Le Monde: Sectarianism has never been so widespread

The French newspaper Le Monde allocated a comprehensive supplement for the debate of the internal "religious war" being fought between Sunnis and Shias in the Muslim world. This conflict which has never been so widespread or so savage is a struggle dividing the Muslim world, and destabilizing huge areas of the Middle East. Its echoes can be heard as far away as Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia.

The judgement of the conflict’s reasons denotes that it is either a matter of a disputed interpretation of Islam, or a struggle for local dominion, or a clash between two styles of life: the nomadic and farmers. It also involves a cultural dispute between Arabs and Persians, namely, Saudi Arabia versus Iran, Le Monde said.

The newspaper cites another reason for the exacerbation of the Sunni-Shiite conflict; that’s the failure of Arab spring to respond to the collective ambitions of the Arab national rebirth. Therefore, certain communities have fallen back on their religious identity, defining themselves in opposition to the other.

Apart from the fact that this conflict is demolishing the lives and communities in many Islamic countries, its repercussion becomes a matter of concern to the West. The chaos it created provided spatial facilities for the terrorists to operate in. The newspaper refers to the deadly attacks committed in Europe by radical Sunni Muslims who are opposing the Western civilization in general. It suggests that the globalization of this factional conflict is now irreversible.

While categorizing the Sunni faction of Islam as the perpetrator of the "terrorist attacks", the newspaper did not mention anything about the "sleeping Shiite cells" of Iran and Hezbollah worldwide, which are waiting the signal of their masters in Tehran to destabilize the tranquility of the West.