Sunnis, Shiites and America’s Allies

As an Egyptian citizen the talk about a Sunni Shiite divide seems alien to me. I mean for years I never heard anyone in my country identifies himself as a Sunni or a Shiite, we all used to say we are Muslims, and this was enough.

Egyptians are known of their love to the members of the house of prophet Mohammed, and for that reason a writer once said that “Egypt has a Sunni mind and Shiite heart”. And I, like many Egyptians, wonder who is to benefit from this escalation of the recent tensions between the followers of the two sects of Islam? It might help us in answering this question, if we noticed that the ones who expressed their worrisome lately about the rise of the Shiites and all this nonsense are Jordan’s king, the Egyptian president and the Saudi monarch, which are all American allies. What a coincidence, right?!

It is very obvious that this escalation of the fear from the so called “Shiite Crescent” serves only the United States and the regimes that consider itself America’s allies in the region. For the United states, it’s part of the standoff with Tehran over its nuclear program, and for the Arab regimes, it’s the fear of what the groups allied with Iran, like Hezbollah, have disclosed: that Israel can be beaten.

I believe that some of the proactive events involving Shiites that took place recently in the region is more of a social “Intefada” than a sectarian statement. The Shiites in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia have long been deprived from many political, economic and social rights, they are the poorest and the areas the live in are the most deprived of facilities and services, they are also denied the right of performing their rituals publicly in most areas of Saudi Arabia.

Sometimes, I just thing that we will all be better off if our governments stopped manipulating our religious feelings and trying to provoke tensions between us for its own purposes. Sadat tried in the past to dig a wedge between Muslims and Christians in Egypt for political reasons and we can all see the consequences of this now, so please spare us another fight over religious identities.