Islam's civil war: a Texan writes......

Interesting theory, yours, about the whole Middle East gambit boiling down to a civil war within Islam which has been going on for more that 50 years. How about for more than 1500 years? I am rereading a book by Richard Fletcher entitled Moorish Spain which was written in 1992. Fletcher speaks about troubles between the Arab rulers of Spain who as Sunnis endured various problems from the Shiite Arabs known as Fatimids and living in Baghdad. This was in the ninth century, but the schism arising from the Shiite breakaway dated back to the seventh century.

 

What we are today witnessing is perhaps a cyclical manifestation of this schism. I find it a bit difficult to characterize these two main branches of Islam. One might argue that the Sunnis are better represented in the strictly Arab countries, but this is not a hard rule as there are some glaring exceptions, Iraq for example which is largely Shiite.

 

Nor can I claim that one branch is more fundamentalist than the other. It may be difficult to be more fundamentalist than the Shiite Ayatollahs in Iran, for example, but the Sunni Wahabi's come as close as anyone. Also, al- Qaeda with all its ultra-orthodox manifestations of Islam was Sunni inspired and led.

 

During my 15 years in Indonesia, all of the Muslims I queried did not recognize either the Sunni or Shiite terms. Only recently have I discovered the presence of a very small group of Indonesians who have declared themselves as Shiites.

 

These anecdotal observations lead me to opine that membership in one of the main branches of Islam or the other is in itself insufficient cause for civil war. One important consideration that I had learned and that was confirmed by Fletcher is that Arab Muslims consider themselves on a higher plane than non-Arab Muslims regardless of nationality.

 

The Moors of the Maghreb, for example, were looked down upon as undisciplined cannon fodder during the invasion and occupation of Spain even though they were converted under the Sunni Arabs. This observation came manifestly to light when the ruling Arabs in Andalucia meted out the choice conquered lands to their Arab brethren while the Moors got the hindmost. Such descrimination seriously pissed off the Moors.

 

Relations between Saudi Arabs and Egyptians are even worse. 

 

The better educated Egyptians are often employed in Saudi Arabia, but with some reservations as they are very much disliked. The Egyptians tend to lord it over the Saudis which exacerbates relations considerably. Hence, the Saudi Arabs have a harder time pulling rank on Egyptians than they do on citizens of most other Muslim countries.

 

Moreover, Egypt is clearly the most scholarly country in the Muslim world when it comes to Koranic study and interpretation. This status annoys the Saudis who can only revert to their claim on the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

 

Clearly, the basis for unity does not exist among the Islamic peoples of the world. I would therefore augment your civil war theory with emphatic tribal and ethnic differences between and within Muslim countries of the Middle East and elsewhere.

 

I would also add that the burgeoning population of Middle Eastern youth and their attendant rising social, economic and political expectations contribute substantially to current discontent given that these expectations have not, and are not likely to be met within the visible future.

 

Perhaps we should expand our thinking to the non-Muslim dominated world as well. I recently heard that should the new Prince of Cambridge have to be named according to the currently most popular name in England, it would be Mohammed.