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The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the

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Extremists By Khaled M. Abou El Fadl Reviewed by L. Carl Brown

F R O M O U R M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 I S S U E

Is

Islam the solution or part of the problem? Abou El Fadl depicts an ongoing struggle between puritans and moderates to define and apply Islam today. Those he labels puritans embrace an absolutist and intolerant orientation. The moderates draw on the more humanistic heritage hammered out by generations of ulama (religious scholars). That heritage has been badly undermined in modern times by the replacement of Islamic legal thought and institutions with Western courts and codes, but most of all by the intolerant doctrines of the Wahhabis, spread with the help of Saudi oil revenues, and of those groups known as Salafis, whose ideology stems in part from Wahhabism. The moderate Muslim outlook that Abou El Fadl champions can, however, build on that battered tradition -- through a dynamic process engaged with a changing world, not through restoration of a supposed lost golden age. A scholar trained in both Islamic and Western law, Abou El Fadl presents a brilliant brief for that humanistic Islamic tradition while getting in some well-placed blows against those puritans. He takes on tough issues such as Islam and human rights, the status of women, and jihad. In the process, he serves up one of the more engaging primers on Islam available.

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Quoting from the book: PAGES 14-15. “All of these teachings put this book in a rather odd position. By recognizing that there is a fundamental schism within contemporary Ilsam, I am discharging what I believe to be my religious obligation, but I am also offending many who believe that it is better not to dwell upon potentially seditious and divisive issues. To be divisive and to contribute to breaking the unity and harmony of Muslims is to cause fitna (sedition and divisiveness), and this word, fitna, fill the hearts of the pious with woe and dread. As sinful as fitna might be, I believe that what is at risk in the ongoing conflict between the moderates and puritans is nothing less than the very soul of Islam. Therefore, it is a greater act of sin for Muslims to indulge in a state of apathetic indifference. In order to differentiate between the militant and fanatic minority and silent majority of Islam, I am forced to compare and contrast two main groups: the

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moderates and the puritans. However it is important to keep in mind that the modern world of Islam cannot be summed up in just those two categories... It is important to note that the two orientations described in this book cut through the Sunni and Shi’I sectarian divide. I have not attempted to describe the differences between Sunni and Shi’I theology here because there is an abundance of published material that discusses those differences, and because those differences are not relevant to the puritan-versus-moderate divide. Sunnis can be puritan or moderate according to the same criteria and distinguishing characteristics as Shi’is. A puritan Sunni tends to believe in the same ideas and come to the same conclusions as a puritan Shi’i. The is true of Shi’I and Sunni moderates.” … PAGES 250-251. Around the middle of March 2002, Saudi newspapers reported an incident that took place in Mecca, the Prophet Muhammad’s birthplace. According to the official account, at least fourteen young girls burned to death or were asphyxiated by smoke when an accidental fire engulfed their public school. Parents who arrived at the scene described a horrific situation in which the doors of the school were locked from the outside, and the Saudi religious police, known as mutawwa’un, forcibly prevented girls from escaping the burning school and also barred firemen from entering the school to sve the girls by beating some of the girls and several of the civil defense personnel. According to the statements of parents, firemen, and the regular police forces present at the scene, the mutawwa’un would not allow the girls to escape or to be saved because they were “not properly covered,” and the mutawwa,un did not want physical contact to take place between the girls and civil defense forces for fear of secual enticement, presumably in the midst of crisis. “Not properly covered meant the girls were either missing the neqab, a veil concealing their faces, or the ‘abaya, a cloaklike wrap covering their bodies. …Three days after the event, the Saudi government ordered all newspapers to desist from publishing anything about the tragedy, and to date no one has been prosecuted or fired for the death of the girls. The tragedy was reported in the media extensively in the West, but received very limited coverage in the Muslim world… There are no words to describe the morally depravity of this incident. The mutauwwa’un, acting under the influence of puritan theology as the school burned, were concerned with one thing and one thing only: that the girls’ hair and faces would not be seen in public.” [How can such “moral depravity’ burning young girls alive be

