Word: ite
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...early as 2004, Jordan's King Abdullah warned of a rising Shi'ite "crescent" running from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Although the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad had the backing of the U.S., in many Arab eyes it represented the expansion of Iran's influence. Sunni Arab leaders have begun to ratchet up their rhetoric against Shi'ites in general and Iran in particular. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2006 said, "Most of the Shi'ites are loyal to Iran and not to the countries they are living in." After a storm of protest from Iraq...
Saddam's execution became another flash point. Even Sunnis who had little sympathy for Saddam were incensed that the government chose to hang him at the hour of morning prayers on one of the most sacred Muslim holidays (Iraqi Sunnis celebrated the holiday one day before the Shi'ites). The choice seemed to confirm suspicions that Shi'ite political dominance would be a constant humiliation. "It was their way of telling us, 'We're in charge now, and you are so weak that even your holy days have no meaning anymore,'" says media analyst Kadhim al-Mukhdadi. "That morning...
...alone in that hopelessness. Sectarian lines have been drawn through mixed neighborhoods. Where Shi'ites are in the majority, Sunni families have been forced to leave for fear of death. Sunnis have responded with their own sectarian cleansing. A large portion of the mostly Sunni middle and upper classes has fled the country; Jordan and Syria together now have nearly 2 million Iraqi expatriates. Inter-sect marriages have become less and less common. Zahra's father has refused to give his younger daughter permission to follow in her sister's footsteps and marry a Shi'ite. "He is the same...
...IRAQ, THE SUNNI-SHI'ITE WAR CAN sometimes seem no more than a series of concurrent battles between neighborhoods such as Adhamiya and Khadamiya. The people fighting may have no conception of any greater plan. The wider Muslim world, however, tends to focus on the big picture. Shi'ites are now politically dominant in Iraq, and Iran is the leading Shi'ite power. So in most Arab capitals, the sectarian war in Iraq is increasingly blamed on Iran. Taken along with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear ambitions, Iran's sponsorship of the Shi'ite Hizballah militia in Lebanon...
...Wahhabi sect, often backed and bankrolled by members of the Saudi royal family, contribute to the spread of sectarian violence by preaching a hard-line form of Sunni Islam that condemns all other strains as heresy. In Pakistan, moderate Muslims blame Wahhabi madrasahs as well as Iranian-funded Shi'ite seminaries for the escalation of Sunni-Shi'ite violence that has claimed more than 4,000 lives in the past two decades. In the latest attacks, three separate suicide bombings killed 21 during the Ashura rituals in January. In Lebanon, sectarian tensions have risen after years of relative calm. Hizballah...