Islam: Sunni-Shi'a split: Has the Israel vs Islam split been overshadowed by internicene Muslim conflict?

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The renown author of Cradle of Islam, Mai Yamani, writing in Project Syndicate, "The Muslim Civil War" (nd) has posed the question as to whether at this juncture of history the world is witnessing the first stages of a Muslim civil war. In a recent article of geostrategic analysis, Yamani poses the question: "Is the Sunni-Shia divide in the Middle East now deeper than the antagonism between Israel and the Arabs?" The question, and any answer, do not in themselves make the situation of the Israels and world Jewry any less of a burden and horror, as Shia-Hiszbullite missiles from Iran land on Israelis from the launch pads of southern Lebanon. But the significance of possible answers remains undiminished. The Sunni monarchies of Saudiland and Jordan, and the Sunni dictatorship of Egypt (kept afloat and restrained by American aid) now have a stake in the peace of Palestine and Israel, as well as the protection of Israel which is taking all the flak for the bombs that newl-emergent Iran would rather direct at Sunnis.

If Yamani is correct, one could also put a new gloss on the disturbing fact that the Saudi monarchy supports Wahabbist world missions and mosque-planting in the USA and Canada. Altho in the past the significant fact has been the use of this Saudi-aid-juiced religious colonialism as a network of recruitment centers for Al Quaeda in the West, they are also the Saudi Wahabbist mainstream's first line of defense against the takeover of Islam in the West by the unleashed Shia forces of Iran's mullocracy, Iraq's Badr Organization, and Lebanese Hizbullite chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. In the end, they are not satisfied with the crushing and extermination of Israel. They want Mecca and Medina.

Rookmaker Club geostrategic analysis:

A victory over Israel by the Shia axis of Iran-Badr(Iraq)-Nasrallah(Lebanon) would tilt the dynamics of Palestine toward the Shia and would be destablizing for the Sunni cresecent from Jordan thru Egypt (the most populous Arab Muslim country) and Saudiland itself where all Shia have to make pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime. In all of the Sunni-dominated countries mentioned, there are Shia minorities; in Saudiland, it just so happens, the 15% of the general population which is Shia has its most dense demographic concentration in the oil-field regions.

More generally, Yamani tells us:

As the Shiite 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 [by the US, perhaps to some extent by the Sunni regimes as well, but to what extent? - P].

But such a defensive posture is bound to be unstable, due to pan-Arab feelings. Today, ordinary Saudi citizens are glued to Al-Jazeera and other Arab satellite TV networks to follow events in Gaza and South Lebanon. They see Arab (not Shiite) blood being shed, with only Hizbullah fighting back. In their eyes, Hizbullah has become a heroic model of resistance.

This is causing the Saudi state to deepen the Sunni- Shiite schism. Following the kingdom's official denunciation of Hizbullah, the Saudi state called on its official Wahhabi clerics to issue fatwas condemning Hizbullah as Shiite deviants and heretics. Such condemnations can only sharpen sectarian divisions within Saudi Arabia and the region.

More immediately, many of us are more concerned about the fate of Israel, in the current context of any such Shia axis vs Sunni non-resistance to Israel's incursions into Shia-Hizbullite territory in the half-state of Lebanon. Our concern is based on the historic friendship of the USA with Jews since George Washington and, by extension, with the Jewish state of Israel after its estblishment by the UN in 1948 and its war for survival in 1967 when it extended its territory for defensive reasons. The minority Jewish Zionist ideologies of Israeli expansionism, and the minority heresy of Christain Zionism are decisively alien to refWrite's motivation of support for Israel's aggressive self-defense against both Hamasian Palestine and Hisbullite Lebanon. Neither the Palestinian Authority nor the State of Lebanon prevented the continued assaults on Israel, its civic order, and its citizens over the decades. Now, Israel is fiting apparently also as a surrogate for the Sunni regimes of Jordan, Egypt, and Saudiland. That is, if Mai Yamani is correct.

-- Politicarp