al-Šuʿūbiyyah refers to the response by non-Arab Muslims to the privileged status of Arabs within the Ummah.
Terminology
The name of the movement is derived from the Qur'anic use of the word for "nations" or "peoples", šuʿūb. The verse is often used by Muslims to counter prejudice and fighting among different people.
:يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقْنَاكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍ وَأُنثَى وَجَعَلْنَاكُمْ شُعُوباً وَقَبَائِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوا إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِندَ اللَّهِ أَتْقَاكُمْ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرٌ O mankind! We created you from a single of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other. Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted.
Socio-political movements
The use of the word in the context of a movement existed before the 9th century. The Kharijites, an early splitoff sect from mainstream Islam, used it to mean extending equality between the shu'ub and the qaba'il to bring about equality among all followers of Islam. It was a direct response to the claims by the Quraysh of being privileged to lead the Ummah, or community of believers.
When used as a reference to a specific movement, the term refers to a response by Persian Muslims to the growing Arabization of Islam in the 9th and 10th centuries in Iran. It was primarily concerned with preserving Persian culture and protecting Persian identity. The most notable effect of the movement was the survival of Persian language, the language of the Persians, to the present day. However, the movement never moved into apostasy and has its basis in the Islamic thought of equality of races and nations. In the late 8th and early 9th centuries, there was a resurgence of Persian national identity. This came about after years of oppression by the Abbasid Caliphate. The movement left substantial records in the form of Persian literature and new forms of poetry. Most of those behind the movement were Persian, but references to Egyptians, Berbers and Arameans are attested.
In Al-Andalus
Two centuries after the end of the Shu'ubiyyah movement in the east, another form of the movement came about in Islamic Spain and was controlled by Muladi. It was fueled mainly by the Berbers, but included many European cultural groups as well including Galicians, Catalans, Calabrians, and Basques. A notable example of Shu'ubi literature is the epistle of the Andalusian poet Ibn Gharsiya. According to the Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, however, this epistle was merely of minor importance, and its few exponents tended to repeat clichés adopted from the earlier Islamic East, e.g., Iran.
Implicit throughout Saddam's rejection of "the Khomeini religion" was the accusation that any Iran-centered practice of Islam was shu‘ubiya—a term originally applied to non-Arab Muslims, mainly Persians, who resisted Arab claims to be the prime inheritors of the prophet. The Ba‘th sought to portray Khomeini and Iran as heirs of these early Islamic dissenters. Saddam then invited Iraqi Shi‘ites to divest themselves of their shu‘ubi tendencies and their reverence for Iranian religious leaders and return to the authentically Arab Islam.
