Welcome To The House Of Peace

As usual the world of Islam is in conflict, and even more as usual, its as much with itself as the rest of us. 

The Sunnis and the Shia's (the two major strands of the 7th century Islamic schism), despise each other and will rarely stand on the same side of any argument within Islam, although more so when it involves non-believers.

Of Course It Always Someone Else's Fault.

Of course in recent centuries they have not had to consider these issues much, as the mainstream of both factions (Iran and the Arabs), have been under colonial rule by British, French and the Ottoman Turks for hundreds of years until the 20th Century.

But those controlling hands have been removed for five decades or more, and the false image of a monolithic Islam has started to break up again. In recent decades, there have been some efforts to make some moves to normalise relations within the Muslim world, especially between Shia Iran and hard-line Sunni Saudi Arabia.

However the stresses created by the failures of the so called 'Arab Spring' have caused any tentative détente to collapse, and now there is more bitterness being generated than ever before. The war in Syria has proved to be the final breaking point ..... Iran, via its Hezbollah militants has supported President Assads regime, while the Saudis have supported the insurgents (even flirting with IS until the Americans warned them off). Diplomatic relations have been broken and now insults are being traded.

Firstly, on the anniversary of the stampede, in Mina, Saudi Arabia, during the 2015 Hajj, which killed at least 2,426 people, including 464 Iranians (according to an unofficial count) the Ayatollah Khamenei accused Saudis of "murdering" pilgrims caught up in a stampede at last year's Hajj.

"The heartless and murderous Saudis locked up the injured with the dead in containers - instead of providing medical treatment and helping them or at least quenching their thirst. They murdered them. The world of Islam, including Muslim governments and peoples, must familiarize themselves with the Saudi rulers and correctly understand their blasphemous, faithless, dependent and materialistic nature. They must not let those rulers escape responsibility for the crimes they have caused throughout the world of Islam."

When asked to respond Saudi Arabia's top cleric Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh, the grand mufti, said accusations were "not surprising", as "We must understand these are not Muslims. They are the son of the Magi and their hostility towards Muslims is an old one, especially with the People of the Tradition [Sunnis]." .... the 'Magi' in this context means the Persians, who once followed the Zoroastrianism religion, and that the Arab conquest had to reach an accommodation with in order to conquer Persia for Islam. Sunni hard-liners (are there any other types?) describe Shias as "rejectionists" who have strayed from the one true faith.

Welcome To The House Of War

Ironically (although of course they don't do irony so don't notice), both sets of Muslims call the non Islamic world 'the house of war', and the Islamic world 'the house of peace' .... it would be funny if it wasn't happening here as well.