04
03
2007
Untangling conflict’s roots: understanding the Shi’ite and Sunni divide
Posted by: Diane Levin in Global and Cultural Awareness, Online Games, Tools & Tests
Conflict, as history tells us, can put down very deep roots. Long-lived, it can consume great quantities of time–weeks, months, years–and even centuries.
One such conflict is the long-standing rift between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims, which has generated so many headlines and claimed the attention of the international community.
For those who wish to understood the origins of the rancorous division between Sunni and Shi’ite, Time Magazine has done an excellent job of untangling its roots in “Behind the Sunni-Shi’ite Divide“.
Meanwhile, at Maps of War, you can view the “Imperial History of the Middle East“–5000 years of shifting control depicted in a 90-second animation.
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March 5th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Thanks for blogging on this Diane. What most interested me in this article was the following: “For most of Islamic history, the denominations have lived side by side in relative peace and harmony . . . [T]he last major ideological fighting between Sunnies and Shiites took place more than two centuriees ago, even before the American Revolution, during the formation of the first Saudi state.” OK, that’s REAL NEWS. It’s like saying that Los Angeles Lutherans took credit for a car bombing at the Beverly Center shopping mall yesterday to protest the Methodist incursion into Pasadena. Anyone interested in the intersection of religion and violence should immediately go to Amazon.com and buy Scott Appleby’s “The Ambivalence of the Sacred.” I assigned my employment ADR class an excerpt from the chapter on Religion’s Violent Accomplices at http://settlenow.org/Faith.html. It’s the type of book that makes you re-think everything you’ve ever thought about religion and warfare. Give it a quick read & spread it amongst your friends. Really a quite remarkably original mind that Appleby has.