Jonah Goldberg
If there was a moment when the United States could have productively intervened in Syria, it looks like that moment has passed.
Shiite militants, including Hezbollah — partly at the behest of their paymasters in Iran — are racing to the defense of Bashar Assad’s regime. According to a witness account in the New York Times, there were some 11,000 Hezbollah fighters in the besieged town of Qusayr alone.
A Shiite religious student in Najaf, Iraq, told the Times that his colleagues believe the leader of Qatar, a backer of Sunni Syrian rebels, is a long-prophesied demonic figure who, it is foretold, will raise an army in Syria to wipe out Shiites in Iraq. As a result, devout Shiites are racing to defend their faith.
Sunnis around the world, meanwhile, are being called on to join the conflict, with the material support of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Sunni Muslim Scholars Association of Lebanon issued a fatwa calling on followers to support the rebels “by words, money, medical aid, and fighting.”
The hugely influential Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, a Sunni Egyptian cleric based in Qatar, called on Sunnis everywhere to come to Qusayr’s aid and proclaimed Hezbollah “more infidel than Jews and Christians.”
In the Middle East, them’s fighting words.
It’s tempting to compare what is going on in Syria to the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that presaged World War II in many ways, chief among them the way fascists and Communists used the belligerents as proxies for the larger conflict brewing in Europe.
The Assad regime, essentially a puppet of Shiite Iran, is a devil we know well. However much the rebellion began as a nonsectarian protest against Assad’s corruption, it is now rapidly becoming dominated by al-Qaeda and other radical and terrorist forces. One such rebel group has reportedly been involved in the slaughter of Christians — not the kind of crowd many Americans have an interest in supporting.
But beyond the bad guys–versus–bad guys aspect, the Spanish Civil War analogy has its limits. A better comparison may be to the bloody upheavals that tore apart Europe in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.
Christianity benefits from dogmas and doctrines more conducive to the separation of church and state than those found in Islam, starting with Jesus’ injunction to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. When the Roman Empire fell, the seat of political authority transferred to Constantinople, but the religious authority remained in Rome. This created room, conceptually at least, to distinguish political authority from religious authority. But the divine right of kings rendered that distinction operationally moot for centuries.
Sounds like Jonah Goldberg has been studying this situation recently.
He has no record of weighing in to such a depth on this before now.
I think population pressure and the shrinking petro dollars in the old-Arab oil rich states is combining to cause the poor in Islam be too many compared with the paternalistic system of cronyism that sees rich Muslims pick and choose which poor Muslims they will support.
Thus a whole bunch of Muslims are finding themselves – financially – on the outs.
Since borrowing money is forbidden, they have already sold sons and daughters into slavery or jihad.
Now, still piss-poor, they have taken up arms.
The whole ”us VS them,” that Obama embraces so wholeheartedly here with no fear of violence, is being embraced there with plenty of violence.
The Iranian president (ex?) Amadinejad was a strong believer in the 13th imam.
He even made himself that dead child’s guardian, should he re-emerge during Mahmoud’s life.
The fight between Shiite and Sunni has been the bloodiest since the end of WWII.
More people have died for this disagreement over which sect lays claim to the crown of world-wide Caliph.
A lot rides on that crown.
You get to tell EVERYONE, Muslim or dhimmi, what to do.
The world-wide Caliph rules higher than any past earthly king or Pope.
What amazes me is why these days have created such a frenzy about this.
A world-wide Caliph taking power on earth is a hazy a promise.
So, why here and now?
But, these are a people who raced to doctors in mass hysteria over their manhoods’ disappearing because a rumor over their cell phones told them this was spreading everywhere any Muslim male touched any non-Muslim.
These are a people who cover every strand of the females’ hair based on a 1979 myth that ”research proved female hair emits rays that control men.”
These are a very superstitious people.