The protagonists: Islam Shiita and other creeds

 2nd part

The countries of the Middle East are countries without rains, with many deserts, arid soils, scorching suns and miraculous rivers, clear nights, crescent moonlight both in the sky and on the flags, territories with oil and gas, Countries of many religious beliefs sometimes fundamentalist and sectarian, often contradictory, conflict and war societies. Peoples who do not seem to know the concept of peace or remember it in their memories.

The protagonists are political and religious. It is generally difficult to tell them apart. Many political protagonists identify with a religion and many religious leaders act politically

From this point of view there are four great currents that are both religious and political. Sunni Islamism in its various versions, radical and moderate, Shiite Islamism, Christianity and Judaism.

 Here we try to decipher its historical, conceptual and strategic frameworks.

One of the most important currents of Islam is Shiism.

Shiism is a branch of Islam called twelfth referring to the transcendental belief in the 12 imams of the lineage of Muhammad beginning with Ali, husband of Fatima, who was the daughter of the Prophet, as well as the sons of Ali and Fatima, Hassan and Hussein and his descendants, of whom the last Imam al-Mahdi allegedly lives in hiding and will reappear at some point as the promised Mahdi impersonating the Dajjal (who is the impostor).

This current is the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is a country with a great international and regional historical projection, with an area of ​​1,650,000 km2 and 83 million inhabitants.

Most of Iran's population is Muslim of which 89% are Shiites, Sunnis reach 11%. Among the minority religions, the Bahá'í faith, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity stand out.

Iran is a theocratic state in which there is no separation between the state and religion. The Islamic Republic's political system is based on the 1979 constitution that encompasses several intricately connected governing bodies. The Supreme Leader of Iran is responsible for the delineation and oversight of general policies, is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and controls the Republic's intelligence and security operations.3 In the absence of the Leader, a council of religious leaders. He himself has the authority to declare war, as well as the ability to appoint and fire judicial leaders, state radio and television networks, and the top leader of the Guards Corps of the Islamic Republic.

A branch of Shismo are the Alawites who mostly inhabit Syria. The Alawites are considered a moderate syncretic branch of Imani Shiism, who also accept the twelve imams as legitimate successors to the prophet. The Alawite trinity includes three emanations of the only God, the Essence, the Name and the Door. In Syria, they are mostly concentrated within the Socialist Arab Baath, occupying the most important and strategic levels of the government, including the presidency. They are concentrated in the coastal province of Latakia. They are also allies of the Lebanese Shiite movement called Hezbollah.

The Hezbollah organization is a Lebanese Shiite organization with a political arm and a paramilitary one. It was founded in Lebanon in 1982 in response to Israeli intervention at the time with Iranian assistance. They supported Assad in the Syrian war. It is together with the Amal Movement (with approximately the same demographic strength), the main political and military expression of the Lebanese Shiite community, currently the largest religious group in the country. He was looking for an Islamic republic, now he changed his postulates and aspires to a democratic and secular society.]

Another predominantly Shiite movement is the Houthis or Houthis of Yemen. They call themselves Ansarolá (also spelled Ansar Allah) which means "supporters of God".

In September 2014, after a coup, the Houthis seized Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, temporarily confirming control of the country. This resulted in a civil war and a military intervention led by Saudi Araboa to prevent the collapse of President Hadi's pre-existing regime.

Saudi Arabia, since 2015, has exerted a blockade that prevents food imports, triggering one of the largest humanitarian crises in recent decades.

The other religious currents of the Middle East include Christians concentrated mainly in Lebanon where most are called Maronites. They constitute 22% of the population of that country, They are participants of an Eastern Catholic Church that follows the Antioquia (or Western Syria) liturgical tradition in which they use Western Syriac (or Aramaic) as their liturgical language and Lebanese Arabic as their auxiliary language.

And finally, other protagonists of geopolitics in the Middle East are the Jews, especially those affiliated with the Zionist currents or returning to Israel. The Jews used to exist as minorities in all the countries of the Middle East but that due to the Arab-Israeli clashes they emigrated from most of the territories of the region moving to the State of Israel that was established in Palestine since 1948. The Israeli government has International support from the various Jewish organizations worldwide, tolerance from the European powers and above all is subsidized by large sums and military equipment by the United States.

The state of Israel, which in practice has a Jewish denominational government, controls its own territory with an area of ​​22,140 km2 and occupies the Western Band of the Jordan with just over 5,600 km2, in turn maintains an almost total fence on the strip Gaza that has an area of ​​365 km2.

9 million people live in the territory of the State of Israel, of whom almost 7 million are Jewish-Israelis and 2 are Arab-Israelis. In the Western Band of the Jordan 3 million Arab inhabitants and some 400,000 Jews settled in colonies within this territory. In Gaza there are 2 million Palestinians, which means that in the traditional territory of Palestine that includes Israel, the Western Band and Gaza there are 7 million Jews and 7 million Arabs. The Arabs of Palestine are governed by the moderate Fatah movement that controls the Palestinian Authority Government and Hamas which is a radical movement based in Gaza. These two Palestinian streams, Fatal and Hamas, have vied for political control of the Palestinian population in the occupied and / or blocked territories. The political effectiveness of both organizations is very limited by the occupation that they suffer by Israel, as well as by the expansion of the Jewish colonies, in the case of the Western Band and by the isolation imposed by the Israeli blockade, in the case of the Gaza strip.