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named “puritan theology”? The impurity of these Islamists is staggering in my opinion.] Back to the book. “In the minds of the mutawwa’un, the horror and offense of that transgression was more compelling than the idea of fourteen-year-old girls being burned alive. At the time this incident occurred, many justifiably asked what type of theology – what type of law or insanity- would support such behavior. Others disgustedly waved it away as yet another manifestation of the barbaric religion of Islam.” PAGE 180. “In today’s world, many Muslims and non-Muslims believe that democracy and human rights are fundamentally at odds with the Islamic faith. In my view, the issue of whether Islam can support and bolster a democratic order that respects individual rights is by far the most important challenge confronting Muslims today. Without doubt there are many different models for successful democratic governance, and it would be deceptive to pretend that all human beings around the world agree on the specific rights that ought to be recognized as fundamental and universal for all human beings. However, the core set of issues confronting moderates and puritans alike is whether, as a matter of principle, people ought to have the collective right to choose or elect their government and to determine the set of laws that govern them. More specifically, the issue is whether devout Muslims can commit to a system that recognizes the sovereignty of human beings over their own affairs. Alternatively, are Muslims duty-bound to recognize that God is the sovereign and that God’s sovereignty precludes human beings from being free to conduct their own affairs as they see fit? IN SHORT, DO ISLAMIC THEOLOGY AND LAW AFFIRMATIVELY PROHIBIT MUSLIMS FROM BELIEVEING IN AND IMPLEMENTING A DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT? THE ISSUE OF HUMAN RIGHTS RAISES A SIMILAR SET OF PROBLEMS, AND IN FACT IN MANY WAYS THE CHALLENGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS INEXTRICABLY INTERTWINED WITHT THE CHALLENGE OF DEMOCRACY…” [Emphasis added.] James Matkin Discussion on Foreign Affairs The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists

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James Matkin • Sadly, while the topic of Professor Abou El Fadl's book, rescuing Islam from extremists, is vital, his analysis with hind sight seems deeply flawed. The good professor writes that he will ignore the differences between the two great Islamic denominations, Sunni and Shia, because in his typology extremism comes from the difference between the "puritans and the moderates" or literal versus figurative interpretations of the Koran and both denominations have these two contrasting world views. Yet the recent bloody wars in Iraq and Syria, and the rise of ISIS, prove the implacable and vicious schisms between Sunni and Shia are now the source of extremism poisoning Islam.

Professor Paul Valley writes this week in the Independent News:

"Sunni and Shia are locked in conflict all across the Shia Crescent. As each side steps up its activities, the other feels more threatened and hardens its response in turn. Sunni-Shia tensions are increasing across the world as a result. They are on the rise in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Egypt, and even in London as issues of identity, rights, interests and enfranchisement find sectarian expression. The tensions are deep-rooted in wider economic and geopolitical concerns. But the risk - given the long history of division and tension - is that predictions of a transnational civil war between Sunni and Shia could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. See http://www.independent.co.uk/n... The tragedy Valley explains is that these "jihadists have come from across the Islamic world but they are backed by Saudi cash."

News > World > Middle East

The vicious schism between Sunni

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and Shia has been poisoning Islam for 1,400 years - and it's getting worse

The war in Syria began much earlier than is generally recognized. The conflict actually began in the year 632 with the death of the Prophet Mohamed. The same is true of the violence, tension or oppression currently gripping the Muslim world from Iraq and Iran, though Egypt, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A single problem lies behind all that friction and hostility. On Tuesday, Britain's leading Muslim politician, the Foreign Office minister Baroness Warsi, obliquely addressed it in a speech she made in Oman, the Arab state at the south-east corner of the Arabian Peninsula strategically positioned at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. The religious tolerance of the Sultanate, she suggested, offered a model for the whole of the Islamic world. It certainly needs such an exemplar of openness and acceptance.

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What most of the crucibles of conflict in the Middle East have in common is that Sunni Muslims are on one side of the disagreement and Shia Muslims on the other. Oman is unusual because its Sunni and Shia residents are outnumbered by a third sect, the Ibadis, who constitute more than half the population. In many countries, the Sunni and the Shia are today head-to-head.

The rift between the two great Islamic denominations runs like a tectonic fault-line along what is known as the Shia Crescent, starting in Lebanon in the north and curving through Syria and Iraq to the Gulf and to Iran and further east.

