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rug

(82,333 posts)
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 09:17 PM Jun 2013

Conflict in the Middle East is about more than just religion

Recently, Shia-Sunni conflicts have seen Hezbollah help Syrian government forces to recapture Qusair. Battles rage between the two sides in Lebanon while in Iraq the monthly death toll from Sunni-Shia violence has topped 1,000. But religion alone does not explain the escalating tensions. Fundamental political shifts begun by the Arab spring are helping create new regional disputes in the Middle East

Peter Beaumont
Saturday 8 June 2013 11.48 EDT

Nine days ago the influential Sunni cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi denounced the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah movement – whose fighters helped Bashar al-Assad's regime retake the Syrian city of Qusair last week – as the "party of Satan".

Speaking in Doha not long before Qusair's fall, Qaradawi did not stop there: the cleric, whose speeches and sermons are heard by millions, went a dangerous step further, calling on Sunni Muslims with military training to support the Syrian uprising against Assad.

It was a sermon that not only marked a sharp shift in the sectarian tensions in the Middle East between Sunni and Shia but an escalation in Qaradawi's own rhetoric. When I heard him preach on Syria at Cairo's crowded al-Azhar mosque last autumn, he was sharp in his condemnation of the Assad regime, but stopped short of endorsing a jihad.

In Doha, however, Qaradawi's remarks embraced a more dangerous sectarian notion. "The leader of the party of the Satan comes to fight the Sunnis … now we know what the Iranians want … they want continued massacres to kill Sunnis," Qaradawi said. "How could 100 million Shias defeat 1.7 billion [Sunnis]? Only because [Sunni] Muslims are weak."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/middle-east-full-blown-religious-war

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longship

(40,416 posts)
1. The article talks about clerics and sermons, Sunnis and Shia.
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 09:52 PM
Jun 2013

One side called the "party of Satan".

And "Muslims are weak!"

But no. It's not about religion.
Huh?


I don't even need to click through to read the rest. I've read enough to see that it is all about religion which is what I've always believed. Certainly an article that starts off this way isn't going to convince many people otherwise.


 

rug

(82,333 posts)
2. That's too bad because it's a good starting point for a seious analysis.
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 10:11 PM
Jun 2013
It has become a cliche in recent months to talk of an inevitable and intractable sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia, over a schism in Islam that occurred 1,400 years ago. The reality is that the present rising tensions in the Middle East are far more complex than simple religious hatred. Rather, they reflect a growing friction rooted in more recent competitions over power, rights and identity which have been exacerbated both by the war in Iraq and by the reconfigurations of the Arab spring.


To say that the Middle East situation is rooted in religious disputes stemming from the seventh century, and not by contemporaneous economic, geographic and political factors is as simplistic as saying the Civil War was rooted in race and not by contemporaneous economic tensions between an industrial north and agrarian south (with starkly different labor needs), and political tensions over territorial expansion.

Fumesucker

(45,851 posts)
3. Religion seems to be even more central to the Muslim worldview than to the Christian one
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 10:29 PM
Jun 2013

Certainly the conflict is about more than religion but religion suffuses it, the entire region has marinaded in these conflicts and this religion with it's schisms and sects for over a thousand years and they're so thoroughly intertwined it is impossible to straighten it all out.

 

rug

(82,333 posts)
5. That would not explain the hundreds of years of the so-called Golden Age of Islam.
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 10:38 PM
Jun 2013

If religion was truly the divisive wedge there, there would have been hundreds of years of war, viciousness and misery, not relative peace and scientific and cultural advancement.

The colonial wars and European empire building of the nineteenth century, two world wars, plus the Cold War, and the age of petroleum are far clearer markers for this region and more dispositive than the question of who was the proper successor to Mohammed.

Sunni versus Shi'a in this framework are convenient rallying cries for these geopolitical ends. But then, so are team colors.

Fumesucker

(45,851 posts)
6. America had a golden age too, it certainly wasn't free of conflict
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 11:16 PM
Jun 2013

Not when you know the history of it well although it looks pretty placid from a bit of a distance.

I suspect the Middle East is sort of like that.

longship

(40,416 posts)
4. Your point is well taken.
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 10:31 PM
Jun 2013

And I have a very close friend who is Egyptian who says some of the same as you. However, he also sees the religious factions leveraging power because of the political unrest. This is something he is more than a little concerned about. We discuss these things often. This guy is no dummy. He is a very well read and long time Econ professor. I trust his opinion.

My point was the quoted part of the article undermined the title. I'll click through and read the rest, but I remain skeptical that religion doesn't have a significant role in Middle Eastern affairs.

Thanks for your response.


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