With the Shiite vs. Sunni schism, I feel like I am watching two wasps, one black, one yellow, trapped in a bell jar, each striving to kill the other.
Some Shiites exult in their political and military triumph. But others wonder whether their new world is that much better than the one left behind. Are the leaders from their own sect consigning them to a future of chronic political violence, corruption and lack of freedom?
Shi’ites say they are living in a state of siege, and some call it genocide. Fear has driven some families abroad while others have taken up arms against groups backed by al-Qaida.
Some artists have taken to expressing their anger at the carnage through their work.
Reuters. “Pakistan’s Sectarian Violence Creeps into Art Scene.” Voice of America, April 5, 2013.
How large does the mirror have to be for the narcissist to comprehend how ugly he has become in the pursuit of his own grandiose phantom?
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I had a good conversation with a Native American at a sun dance at what today seems thousands of years ago.
He said as the sun burned dew of the grass, “Good morning.”
“Every day is a good morning,” I said in return.
Why don’t others say that?
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Residents said the violence broke out on Friday when a group of Christian children were drawing on a wall of a Muslim religious institute.
A Reuters reporter saw what looked like a swastika drawn on the wall. Muslim residents said it had offended them because it looked like a cross.
So Egyptian Muslims find the cross offensive but not the swastika?
With reference to violence against Christians in Muslim-majority states, I supposed I’ve added another wasp to that bell jar.
People in Iraq were displaced up to 2003 by campaigns by the government of Saddam Hussein which considered them opponents; between 2003 and 2005 by the fighting which followed the country’s invasion; and from 2006 by sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi’a militias which led to massive civilian casualties and around 1.6 million new IDPs.
With NATO having made its statement, Iraqi institutions today attend to the displaced and poor. Nonetheless, the above quoted source also notes that ” . . . by the end of 2011, more than half of Iraq’s 1.4 million Christians had fled their places of origin.”
From a voice dissenting over the characterization of the Islamic Small Wars as sectarian:
Recent reports from the International Crisis Group, for example, describe the complex dynamics of the war in Syria, including numerous actions by individuals and groups that defy presumably rigid sectarian lines of affiliation. The ICG reports tell story after story of courageous individuals from differing ethnic and religious backgrounds attempting to meet the everyday humanitarian needs of fellow citizens in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
Perhaps in disagreement with Elizabeth Hurd’s thesis, albeit without confrontation, there is this from fellow WordPress blogger Avi Melamed:
Accumulating information indicates a growing rage among Iraqi Sunnis for a variety of reasons including:
- The support of the current Iraqi government for the Assad regime due to pressure from Iran on the Iraqi government to do so
- The fact that Iranian arms and military reinforcements to support Assad make their way through Iraq
- The involvement of the Iranian backed Iraqi Shiite Militia called the “Al Mahdi Army” in the war in Syria
- Growing feelings of being discriminated against by the predominantly Shiite Iraqi government
This rage was most recently expressed in stormy demonstrations of Sunnis that swept the Al- Anbar area. Reportedly, following the demonstrations, the Iraqi government ordered the arrest of Ali Al-Hatim Suleiman, the Leader of the Al-Dalim Sunni Tribes.
Melamed, Avi. “Iraq on the Verge of a Violent Sunni-Shiite Confrontation.” March 20, 2013.
Toss that black-and-white thinking into the air and let it disappear in the winds: every Islamic Small Wars battle space, from Afghanistan to Somalia has its unique cultural, economic, environmental, political, and social variables in play, and yet I feel there’s one thing I feel we may be certain about: in the manner in which Shiite and Sunni communities and militants compete, whichever inherits the earth will be only as locusts “inheriting” a cornfield.
ASTORE, Pakistan — The caravan pulled away, leaving behind 19 bullet-riddled bodies in a muddy ditch. Inside the three buses, those spared quietly wept.
The remaining Shiite Muslims had just survived a massacre by Sunni Muslim militants. And the Sunnis aboard had just helped save as many of the Shiites as they could.
With that last piece cited, Alex Rodriguez has published a headline and article you don’t see every day but should.
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