Are the current wars in Syria and Iraq the continuation of a thousand-plus years of Sunni-Shiite wars?

Answer 1

Answer 1: No

While this view gets plenty of attention in the Western media (Bill Maher suggests it quite strongly), it is overly simplistic to say that the Syrian Civil War and the Iraqi Insurgency are simply a continuation of Sunni-Shiite confrontations that have pitted numerous different states and proto-states against one another. There are actually two axes that differentiate the parties in these current conflicts: ethnoreligious identities and mosque-state separation.

Ethnoreligious identities: The current Middle East conflicts are primarily characterized by the use of religious beliefs as ethnic identifiers. Both Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs speak the same language, eat the same foods, and lived in mixed communities and mixed provinces. However, belief in a certain theological structure was seen as a way to discriminate between membership in both groups. As opposed to a typical religious war (like the Thirty Years Wars), religion was not used in the "dogmatic" or "excommunicatory" sense. This is to say that Sunni Arabs do not oppose Shiite Arabs (or vice versa) BECAUSE the Shiites commemorate the Tenth of Ashura, but use this event to identify who was a "fellow Sunni" or "enemy Shiite". Additionally, in these conflicts, there are Assyrians and Maronites who identify as Christians. There are also Sunni Kurds and religious minority Kurds who typically identify with a Kurdish identity rather than with their co-religionists.

As a result of the organization of these ethnoreligious groups, the Middle East conflicts are better analogized with the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s than the Ottoman-Safavid conflicts which did have religious conversions as their goal (especially on the Safavid side).

Mosque-State Separation: This is a distinct issue that many commentators in the West do not seem to notice. Various groups have different ideas about whether Secularism or Islamism are the proper mechanism by which to run a state with the latter incorporating more Islamic values and religious authority into governance. Some groups, like the Kurds, favor Secularism, prefering to keep religion completely out of the realm of government edicts. Other groups like ISIL, favor Islamism and hold that all things under their rule should be governed by the strictest readings of Sharia Law. These political philosophical views have served to divide ethnoreligious groups. For example, ISIL is made up of Sunni Arabs, primarily from Iraq and Syria. However, many Iraqi Sunni Arabs (especially former Awakening Council Leaders) would rather put their weight behind the Shiite-led government of Iraq than ISIL because they dissent with the political organization and ISIL's extreme Islamism. (Note that these Sunni leaders simply consider the Shiite-led government the lesser of two evils; they are still quite distrustful of that government.)