Ian Black: “Sectarianism has certainly raised its ugly head in recent years – but a lot of people have worked hard to make that happen.”
Sunni v Shia: why the conflict is more political than religious
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/05/sunni-shia-why-conflict-more-political-than-religious-sectarian-middle-
Over the past four years the vicious war in Syria has amplified sectarian sentiment so that Alawites are now identified en masse with Bashar al-Assad and Sunnis with the opposition. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a militant Shia group backed by Iran and supporting Assad, reinforces this binary narrative. But disputes exist of course within sects while other ties transcend religious identity.
Extremist Sunni preachers based in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait abuse Shia as “idol-worshippers” – the intolerant language of Wahhabi exclusivity. Iranians are scorned as “Safawis”, a pejorative reference to the 16th-century Safavid dynasty. Fanatical jihadis such as the Islamic State justify the killing of “apostates” under the doctrine of “takfir”.
In its heyday, al-Qaida targeted the “far enemy” – America in particular. But the Islamic State has placed anti-Shia sentiment at the centre of its poisonous ideology. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, its “caliph”, has ignored pleas by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor, to refrain from the indiscriminate killing of Shia and, instead, to attack the Shia-dominated and Alawite regimes in Iraq and Syria.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the influential Sunni cleric given a platform by al-Jazeera TV, famously denounced Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah (the “party of God”) as the leader of the “party of Satan”.
So sectarianism has certainly raised its ugly head in recent years – but a lot of people have worked hard to make that happen. And social media has made it easier than ever to spread toxic and intolerant messages.