A REPEAT OF HISTORY IS IN THE MAKING. I say let them work out their own issues, and when it is done, in order to repopulate the areas that many have been killed and destroyed, all non-moslem countries return the moslems in their country, back to their original country and culture. As ISIS keeps advancing on the ground in Iraq, the hardline jihadi militants have revived with a vengeance one of the oldest conflicts there is: the rift between the Sunnis and Shiites in Islam. Iraq is a perfect ground for the divide to turn violent: it has a Shia-majority population, a Shia-led government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and an embattled Sunni minority, which dominated the country for centuries, from the Ottoman Empire until the U.S. invasion deposed Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Iraq conflict plays out on several levels between Sunnis and Shiites. First and foremost, its about how to share power in a 21st century state. The prime minister, a Shiite, has failed abysmally in creating a formula to share power with the Sunnis, the traditional political masters in Iraq, Robin Wright, a joint fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center, non-partisan institutions, told NBC News. The divide between the two major branches of Islam has lasted for centuries -- and the schism is not always just a religious one. It began when the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 A.D. and a clash erupted over who should succeed him. One side, which became the Shiites, believed Muhammad’s successor should be someone from his bloodline; those who spawned the Sunnis held it could be a pious individual who could follow Muhammad’s customs. The rift has divided the Muslim landscape across the Middle East and beyond for 1,350 years, with some countries being controlled by Shiites and the others by Sunnis, and shifting back and forth. The large majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunni. Shiites are concentrated in Iran, southern Iraq and southern Lebanon, with significant communities in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. But tensions are on the rise in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia, Malaysia and Egypt. The growing concern is the possibility of a transnational civil war between Sunni and Shias where countries are divided along sectarian lines. “Now there’s a war, there’s not reconciliation,” Amir al-Khuzai said. “With whom do we reconcile?” ibtimes/how-sunni-shiite-conflict-frames-current-crisis-iraq-16
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 04:44:48 +0000
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