To commemorate its founding 25 years ago, PS is republishing a selection of commentaries written since 1994. In this commentary from 2006, Mai Yamani notes that if the Middle East’s Sunni regimes decide that they need their own Hezbollah fighting for their cause, there are plenty of Al Qaeda-trained fighters available.
LONDON – Is the Sunni-Shia divide in the Middle East now deeper than the Arab-Israeli one? You might think so, given the response of some Arab governments to Hezbollah’s decision to attack Israel. Even as Israel dropped bombs on Beirut and Tyre, Saudi Arabia – perhaps the most conservative Arab-Muslim state – condemned the actions of the Shia Hezbollah in instigating conflict with Israel. Never before in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict has a country that considers itself a leader of the Arab-Muslim peoples backed Israel so openly.
And Saudi Arabia is not alone. Egypt and Jordan have also roundly condemned Hezbollah and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, for their adventurism.
What is behind this stunning development? Are we seeing a fundamental shift in relations between Arab nationalism and Islamic sectarianism? Is Saudi Arabia’s Sunni government more concerned and frightened by Shia Islam than it is committed to Arab unity and the Palestinian cause?
Arab denunciations of Hezbollah suggest that the Muslim sectarian divide, already evident in the daily violence in Iraq, is deepening and intensifying across the Middle East. US President George W. Bush’s effort to shatter the Arab world’s frozen societies was meant to pit the forces of modernization against the traditional elements of Arab and Islamic societies. Instead, he appears to have unleashed the region’s most atavistic forces. Opening this Pandora’s Box may have ushered in a new and even uglier era of generalized violence, what perhaps can only be called a “Muslim Civil War.”
The Shia-Sunni divide has existed since the dawn of Islam. But the geographical and ethnic isolation of non-Arab Shia Iran, together with Sunni Arab countries’ dominance of their Shia minorities, mostly kept this rivalry in the background. These tensions further receded in the tide of the “Islamization” created by the Iranian revolution, in the wake of which Arabs’ sectarian Sunni identity was increasingly obscured by a generalized “Islamic” assertiveness.
That all changed when Al Qaeda, a Sunni terrorist force that draws heavily on Saudi Wahhabi ideology and personnel, launched its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. A specifically Sunni brand of militant Islam was now on the march. When the US launched wars on both the Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan and the Sunni Iraqi regime, this new radical Sunni strain was emboldened further.
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The region’s newly assertive Sunni Arabs perceive Israel and the West as just one of the threats they face. The other is the so-called “Shia crescent” – the arc of land extending from Lebanon through Syria and Iraq to Iran that is inhabited by the allegedly heretical Shia. Saudi Arabia’s rulers, as custodians of the Muslim faith’s holiest places in Mecca and Medina, perhaps feel this threat most keenly.
In Sunni eyes, the Shia not only dominate the oil-rich areas of Iran, Iraq, and eastern Saudi Arabia; they are also – through the actions of Hezbollah – attempting to usurp the role of “protector” of the central dream of all Arabs, the Palestinian cause. It is because the Saudi royal family derives its legitimacy from a strict form of Sunni Islam and doubts the loyalty of its Shia population that the Kingdom has turned on Hezbollah.
Ironically, it is the US, Saudi Arabia’s longtime protector, that made Shia empowerment possible, by overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime and bringing Shia parties to power in Iraq. The Bush administration seems to recognize what it has done: as the Shia arc rises in the east of the Arab-Muslim world, the US is attempting to strengthen its protection of the Sunni arc – Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia – in the region’s west. Israel, the once-implacable enemy of the Arab cause, now seems to be slotted into this defensive structure.
But such a posture is bound to be unstable, due to pan-Arab feelings. Today, ordinary Saudi citizens are glued to Al Jazeera and other Arab satellite television networks to follow events in Gaza and south Lebanon. They see Arab (not Shia) blood being shed, with only Hezbollah fighting back. In their eyes, Hezbollah has become a heroic model of resistance.
This is causing the Saudi state to deepen the Sunni-Shia schism. Following the Kingdom’s official denunciation of Hezbollah, the Saudi state called on its official Wahhabi clerics to issue fatwas condemning Hezbollah as Shia deviants and heretics. Such condemnations can only sharpen sectarian divisions within Saudi Arabia and the wider region.
As these antagonisms deepen, will the Sunni regimes come to believe that they need their own Hezbollah fighting for their cause? If they do, they need not look far, for many such fighters have already been trained – by Al Qaeda.