Protagonists, Middle East (1st part)

The countries of the Middle East are countries without rains, with many deserts, arid soils, scorching suns and miraculous rivers, clear nights, crescent moonlight both in the sky and on the flags, territories with oil and gas, Countries of many religious beliefs sometimes fundamentalist and sectarian, often contradictory, conflict and war societies. Peoples who do not seem to know the concept of peace or remember it in their memories.

The protagonists are political and religious. It is generally difficult to tell them apart. Many political protagonists identify with a religion and many religious leaders act politically

From this point of view there are four great currents that are both religious and political. Sunni Islamism in its various versions, radical and moderate, Shiite Islamism, Christianity and Judaism.

Here we try to decipher its historical, conceptual and strategic frameworks.

Sunni Islamism, which we will be developing in the first part of this cycle, has two main versions,

the moderate version, represented by countries such as the Republic of Turkey, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, and the radical version made up of the regimes that follow the so-called “wahabi” version of Islam, extremely rigorous and restrictive initiated and promoted by Saudi Arabia and various derivative movements such as ISIS in Syria and Iraq and AlQaeda and to some degree the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.

Wahhabism is an allegedly puritanical and radical religious current of Islam in matters of faith and religious practices. Created by the religious Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792) in the 18th century. Its rise is due to its early relationship with the House of Saud and to the mutual support it provided. Followers of Wahhabism see their role as defenders of Islam, as well as the need to restore the purity of an Islam apparently contaminated by innovations , superstitions, deviations, heresies and idolatry. It originated in Saudi Arabia, which is still today the center of the sect, and uses its large funds to finance its expansion in the Muslim world and in other countries.

ISIS is a fundamentalist jihadist and Wahhabi Islamist group that proposes the return of the ancient Islamic caliphates through the formation of a proto-state in Syria and Iraq and other countries. They came to control a territory that stretched from Rafqa in Syria to Mosul in Iraq. It is currently reduced to small areas in these countries.

Al Qaeda is a fundamentalist jihadist Islamist organization that developed in various Muslim countries using terrorist attacks and practices and aims to create a network of Islamist resistance. It has become known worldwide for being responsible for the attacks of 9/11/2001 and other terrorist attacks, but also for having many branches in various Islamic countries such as Jabhat al-Nusra (known as Frente al-Nusra) today. called Tahrir Al Sham, and other branches and subgroups

Other radical and jihadist organizations include Hay'at Tahrir Al Sham ("Organization for the Liberation of the Levant"), and also the Nusra Front, is an active organization of allied jihadist-Salafist ideology and al-Qaeda branch in Syria and also in certain parts of Iraq and Lebanon. Salafists make a literal and orthodox reading of the founding texts of Islam, the Koran and the Sunna and consider their interpretation to be the only legitimate interpretation. This group has participated in the Syrian civil war especially in Idlib and north of Aleppo.

The Taliban for their part are a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political-military faction in Afghanistan, currently waging war within the same country. The word comes from the Arabic word ṭālib, that is, student, in the most general sense of the expression. The plural form ṭālibān [طالبان], "students", is translated from Arabic into Pashtun in a more specific sense as "religious student", "novice" or "seminarian"

whose idea of ​​society is based on strict interpretations of what the life of a Muslim should be, without allowing other interpretations that allow some kind of "debauchery", as is usual in democratic societies, and under which his country governed from 1996 until he was overthrown in the country in 2001.

It has regrouped since 2002 and revived as a strong insurgent movement that rules mainly in areas of Pastunistan and fights in guerrilla warfare against the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAFR), but in which the USA has the main role.

The predominantly secular predominantly Sunni Muslim regimes are mainly Turkey, Algeria, Tunisia and the Kurdish independence political movements.

Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary and constitutional republic whose political system was established in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk of the Mov. Nacl Turco, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, with the Occupation of Constantinople, as a consequence of the 1st World War and the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey's main religion is Islam. 99% of the Turkish population is Muslim, of which more than 80% belong to the Sunni branch of Islam.

For their part, the Kurds are a town of 20 million that lives in a mountainous region of Western Asia, encompassing part of the territories of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Its main organizations are the PKK "Kurdistan Workers' Party", facing the Turkish government and the PDK Kurdistan Democratic Party which is one of the main Kurdish political parties in the Iraqi Kurdistan region. Promote democratic values. Individual rights and freedom of expression. For its part, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (UPK) is an Iraqi political party in the north of the country where almost all Iraqi Kurds live. Those provinces are Suleimaniya, Erbil, Dahuk and to a lesser extent Diyala, Al Ta’mim and Ninawa. In Syria is the PYD Syrian Democratic Union Party is a political party founded in 2003 by Kurdish nationalists in northern Syria. Her armed arm in the Syrian War are the Popular Protection Units and the Female Protection Units. It is a lay and egalitarian non-religious movement.

The Shiite current, which believes in it, believes in the transcendence of the 12 Imams and in particular of the last Imam al-Mahdi that will reappear at some point.

But we will develop this in a second article in this series where we will also deal with Shiite Islamism and its various tendencies, Maronite Christianity in Lebanon and Syria and Judaism in Israel and the multi-confessional Palestinian complement of the Arabs of the western bank of the Jordan, Gaza and the Arab-Israeli population as political-religious protagonists of the evolution and conflicts of Middle Eastern societies.