It is important to also appreciate sectarianism from below, which is also a driver of conflict. Nader Hashemi is the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. As for the final school of thought, the problematic views on sect that persist among Sunnis and Shias can be understood by the following concept: communal groups that occupy a common geographic space and have a shared history of interaction typically produce and perpetuate stereotypes and prejudicial views of the other. Since September 27 the region have been witnessing heaviest fighting in decades. %PDF-1.6 %���� The fragmentation of religious authority has significantly increased the volume and frequency of conflict among the clerics themselves and with the Saudi regime. “They are doing this regardless of their sectarian background.”. Why does the Saudi regime continue to get away with murder? In Iraq, the newer and less formal muhasasa system reserves the presidency for an Iraqi Kurd, the premiership for a Shia Muslim, and the speaker of Parliament for a Sunni Muslim. This is “the only time it has ever happened, over 1000 years ago.” The popular TV host and liberal commentator Bill Maher argued that the sixteenth century was a more accurate reference point for understanding contemporary conflict in the Middle East, in that Muslims were experiencing the equivalent of the Christian wars of religion in early modern Europe. Khatib said that the sustained demonstrations in Iraq, despite the violent crackdown by state security forces, proves that, for many in these protests, the fear barrier has been broken. The cases of the Kurds and the Palestinians are notable exceptions to this rule. Is the cease-fire sustainable in Nagorno-Karabakh?

His answer was the “nations [of the Arab world] were essentially artificial constructs.” The “inherent stability of the Middle East’s artificial states” can be traced back to the “end of World War I, when two of the victorious allies, Britain and France, carved up the lands of the defeated Ottoman Empire between themselves as spoils of war.”. But in places where people have long been divided on ethnic and religious lines, how sustainable are national movements that seek to breach them? In some areas, religious sectarians (for example Protestant and Catholic Christians) now exist peacefully side-by-side for the most part, although these differences have resulted in violence, death, and outright warfare as recently as the 1990s.

Saudi clerics are not a monolithic entity. The following is required: Sectarianism is, admittedly, a much more complicated phenomenon than what has been discussed here. The rise and expansion of salafism in the Arab world has perpetuated this problem, as has the regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I’ve focused on sectarianism from above — state-generated manipulation of sectarian identity mobilisation in the pursuit of political power. These “ancient divisions,” he asserts, propel instability in the Arab world, which is “rooted in conflicts that date back millennia.” Before leaving office, Obama observed that in the Middle East today, “the only organizing principles are sectarian.”, Other prominent American politicians, both Republican and Democrats, have made similar claims. The intervention to Afghanistan in 2001 and the experienced discourse onwards indicates that they are Afghans who will establish a safe and secure environment, set a social compromise to build a promising country and obtain prosperity by the natural wealth of Afghanistan. In 2016 he wrote a 20,000 word essay for the prestigious New York Times Magazine called, “Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart.” In his essay, Anderson sought to answer the question: why did democratic transitions of the Arab spring revolts fail, producing sectarian conflict and instability across the Middle East? Classement des meilleures ventes d'Amazon : Comment les évaluations sont-elles calculées ? Your information is being handled in accordance with the ABC Privacy Collection Statement. Web-panel discussion on Friday, 23th of October 2020 at 2 p.m.  local time in Istanbul / 4 p.m localt time in Kabul. Both systems were devised with the aim of ensuring political representation across religious groups and reducing fighting among them. The peace and reconciliation process, along with relevant undertakings, will be discussed if they give birth to a ‘hope’ that Afghan citizens need. This anti-democratic political context is essential for understanding sectarian conflict in Muslim societies today, especially in those societies that contain a mix of Sunni and Shia populations.

Une erreur est survenue. The rising menace of sectarian politics in Indonesia, The stoking of religious and racial sentiments by political underdogs will likely reappear during upcoming elections, scholars warn. In Iraq, sect-blind movements such as the Iraqi Communist Party and the Civil Democratic Alliance, a coalition of secular independent parties, have also emerged over the years, though they too have failed to amass decisive support. Having said this, it is also important that we do not romanticise the past. But one thing is clear: People are not deterred.”. The end of the Arab Spring, the rise of ISIS and the future of political Islam, De-sectarianisation of the Middle East is also heavily dependent on a. Murat Yeşiltaş, Director of Security Studies, SETA, H.E. This widely popular view, based an alleged enduring Sunni-Shia antagonisms with roots in the seventh century, clouds rather than illuminates the complex realities of the politics of the region which are better understood as series of deep and expanding developmental crises (both political and economic) that the region has been facing since the Second World War. Biased views of societal groups can be deeply rooted in cultures and can be difficult to alter. I mean they’ve been fighting each other for a thousand years. This type of sectarianism also overlaps with and is reinforced by patron-cliental relations, patronage networks, class divisions, and rural/urban splits. Nasr’s insight helps deepen our theoretical understanding of identity mobilisation in that it pushes the conversation beyond primordial differences and manipulation by religious authorities to focus attention on state behaviour and state-society relations. In the Arab world, by contrast, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the new borders that emerged produced a situation where you have “all these different peoples living cheek by jowl, many of them not wanting to live together; not knowing how to live together.”. Désolé, un problème s'est produit lors de l'enregistrement de vos préférences en matière de cookies. The demands of the demonstrators in those two countries, and the national unity underpinning them, are seen as posing a direct threat to the sectarian political … The politics of sectarianism or sectarianisation — the deliberate manipulation of religious identities — is a result of this political dynamic. Increase font size. What remains unclear is how such spontaneous and grassroots nationalist movements can be sustained in a sectarian context. While it is true that religious identities are more salient in the politics of the Middle East than before, it also true that these identities have been deliberately politicised and weaponised by state actors in pursuit of political gain. Il analyse également les commentaires pour vérifier leur fiabilité. But Iraq and Lebanon don't even have a face, so it really is a protest against the system.”. The failure of good governance and expansion of political authoritarianism, during the post-colonial era is a better entry point to understand this topic. In this context, Shadi Hamid asks: “if there is something constant about a culture and its predisposition to violence, then how can we explain stark variations in civil conflict over short periods of time?” There is also the related question of geography that this school fails to answer.