Sectarianism
Some scholars and journalists define it as pre-existing fixed communal categories in society, and use it to explain political, cultural, or religious conflicts between groups.
[1] Others conceive of sectarianism as a set of social practices where daily life is organized on the basis of communal norms and rules that individuals strategically use and transcend.
In its most basic form, sectarianism has been defined as, 'the existence, within a locality, of two or more divided and actively competing communal identities, resulting in a strong sense of dualism which unremittingly transcends commonality, and is both culturally and physically manifest.
[7] Scholars argued that the use of term "sectarianism" has become a catch-all explanation to conflicts, which drives analytical attention away from underlying political and socioeconomic issues, lacks coherence, and is often associated with emotional negativity.
[6] In the past and present, religious identities have been politicized and mobilized by state actors inside and outside of the Middle East in pursuit of political gain and power.
The recognition of these intersecting forms of discrimination and marginalization is decisive for developing inclusive strategies to promote peace, tolerance, and increased social cohesion within diverse societies.
[28] Soleimani was responsible for strengthening Iran's ties with foreign powers such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria's al-Assad, and Shia militia groups in Iraq.
Christian communities, and other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East, have been socially, economically and politically excluded and harmed primarily by regimes that focus on "securing power and manipulating their base by appeals to Arab nationalism and/or to Islam".
Middle Eastern dictatorships backed by the United States, especially Saudi Arabia, feared that the spread of the revolutionary spirit and ideology would affect their power and dominance in the region.
[11] As Nader Hashemi asserts:The U.S. invasion of Iraq; the support of various Western governments for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which commits war crime upon war crime in Yemen and disseminates poisonous sectarian propaganda throughout the Sunni world; not to mention longstanding Western support for highly repressive dictators who manipulate sectarian fears and anxieties as a strategy of control and regime survival – the "ancient hatreds" narrative [between Sunnis and Shi’as] washes this all away and lays the blame for the regionʹs problems on supposedly trans-historical religious passions.
Instrumentalists see the Sunni-Shi'a divide as a modern invention and challenge the myths of primordial narratives since sectarian harmony have existed for centuries.
Prior to John F. Kennedy, only one Catholic (Al Smith) had ever been a major party presidential nominee, and he had been solidly defeated largely because of claims based on his Catholicism.
At the end of that war the lands of Catholics were confiscated with over ten million acres granted to new English owners under the Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652.
[40][41] The Labour-Catholic party saw a larger political electorate in the many Liverpool-Irish, and often ran on the slogan of "Home Rule" - the independence of Ireland, to gain the support of Irish voters.
[45] While the IRA-bombing in 1939 (see S-Plan) somewhat increased violence between the Irish-Catholic associated Labour party and the Conservative Protestants, the German May Blitz destroyed property of more than 40.000 households.
[48]Northern Ireland has introduced a Private Day of Reflection,[49] since 2007, to mark the transition to a post-[sectarian] conflict society, an initiative of the cross-community Healing Through Remembering[50] organization and research project.
[70] During the Safavid rule between 1501 and 1722, Shiism started to evolve and became established as the official state religion, leading to the creation of the first religiously legitimate government since the occultation of the Twelfth imam.
[70] The establishment of Shiism as an official government ideology opened the doors for clergies to benefit from new cultural, political and religious rights which were denied prior to the Safavid ruling.
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the British government placed a Sunni Hashemite monarchy to the Iraqi throne which suppressed various uprisings against its rule by the Christian Assyrians and Shi'ites.
However, scholars have claimed that the eruptions of violence can also be partly attributed to the modernizing reforms, the Tanzimat, taking place within the Ottoman Empire, who had been ruling Syria since 1516.
For example, President Hafez al-Assad's involvement in the Lebanese civil war by giving political aid to Maronite Christians in Lebanon.
Although sectarian identities played a role in the unfolding of events of the Syrian Civil War, the importance of tribal and kinship relationships should not be underestimated, as they can be used to obtain and maintain power and loyalty.
[97] This changed after the protests and the following civil war began to be portrayed in sectarian terms by the regime, as a result of which people started to mobilize along ethnic lines.
[103][105] Regional interests are, for example, the north's proximity to the Hejaz, the south's coast along the Indian Ocean trade route, and the southeast's oil and gas fields.
[105][115][119] Violent non-state actors Al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Sharia and Daesh, particularly active in southern cities like Mukalla, fuel sectarian tendencies with their animosity towards Yemen's Isma'ilis, Zaydis, and others.
[105][110] Collateral damage caused by cruise missiles, cluster bombs, and drone attacks, deployed by the United States, compromised Yemen's sovereignty.
[129] Over the course of the twentieth century clashes and tensions unfolded between the Shi’ites and the Saudi regime, including the 1979 Qatif Uprising and the repercussions of the 1987 Makkah Incident.
[129][130] Though relations underwent a détente in the 1990s and the early 2000s, tensions rose again after the 2003 US-led election of Iraq (owing to a broader rise of Shi’ism in the region) and peaked during the Arab Spring.
[135] Yet, the reality on the ground has been more complex than such a conclusion, because as Nadya Sbaiti has shown in her research, in the aftermath of the First World War, the “need of shaping a collective future that paralleled shifting conceptions of the newly territorialized nation-state of Lebanon”[18] was clearly present.
“Over the course of the Mandate, educational practitioners and the wide range of schools that proliferated helped shape the epistemological infrastructure en route to creating this entity.
