The Theatre of Theological Conflict

The Middle East is a tangled web of tribal and sectarian hatred. Hatred so severe that regular outbursts of violent antipathy results in the deaths of countless people whose crime is that they worship in their misguided faith, the 'wrong' Islamic faith faction and as such represent heretics in whom investment in life is misplaced. Since they represent an affront to Islam and to the Prophet Mohammad they are deserving of death.

At times when Sunnis are forced by a tyrannical rule to live in tolerance beside their Shia Islamic counterparts, or vice versa, violence subsides. Until such time as the dictatorship benevolent to one or the other falls, and the opportunity arises to allow old enmities to rise again in a flaming phoenix of slaughter. Which is what is even now occurring with the vehemence of the true believers against the falsity of the faithless who corrupt Islam and whose false beliefs merit their death in Syria.

The full impact of the hatred one sect evidences against the other has not yet been fully unleashed, although there have been ample reports of atrocities reported by one side against the other through the conflict in Syria. Not yet reaching the bloodlust scale of what occurred between 2006 and 2007 in Iraq that even the presence of international troops in the country were incapable of preventing, as Shia militias haunted Sunni enclaves during the night hours intent on widespread slaughter and Sunni militias returned the compliment with the full fury of religious dementia.

When the American occupying forces and their diplomatic counterparts were doing their utmost to persuade Iraqis of the fundamental requisite of democracy in creating a stable and socially advanced country for all its citizens, a U.S.-approved coalition of administration sharing between minority Sunni, majority Shia and Kurds took office. And the troika of shared government seemed to work well enough, lending confidence to the population.

The influx of foreign fighters into a still-unsettled geography, with an al-Qaeda focus on disrupting the Shia-majority-leading rule was creating ongoing havoc with its extreme brutality, where it visited atrocities even among the Iraqi Sunnis. Enough so, that the Sunnis became enraged at the actions of their sect's terror groups and agreed to work with the Americans to expunge the al-Qaeda militias from the country during the U.S. 'surge'.

Relations between the U.S. military and the Iraqi Sunni militias whom the Americans trained and armed were exemplary. Until the time that the U.S. surrendered military authority to the largely Shia-led government military which absorbed the Sunni militias and had authority over them, pledging to deal with them honourably and equably. Which, needless to say, simply did not occur. That, and the edging out of the Sunni complement of the governing trio, served to disillusion Iraq's Sunnis.

Iraq's minority Sunnis began protesting mistreatment from the Shia-led government, resulting in mass demonstrations. Attacks from Sunni militias against Shia mosques and worshippers, and by Shia militias against Sunni Iraqis have become more numerous and more deadly. A wave of such attacks in both Shiite and Sunni areas in the last week alone totalled 230 deaths resulting from sectarian violence, echoing the prospect of a return to the civil war that had consumed the country years ago.

On Monday alone, 86 people were killed in attacks against markets, crowded bus stops during morning rush hour, and mosques. Those centres of worship which one assumes are held as sacred, untouchable places consecrated to God, which either of the sects would theoretically hold in respect. But which, in Islam does not turn out to be the case at all.  Much like the religion of peace urging conflict in its fundamentalist view of the call to jihad.

As a reflection of the entire Middle East and the monopolistic place of Islam as the foundational religion, culture, social structure, and fanatical political ideology, the default line always seems to be tribal, sectarian-motivated enmity, flaring to murderous revenge against the 'other' as a classical modus operandi to population control.