April 2, 2008
What Every American Should Know About the Middle East
Most in the United States don’t know much about the Middle East or the people that live there. This lack of knowledge hurts our ability to understand world events and, consequently, our ability to hold intelligent opinions about those events.
For example, frighteningly few know the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and most think the words “Arab” and “Muslim” are pretty much interchangeable. They aren’t. So here’s a very brief primer aimed at raising the level of knowledge about the region to an absolute minimum.
comments
Leave a Reply
Why would an American know much about Arabs when most couldn’t place Europe on a world map!
Everytime I’m in America and I get asked, Where you from?
“Scotland”
Ehhh…
“UK”
Ehhh…
“Europe”
Ahh over there! Where did you park your truck?
Europe is the one just west of Africa, right?
(I actually heard a person say “Africa? Oh yeah, that’s a big country.” once.)
When in doubt, ask a Shia
. The Shias do not believe in the Imammate/Caliphate as being the property of the family of Muhammad, rather they believe that it should go to the right person for the job just like the Sunnis. The difference at that time was who the right person is. For Shias it happened to be Ali, the second cousin of Muhammad, for Sunnis it was Abu Bakr.
Saying that it was a political difference that some how morphed into a religious difference is again wrong. In Islam, politics is part of religion. It is a social religion and therefore who you choose to follow as your leader is a religious decision. Sunnis chose to follow Abu Bakr and ended up spreading Islam through aggression. Shias chose to follow Ali and ended up spreading Islam through personal examples of piety and good will. All the wars fought by Muhammad were defensive and aggressive wars fought by Muslims (mostly for land grabbing under the pretext of religion) were fought under Abu Bakr and his predecessor.
If the US can end up with a leader who lost the popular vote and who would lead us into an unpopular war that nobody wanted in this day and age, then so can the young nation of Islam over 14 hundred years ago.
Abbas: Thank you for this insightful comment. This seems to be a good argument for separation of church and state, which is something that a number of Christians here in the U.S. don’t seem to appreciate and are actively trying to undermine. The wisdom of this country’s founders was marked by an understanding of the interminable nature of religious warfare. They understood that even if a single religion gains a total dominion, minor difference within that context will still loom large. The only way to end this otherwise endless cycle is to respect difference and, instead of trying to legislate morality or religious compliance, to build institutions that protect the right to that difference. And these institutions have to be strong, since the urge to assert the power of a single view of truth never goes away–it is built into human nature. Much of the religious turmoil we see today demonstrates just how easy it is for new generations to forget what has been learned, only to discover it all again the hard way.