{"id":880,"date":"2015-09-06T23:00:27","date_gmt":"2015-09-06T23:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=880"},"modified":"2015-09-07T00:07:33","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T00:07:33","slug":"saudi-arabia-insists-on-sectarian-war-within-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/09\/saudi-arabia-insists-on-sectarian-war-within-islam.html","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia insists on sectarian war within Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/i>Apr\u00e8s le pain, l’\u00e9ducation est le premier besoin du peuple.<\/em><\/p>\n

After bread, education is the first need of the people.<\/p>\n

Georges Danton<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Saudi Arabia and its supporters are obsessed with saying there is a sectarian war within Islam. While there is evidence Saudi Arabia, other Gulf Arab tyrannies and terrorists\u00a0fight out\u00a0this\u00a0sectarian war, there is little\u00a0evidence that anyone else gives it any thought or even agrees that it exists.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"Saudi<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Deranged\u00a0pro-Saudi commentator\u00a0Joseph Kechichian argues that the sectarian conflict is real and worth fighting about<\/a>,\u00a0and says\u00a0Yemenis have no right to decide Yemen’s future\u00a0because Saudi Arabia knows\u00a0best<\/em><\/p>\n

If one is to look at the conflict in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East in any depth, we find\u00a0there is solely a one-way flow of sectarian violence, so it isn’t a sectarian war at all because there is only a single participant in the violence and it is always Saudi Arabia. All the violence pours out of Saudi Arabia, and it is directed not just against Arabs but\u00a0against\u00a0all Muslims.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In any debate between pro-Saudi commentators and pro-Iranian commentators, the first thing the former will do is appeal to the imaginary, self-fulfilling prophecy of a sectarian war between “Shia\u00a0and Sunnis” (implying Muslims need to pick a “side” on\u00a0that absurd fabricated issue) and the alleged proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The response of the pro-Iranian commentator will be to point out that Iran isn’t interested in such a conflict and that the Saudis are curiously obsessed with talking about it. What neither seem to mention is the reason the Saudis are so desperately obsessed with cultivating\u00a0the image of a sectarian or proxy war between themselves and Iran, which I will try to explain here.<\/p>\n

First, there is no war between Sunnis and Shia. The actions of the Saudi tyrants and the terrorists funded by them have not only\u00a0driven Christians, Shia\u00a0and Kurds into unparalleled persecution and suffering at the hands of Gulf state-sponsored extremists, but have\u00a0resulted in the mass beheading, displacement and slaughter of the Sunni Arabs in Syria and Iraq who are not deemed sufficiently extremist by the tyrants of Riyadh.\u00a0Saudi tyrants\u00a0and their\u00a0extremist fanatics\u00a0slaughter Sunnis in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere, but Saudi Arabia and some other Arab tyrannies insist\u00a0the threat to the Arabs\u00a0is not them but Iran (who so far haven’t showed up to kill anyone). So while\u00a0Iran appeals over and over again to Muslim unity, Saudi Arabia insists at all costs that\u00a0tribalism, religious dogma, illiteracy,\u00a0decapitation,\u00a0and stupidity should dictate the lives of all Muslims. Furthermore, for Saudi Arabia, fighting Iran requires mass killings not only of other sects but of their own. In short, the\u00a0only sectarianism among Muslims is Saudi Arabia trying to throw acid in everyone’s\u00a0faces.<\/p>\n

I have argued that the weakest link in\u00a0the “Iran supports sectarianism” theory is that the entire reason people chose to hate Iran was\u00a0because of Iran’s\u00a0resolute support for Muslims of all sects. Were it not for this support, Iran would never have faced sanctions by the US, or even the hostility of Saudi Arabia which sees Iran as getting too close and winning the hearts and minds of Arabs in Yemen. Iran does not distinguish between which Muslims it will support, instead committing itself to support them all and even to support vulnerable Christians, Jews and Kurds at every opportunity. It is this commitment that led Iran to express solidarity with\u00a0the Palestinians of Gaza and the Houthis of Yemen, who do not follow Iran’s branch of Islam at all or take any orders from Iranian clerics.\u00a0Iran is targeted by sectarians not through any hostility by Iran to other sects, but because of Iran’s\u00a0opposition to sectarianism and the great strides it made to bury sectarianism in favor of Islamic unity.<\/p>\n

