and their occasional relationships with the Ismailis. But we can perhaps forgive these authors since Sufism is not the focused subject in their books.

When Wasserman describes in detail the teachings of the Ismailis, he seems to echo the theological and philosophical line of thinking which the Sufis had long since developed. Wasserman never suggests or sheds any light on any connections between the Islmailis (or the Qarmatis) and the Sufis.

“The Islmailis carried the doctrine of the Imam to the greatest heights of any Shiite sect. The Imam alone can guide the seeker through the practices necessary to attain the knowledge of God and provide him with the means to reach salvation. The Imam enjoys the highest form of ilm or gnosis, direct spiritual wisdom bestowed by Allah…

Take away the formal, hierarchical structure of the Ismaili religion, and we would find parallels between the descriptions of the Ismailis compared to the Sufis.

According to Shah, the Sufis also believed that any individual could be inspired to attain the high level of enlightened, spiritual wisdom as the Islmailis seem to want to reserve for the Imam (much like the special, authoritative divinity of a Catholic Priest – give or take his sexual perversions.).

“The medieval Ismaili doctrine included an eclectic mix: it combined advanced philosophical speculation with Persian, Jewish, Christian esotericism; Gnostic, Neoplatonic, and Hindu mysticism; and elements of Sufi and Islmaic occultism. It included kabbalistic techniques for the investigation of creation through the analysis of words and numbers.”

Again, Wasserman’s description of the Ismailis doctrine echoes that of Shah’s coverage of the Sufis, except the Sufis, according to Shah, held no formal doctrine, no formal religion. The similarities between Wasserman’s Ismaili doctrine and Shah’s Sufi guidelines for individual enlightenment, are striking. Meanwhile, Wasserman seems to place the Sufis in a much smaller pigeon hole of “Islamic occultism.” Shah would probably shake his finger at this gross misconception.

Only at the end of Part Two, after cataloguing the long line of Ismaili Imams as far as the fifteenth and on into the twentieth century, many of them extremely colorful characters, Wasserman concludes this chapter on the Assassins by comparing the “common elements shared by Sufism and Ismailism—mysticism, Gnosticism, speculative philosophy, techniques of self-development, and loyalty to a central teacher, pir, or shaykh—encouraged mutual interaction.”

Wasserman moves closer to a description of the Sufis that resembles Shah’s (the specialist on the subject) and provides a tiny peek at the relationship with the Ismailis and the Sufis.

War in the Name of God’s Love

In Part Three of his book, Wasserman follows the history of the Knights Templar and describes them as the European reflection of the Ismaili Assassins. “The Templars were similarly hierarchically structured. Their raison d’etre also involved armed struggle in the name of the highest religious aspirations. A rich tradition of historical supposition maintains that contact with the sophisticated religious teachings of the Assassin Order was a primary influence in the development of the secret Templar heresy that is said to have led the Knights Templar far afield from their Christian roots.”

One of the strengths in Wasserman’s book lies in the connections between the groups which otherwise seem unrelated: the Ismialis (Assassins) and the Sufis, the Ismailis and the Qarmatis, and to some extent the Assassins and the Knights Templar.

Contrary to the European legends, Wasserman shows that during the heyday of their organization, the Assassins killed only about fifty men, all of them “high value targets.” In other words the Assassins used “smart kills,” a sort of corollary to the modern “smart bombs,” which avoid inhumane massive deaths. Instead, the Assassins killed “high value targets” who were the decision makers, the puppeteers, the rulers who otherwise send the lower class soldiers into to do the dirty and dangerous work of war.

The massive killings during the Crusades were incurred during clashes mainly between Saladin’s armies and the Knights Templar. For both sides, the Christians and the Sunni Muslims were fighting in the name of the same God and the same Prophets, give or take one or two. Mostly they fought for territory and the seemingly eternal conflict over the small piece of real-estate in Jerusalem: the Dome of the Rock which sits on Herod’s Temple which sits on Solomon’s Temple.


Mark Biskeborn is a writer. You can email him mbiskeborn@hotmail.com