In his controversial book The Clash of Civilizations (1996) Samuel Huntington used the politically incorrect phrase “the bloody frontiers of Islam” (it is politically correct to not mention the fact that the largest portion of religiously inspired violence today is by Muslims, even though few Muslims actually engage in it). If anything, the frontiers have become bloodier than ever, for example in Africa. It is debatable whether Islam, with its many divisions, is accurately describable as one civilization. If it is, much of the violence occurs within it rather than on its frontiers. Horrendous atrocities are committed by Muslims against Muslims in Syria and Iraq, where armed conflicts are escalating toward a war between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims that spills across national frontiers, threatening the stability of the entire region. It is not just outside observers but the combatants themselves who characterize these conflicts in religious terms. Sunni insurgents invoke their faith in the battle against the regime of Bashar al-Assad (who is an adherent of the Alawite sect, which is an offshoot of Shi’i Islam), as do their Iraqi coreligionists in the fight against the Shi’a-dominated government of Nouri al-Malaki.
Two questions obtrude here: Are there real differences between these two branches of Islam? Do the differences sufficiently explain the conflict between them, or are there important non-religious causes to be taken into account? I think that the answer to both questions is yes, though I have neither the space nor the competence to provide a detailed elaboration of this answer here. Modern historians and social scientists have the inclination to propose that allegedly religious conflicts are “really” about something else–such as class, ethnicity, or national interest. This inclination derives from the fact that modern scholarly disciplines operate within a secular discourse that has difficulty dealing with religious motives. The term “religionization” has been used to apply to conflicts which originally had little to do with religion, but which subsequently came to be articulated in religious terms. For instance, the term was used to describe the conflict between Muslims, Croats, and Serbs in Bosnia. P.J. O’Rourke has the satirist’s gift of making pithy observations about complicated situations. Thus he described the war in Bosnia as occurring between three groups of people of the same race, who look alike, who speak the same language, and are only divided by religions in which none of them believe. Could this be said of the Sunni/Shi’a conflict raging in the Middle East today? I think not. Passionate religious beliefs are clearly in play, and at least partly explain the ferocity of the conflict. But this doesn’t mean that more mundane interests are not also involved, such as for example the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran for hegemony in the oil-rich region. Motives are rarely pure, and history is not a seminar in either theology or economics.
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