A painting of the Battle of Karbala in 680AD, in present day Iraq, which is remembered by both Sunnis and Shias (Corbis) What makes Syria different is that there a Sunni majority is ruled by a Shia minority. The Alawites, the sect to which President Bashar al-Assad and

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much of his army officer elite belong, are Shia. That situation is the mirror opposite of Iraq under Saddam, where a Sunni strongman lorded it over a Shia majority - until the invasion of Iraq, when elections put the Shia in charge, insofar as anyone can be said to be running that chaotic country.

The division between the two factions is older and deeper even than the tensions between Protestants and Catholics, which bedeviled Europe for centuries. The two Christian denominations had a shared history for 1500 years. By contrast the rift between the two biggest Muslim factions goes right back to the beginning - and a row over who should succeed the Prophet Mohamed as leader of the emerging Islamic community when he died in the early 7th century.

In the last 10 years of his life Mohamed inflicted total defeat on the pagan tribes of Mecca and by doing so united the entire Arabian Peninsula. Around 100,000 people had submitted to the rule of Mohamed and of Allah. Tribal alliances in Arabia in those days usually disintegrated on the death of the leader, or after the short-term military objectives had been met and the spoils divided. Often succession would pass to the leader' s son. But Mohamed had no son, only a daughter. And his inheritance was spiritual as well as political.

The majority of his followers thought his closest associate, Abu Bakr, should take over. They became the Sunnis. But a minority thought the Prophet's closest relative, his son-in-law and nephew Ali, should succeed.

Shia is an abbreviation of Shiat Ali "the party of Ali". Intrigues and violence followed, with Mohamed's widow Aisha (who was also the daughter of Abu Bakr) leading troops against Ali. Eventually Ali was killed, as was his son Hussein, and persecution and martyrdom became ingrained in the Shia psyche. As the years passed rift hardened into schism. The seeds of civil war had been sown.

The two sides agreed on the Quran but had different views on hadith, the traditions recorded by Mon hadith, the traditions recorded by Mohamed's followers about what he had said and done in his life. Diverging traditions of ritual, law and practice soon emerged. A clerical hierarchy, topped by imams and ayatollahs, became crucial in Shi'ism. By contrast, Sunni Muslims felt no need of intermediaries in their relationship with God - an approach which has abetted the rise of extremist zealots like al-Qa'ida. The Sunnis became

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happy to depend upon the state, which their adherents mostly controlled.

The chief Shia religious festival became Ashura when devotees would beat themselves to commemorate the death of the Prophet's grandson Hussein at the Battle of Karbala in 680. Various Shia sub-sects formed, including the fanatical Assassins, the Alawites in Syria and the Ismailis, whose leader is the Aga Khan. Some mystical Sufi movements created a bridge between Sunni and Shia but hardline Sunnis regard the Shia practice of venerating saints and visiting shrines as heretical - which is why Sunni extremists bomb Shias on pilgrimage in places like Karbala in Iraq today.

READ MORE: SYRIA CONFLICT: ENEMIES CROSS THE FRONT LINES IN DAMASCUS. BUT WILL THE TRUCE HOLD?

Yet for much of the 1,400 years since the death of the Prophet the majority of Sunni and Shia Muslims have not routinely allowed their theological differences to create hostility. Some Sunnis included ritual denunciations of Ali in their prayers, but in many times and places the two sects have co-existed peacefully.

From time to time, however, violence has flared in which the Shia, in the main, have been brutally and even genocidally persecuted. In 1514 an Ottoman sultan ordered the massacre of 40,000 Shia. Mughal emperors in India between the 15th and 19th centuries routinely executed Shia scholars, burned their libraries and desecrated their sacred sites. Inter-communal violence has recurred in Pakistan.

There have been periods and places of concord. In 1959 the most influential centre of Sunni scholarship, al-Azhar University in Cairo, admitted Shia jurisprudence to its curriculum. In Azerbaijan, where the Shias are in the majority, there are mixed mosques where both sects pray together. But early in the 20th century the Saudi royal family made discrimination against the Shia official and destroyed most of the Shia holy places. With the rise there of the Sunni fundamentalism known as Wahhabism, severe restrictions have been placed on Shia practice and its leaders jailed. Some Saudi scholars brand Shi'ism as a heresy "worse than Christianity or Judaism".

