Religion and Politics

ISIS & the Shia Revival in Iraq

In The New York Review of Books, Nicole Pelham details the Shia-Sunni tensions that are resurfacing in Iraq as ISIS advances through the nation’s northern territory. Shortly after the capture of Mosul, “Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite spiritual leader based in Iraq’s Shia shrine city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, issued a call for jihad against ISIS and its Sunni allies,” Pelham writes. Sunnis are equally distrustful of Iraq’s Shia-dominated government, having “come to regret promises of liberation since the Americans first marched into Iraq.”

Read at The New York Review of Books

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