Is the seemingly always ongoing conflict in the middle east fundamentally religious in nature?
This is no great insight but it’s pretty clear that many Sunnis hate non-Sunni Muslims (and Jews), and many Shia Muslims hate the Sunnis (and Jews), but are okay with Alawites, but not so much the Druze and Bhai. And the Ismailis seem to be the Jews of the Islamic world. And that does not even begin to touch on some of the other related sects/religions in the region, e.g. Sufi, Yashedi, . . .
It seems today that even if Israel had never been established, there is enough religiously motivated hate in the middle east to guarantee ceaseless war regardless.
Is there any reason to expect such religious feuds and wars to ever end? Normally I suppose, you could say that with ‘education’ and especially by exposure to ‘the other’ in a successful integrated society, such things would gradually lessen. But so long as their societies are isolated, their people clustered in religious and ethnic enclaves, their temples kept separate in a region where the temple holds so much power, and when education is available primarily through religious instruction and access to other educational sources and resources such as the Internet are limited or banned outright, it seems unduly hopeful that things will change much.
One way to diminish the impact of militant religious tribalism might be to substitute another, secular, religion such as communism that could attract those of all faiths. To an extent, that was basically the approach used by Saddam Hussein (I think). But ultimately, it just provided another target, a more secular one, for certain religious and tribal fundamentalists.
Maybe it’s this type of pessimism that appeals to Trump, Rand Paul, and others. ‘Just let God sort them all out’.
Still, obviously, there is lotsa risk in leaving the region to its own devices and I am not advocating doing so. In addition to not providing a ‘shining-city-on-the-hill’ example to the locals, abandoning the middle east may make international export of religious zealotry and violence more likely, Israel could conceivably be more threatened and thus forced/duped into making unwise choices, and of course, the vacuum so formed by “The West’s” leaving would likely be filled by ‘less idealistic’ states such as Russia or China (both of which, like the majority of middle east nations come to think of it, are getting close to embodying Orwell’s “boot stamping on a human face - forever”).
Anyway, is peace in the middle east ever possible when religion holds such much sway there? Would the region still not be at war with itself even if Israel had never come into being?
Or am I just stereotyping and generalizing on the basis of who and what gets media coverage?