The fanatics of al-Qa'ida have been nurtured in this Wahhabi ideology. Some of them consider the Shia to be not merely heretics but apostates - and the punishment for apostasy, they say, is death.

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Over the years outsiders have exploited the division. British colonialists in Iraq in the 1920s used an elite of Sunni army officers to suppress a Shia rebellion, paving the way for Saddam's Sunni minority rule, in which Shia clerics were regularly executed. The legacy has been that most of the 6,000 killings over the past year in Baghdad are Sunni on Shia and vice-versa. Now this ruthless sectarianism has spread to Syria.

Two major developments have triggered the escalation of tension between Sunni and Shia in recent years. The first was the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 when the rule of the pro-Western Shah was overthrown and replaced with a Shia theocracy with Ayatollah Khomeini at the head. Khomeini did his best to build good relations between Shia and Sunni inside Iran but other leaders, religious and secular, have since been more divisive. And Khomeini was from the outset adversarial to the Sunni aristocrats who led Saudi Arabia - calling them American lackeys as well as "unpopular and corrupt" dictators.

Division: Forces of Syria's Alawite (Shia) regime (Reuters)

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The Iranians and Saudis have been fighting a proxy war in the Middle East ever since.

Today in Iran, though Christian churches are tolerated, the million Sunnis in Tehran have no mosque of their own. There are no Sunnis in top government. Sunni businessmen have difficulty getting import and export licences. Huge numbers of ordinary Sunnis are unemployed. The situation in Saudi Arabia is the exact reverse, with Shia on the receiving end of the discrimination.

From time to time there are attempts to insist that the tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia are not religious. In 2007 King Abdullah of the House of Saud met the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and, with public hugs, spoke of a thaw in relations between the two regional powers - and condemned those who were trying to fuel the fire of strife between Sunni and Shia.

But it changed nothing in the realpolitik. Each oil-producing giant sees the other as a huge obstacle to its national interests. Geopolitics is the reality but religious vision is the tribal badge it wears.

The invasion of Iraq instigated by George Bush and Tony Blair in 2003 was the second big factor in the deterioration of Sunni-Shia relations. Saddam Hussein led a Sunni elite which governed Iraq's Shia majority with a reign of state terror. The US had backed Saddam in Iraq's war with Iran throughout the 1980s, in which half a million troops died.

But after 9/11 the US changed its mind about Saddam, overthrew him and brought democracy to Iraq. The resulting election placed in power leaders from the Shia majority who have excluded the Sunni minority - who have responded with the car bombs which are killing thousands in Baghdad and elsewhere. Al-Qa'ida jihadists have flooded into the country to join Sunni terrorists in attacking the Shia government. And now the polarised sectarian conflict has spilled over into Syria.

When the Arab Spring reached Syria in 2011 it began as a protest against the corruption, nepotism and human rights abuses of the Assad government. But within two years the armed uprising against the regime was transformed.

Rebels motivated by political indignation, who received limited backing

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from Western governments, slowly became outnumbered by rebel groups with extreme Islamist motivation fighting to create what they call the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

These jihadists have come from across the Islamic world but they are backed by Saudi cash. More recently Shia militants from the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah have arrived to support the Alawite-led army of the Assad regime. Full-blown civil war is the result.

What all this means is that Sunni and Shia are locked in conflict all across the Shia Crescent. As each side steps up its activities, the other feels more threatened and hardens its response in turn.

Sunni-Shia tensions are increasing across the world as a result. They are on the rise in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Egypt, and even in London as issues of identity, rights, interests and enfranchisement find sectarian expression.

The tensions are deep-rooted in wider economic and geopolitical concerns. But the risk - given the long history of division and tension - is that predictions of a transnational civil war between Sunni and Shia could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-vicious-schism-between-sunni-and-shia-has-been-poisoning-islam-for-1400-years--and-its-getting-worse-9139525.html

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Paul Vallely Paul Vallely is visiting professor in Public Ethics at the University of Chester and a senior research fellow at the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester. He writes on ethical, political and cultural issues. He has a fortnightly column in the Independent on Sunday and also writes for the New York Times and the Church Times. His latest book is Pope Francis – Untying the Knots. He was co-author of the report of the Commission for Africa and has chaired several development charities.

