Exactly, I know that the leaders of the Arab Sunni monarchies and plutocracies are this bad and that bad, but who said that such peoples welcome the Iranian Revolution as an obvious alternative? (the Iranian revolutionaries seem to be living a mirror image of the Neo-Con dream, that we will accept them with flowers in the streets, while the truth is, the best they can hope to get out of this chaos is al-Qaeda or ISIS, et al., to which the grudging admission has to be made that the Al-Saud, Al-Maktum and so forth are better alternatives for Iran).
He knows that people are angry at him for his blunt support of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s presidency.
Then why did Mr. Khamenei equate demonstrations with disobeying the Hidden Imam? It basically made Ahmadinejad's second election results a non-disobey-able divine decree in Shia belief, and I have not seen any formal "apology" from Khamenei or his minions (let us not get into the farce of how this plays out in terms of their demands for individual rights for their brethren in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, etc.).
Please spare me your high-minded rhetoric Mr. Saf: I have also found most, if not all Shias, disgusted at any role for Sunnis in the Muslim world, and in fact disgusted at our very existence.
So don't worry, the wars will go on and on as long as the Shias also see "Wahabis" as vermin and rats.
Let us cut to the truth of the matter: Is there any one from the Shia elements who does not think the Sunnis "should be punished" for some thing or the other?
We need this answer first, because no Sunni will accept to live with a group whose only thought is revenge.
Shias should get over this and understand what will happen: If they come to slaughter Sunnis, they should not expect flowers in return, either from any Sunni - their rantings about ISIS being a terrorist organization are true, but then again, do Shias consider Sunnis as anything other than terrorists?
To top it off, the comment about killing Sunnis in Iraq so that Sunnis do not go to Tehran is so George W-Esque that it is sad.
Even the geography curriculum discusses the region from an Islamic perspective. For example, kids are taught that the “Zionists” have occupied Palestine illegally, and the Islamic umma one day must re-establish Muslim control over Jerusalem, the “Third Qibla” of Islam, to which Muslims turn to pray after Mecca and Medina. “Israel,” for example, does not appear on maps of the Arab world in Saudi geography textbooks.
++++++++
This is also taught in every Arab country, including Syria and other countries the West has problems with. Both 'allies' like Egypt or Saudi Arabia and 'enemies' of the West like Iran or Syria are on the same page here. Whatever the West may feel about it, it is basically impossible for any changes to occur here, just like Israel being a 'Democratic Jewish state' is the vision of the Zionists, regardless of how oxymoronic this idea is in the present and/or future.
++++++++
Oftentimes, Shia Muslims are considered “apostates,” or “rejectionists,” and could be subject to discrimination and even death. The Shia in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are excluded from key government, defence, and national security positions.
+++++++++++
I guess after what we are seeing that has happened in Iraq with the Sunnis there, there will be even less chance of any key positions being given to them in overwhelmingly Sunni-majority or Sunni-ruled countries, since the Sunnis have learned that the 'law of the jungle' applies in their dealings with Shias. For better or for worse, this is how we see it, and events in Iraq have only validated this view.
Besides, Shias in Shia-majority lands many foul things about us, which is exactly why what we see in Iraq happening with broader Iranian and Shia support is happening (because there is broad lay support for the dehumanization and vilification of Sunnis, it is not a one-way street).
Even though I am definitely no supporter of Saddam, but strictly speaking about US interests in the Middle East, these would have been much better served if sanctions had not been imposed on Saddam's Iraq. Now it is only a case of picking up the pieces after the glass has shattered. Goes to show that even in the field of high-level international politics, emotions and gung-ho revenge get in the way of level-headed interests.
What I feel is that the concept of nation-statehood as drawn up about a century or more ago in the Middle East was incorrect to begin with. The problem is that most people on the ground can only envision a "Sunni Iraq" or a "Shia Iraq", etc. Compromise is definitely out of the question, and it is not only a matter of politicians, but more and more of people on the ground.
