Religion and Politics

Power Struggles in Middle East Exploit Islam’s Ancient Sectarian Rift

In The New York Times, David D. Kirkpatrick reports on political leaders’ use of existing Sunni-Shiite divides in the Middle East to protect their own interests. While the sectarian tensions are centuries old, the current violence in the region is the result of deliberate inflaming of those tensions for political gain rather than the organic bubbling over of repressed divides. According to Vali Nasr, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, “Great powers gravitate to clients they can support.”

Read at The New York Times

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