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How else would one depict conflict between Sunnis and Shias? 114 comments Rod Liddle 31 January 2014 18:42

Slavery in Islam

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THE

ECONOMIST

To have and to hold Jihadists boast of selling captive women as concubines Oct 18th 2014 | CAIRO | From the print edition

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Doing it by the book THE holy book is clear about what to do when you capture a city: “Put to the sword all the men in it”. As for the women and children, “You may take these as plunder for yourselves.” This is pretty much the advice that the fighters of Islamic State (IS) seem to have followed in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq, peopled largely by members of the Yazidi faith, that the jihadists seized last month. Reports by the UN and independent human-rights groups suggest that the invaders executed hundreds of Yazidi men and kidnapped as many as 2,000 women and children.

Any doubt as to the fate of these captives was dispelled by the latest issue of IS’s glossy English-language online magazine, Dabiq. An article titled “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour”

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details religious justifications for reintroducing a practice that ended in all but a few Muslim countries more than a century ago. It claims not only that the Koran, the sayings of the prophet and traditional Islamic law all endorse the enslavement of infidel women captured in wartime, but that the abandonment of this right has caused sin to spread; men are easily tempted to debauchery when denied this “legal” alternative to marriage.

In this section Tough, but bowing Hard choices To have and to hold The sword unsheathed A mount of troubles Shaking the kaleidoscope Reprints Related topics Government and politics War and conflict Islam Better yet, the article grimly enthuses, the prophet himself foretold that one of the signs of the Hour—the end of the world—was when “the slave girl gives birth to her master.” This obviously means that concubines are needed to breed soldiers for jihad. Therefore, explains the writer, the victorious warriors of Sinjar divided the Yazidi women and children among themselves, “after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority as khums”, ie, the share of booty surrendered to early Muslim commanders.

The fastidious theologians of IS are right in some respects. Technically speaking, the syncretic Yazidi faith may be regarded by Islam as heathen, denying its adherents the protections that Christians and Jews—fellow “people of the book”—should enjoy. And it is true, too, that Islamic scripture, although vague in many matters, is specific about slavery, including such questions as whether sex is permitted. In recent times Muslim rebels in Sudan as well as in Nigeria have used such arcane justifications to excuse enforced concubinage.

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Yet the fact is that, like members of most faiths, the vast majority of Muslims have pragmatic concerns about hyper-literal interpretations. Mainstream Muslim clerics, citing competing verses and traditions that praise the freeing of slaves as a virtuous act, often describe Islam’s abandonment of slavery as a sign of its adaptability to modern times. Besides, imagine if Christians and Jews still followed the letter of the Bible, which is, incidentally, the source of the passage at the top of this article. The verse (Deuteronomy 20:10-20) also prescribes that in case of capturing a city from the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites or Jebusites, the victors should “utterly destroy them” and “save alive nothing that breatheth”.

From the print edition: Middle East and Africa

HUFFINGTON POST Tahir Gora CEO Canadian Thinkers' Forum

Canadian Muslims Caught up in Two Extremes Posted: 11/26/2014 12:42 pm EST Updated: 11/26/2014 12:59 pm EST

I used to hear some moderate Muslims say that "our faith is hijacked by extremists."

Later on those moderates hijacked whatever they could do.

This reminds me of a press release by a small so-called moderate Muslim group that boycotted a conference arranged by the Coalition of Progressive Canadian Muslim Organizations

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(CPCMO).

The conference was meant to speak to Canadian community leaders to draw strategy lines in terms of combating ISIL ideology and Jihadi recruitment in Canada.

The conference was chaired by Minister Jason Kenney.

Panelists were from all diverse backgrounds such as Rev. Majed El Shafie, President & Founder One Free World International, Sayed Nabil Abbas from Centre Islamique Libanais Montreal, Lal Khan Malik, National President Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at Canada, Kamran Bokhari, Renowned Author and Scholar, Tom Quiggin, Security Expert and author of a landmark report 'Presence of Muslim Brotherhood in Canada, a representative from Yezidi Human Rights Organization International, Sartip Kakaee Chairman Kurdish House, Dr. Zroaster Solomon, Kurdish Centre, Imam Muhammad Robert Heft, Founder and Imam Paradise4E and Martin Sampson, communication director The Centre for Israel Jewish Affairs.