What baffles people like me is how the portrayal of the protagonists change as per the situation: Yesterday, this group were "sectarian Shia militias", but during the lifting of the siege of Ameril they became "Shia volunteers" in the news, even though it is obvious that their mentality, allegiances, and prejudices were the same before as they are now.
As a Sunni I would have to say that: Even though the above two points may be the same, yet our (Sunni) belief that their "12 Imams" are not at the level of absolute inerrancy in every matter does lead to many, many ramifications, some of them small, some of them big.
With regards to the Jewish-Christian comparison, I still think it is appropriate analogy in a general sense, since both Jews and Christians dispute as to who is the "true Israel" and this has historically had many ramifications; in here, we and the Shias dispute as to who belongs to the "true Islam" versus "fake Islam", and as we can see there is always potential for violence in here as well.
I do not know why the split between Sunnis and Shias is portrayed as analogous to that between Catholics and Protestants. To me at least, it seems to be more akin to the disagreements between Jews and Samaritans, or between Jews and Christians - the origin is taken right to the very early period of the foundation of the religion, and one side or the other, or both, demonize the other. Many a times the demonization is latent, but it is extremely easy for passions to be whipped up, since the basis is basic foundational disagreements that can never be resolved amicably.
One point about Sunni dissatisfaction with the Maliki government: As a Sunni, the main problem I have with the Shia groups is that they see political participation as a series of "turns": Sunnis had their turns with the Caliphate, the Ottomans, and Saddam but now it is the Shias' turn in Iraq. Not only Maliki, but Shias at large in Iraq and elsewhere are simply not interested in democracy or power-sharing at all. Whether one thinks this right or wrong is something else, but this is the common Shia mentality with regards to what the "future" holds.
It is very transparent that the Army was and has always been in charge for decades and I do not know how anyone thought that Mursi actually had true power.
These 'mirages of democracy' are akin to a parent letting their children use small amounts of cash [like 5 or 10 dollars] but never ever letting them have any access to the "real money".
There are other links discussing this issue, but this can be a start. In any case, orthodox Islamic theologians do not necessarily try to tie the Islamic laws to any rational discussion, because for any given time and place, there will be those, both men and women, who will disagree with their minds about aspects of Islamic law.
Then who gets to decide what is the situation with a child if not the parents? It sounds like the view of a totalitarian regime, where children are forcibly taken out of the parents' arms because Uncle Sam or Uncle Mao know best.
Perhaps the parents do not want education for their children, and are happy to themselves and their children to be menial workers for the rest of their lives; perhaps they are happy thinking that they will not reach their 50th birthday due to the economically low status they are in. Even today, only about half of the world is functionally literate, and I do not see any military action being taken to impose functional literacy everywhere.
The economic angle of secular education is not enough to impose it on everyone, especially when the correlation is not always there. There are so many studies which show that across the globe, people do not always read and comprehend things on a level commensurate to the their formal grade. In our world today, many of not most of us are forced to take on jobs unrelated with what we did in University
This is even less so when such huge loss of life and property are incurred in the process. If a tenth of the population is killed, a fourth is forced to flee, and a lot of the infrastructure flattened so that all the uneducated women can get education, by what metrics did such an operation become a success? (You cannot teach dead people to become literate, and refugees have had their whole lives disrupted, I do not see education being one of their goals).
As a Muslim, I have to say it is deplorable that the Soviet-puppet regime of the 1980's is being paraded as one of the high points for anything in Afghanistan.
As for the Taliban, at least they are a group based on the interpretation of Islam adhered to within Afghanistan itself for decades; besides, tens of millions of Muslim families will never consider letting their post-pubescent women wander outside the house for any reason whatsoever, whether they are under the Taliban, the US, the Communists, or anybody else. I know this sounds stupefying for urban Westerners, but this is the reality in much of the world, and it is not something negotiable for millions of Muslims.
That even an ostensibly "enlightened liberal site" is pushing the Soviet era as a golden age for Afghani life in some aspect shows that the Westerners still consider Muslim people as somewhat of baboons that have to be brought up to humanity, no matter who brings about that change.
As far as I know in the 4 traditional schools of thought, the person whose blood can be spilled (mahdur ad-dam)has to be living within the confines of the Islamic-ruled country.
