Sunday, March 29, 2015

The Yemeni war continues: sectarian differences

Do you know that the Saudi regime supported the "Shi`ite" side (i.e. Zaydis according to the silly terminology of present-day Western media) in the 1960s, while Nasser supported the Republican side?  The conflation (on theological and terminological grounds) of Zaydis and Shi`ite twelvers is silly and ignorant when there are deep differences between them (as there are between `Alawites and Shi`ite twelvers (do you know that in the 1980s and early 1990s, during the conflict between Hizbullah and the Syrian regime there were articles in Western media which tried to explain the conflict in references to sectarian differences between `Alawites and Shi`ites)? Zaydis disagree, for example, with the hostility of Shi`ite twelvers toward the first three rightly-guided caliphs.   Sectarianism is only relevant in that the Saudi regime and its allies have been invoking sectarian hatred in the last decade in order to undermine the stance of Iran and its allies in the region.