Minister Kenney congratulated President CPCMO, Salma Siddiqui and moderator Ernest Tannis on gathering community leaders of all stakeholders who are sufferer in the hands of ISIL, whether be Shia, Sunni, Ahmadi, Yezidi, Kakaee or Kurdish.

But self-claimed moderate Muslim organization known as The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow boycotted the conference by issuing a statement.

A part of that statement reads: "The Board of directors of MFT decided not to take part in the above conference since two of the panelists invited are Islamists known for promoting Sharia law in Canada."

The organization didn't identify the names of those panelists but according to the website pointdebasculecanada website, Imam Robert Heft and Sayed Nabil Abbas' names stand out on the

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roaster of speakers.

The CPCMO that organized the conference never supports Sharia Law either but believes in engaging representatives of those Shia and Sunni camps that are willing to denounce ISIL ideology and Jihadi recruitment in Canada.

The CPCMO didn't behave like a dictatorial body that would show no dialogue and communication willingness in terms of engaging Canadian Muslim communities at large.

The coalition wanted to show the willingness for dialogue with all those hard core traditional Islamic groups over sensitive issues such as the burka, radicalization, one law for all etc.

Only dialogue and communication with each other can save Canada from potential dangers.

Canadian Muslims are already caught up in two extremes. One extreme consists of literal Islamic fundamentalists and the other consists of self-claimed anti-Islamist individuals.

Both extreme groups further their conspiracy theories and are playing their fear cards in order to further their divisive agenda and partisan politics.

Our Canadian Government on the other hand is doing her best to fill the bridges.

That's the reason Minister Kenney chaired CPCMO Conference and Canada's Office of Religious Freedom held a forum in which they invited Shia, Sunni, Ahmaddi and secular Muslims in order to further a dialogue on Islam and religious freedom.

Unfortunately, some individuals on both sides believe in avdictatorial mindset and don't believe in exercising freedom of thought.

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James Grant Matkin The conference boycott because of Sunni - Shia conflict within Islam is a disheartening clue to what lies ahead with the current ISIS [Sunni backed] war. The history of the divide is vicious at times and goes back 1400 years. The division according to experts has the potential to explode into a full civil war through out the middle east. According to British Ethics professor, Paul Vallely, "The division between the two factions is older and deeper even than the tensions between Protestants and Catholics, which bedeviled Europe for centuries… "The two sides agreed on the Quran but had different views on hadith, the traditions recorded by Mon hadith, the traditions recorded by Mohamed's followers about what he had said and done in his life… Yet for much of the 1,400 years since the death of the Prophet the majority of Sunni and Shia Muslims have not routinely allowed their theological differences to create hostility. From time to time, however, violence has flared in which the Shia, in the main, have been brutally and even genocidally persecuted. In 1514 an Ottoman sultan ordered the massacre of 40,000 Shia... The fanatics of al-Qa'ida have been nurtured in this Wahhabi ideology. Some of them consider the Shia to be not merely heretics but apostates - and the punishment for apostasy, they say, is death. Two major developments have triggered the escalation of tension between Sunni and Shia in recent years. The first was the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 when the rule of the pro-Western Shah was overthrown and replaced with a Shia theocracy with Ayatollah Khomeini at the head." In the same vein the genesis of ISIS according to a recent discussion at Harvard - “Where they come from is Iraq. They come out of Sunni disenchantment with the government in Baghdad." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-vicious-schism-between-sunni-and-shia-has-been-poisoning-islam-for-1400-years--and-its-getting-worse-9139525.html

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The recent sharp drop in the price of oil has roots in the ongoing schism between Sunni and Shia as explained by the WSJ here.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WORLD NEWS

Analysis: Oil-Price Drop Adds New Element to Middle East Tensions Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Allies Can Stomach Low Prices Far Better Than Iran Can

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ENLARGE Iran Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh pushed OPEC to cut targets. ASSOCIATED PRESS By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV Dec. 2, 2014 5:29 p.m. ET 16 COMMENTS

In a Middle East torn apart by the struggle between the Saudi-led Sunni conservative bloc and a rival alliance led by its Shiite nemesis Iran, the sudden rout in oil prices has just added a new ingredient to the volatile mix.