One of the salient features of the Islamic-ruled governments was that they rarely, if ever, sent assassination units to kills apostates or other blasphemers outside of their own lands.
In addition, even in the case of outright disbelievers like Ahmadis, while at the beginning they are apostates from Islam, at this stage anyone holding Ahmadi beliefs is to be treated as a member of a non-Muslim religion, and not as an apostate, etc.
and unlike other Arab dictators, Assad is hugely popular in his country.
is quite funny. If that is the case, then so was Saddam a hugely popular dictator in Iraq, as his supporters fought tooth and nail against the post-invasion Iraq.
The Shiites should just come out and say that they only support other Shias and anything they deem to be pro-Shia (even if it is in their imaginations like the uprisings in Lybia or Egypt) and that they do not give a damn about us Sunnis until and unless we seem to move closer to Shiaism.
From my side, I am honest and say that I only care about Sunni interests as opposed to Shia ones as well. But at least I am honest about where my allegiances lie and do not try to portray things as other than what they are.
For the life of me, I do not know why protests in a small city and a tiny village in Saudi Arabia are made to look as if the whole of the Eastern Province is up in flames against the Royal Saudi Family, that the province will break off the kingdom or that the Royal Family is about to fall. This, especially when there are not even 1000 or even 500 protesters for this matter.
Secondly, the Bahraini kingdom requested for foreign help in the same way that Khamenei requested Iraqi and Lebanese Shia help in quelling the Iranian protests in 2009, so I see a double standard being used here by Press TV and their friends.
I wonder why no one makes mention of the fact that most Yemenis are Sunnis while Saleh is a Shia (albeit a Zaydi Shia, but a Shia nonetheless). The same is the case with Syria, which is a Allawi dictatorship presiding over a mostly Sunni population.
In the case of tiny Bahrain, the whole world knows about the sectarian angle, but in the case of much larger Yemen and Syria, almost no one who follows the news casually knows about this matter.
Exactly, I know that the leaders of the Arab Sunni monarchies and plutocracies are this bad and that bad, but who said that such peoples welcome the Iranian Revolution as an obvious alternative? (the Iranian revolutionaries seem to be living a mirror image of the Neo-Con dream, that we will accept them with flowers in the streets, while the truth is, the best they can hope to get out of this chaos is al-Qaeda or ISIS, et al., to which the grudging admission has to be made that the Al-Saud, Al-Maktum and so forth are better alternatives for Iran).
He knows that people are angry at him for his blunt support of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s presidency.
Then why did Mr. Khamenei equate demonstrations with disobeying the Hidden Imam? It basically made Ahmadinejad's second election results a non-disobey-able divine decree in Shia belief, and I have not seen any formal "apology" from Khamenei or his minions (let us not get into the farce of how this plays out in terms of their demands for individual rights for their brethren in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, etc.).
Please spare me your high-minded rhetoric Mr. Saf: I have also found most, if not all Shias, disgusted at any role for Sunnis in the Muslim world, and in fact disgusted at our very existence.
So don't worry, the wars will go on and on as long as the Shias also see "Wahabis" as vermin and rats.
Let us cut to the truth of the matter: Is there any one from the Shia elements who does not think the Sunnis "should be punished" for some thing or the other?
We need this answer first, because no Sunni will accept to live with a group whose only thought is revenge.
Shias should get over this and understand what will happen: If they come to slaughter Sunnis, they should not expect flowers in return, either from any Sunni - their rantings about ISIS being a terrorist organization are true, but then again, do Shias consider Sunnis as anything other than terrorists?
To top it off, the comment about killing Sunnis in Iraq so that Sunnis do not go to Tehran is so George W-Esque that it is sad.
Even the geography curriculum discusses the region from an Islamic perspective. For example, kids are taught that the “Zionists” have occupied Palestine illegally, and the Islamic umma one day must re-establish Muslim control over Jerusalem, the “Third Qibla” of Islam, to which Muslims turn to pray after Mecca and Medina. “Israel,” for example, does not appear on maps of the Arab world in Saudi geography textbooks.
