[News] How western lies about the 'Sunni-Shia divide' have set the region ablaze

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/western-lies-sunni-shia-divide-set-region-ablaze-how>
How western lies about the 'Sunni-Shia divide' have set the region ablaze
Hatem Bazian
October 11, 2024
------------------------------

Sunnis must fight Shia in the Middle East, and Shia must fight Sunnis,
according to the current, dumbed-down western framing of the region.

If you have been around for more than a few days, the rhetoric about
never-ending Sunni-Shia war and mayhem is never far from the minds of
western political leaders, think-tank inhabitants, Middle Eastern leaders
allied with the West, media talking heads, poisoned social media users, and
imperially appointed religious sermonisers.

All are aiding and abetting the process of driving war, acting as merchants
of death and destruction while claiming to work for peace.

As developments in the British
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/uk>-designated
Middle East heat up again, colonial and Orientalist practitioners, along
with their handpicked post-colonial ruling elites, are jumping into the
fray to add insult to multi-generational injury.

As if Israel’s genocide in Gaza
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-war-gaza> and open-ended
mayhem against Arabs and Muslims throughout the 20th and into the 21st
centuries were not enough, we have also been subjected to the colonial
“sushi theory” of Middle Eastern politics, which aims to frame and explain
everything that is wrong or dangerous in the region.

The colonially manufactured and stoked Sunni-Shia transhistorical conflict
has been used to explain away Euro-American
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us> wars, Zionist violence, and
foreign intervention in the region. The old/new divide-and-rule policy is
on full display, with numerous participants and vast intelligence networks
working day and night to keep the death flames burning. (Here, I must admit
that I like sushi, as it is one of the healthiest meal choices - but not as
a theory for the Arab and Muslim worlds.)

One can both be committed to their own understanding of Islamic history and
existing cleavages - whether theological, textual, political, national or
ethnic - while resisting the colonially stoked strategy of weaponising and
instrumentalising such divisions to further western domination of the
region and its peoples.
Vast oil wealth

Regional conflict exists today primarily due to the vast oil and natural
gas resources across the Middle East, which are crucial for the modern
global economy. Before the discovery
<https://www.wired.com/2008/05/dayintech-0526/> of Middle Eastern oil in
1908 in Iran <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iran>, the world’s
primary focus was on trade routes to Asia, raw materials, and capturing
markets for the surplus of industrial production from factories across
Europe and North America.

The rush for natural resources and markets in the 19th century witnessed
the expansion of British, French
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/france>, Dutch, German, Italian
and Belgian military, economic and epistemic footprints, while utilising
divide-and-rule strategies and the deployment of massive violence and
genocide to achieve colonial goals.

The colonially produced 'sushi theory' of Middle Eastern politics, which
professes to explain all the causes of conflict, is in fact the precise
recipe for never-ending wars

Let’s be clear: divisions existed beforehand, but colonialism and European
greed created a revolving-door situation, leading to the degradation of
societies’ ability to resist, while allowing colonial powers to capture
more and more natural resources and markets at fire-sale prices.

Religion was deployed as an imperial instrument to motivate and stimulate
interventionist policies, and to expand colonial economic and political
footprints around the globe.

Anyone who looks at the Global South without understanding colonial
divide-and-rule policies, and the weaponisation of religious, cultural,
linguistic and ethnic differences to maximise control and domination,
misses the crucial factors that fomented and maintained conflicts over a
long period.

Are European and American forces in the Middle East intended to protect
Sunnis from Shia, or vice versa? Is the massive build-up of military bases
and intelligence penetration across the region part of a broader plan to
foster peace, love and tranquility between Sunni and Shia communities?

If you happen to believe this, then you must have missed the region’s long
history, and the genesis of current conflicts.
Dubious claims

The western colonial project incubated the Zionist project
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/britain-palestine-balfour-declaration-fatal-mistake>
and also helped to form the modern nation-states in the Arab region.
Post-colonialism has made it possible to remove colonial troops while
keeping the colonial epistemic system in place, whether in economics,
education, or social and religious structures.

The region named the Middle East by the British was shaped, and continues
to exist, within the frameworks set out in the 19th century and cemented by
the Sykes-Picot Agreement
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/sykes-picot-one-hundred-years> and
the subsequent Paris Peace Conference at the end of the First World War.

The British and the French worked in the 19th and 20th centuries to stoke
Sunni and Shia divisions to further their colonial programmes in the
Ottoman and Qajar (Persian) regions. The instrumentalisation and stoking of
Christian-Muslim tensions in the area, amid dubious claims of “protecting”
Christian populations in the East, was a fundamental part of a colonial
endeavour vested in natural resources, trade routes and racist claims of a
civilisational project.

Every place you look around the Global South, colonial powers have used the
divide-and-rule strategy to stir up old wounds, fomenting religious,
ethnic, racial and cultural conflicts that were then used to push for
invasions and interventions, pouring more fuel on the fire.

While such differences exist - indeed, they are natural among diverse human
groupings - it is important to understand how they were utilised in the
colonial period, and are currently deployed to further the hegemonic
domination and expansion of the West’s modern colonial footprint across the
region.

Colonial powers stirred up the preexisting Sunni-Shia divide. They stoked
tensions, amplified differences, sponsored “thinkers” and “think tanks”,
wrote and published biased articles, funded media outlets, and drove
daggers into households, mosques and community gatherings.

