The Sunni-Shiite conflict is exaggerated

It’s tempting to explain the seemingly endless Middle East strife in sectarian terms. In Iraq, for example, it’s Sunni extremists vs. Shiite moderates. In Syria, it’s Shiite President Bashar al-Assad vs. Sunni rebels. And in Yemen, it’s a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran. Some observers have even suggested that the whole region is on the verge of an epic religious conflagration on par with the Thirty Years’ War, which tore Protestant and Catholic Europe apart in the 1600s.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this historical narrative is that it ignores everything that happened between 680 and, say, 1980. Op-eds about the “ancient” and “age-old” Sunni-Shiite warfare rarely reference this crucial 13-century period — a.k.a. the entire time during which Sunnis and Shiites were supposedly in conflict. Like everywhere in the world, people in the region were definitely fighting during this time. Historians could even provide a couple good examples of battles along Sunni-Shiite lines. But sectarian identity was seldom the chief issue that brought people in the Middle East to war.

Amid this surfeit of goodwill, it fell to historians to challenge the widely accepted claim that Turkey and Iran had neither fought nor changed their border since the Ottomans and the Safavids signed a peace treaty in 1639

Meaning that, measured purely in terms of years since the last actual war, the Turkish-Iranian rivalry is historically on par with our country’s rivalry with Britain (conclusion of last war: 1815) or Britain’s rivalry with France (also 1815).

Over the past decade, extremists have dedicated themselves to reducing the region’s complex identities to a simple Sunni vs. Shiite divide. It’s an invented history. But unfortunately in these efforts, success tends to breed success, and sectarian narratives quickly become self-fulfilling. Imagine how easily a liberal Shiite Alawite who hated Assad might conclude, after hearing rebels extol their commitment to killing Alawites, that his own survival was tied to the dictator’s. Cases like these are a depressing reminder that those who peddle bad history as an excuse for killing each other all too often succeed.

confuzzled dude wrote:

It’s tempting to explain the seemingly endless Middle East strife in sectarian terms. In Iraq, for example, it’s Sunni extremists vs. Shiite moderates. In Syria, it’s Shiite President Bashar al-Assad vs. Sunni rebels. And in Yemen, it’s a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran. Some observers have even suggested that the whole region is on the verge of an epic religious conflagration on par with the Thirty Years’ War, which tore Protestant and Catholic Europe apart in the 1600s.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this historical narrative is that it ignores everything that happened between 680 and, say, 1980. Op-eds about the “ancient” and “age-old” Sunni-Shiite warfare rarely reference this crucial 13-century period — a.k.a. the entire time during which Sunnis and Shiites were supposedly in conflict. Like everywhere in the world, people in the region were definitely fighting during this time. Historians could even provide a couple good examples of battles along Sunni-Shiite lines. But sectarian identity was seldom the chief issue that brought people in the Middle East to war.

Amid this surfeit of goodwill, it fell to historians to challenge the widely accepted claim that Turkey and Iran had neither fought nor changed their border since the Ottomans and the Safavids signed a peace treaty in 1639

Meaning that, measured purely in terms of years since the last actual war, the Turkish-Iranian rivalry is historically on par with our country’s rivalry with Britain (conclusion of last war: 1815) or Britain’s rivalry with France (also 1815).

Over the past decade, extremists have dedicated themselves to reducing the region’s complex identities to a simple Sunni vs. Shiite divide. It’s an invented history. But unfortunately in these efforts, success tends to breed success, and sectarian narratives quickly become self-fulfilling. Imagine how easily a liberal Shiite Alawite who hated Assad might conclude, after hearing rebels extol their commitment to killing Alawites, that his own survival was tied to the dictator’s. Cases like these are a depressing reminder that those who peddle bad history as an excuse for killing each other all too often succeed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-middle-easts-long-sectarian-peace/2015/04/17/70e015a4-e3b2-11e4-81ea-0649268f729e_story.html?hpid=z7

May be it's about time the ordinary folk ignored all these half-baked (& paid) revisionist historians who're out there to push their prejudiced agendas at the expense of innocent lives.