++++++++
This is also taught in every Arab country, including Syria and other countries the West has problems with. Both 'allies' like Egypt or Saudi Arabia and 'enemies' of the West like Iran or Syria are on the same page here. Whatever the West may feel about it, it is basically impossible for any changes to occur here, just like Israel being a 'Democratic Jewish state' is the vision of the Zionists, regardless of how oxymoronic this idea is in the present and/or future.
++++++++
Oftentimes, Shia Muslims are considered “apostates,” or “rejectionists,” and could be subject to discrimination and even death. The Shia in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are excluded from key government, defence, and national security positions.
+++++++++++
I guess after what we are seeing that has happened in Iraq with the Sunnis there, there will be even less chance of any key positions being given to them in overwhelmingly Sunni-majority or Sunni-ruled countries, since the Sunnis have learned that the 'law of the jungle' applies in their dealings with Shias. For better or for worse, this is how we see it, and events in Iraq have only validated this view.
Besides, Shias in Shia-majority lands many foul things about us, which is exactly why what we see in Iraq happening with broader Iranian and Shia support is happening (because there is broad lay support for the dehumanization and vilification of Sunnis, it is not a one-way street).
Even though I am definitely no supporter of Saddam, but strictly speaking about US interests in the Middle East, these would have been much better served if sanctions had not been imposed on Saddam's Iraq. Now it is only a case of picking up the pieces after the glass has shattered. Goes to show that even in the field of high-level international politics, emotions and gung-ho revenge get in the way of level-headed interests.
What I feel is that the concept of nation-statehood as drawn up about a century or more ago in the Middle East was incorrect to begin with. The problem is that most people on the ground can only envision a "Sunni Iraq" or a "Shia Iraq", etc. Compromise is definitely out of the question, and it is not only a matter of politicians, but more and more of people on the ground.
What baffles people like me is how the portrayal of the protagonists change as per the situation: Yesterday, this group were "sectarian Shia militias", but during the lifting of the siege of Ameril they became "Shia volunteers" in the news, even though it is obvious that their mentality, allegiances, and prejudices were the same before as they are now.
As a Sunni I would have to say that: Even though the above two points may be the same, yet our (Sunni) belief that their "12 Imams" are not at the level of absolute inerrancy in every matter does lead to many, many ramifications, some of them small, some of them big.
With regards to the Jewish-Christian comparison, I still think it is appropriate analogy in a general sense, since both Jews and Christians dispute as to who is the "true Israel" and this has historically had many ramifications; in here, we and the Shias dispute as to who belongs to the "true Islam" versus "fake Islam", and as we can see there is always potential for violence in here as well.
I do not know why the split between Sunnis and Shias is portrayed as analogous to that between Catholics and Protestants. To me at least, it seems to be more akin to the disagreements between Jews and Samaritans, or between Jews and Christians - the origin is taken right to the very early period of the foundation of the religion, and one side or the other, or both, demonize the other. Many a times the demonization is latent, but it is extremely easy for passions to be whipped up, since the basis is basic foundational disagreements that can never be resolved amicably.
One point about Sunni dissatisfaction with the Maliki government: As a Sunni, the main problem I have with the Shia groups is that they see political participation as a series of "turns": Sunnis had their turns with the Caliphate, the Ottomans, and Saddam but now it is the Shias' turn in Iraq. Not only Maliki, but Shias at large in Iraq and elsewhere are simply not interested in democracy or power-sharing at all. Whether one thinks this right or wrong is something else, but this is the common Shia mentality with regards to what the "future" holds.
It is very transparent that the Army was and has always been in charge for decades and I do not know how anyone thought that Mursi actually had true power.
These 'mirages of democracy' are akin to a parent letting their children use small amounts of cash [like 5 or 10 dollars] but never ever letting them have any access to the "real money".
This is incorrect. Please refer to the following link:
http://callingchristians.com/2012/05/11/punishing-the-female-rape-victim-in-islam/
There are other links discussing this issue, but this can be a start. In any case, orthodox Islamic theologians do not necessarily try to tie the Islamic laws to any rational discussion, because for any given time and place, there will be those, both men and women, who will disagree with their minds about aspects of Islamic law.