The decline that followed Thursday’s decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel not to cut production hit all of the Middle East’s oil powers. While merely a nuisance for some, for others it is a harbinger of possible economic catastrophe.

Which OPEC Members Are Breaking Even?

ENLARGE Saudi Arabia and its fellow Gulf monarchies—Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar—sit on giant rainy-day funds and can comfortably weather a few years of cheap oil, provided that prices stabilize not too far from current levels. Saudi strategic allies Egypt and Pakistan would likely benefit, as cheaper oil spurs their economies.

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But for Iran, its economy already buffeted by international sanctions as the nuclear issue remains unresolved; the recent oil rout represents real pain that makes its regional ambitions much costlier.

“It seems that OPEC’s Arab members do not mind the drop in the oil price—they see it part of the pressure exerted on Iran, which is involved in a cold war in the region, and in several conflicts in the area,” said Riad Kahwaji, chief executive of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai. “If it wasn’t deliberate, they do not mind.”

RELATED

Iraq and Kurdistan Agree on Oil Deal Oil Prices Resume Skid as Supplies Weigh on Market Saudi Arabia, the largest producer within OPEC, was the main proponent of leaving production targets untouched, arguing that a reduction would be futile in raising prices, since any supply shortfall would be quickly made up by oil produced in OPEC nonmembers, such as the U.S. Iran, which is jostling with Saudi Arabia’s allies in theaters from Yemen and Bahrain to Syria and Lebanon, pushed for the cut and criticized OPEC’s decision.

To what extent this tilt in the region’s balance of financial power will lead to policy changes is an open question. The Middle East isn’t a part of the world where foreign-policy decisions are dictated by enlightened economic self-interest. Lower oil prices won’t necessarily alter the behavior of regimes that perceive their very survival to be at stake.

A case in point is Iran’s support for the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, which is fighting against Islamic State and more moderate

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Sunni rebels backed by the West and the Gulf monarchies. That support continued unabated in 2011 and 2012, even as Iran’s economy tanked under the impact of international sanctions imposed at the time. Other Iranian clients in the region—such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon—do not actually require large cash infusions from Tehran.

“We are locked in a dynamic that is not necessarily dictated by economics, but is mostly dictated by geopolitics,” said Ali Vaez, Iran expert at the International Crisis Group think tank. “The principle that Iran is not going to allow its most important ally in the Arab world to collapse and create a circle of Sunni extremism in the middle of Lebanon and Iraq is a principle that is independent of the economic situation.”

‘It seems that OPEC’s Arab members do not mind the drop in the oil price—they see it part of the pressure exerted on Iran.’ —Riad Kahwaji, chief executive of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis Somewhat alleviating the pressure on the Assad regime, Islamic State—which smuggles out oil from the fields it controls, often with the connivance of other rebels—is also going to see its income shrink. “Oil is just part of their revenues, but it is still part of their revenues,” said Andreas Krieg, an expert at King’s College London. “It would be even more difficult for them to sell oil to the Turks or the Kurds because, at those prices, they would be less willing to take the risk.”

Across the border in Iraq, Islamic State’s other main foe, the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, is also dependent on oil for most of its revenues. But even when oil was trading high, Iraq’s

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army—weakened by endemic graft and low morale—collapsed in Mosul. Oil fluctuations won’t make much of an immediate difference.

“Iraq is in a mess, and it doesn’t matter whether they make less or more money because it is so infested with corruption,” said Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi political analyst and general manager of the newly established Al Arab News regional TV channel.

What cheap oil will do, however, is make it more palatable for countries across the region to cut costly fuel subsidies—and make life easier for those countries that have already done so. Fuel subsidies eat up a major chunk of the government budget in countries from Morocco to Jordan, and notably in Iran.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi has just pushed through a series of such unpopular cuts—steps no previous Egyptian government dared to make—and is planning to do more. Cheaper oil makes those cuts politically less risky, bolstering Mr. Sisi just as he confronts an Islamist opposition that could have capitalized on socioeconomic unrest. “Egypt is a massive winner,” says former hedge-fund manager Emad Mostaque, a strategist at Ecstrat consultancy in London.

