Shia Muslims are no longer in the ascendant

Visting iraq’s latest grand shrine in what is said to be the world’s largest cemetery, in the holy city of Najaf, has become something of a pilgrimage for people from across the region wanting to salute two of Shia Islam’s modern heroes. One is Qassem Suleimani, the long-serving commander of the Quds force, the foreign arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); the other is Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the commander of the beefiest umbrella group of Shia militias in Iraq, whose grave is at the shrine. (Suleimani is buried in southern Iran.) Both were killed three years ago in Baghdad by an American drone strike aimed at Suleimani, whose job was to protect and spread the Shia revolution across the region.

Busloads of fellow Shias—from Lebanon and Bahrain as well as Iraq and Iran—come to the shrine to hail the pair for carving out a Shia domain that gave their sect, which caters for about 15% of Muslims across the world, a rare moment of triumph across the region. “Never again will we be the shoe-shiners and street-sweepers of the Middle East,” says a militiaman from Lebanon, referring to the centuries of domination by Sunni Muslims like those who still reign over Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and beyond.