Then who gets to decide what is the situation with a child if not the parents? It sounds like the view of a totalitarian regime, where children are forcibly taken out of the parents' arms because Uncle Sam or Uncle Mao know best.
Perhaps the parents do not want education for their children, and are happy to themselves and their children to be menial workers for the rest of their lives; perhaps they are happy thinking that they will not reach their 50th birthday due to the economically low status they are in. Even today, only about half of the world is functionally literate, and I do not see any military action being taken to impose functional literacy everywhere.
The economic angle of secular education is not enough to impose it on everyone, especially when the correlation is not always there. There are so many studies which show that across the globe, people do not always read and comprehend things on a level commensurate to the their formal grade. In our world today, many of not most of us are forced to take on jobs unrelated with what we did in University
This is even less so when such huge loss of life and property are incurred in the process. If a tenth of the population is killed, a fourth is forced to flee, and a lot of the infrastructure flattened so that all the uneducated women can get education, by what metrics did such an operation become a success? (You cannot teach dead people to become literate, and refugees have had their whole lives disrupted, I do not see education being one of their goals).
As a Muslim, I have to say it is deplorable that the Soviet-puppet regime of the 1980's is being paraded as one of the high points for anything in Afghanistan.
As for the Taliban, at least they are a group based on the interpretation of Islam adhered to within Afghanistan itself for decades; besides, tens of millions of Muslim families will never consider letting their post-pubescent women wander outside the house for any reason whatsoever, whether they are under the Taliban, the US, the Communists, or anybody else. I know this sounds stupefying for urban Westerners, but this is the reality in much of the world, and it is not something negotiable for millions of Muslims.
That even an ostensibly "enlightened liberal site" is pushing the Soviet era as a golden age for Afghani life in some aspect shows that the Westerners still consider Muslim people as somewhat of baboons that have to be brought up to humanity, no matter who brings about that change.
As far as I know in the 4 traditional schools of thought, the person whose blood can be spilled (mahdur ad-dam)has to be living within the confines of the Islamic-ruled country.
One of the salient features of the Islamic-ruled governments was that they rarely, if ever, sent assassination units to kills apostates or other blasphemers outside of their own lands.
In addition, even in the case of outright disbelievers like Ahmadis, while at the beginning they are apostates from Islam, at this stage anyone holding Ahmadi beliefs is to be treated as a member of a non-Muslim religion, and not as an apostate, etc.
The quote by the Iranian:
and unlike other Arab dictators, Assad is hugely popular in his country.
is quite funny. If that is the case, then so was Saddam a hugely popular dictator in Iraq, as his supporters fought tooth and nail against the post-invasion Iraq.
The Shiites should just come out and say that they only support other Shias and anything they deem to be pro-Shia (even if it is in their imaginations like the uprisings in Lybia or Egypt) and that they do not give a damn about us Sunnis until and unless we seem to move closer to Shiaism.
From my side, I am honest and say that I only care about Sunni interests as opposed to Shia ones as well. But at least I am honest about where my allegiances lie and do not try to portray things as other than what they are.
For the life of me, I do not know why protests in a small city and a tiny village in Saudi Arabia are made to look as if the whole of the Eastern Province is up in flames against the Royal Saudi Family, that the province will break off the kingdom or that the Royal Family is about to fall. This, especially when there are not even 1000 or even 500 protesters for this matter.
Secondly, the Bahraini kingdom requested for foreign help in the same way that Khamenei requested Iraqi and Lebanese Shia help in quelling the Iranian protests in 2009, so I see a double standard being used here by Press TV and their friends.
I wonder why no one makes mention of the fact that most Yemenis are Sunnis while Saleh is a Shia (albeit a Zaydi Shia, but a Shia nonetheless). The same is the case with Syria, which is a Allawi dictatorship presiding over a mostly Sunni population.
In the case of tiny Bahrain, the whole world knows about the sectarian angle, but in the case of much larger Yemen and Syria, almost no one who follows the news casually knows about this matter.