Hotbeds of Islam Conflict

 

Currently several hotbeds of Islamic conflict exist. Here are a few:

           

Saudia Arabia.  About 1500 the Saud dynasty established control over a small area of land that would later become Saudia Arabia.  In the mid-eighteenth century, the Saudis formed an alliance with a religious fundamental, Muhammad idn Abd al-Wahhab, a Sunnite who believed that Muslims should follow a strict interpretation the Islamic law.  In 1932, Ibn Saud proclaimed the Arabian Peninsula the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  Ibn Saud's success was due largely to his revival of the Wahhabi movement.  Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait precipitated the Persian Gulf War of 1991.  Saudi leaders fearing that Iraq would attempt to control their oil fields joined the United States and its allies in driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait.  Thousands of U.S. troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia from 1991 to 2003.  The Wahhabis strongly opposed the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia home of Islam’s two holiest cities.  Tensions between the ruling Saudis and the Wahhabis began to grow.  The most notorious Wahhabi Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden became the leader of the terrorist organization al-Qaida.

           

Afghanistan.  In 1996 bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders moved to Afghanistan.  There they lived under the protection of the Taliban a conservative Islamic group that controlled most of the country.  On September 11, 2001 Islamic terrorists hijacked two commercial jetliners and deliberately crashed them into the twin towers of World Trade Center causing them to collapse.  The United States retaliated by briefly ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan.

Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups dominated by the Sunni Arabs. Bashar al-Assad who has been president of The Arab Republic of Syria since 2000 has effectively suspended most constitutional protections for citizens, many of whom have fled the country. A civil war has splintered the country, divided national alliances and contributed to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999.

Iraq.  In 1979 the Shiite Muslim Ayatollah Khomeini took control of Iran and fought a war with Iraq over territorial disputes.  The United States supported Iraq until the Kuwait invasion in 1991 when the United States organized the Islamic coalition against Iraq.  In March 2003 United States-led forces launched another war against Iraq to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a supporter of the Taliban. After the American presence in Iraq ended in 2011 fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country allowing ISIS to grab Iraqi territory.

Iran. The Persian Empire as Iran was then called collapsed with the invasion of Alexander the Great in 330 BC. Under the Sassanid Dynasty Iran again became a leading world power until Muslims raided the country in 651 AD. Following a coup in 1953 secular Iran gradually became close allies with United States until the 1979 revolution. With the fall of Saddam Hussein Iran has become a nuclear threat and the religious terror group Hezbollah, an Iranian surrogate has grown more powerful.

Pakistan.  In the nineteenth century the area that makes up Pakistan and India came under British colonial rule.  In 1947, Pakistan was created as a homeland for Muslims while the people of India were primarily Hindus.  Almost all the people of Pakistan are Muslims, but major cultural groups including Punjabis, Sindhis, and Pashtuns make establishing a unified nation difficult.

           

Palestine, the land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea and between Egypt and southwest Asia, has for over 2000 years been the center of religious conflict.  Between 1933 and 1935, more than 100,000 Jewish refugees fled to Palestine to escape persecution in Nazi Germany and Poland.  In 1947, the United Nations divided Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish.  The day after the Jews established the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, five Arab states—Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria—attacked Israel and were defeated.  In May 1967 Egyptian troops entered the Sinai Peninsula.  In the following six days, the Israelis destroyed the invading Islamic armies.  The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) founded in 1964 seeks to establish an independent state in Palestine.  The other Islamic states support the Palestinian’s fight against the Israelis but exclude Palestinians from their own countries considering them an inferior sect.

Malaysia a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy divided into 13 states and a Federal Territory in Southeast Asia is rich in natural resources and racially and ethically diverse.  Islam is the official religion.  Kuala Lumpur with once the world’s tallest building, the Petronas Towers, reflects the urbanization of Malaysia.  With Muslim mosques, Christian churches and Hindu and Buddhist temples standing side-by-side, stricter Islamic standards have engendered religious unrest.

Conclusion: It’s a mess. Recommendation: Pray, celebrate life, turn off the news and change the channel to I Love Lucy reruns.