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LONDON – Is the Sunni-Shia divide in the Middle East now deeper than the Arab-Israeli one? You might think so, given the response of some Arab governments to Hezbollah’s decision to attack Israel. Even as Israel dropped bombs on Beirut and Tyre, Saudi Arabia – perhaps the most conservative Arab-Muslim state – condemned the actions of the Shia Hezbollah in instigating conflict with Israel. Never before in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict has a country that considers itself a leader of the Arab-Muslim peoples backed Israel so openly.
And Saudi Arabia is not alone. Egypt and Jordan have also roundly condemned Hezbollah and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, for their adventurism.
What is behind this stunning development? Are we seeing a fundamental shift in relations between Arab nationalism and Islamic sectarianism? Is Saudi Arabia’s Sunni government more concerned and frightened by Shia Islam than it is committed to Arab unity and the Palestinian cause?
Arab denunciations of Hezbollah suggest that the Muslim sectarian divide, already evident in the daily violence in Iraq, is deepening and intensifying across the Middle East. US President George W. Bush’s effort to shatter the Arab world’s frozen societies was meant to pit the forces of modernization against the traditional elements of Arab and Islamic societies. Instead, he appears to have unleashed the region’s most atavistic forces. Opening this Pandora’s Box may have ushered in a new and even uglier era of generalized violence, what perhaps can only be called a “Muslim Civil War.”
The Shia-Sunni divide has existed since the dawn of Islam. But the geographical and ethnic isolation of non-Arab Shia Iran, together with Sunni Arab countries’ dominance of their Shia minorities, mostly kept this rivalry in the background. These tensions further receded in the tide of the “Islamization” created by the Iranian revolution, in the wake of which Arabs’ sectarian Sunni identity was increasingly obscured by a generalized “Islamic” assertiveness.
That all changed when Al Qaeda, a Sunni terrorist force that draws heavily on Saudi Wahhabi ideology and personnel, launched its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. A specifically Sunni brand of militant Islam was now on the march. When the US launched wars on both the Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan and the Sunni Iraqi regime, this new radical Sunni strain was emboldened further.
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Project Syndicate is returning to Climate Week NYC with an even more expansive program. Join us live on September 22 as we welcome speakers from around the world at our studio in Manhattan to address critical dimensions of the climate debate.
Register Now
The region’s newly assertive Sunni Arabs perceive Israel and the West as just one of the threats they face. The other is the so-called “Shia crescent” – the arc of land extending from Lebanon through Syria and Iraq to Iran that is inhabited by the allegedly heretical Shia. Saudi Arabia’s rulers, as custodians of the Muslim faith’s holiest places in Mecca and Medina, perhaps feel this threat most keenly.
In Sunni eyes, the Shia not only dominate the oil-rich areas of Iran, Iraq, and eastern Saudi Arabia; they are also – through the actions of Hezbollah – attempting to usurp the role of “protector” of the central dream of all Arabs, the Palestinian cause. It is because the Saudi royal family derives its legitimacy from a strict form of Sunni Islam and doubts the loyalty of its Shia population that the Kingdom has turned on Hezbollah.
Ironically, it is the US, Saudi Arabia’s longtime protector, that made Shia empowerment possible, by overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime and bringing Shia parties to power in Iraq. The Bush administration seems to recognize what it has done: as the Shia arc rises in the east of the Arab-Muslim world, the US is attempting to strengthen its protection of the Sunni arc – Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia – in the region’s west. Israel, the once-implacable enemy of the Arab cause, now seems to be slotted into this defensive structure.
But such a posture is bound to be unstable, due to pan-Arab feelings. Today, ordinary Saudi citizens are glued to Al Jazeera and other Arab satellite television networks to follow events in Gaza and south Lebanon. They see Arab (not Shia) blood being shed, with only Hezbollah fighting back. In their eyes, Hezbollah has become a heroic model of resistance.
This is causing the Saudi state to deepen the Sunni-Shia schism. Following the Kingdom’s official denunciation of Hezbollah, the Saudi state called on its official Wahhabi clerics to issue fatwas condemning Hezbollah as Shia deviants and heretics. Such condemnations can only sharpen sectarian divisions within Saudi Arabia and the wider region.
As these antagonisms deepen, will the Sunni regimes come to believe that they need their own Hezbollah fighting for their cause? If they do, they need not look far, for many such fighters have already been trained – by Al Qaeda.