Everyone has been targeted by Saudi Arabia’s obsession with waging a sectarian war, and the primary victims of their schemes have been Sunni Arabs. Even within Syria, the vast majority of people being killed as “Assad dogs” and “Iranians” by Saudi-backed terrorists\u00a0are actually Sunni Arabs. Extremists slaughter people of their own sect, and then mindless, ignorant commentators\u00a0in the media\u00a0frame\u00a0it as sectarianism\u00a0so they can\u00a0apportion blame\u00a0upon sects rather than upon the perpetrators of violence.<\/p>\n

What you\u00a0really have within Islam is not a sectarian war but a slavering, murderous regime in Riyadh that will kill anyone who points out\u00a0its illegitimacy – Shia or Sunni. Saudi Arabia can never appeal too Islamic unity the way Iran does, because the regime doesn’t even have any legitimacy among its own people or among the Sunni Arabs it desperately tries to use in its so-called sectarian wars such as in Yemen.<\/p>\n

The best that Saudi Arabia can hope for is to survive a little longer before the Arabs\u00a0finally rise up against the tyranny that would expend\u00a0them. To do this, the tyrants and oil sheikhs keep lying about a sectarian war, keep funding\u00a0extremists who make the sectarian war look real, and make\u00a0hollow arguments that someone else is to blame for the sectarianism\u00a0they have been selling, exaggerating and publicizing constantly.<\/p>\n

\n

By\u00a0Harry J. Bentham<\/a><\/p>\n

\"HJB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apr\u00e8s le pain, l’\u00e9ducation est le premier besoin du peuple. After bread, education is the first need of the people. Georges Danton Saudi Arabia and its supporters are obsessed with saying there is a sectarian war within Islam. While there is evidence Saudi Arabia, other Gulf Arab tyrannies and terrorists\u00a0fight out\u00a0this\u00a0sectarian war, there is little\u00a0evidence…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,71,72,892,127,153,67,66,3,70,69],"tags":[1113,1103,1108,58,1110,1114,1106,1111,619,616,1109,1112,617,1107,1104,1105,1050,73,613],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conflict-2","category-conflict-resolution","category-international-relations","category-islam","category-journalism","category-lordre-2","category-middle-east","category-politics-2","category-religious-studies","category-religious-violence","category-violence","tag-al-saud-regime","tag-gulf","tag-iran-sectarianism","tag-iraq","tag-islamic-unity","tag-oil","tag-proxy-war","tag-riyadh","tag-saudi-aggression-against-yemen","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-saudi-arabia-sectarianism","tag-saudi-regime","tag-saudis","tag-sectarian-war","tag-shia","tag-shia-sunni-conflict","tag-sunnis","tag-syria","tag-yemen"],"yoast_head":"\nSaudi Arabia insists on sectarian war within Islam - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/09\/saudi-arabia-insists-on-sectarian-war-within-islam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saudi Arabia insists on sectarian war within Islam - L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Apr\u00e8s le pain, l’\u00e9ducation est le premier besoin du peuple. After bread, education is the first need of the people. Georges Danton Saudi Arabia and its supporters are obsessed with saying there is a sectarian war within Islam. While there is evidence Saudi Arabia, other Gulf Arab tyrannies and terrorists\u00a0fight out\u00a0this\u00a0sectarian war, there is little\u00a0evidence…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/09\/saudi-arabia-insists-on-sectarian-war-within-islam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-09-06T23:00:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-09-07T00:07:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2015\/09\/Saudi-apologist.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Harry J. 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