“The Sunni and Shia want to kill each other. They want to blow each other up… They have fun… This is what Allah tells them to do.” This 2007 statement from right wing US shock jock Bill O’Reilly is as shocking as it is unsophisticated. However, it represents the logical extension of various trends of thought on conflict in the Middle East.
US president Barack Obama stated in his 2016 State of the Union address that the Middle East was going through a transformation “rooted in conflicts that date back millennia.” In a further interview he claimed that certain countries in the region “have very few civic traditions”, so as autocracy unravels “the only organizing principles are sectarian.” While more nuanced and without the disdain for human life shown by O’Reilly, Obama’s view is based in the same logic.
Language used to describe conflicts in the Middle East drastically oversimplifies them, ascribing blame at a societal level on the people most likely to be the conflict’s victims. Sectarianism is, more often than not, a symptom rather than a cause. Indeed, not every country with sectarian or ethnic divisions is at war. Instead, we must take a more nuanced view to understand why conflict happens. In fact - the term sectarian itself requires greater clarity as it masks the complexity of why only some sectarianism leads to violence.
Problems of Definition
Firstly we must understand what is meant by sectarianism. One of its oldest definitions is as “excessive attachment to a particular sect”, referring to a religious or sometimes political denomination. However, it has also been defined more broadly to include ethnicity and any communal identity, leading the term to lack precision in its usage. Furthermore, what does it mean for a conflict to be sectarian? Sectarianism can be a factor and a key feature of conflict without being itself the root cause. However, labeling a conflict as sectarian denotes this as the most central factor, while diminishing other more important factors, that cannot be so succinctly summarised.
In response to this some analysts have used the term sectarianisation to denote an active process rather than something fixed in time. This is a much better reflection of how societies divide along such lines and how this is not necessarily a mutual phenomenon, but can be imposed by one actor on another. However, sectarianism remains the dominant term.
Ancient Hatreds
The ancient hatreds, or primordial, school of analysis argues that conflict between identity groups is essentially inevitable and based in ancient blood feuds. This has had a real world impact. Former US President Bill Clinton’s primordialist reading of conflict in the Balkans supposedly affected US intervention there. US senator Rand Paul defended US withdrawal from Syria in 2018 by stating: “The place is a mess. I mean they've [Sunni and Shia] been fighting each other for a thousand years.”
Other US politicians have expressed the hopelessness of intervention on the basis that the people of these areas will never stop fighting. From TV pundits to regional analysts the view that the Middle East is not adapted for “modernity” and that people just can’t get along there has been commonplace. This view seems distinctly convenient, both absolving governments of responsibility - particularly in the Middle East, where world powers have consistently meddled - as well as absolving them from taking future action.
Exit of the Witness
One way to understand this is through the lens of violence as a dynamic between a perpetrator, victim, and witness. The witness can have a mitigating role in violence, causing a perpetrator to moderate their behavior on the basis that they risk reprisals. For crime prevention it is established that the certainty of being caught is one of the biggest deterrents. I would argue the language of ancient hatreds gives the witness, here the general public and their politicians, the opportunity to opt out of this role, leaving the perpetrator and victim. Thus we can see this view of the conflict being used to justify disengagement policies, as well as diminishing public engagement, with conflicts appearing too confusing, based on ancient and deeply intractable divisions.
A case in point here would be the Israel Palestine conflict. The labeling of the actors, actions, and overarching conflict is highly contentious. The conflict is often casually referred to as sectarian and decried as too complicated, based on 2000 years of history the layperson cannot possibly hope to comprehend. These terms are obfuscating and lead much of the public to give up its role as witness, diminishing public pressure and allowing governments to support Israel with relative impunity, despite its violations of international law. Furthermore, as Israel defines itself on the basis of Jewish identity, a sectarian framing allows opposition to Israel to be delegitimised as anti-semitic. In a 2010 talk, Israeli historian Ilan PappĂ© argued the conflict was not complicated, instead mirroring European settler colonies, but that Israel had “succeeded with the help of its allies… to build this complex explanation that is so complex that only they can understand it.”
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The label sectarian can also be self-fulfilling. In Iraq, assumptions about sectarian divisions led to the imposition of the Muhasasa system of dividing power between Sunnis, Shi’as, and Kurds after the 2003 US-led invasion. This has been criticised for its potential to sow sectarian division, ensuring political power is understood as fundamentally sectarian, as well as opening the system up to proxy meddling from regional powers like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Conclusions
As O’Reilly illustrates, the current narrative has demonised people in the Middle East as the authors of their own suffering and has led to damagingly misguided foreign policy as well as public disengagement. Rather than this simplistic narrative and catch all of “sectarianism”, analysis should focus on the individual drivers of each conflict. More consideration must be given to language, with terms like sectarianisation marking an important step towards a more nuanced understanding of conflict in the region
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