OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: Shiites, Sunnis and George Bush

This blood feud was so grave that people still fight over it today. Killing the prophet's grandson in the desert, along with his young children, was not something to be forgiven. Hussein's sons, for the following ten generations, were considered true religious leaders of the Islamic world by Shiites. Yet they had no power, and one way or another, every one of the sons was killed by Sunnies.

The twelfth one disappeared mysteriously, and it became a popular belief that he was the messiah and that he had gone to the skies to come back some day to take revenge for his father, to kill all evil people, and put the kingdom of god on earth. The idea was far fetched, was not mentioned in the Quran, and sounded like blasphemy to Sunnis.

The new feud of Arabs and Iranians:

Iranians had become Moslem by force. They lived under Arab rule for two hundred years. During the first year of the invasion, more than 100,000 people were taken as slaves, but they did not totally lose their identity, unlike countries of North Africa, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. They were able to hold on to their own language and local governments and eventually throw the Arabs out of their territory. However, they remained Moslem, with about one third of the population being Shiite.

About 700 years ago problems flared up again. The brutal invasion of the Mongols destroyed all existing governments. It took another 200 years until the Ottoman Empire took over Turkey and Arabic countries, and the Safavid dynasty took over Iran.

The Ottoman Empire was Sunni and wanted to expand to the east and to the west, which meant rolling over the Iranian government. Iran was being hit from the east by Sunni Uzbeks and Afghans while being hammered from the west by the Ottoman Empire. At this time, only about one third of Iran was Shiite. So, Shah Ismail Safavi, a devoted Shiite, came up with the solution, "Let's turn the entire country to Shiite." It was an effective idea and was achieved by the sword. One would become Shiite - or he was dead.

This change brought a new identity for the country; a mixture of old Persian ideas mixed with Islam, creating such a difference that it would make it impossible to ever get along. One hundred years of battles ensued and the borders of the two countries were sealed.

The rivalry between the two countries was extremely serious. They brutally killed one another, and in large numbers. The Sunnies massacred the Shiites in Turkey and branded them on their foreheads, while the Shiites invaded Iraq and burned the Sunni shrines. A small group of Shiites migrated to Lebanon and took refuge in the mountains .They had much better relationship with Christians than the Sunnies.

Meanwhile, a renaissance was taking place in Europe. Secular governments took away much of the power of the church. Advances in science, the discovery of America, and many more changes on the continent, awoke Europe from the sleep of the Middle Ages.

Simultaneously, in Islamic countries, a gradual deep sleep took over with religious leaders dominating all aspects of life. Both the Ottoman Empire and Iran began to rot from the core. Gradually, both countries weakened and eventually, the fighting subsided and old battles turned to local skirmishes. The old savagery was mostly gone until the First World War.

First World War:

If we assume that the cold war was the continuation of WWII, and WWII was a continuation of WWI, then we can conclude that World War I in Europe did not really finish until 1984 when Russians pulled their troops out of Europe.

Unfortunately, the First World War in the Middle East is not over yet. The Arab-Israeli conflict started in 1917, and the division of the Ottoman Empire happened about the same time. General Edmund Allenby randomly divided the Ottoman Empire into heterogeneous pieces among Arabs, Jews, Kurds and Persians. The goal was to divide the area so badly and drastically, that it would never become a problem for Europeans.

These events coincided with the discovery of oil in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In 1914, the British Empire decided to change the fuel of the British navy to oil rather than coal. With this change, the most hated European companies showed up in the Middle East. Probably the most famous one is BP, British Petroleum (new name for the old Anglo Persian Oil Company) which plundered Iran and Iraq for decades.

According to the contracts that the British had made with their puppet governments of Iran and Iraq, the British would dig out the oil, sell it at 97 cents a barrel and would give16% of the profits in the form of credit to Iran to buy armaments from England.

Post-war chaos, local corruption, and colonialism were the stories of the day. For a few years, the British ruled the world and they had one main obsession - keep the socialist movement contained in the USSR so they could hold onto their colonies in India, the Middle East and Africa.

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