I've just come across a report in al-Masryoun, an Egyptian paper with which I'm not familiar, about clashes between Sunni and Shia at the Cairo Book Festival. The report claims that a Shia book vendor got into a scuffle over his supposedly offensive behavior which had to be broken up by the security forces. It then links it back to Sunni Muslim anger over "hundreds of thousands" of pamphlets urging Sunnis to become Shia and advertising a forum dedicated to "Shia-izing Egypt", along with the publication of numerous Shia books attacking the Sunnis, and Qaradawi's warnings about the dissemination of Shia books among Sunnis.
One of the alleged pamphlets as reproduced in al-Masriyoun, with the URL airbrushed out
In a report on Al-Arabiya's website yesterday, the Shia publisher denied producing anti-Sunni materials or materials calling for Sunnis to convert to Shi'ism, while the other Shia at the center of the conflict said that he had been coming to the Book Festival for many years and that all of his books had been approved by al-Azhar. The Shia-ization of Egypt forum does appear to exist, though it's hard to judge who actually created it or why. But whatever the truth, enough there for the tabloids to leap on it and for more rumors and buzz to spread... and the beat goes on.
Mark, if you really want to analyze the roots of the Sunni-Shiite conflict, you must look even deeper than the Sunni regimes who are using this issue to their advantage.
For instance, look at this video, presumably made by a radical American neoconservative:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FJXW7mWPmkc
I think that explains a lot. Both Sunnis and hard-core neoconservatives see the form of religion that a huge group of Shiites practice as illegitimate. And there is obviously bound to be much more support for the neoconservatives among actual soldiers in Iraq who agree with their ideals.
Posted by: Mike | February 03, 2007 at 11:19 PM