American analysts had naively hoped that both Sunnis and Shi’ite would have been able to put all this behind them. Then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice complained in January 2007: “There’s still a tendency to see these things in Sunni-Shia terms. But the Middle East is going to have to overcome that.” Seven years later, they still haven’t. In fact, the idea that the Sunni-Shi’ite divide, which is 1,400 years old and goes all the way back to the murky origins of Islam, is something that can without undue difficulty be “overcome” is a sterling manifestation of the general superficiality of Washington’s analysis of the Middle East, during both the Bush and the Obama administrations. Unbeknownst to the analysts and policymakers who have influenced Washington policy for decades now, the Sunni-Shi’ite divide cannot be bridged by negotiations, or by bribes (“aid”), or by anything but the full surrender of one group to the other — which is not going to happen. This is because the divide has enough roots in each side’s differing understandings of Islam for hardliners in both camps to label the other “unbelievers,” and thus people who can lawfully be killed. Islamic tradition holds that after Muhammad died (which is supposed to have happened in 632 AD), the Muslim community chose his companion Abu Bakr to succeed him as caliph, or successor of Muhammad as the military, political and spiritual leader of the Muslims. But one group among them thought that the leadership belonged by right to Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s son-in-law and one of his first followers, and after him to a member of the prophet’s household. Ali finally did become caliph after Abu Bakr had been succeeded by two other companions of Muhammad, Umar and Uthman, but was assassinated only a few years later. Then in the year 680, his son Hussein was killed in battle with the caliph Yazid I at Karbala in Iraq, and the split between those who believed that the caliph should be the best man in the community (the Sunnis) and those who believed the Muslims should be led by a relative of Muhammad (the Shi’ites) became formal, bitter and everlasting. There is not much doctrinal difference between the two camps, but since each believes that the other has departed from the truth of Islam, and each (particularly the Shi’ites) nurses centuries-old grudges over ancient wrongs done to them, this split is not going to be “overcome.” Saddam Hussein kept a lid on it in Iraq by brute force, but now that he is gone and a Shi’ite government is in power there, the Sunnis are determined to wrest control back from them, and the Shi’ites and their Iranian patrons are just as determined to keep it. It is a recipe for endless warfare, until the Mahdi returns and reveals whether he has come as the Sunni or the Shi’ite version. In the meantime, the strength of ISIS, the Shi’ites’ determination to win back the territory they have lost, and the very real possibility that Sunni-Shi’ite war could engulf the entire Middle East, are grim monuments to the price of Washington’s faulty analysis. - See more at: pamelageller/2014/06/sunni-vs-shia-explained.html/#sthash.2lse9oq5.dpuf
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 14:55:06 +0000
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