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Primers Prototype A
The Sunni-Shiite Split, Part 3: Divided Islam in the Modern Context
Kamran Bokhari, director of STRATFOR’s Middle East analysis, discusses Sunni
Muslim views of the Middle East – through the prism of past empires and fears of a
newly strengthened Iran. (Audio file, 3 min. 54 sec.)
KAMRAN BOKHARI:
The bulk of the Islamic world adheres to Sunni Islam, mainstream orthodox Islam. There
are internal divisions within Sunni Islam, but for the most part the Islamic world adheres
to a Sunni view of religion, politics, society, and so on and so forth.
There are very few countries where you have Shia majority. It’s because of the basic
demographic divide where the Shia are a minority within the overall Islamic world. You
see that manifested because Iran is the one state in the wider Islamic world that is the
center of Shia political Islam, that is the center of Shia political power. Iran is also
distinguished on the basis of ethnicity – Iran is not Arab, Iran is Persian in terms of
ethnicity, language, Persia has its own cultural dynamics and they are very different from
the wider Arab world.
Therefore not only do we have a sectarian divide, we also have an ethnic divide. In other
words, the modern nation-state of Iran is a peculiar entity in its environment, which is
mostly Arab and predominantly Sunni in religious terms.
The View from the Arab World
The Arab world is basically the countries in the Middle East where the majority of people
are Arabs by ethnicity. These countries include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the North African
countries extending all the way to Morocco, the Levant -- meaning Syria and Lebanon -the Persian Gulf states, Yemen, you could even include Sudan, at least the northern part
of it, some would argue that Somalia also has an Arab flavor to it. That is your Sunni
Arab world in that wider Middle East.
Political Divides Through History
In order to understand what is happening right now, we have to understand a bit of the
history, the historical sectarian divide in the region.
The Arabs for the longest time did not enjoy political power in their areas because they
were part of the Ottoman Empire, which was a Turkish empire -- of course fellow Sunnis,
but nonetheless they were not Arabs. At that point in time, at the height of the Ottoman
Empire, that was representing the Sunni Islamic world, you had the Safavid empire in
Persia, and the Safavid–Ottoman rivalry is well known. Their main battleground was
Mesopotamia, which we call Iraq. Iraq, even though it had a substantial Shia population,
it was taken over by the Ottomans in the mid-16th century. That is when Iran last ruled
Iraq.
Fast-forwarding to 2003 and the overthrow of modern Iraq by US forces, that has created
the conditions in which Iran has the opportunity to reclaim its sphere of influence in Iraq
and use Iraq as a launch pad to project power into the wider Middle East. That is what is
at the heart of the problem. This is very terrifying for the Arab states, who, despite their
wealth and alliance with the West, are inherently very weak, and they are no match for
the Iranian military.
There is a fear within the region of an Iranian-Shiite emerging threat that will in worstcase scenario, gobble up good chunks of the Sunni Arab world. This is the geopolitical
dilemma for the Arabs: after many centuries they are looking at the Persians, who are
Shia, asserting themselves and becoming empowered -- because of the fall of the Baathist
state, which served as a bulwark against Iranian expansionism.
(End Part 3 - 11:09.5 in original recording)