Notably, the region we call the Middle East has the largest
<https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/data_graphs/330.htm> oil and natural gas
reserves in the world. Western greed is a driving force in this equation.
For US and European corporate and financial elites, this resource is too
valuable to be kept in the hands of the “subhuman populations” who inhabit
this region. The same applies to Venezuela, and more broadly to Latin
American and African resources.
Imperial intervention

The foolish, colonially produced “sushi theory” of Middle Eastern politics,
which professes to explain all the causes of conflict, is in fact the
precise recipe for never-ending wars that necessitate continued western
imperial intervention, massive military sales, support for Zionism,
propping up of post-colonial monarchies, and broad-based hegemonic control.

Furthermore, the Sunni-Shia framing of conflicts reproduces the old
Orientalist tropes about “irrational” cultural and religious divisions that
call for western “civilisational” rehabilitation projects across the
region. This paradigm ushers in massive interventionist programmes that
seek to transform Arab and Muslim societies across the region into cuddly
post-colonial subjects - ones who will accept domination, humiliation,
constant violence, “civilisational reforms”, and pillaging of resources in
exchange for being welcomed into the emptiness of western cultural
production and norms.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/islam-century-western-distortion>

Islam and a century of western distortion


Surrender to global market forces, and join the pleasure tours in the Red
Sea, Halloween festivals en route to Mecca, hedonistic escapes in the Gulf,
and decadent resorts in Egypt
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/egypt>’s Taba.

Colonial advisers on the scene will help to build the tallest, empty vanity
buildings in the world; host the most outrageous western raves; offer the
biggest prizes for the most inconsequential sports races to nowhere; and
celebrate being important, to help alleviate your self-produced inferiority
complex.

The West will provide colonial perfumes to make your rot smell like roses,
as you sell your society to the western corporate machine, privatise
national resources, open your borders to Israeli
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel> products and investment,
and welcome every US and western Islamophobic
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/islamophobia> diplomat or media
personality.

This is the pitch: what is keeping you from arriving on the world stage are
the “bad” Sunnis and Shia in your neighbourhood, who seem not to understand
the value of letting go of their society’s centre of ethical and moral
meaning. Sell your soul to colonialism, and let go of your moral and
ethical inhibitions. The Abraham Accords
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-gulf-normalisation-deals-support-plummets>,
Camp David Accords, Wadi Araba Treaty and a host of other agreements have
brought “prosperity” and “inclusion” to circles of upward influence and
mobility.
Religious 'wisdom'

Now, let me turn to the imperially appointed religious figures who peddle
the present colonial scheme, packaged as the foundation of religious and
spiritual meaning for unsuspecting people to consume.

The “religious” cadre comes out in strength to sell “sushi theory” across
the Arab and Muslim world, with ready-made fatwas and explanations to
ignite the disharmony fuse and cast doubt on de-colonial possibilities. The
term “peace” is used in these imperially constructed religious circles to
mean normalisation
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-normalisation-deals> with
Israel, alongside the justification of hegemonic domination and western
military bases across the region.

The imperial religious cadre defends the indefensible, while instructing
all to obey the ruler, because he knows what’s best.

In this context, Israel becomes a strategic ally, and western power in the
region is a safety net. Sunni Palestinians
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine> are troublemakers
disrupting the colonial “peace”, and Shia expansionism is a threat to the
region’s survival. The US, Israel, Nato
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/nato>, monarchs, dictators,
intelligence services and “private contractors” - the modern mercenaries -
are needed to save you from each other.

US, Israel, monarchs, dictators, intelligence services and 'private
contractors' - modern mercenaries - are needed to save you from each other

Otherwise, the story goes, the Sunni or Shia monster hiding under your beds
and prayer rugs will come out to kill you. To combat this, you need Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Zionism, western military bases, a
corporate takeover of your economy, and a PR firm to shape your curriculum
to produce a compliant population - one that consumes and indulges, but
never dares to ask a question or raise any opposition.

This imperial religion, and the imperially nurtured religious elites who
peddle colonial discourses, are the real harbingers of death. They act as
the religious handmaiden to empire, while blessing the death machines that
mow down their flocks in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions.

These professional imperial religious wizards readily deploy texts, mine
sources for pacification nuggets, and entertain us with orchestrated
gatherings to impart silencing “wisdom” on the one hand, and messages of
fire and brimstone on the other to critics of the present colonial project.

This cuddly bunch is all too ready to offer religious justifications for
kings, presidents and empire, rationalising the mass killing of anyone who
dares to challenge this paradigm and speak truth to power.

We can still maintain an understanding of Sunni-Shia history and the
complex narratives that are shared and debated, while refusing the ongoing
colonial attempts to weaponise this issue to dominate the region and devour
the best and brightest among us, disrupting real change. Any discourse that
pushes and weaponises these divisions, only serves the colonial project and
its multifaceted attempts to reconquer the region.

Finally, we must dispense with the idea that the colonial enemy of my enemy
is my friend. This must be replaced with the historically verifiable
understanding across the Global South that the colonial enemy of my enemy,
after a divide-and-rule strategy, has devoured us both.

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20241011/e4aec931/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: lebanon-beirut-strike-israel-october-2024-fadel-itani-afp.jpg.webp
Type: image/webp
Size: 27554 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20241011/e4aec931/attachment-0001.webp>