The largest holiday in the Islamic calendar is
Eid-al-Fitr, celebrated this year on March 10th across the Islamic world
-- a world
that stretches from Indonesia, west through Malaysia, the Indian
subcontinent, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia, onward from Iran,
Syria, Saudi Arabia, and westward across Northern Africa -- down to
Nigeria. It also includes some people in South Africa and some in
East African countries like Uganda and Kenya.
Vast as this may seem, these close to two billion people are not a unitary whole. As in Christianity, there is a basic schism between Sunni and Shia, the counterpart of Catholic and Protestant. Most countries are Sunni majorities, the only exception being Shia Iran.
The radical and now pragmatic Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed a sort of reconciliation deal with Iran in 2023 whereby both countries agreed to respect each other's sovereignty and not interfere in the internal affairs of the other. Iran's president Ebrahim Raisi also received an invitation from Prince Mohammed's father King Salman to visit Saudi Arabia, and did so in March 2023.
A year later relations between the countries remain restored but there are tensions, particularly with respect to regional allies and the conflicts in Yemen and Lebanon. And Syria continues to be Iran's best Arab friend.
Iran
is also expanding its horizons as it looks towards China and also
Russia and the (former Soviet but now) independent republics like
Kazakhstan. The emerging triple axis of Russia, China and Iran is an
attempt to remake the world according to some like Dina Esfandiary, who
holds a doctorate from the renowned War Studies Dept. at King's College
London.
Others
believe that to be illusory, and that the relationships are basically
bilateral with ad hoc trilateral coordination when necessary in specific
circumstances.
Is
there any chance the OIC (Organization for Islamic Cooperation) could
become unified like the EU? The
problem it faces is that its member states may share religion in common
but they are separated by sectarian, ethnic and cultural divides.
Europe, on the other hand, was separated only by language and history,
and therefore could profit economically by forming the EU.
Another problem is the large population differences and the possibility of richer countries being swamped by poor and illiterate immigrants. Still others with a more tolerant religious culture might not like the intrusion of religious diehards.
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