Sectarianism in the Arab World

Division, a word so simple yet characterized by many intricacies has led mankind through its political evolution. The development of the modern nation-state, which was birthed by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 was based on it. The United States and the Soviet Union threatened to lob nuclear weapons at one another, in part because of a division of ideologies. A long list of countries have fought based on “division,” whether the reasoning be religion, language or culture: India-Pakistan, England-France, the Kurdish Worker’s Party and the Turkish government. The list goes on, both in modern times and across the historical spectrum.

Political entities and the people within them have molded and refined their entities, a fluid reality, based upon self-identification vis-à-vis an “other.” While not easily defined, given the pluralities of “others,” each and every socio-political grouping has defaulted to an antagonistic relationship or relationships which have endured for various lengths of time. The violence associated with these divisions have ranged from the one-off battles, which brings to mind the Canadian (then a British colony)-American War of 1812 to mind. Others have lasted longer, usually those which have been fought not at the inter-state level but that of the intra-state variety. Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sri Lanka, among a long list of others fall into this category. Samuel Huntingon, in his controversial book The Clash of Civilizations, boiled these latter categorized wars to geographical fault lines. But geography is only one of a variety of casual factors. Ideological and religious divisions are internal issues within many of the world’s religions, and in the vast majority of cases have in turn caused violent conflict within geographic areas and not on the borders of two “civilizations” as Huntingon would call them.

No inter-geographical contest between ideologies has been ever-present and violent as that between the religions of the Middle East.  While division, in terms of Islam, began with the antagonistic relationship between the prophet’s third wife Aisha and his son-in-law and nephew Ali, it was morphed into its modern form by colonial politics. Christians which had long been accepted by their Muslim neighbours, albeit with a tax levied against them, were also affected. Even before the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War One, British and French intervention into the Arab lands, in the form of numerous capitulations, had created sectarian strife.  1860 saw Greater Syria’s Druze population, back by Sunni paramilitary forces, butcher up to 20,000 Christians. The resentment was in part due to these above mentioned agreements and the trading privileges bestowed upon Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire as mandated by the capitulations.

While uprisings, like that of 1860, would subside, the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the division of Arab lands would entrench a new and irreconcilable system: the nation-state. The mandate system, backed by the newly-born League of Nations, allowed both the British and French an opportunity to “assist” these peoples, defined by fictitious boundaries, to mature into nation-states. While on paper, these projects seemed noble in their cause, they instead allowed these colonial overseers, who had divided the region with the Skyes-Picot Agreement, to exacerbate underlying tensions that they themselves had previously allowed to resurface. This is not to argue that protagonists on both sides of the Sunni-Shi’a spectrum did not play a role in exacerbating these tensions, but rather that the systemic forces which created the conditions for sectarian hatred: economic hardship, political turmoil and occupation, were by and large a European creation.  During this period the colonial overseers also engaged in divisive policies, playing minority or religiously linked groups off against the larger population.

The French backed the Christian Maronites in Lebanon and encouraged Alawites to join the ranks of the Syrian military; the latter to ensure that they had a trustworthy force to lean on successive Syrian governments. In both cases the colonial positions bestowed upon the political elite of both groups would in turn translate into disaster for their wider co-religionists. In Lebanon, a bloody civil war, created through attempts by the Maronite political elite to govern alone, led to a mass exodus of Christians and the destruction of the country. In Syria, we see the bloody effects of minority rule today, with the Alawite populace under threat of massacre as Bashar al-Assad has tricked his coreligionist and other minorities into supporting his rule. In Iraq, the British continued the Ottoman policy of supporting Sunni rulers, which were in the minority, over their Shi’a counterparts. In Israel, the play was not between Muslim groups but rather between newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Europe and the native Palestinians. Nevertheless, the effects were the same.

With the independence of these colonial creations, built on artificial borders, with populaces whose political elite rallied them around their sectarian identities for political gain it is no wonder that the break down in central power would arose violent sentiments. With the Arab Spring, and this is especially true in Syria, the nation-state bonds which have so tenuously kept these cleavages in check have now been unraveled. The result has been various levels and instances of brutality — rape, murder, the destruction of holy places. While many may point to causal factors which reach back thousands of years, it is worthwhile to keep in mind the colonial legacy.

Iraqi and Lebanese Shia Units fight Syrian rebels to defend the Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque in Damascus. The grand-daughter of Prophet Muhammad is an important figure for Shi’as.

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