And in Pakistan, where Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif moved to cut fuel subsidies last year, cheaper oil is already translating into lower prices at the pump. That is giving Mr. Sharif, who lived in Saudi exile after being ousted in a 1999 coup, a much-needed boost just as opposition politician Imran Khan is launching a new series of rallies that aim to unseat the government.

“It is a relief for Pakistan,” said Sakib Sherani, a former government economic adviser who runs the Macro Economic Insights think tank in Islamabad. “And politically, it is a big benefit to the government.”

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Police storm Sydney cafe to end hostage siege, reports say 2 dead BY LINCOLN FEAST AND COLIN PACKHAM SYDNEY Mon Dec 15, 2014 11:14pm IST

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1 OF 2. A police officer runs across Martin Place near Lindt cafe, where hostages are being held, in central Sydney December 15, 2014. CREDIT: REUTERS/DAVID GRAY (Reuters) - Heavily armed Australian police stormed a Sydney cafe on Tuesday to free several hostages being held there at gunpoint, in a dramatic end to a standoff that had dragged on for more than 16 hours.

Media said two people, including the gunman, had been killed. New South Wales police declined to comment on the reports, and it was not clear whether the fatalities occurred during the rescue operation itself.

Heavy gunfire and blasts from stun grenades filled the air shortly after 2 a.m. local time (1500 GMT on Monday).

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Moments earlier at least six people believed to have been held captive managed to flee the scene after several loud bangs were heard coming from the cafe.

Medics tried to resuscitate at least one person after the raid and took away several injured people on stretchers, said a Reuters witness at the scene in downtown Sydney. Bomb squad members moved in, searching for explosives.

The operation began shortly after a police source named the gunman as Man Haron Monis, an Iranian refugee and self-styled sheikh facing multiple charges of sexual assault as well as being an accessory to murder.

He was also found guilty in 2012 of sending offensive and threatening letters to families of eight Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, as a protest against Australia's involvement in the conflict, according to local media reports.

Although he was known to the authorities, security experts said preventing attacks by people acting alone could be difficult.

"Today's crisis throws into sharp relief the dangers of lone wolf terrorism," said Cornell University law professor Jens David Ohlin, speaking in New York.

"There are two areas of concern. The first is ISIS (Islamic State) fighters with foreign passports who return to their home countries to commit acts of terrorism.

"The second is ISIS sympathizers radicalised on the internet who take it upon themselves to commit terrorist attacks to fulfil their radical ideology.

"We are entering a new phase of terrorism that is far more dangerous, and more difficult to defeat, than al Qaeda ever was."

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Police said they would brief the media at 5 a.m.

ISLAMIC FLAG

During the siege, hostages had been forced to display an Islamic flag, igniting fears of a jihadist attack.

Australia, a staunch ally of the United States and its escalating action against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, is on high alert for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East.

News footage showed hostages holding up a black and white flag displaying the Shahada - a testament to the faith of Muslims. The flag has been popular among Sunni Islamist militant groups such as Islamic State and al Qaeda.

At least five hostages were released or escaped on Monday, with terrified cafe workers and customers running into the arms of paramilitary police.

A further 15 or so hostages were understood to have been holed up inside the cafe.

The incident forced the evacuation of nearby buildings and sent shockwaves around a country where many people were turning their attention to the Christmas holiday following earlier security scares.

In September, anti-terrorism police said they had thwarted an imminent threat to behead a random member of the public and days later, a teenager in the city of Melbourne was shot dead after attacking two anti-terrorism officers with a knife.

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The siege cafe is in Martin Place, a pedestrian strip popular with workers on a lunch break, which was revealed as a potential location for the thwarted beheading.

In the biggest security operation in Sydney since a bombing at the Hilton Hotel killed two people in 1978, major banks closed their offices in the central business district and people were told to avoid the area.

Muslim leaders urged calm. The Australian National Imams Council condemned "this criminal act unequivocally" in a joint statement with the Grand Mufti of Australia.

Concerns about an attack in Australia by Islamists have been growing for more than a year, with the security agency raising its national terrorism public alert to "high" in September.