Eggs Laid by Tigers
Sunday, June 14, 2009
How come Sunni Hamas is supported by Sheite Iran . . . .
[Iranian child]With the emphasis President Hussein has given to Israeli-Palestinian problems and since today the Israeli prime minister has endorsed the creation of a Palestinian State, sorta, I got curious: Why would Iran, predominantly Shia, support Palestine, predominantly Sunni?
[Israeli Child]
Vali Nasr, in his The Shia Revival, makes much of the disdain, even contempt, with which the Sunni hold the Shia: a Sunni avoids eating with a Shiite because the Shiite is unclean; if a Sunni must shake hands with a Shiite, he must ritually wash his hands.
Part of the problem is mutual religious bigotry: there is -- to Western eyes -- a tiny difference in which of the descendants of Muhammad to follow; the Iranian Shia follow one line, the Arab Sunni another. As the Sunni are evangelical, most of the Muslim world is Sunni. The tiny difference, in Muslim eyes, is big.
[Palestinian child]
Part of the problem is racial: most Sunni are Arab or belong to one of the many tribes that make up Central and South Asia; and the Shiites, cantered mostly in Iran , are Persian, an ancient and proud people.
[Click on the map to make it bigger]
Imagine that you are Iranian, you speak Farsi, and you are surrounded by all these other folks, each of whom regards you as Unclean, and has done so for more than a thousand years.
Then imagine that your home country, Iran, has been assigned, by the British and French for purposes of their own, large numbers of Balochistans and Kurds and others who resent your rule and are set to revolt if given a chance to do so.
The World must seem a dangerous place to the Iranian. Wouldn't you want as many Bombs ass you could get, if you were they?
Iran, for many years, saw Israel as a natural ally against encircling Arabs, Balochs, Kurds, Afghans, Turks, and others, and so would you. After the revolution that established the current theocracy, Iran associated Israel with the United States [the "Little Satan"; the "Big Satan"] and that enmity was sufficient to overcome Iran's reluctance in supporting Sunni Palestine against Israel.
I think somebody made a mistake. Somebody supported the Shah of Iran and not the Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini. Oops! O Well. Can't make all decisions right, right? I supported Khomeini. Did you?
Does this help?
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One of my favorite pics of all times. True love if ever there was true love.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Richard Engle's blog
If you, like me [or, as we used to say, "as do I"], particularly like Richard Engle's reporting about events in the Muslim world, here is the address to his blog.
Among many other things, Richard even explained who the Pashtuns are, and why pashtunwali is important to U.S. policy and strategy. I've seen nothing like this by any other reporter.
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