A reader asks:
I often hear the Sunni/Shia conflict analogized to the Catholic/Protestant conflict, esp as manifested in Northern Ireland. Would you say this is valid or not? Why? I honestly don't understand these intramural conflicts very well, so this is a genuine request for clarification.
This is a common issue that crops up. First, I would suggest that all reading Chris' post on analogical reasoning. The main issue I have with the analogy is that it gives you information about the situation which you already have unless you're ignorant in the first place. That is, there is a sectarian conflict which is common in the Muslim world based on religious divisions, that between Shia and Sunni being the primary one. But, this analogy is very coarse and tends to break down when you move toward a more fine grained model. During the 1980s when revolutionary Iran was in full flower Shiism was the Protestantism of Islam, taking on a corrupt and calcified Sunni order. Today, the Shia are the Catholics of their Islam because of their emphasis on clerical guidance and leadership. But there's another fundamental problem: people don't really know much about Catholicism and Protestantism and religious history in general, so they have no basis on which to project inferences based upon an analogy in the first place.
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Growing up in southern Ireland I never had the feeling that the problems in Northern Ireland were particularly religious in nature. Unlike the Shia/Sunni situation, Catholics and Protestants dont really know that much about how their own versions of their faith differ from the others - apart from one of them having a head honcho called 'Pope'.
The labels 'Catholic' and 'Protestant' in the Northern Ireland situation merely label two historical factions (the catholic historically 'native' population, and the protestant historically immigrant population). The conflict between them has really been a power struggle between these two groups rather than a doctrinal issue.
Unlike the Shia/Sunni situation, Catholics and Protestants dont really know that much about how their own versions of their faith differ from the others
how do you know that the shia/sunni divide is one characterized by groups who know a lot about their faith?
Thats a reasonable point. Never underestimate the ability of 'religious' people to know almost nothing about their own or other faiths.
Are the Shia/Sunni conflicts really religious in nature? It sounds like from the beginning it was just a matter of a power struggle.
Martin Luther had something to say when he (accidentally) founded protestantism, but many of the later conflicts were effectively power struggles.
The reason I bring up the Ireland conflict is for a much baser, less deeply analyzed reason. Every so often I will hear somebody drag out the canard that Islam is intrinsically a religion of violence and hate. When you try to respond with Inquisition or Crusades, you're told, well, yeah, that was centuries ago, but Islam is killing lots of people today in the name of its religion. I then point out that it wasn't so very long ago that people were doing car bombings and other terrorist tactics in Northern Ireland in the name of their religion.
Whether or not the nature of the division is truly analogous, the point is that Christians are just as capable of Muslims of "sectarian violence."
Ultimately, it probably comes down to what most violence between ethnic groups does come down to: fear, paranoia, and the need to define an "other" of whom one utterly disapproves.
-Rob
Certainly nobody in the IRA ever _claimed_ religion as a motivation - it was always "The Cause", ie a united Irish Republic. Explicit references to religion were always more common on the unionist/loyalist side.
And was the Iran/Iraq war a Sunni vs. Shia thing or an Arab vs. Persian thing?
Are the Shia/Sunni conflicts really religious in nature? It sounds like from the beginning it was just a matter of a power struggle.
nothing is purely anything :) why did husayn allow himself to be slaughtered against insurmountable odds at karbala? there was no feasibility of power.
Certainly nobody in the IRA ever _claimed_ religion as a motivation - it was always "The Cause", ie a united Irish Republic. Explicit references to religion were always more common on the unionist/loyalist side.
doesn't the IRA have a marxist tinge?
And was the Iran/Iraq war a Sunni vs. Shia thing or an Arab vs. Persian thing?
it was a sadam vs. not enough power thing. it was a scared arab world vs. regional semi-superpower thing. seeing how the iraqi army was mostly shia, and that the iranian army is disproportionately azeri (azeri turks are 25% of iran's population) it is hard to reduce it an arab vs. persian thing.
doesn't the IRA have a marxist tinge?
to a certain degree, but the Provisional IRA was founded in the late 1960's as an explicitly traditionalist alternative to the official IRA, which had, by that time, become an orthodox Marxist organization more interested in 'the class struggle' (including allying with the Protestant working class!) than armed opposition to Stormont/London/Loyalists/any fucker in their way.
My limited understanding is that Shia relates to an older Persian/Arab conflict. Within Iraq, that's not the case - but "Iraq" is the creation of Western boundary-drawing efforts.
The actual religious explanation (something about the order of succession of the early caliphs) seems kind of incidental. Plus, Islamism is the new Marxism - so this is not just ideological but also "gang warfare" or factionalism.
What peeves me is that someone figured out how to resolve all these tensions within the framework of a relatively stable (albeit corrupt) nation-state: Saddam Hussein. And the U.S. took him out.
The tribal mentality that predominates in the Arab world is uttely alien to the U.S. mainstream mentality. Add to that a vast cultural/language gulf, and the hopes of the U.S. putting Humpty Dumpty back together again are virtually nil.
My limited understanding is that Shia relates to an older Persian/Arab conflict
to some extent. but please note two points
1) shiism was introduced into persia by arabs, and before the 16th century was strongets in non-persian areas
2) in the 16th century turkish warriors imposed shiism on the sunni persian population. to do this they brought shia clerics from places like syria