Did Arab uprisings deepen the Sunni-Shia divide?

Even though it’s published on Al-Jazeera, which has become a hub for biased, sectarian media coverage of Syria, this is a very good article by Rima Majed, a PhD student at Oxford, United Kingdom. Majed argues that framing of the Syrian uprising as an ages-old sectarian war between Sunnis and Shia – which is what many are doing, from the Syrian regime and its allies to western leftists and ‘experts’ – is not only “reductionist and entirely misleading” but is also lazy because it often serves as a substitute for “exploring the complex and dynamic nature of the Syrian conflict that is essentially a conflict over power.”

Among others, the article quotes the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif claiming that the conflict between Sunnis and Shia is “the most serious security threat not only to the region but to the world at large.”

Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/did-arab-uprisings-deepen-sunni-shia-divide-20131217293301149.html

 

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