With the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the return of the Shia community to power in Iraq, a new perspective on the Arab world has emerged for many experts: the opposition of Sunnism and Shiism. In Iraq this opposition takes the form of an intercommunity conflict between Shia militias and Sunni armed groups. The idea of a confrontation arising from rivalry between these two historic branches of Islam suffers from certain weaknesses, and does not stand up to close analysis, even if the idea itself is attractive.

This sectarian struggle is much more complex than it appears, and has three different facets. The first is the ancient cleavage that has always separated the Arab and the Persian worlds. Secondly, the rivalry between the Sunni and Shia communities has a political dimension that includes their religious differences without these necessarily constituting the major element. The real reason for this antagonism between Arab and Persian is the wish to dominate the Muslim world, and not with the relative claims to sanctity of either Sunni or Shia. Above all, it sets revolutionary, Shia Iran against Sunni, Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, and also to a certain extent al-Qaeda, against Iran, notably in Iraq. The main issue is still leadership of the Muslim world, in the shape of a struggle which exploits identity through a religious cover.

From Ideological Competition to Armed Struggle: a New Vision of the Shia-Sunni Confrontation

A Cleavage Anchored in History

The struggle which pits Shia against Sunni is above all historic and political, rather than ideological. Its starting point was the murder of the fourth Caliph, Ali,⁽¹⁾ and the seizure of the Caliphate by the Governor of Damascus (Mo’awiyya) who founded the Omayyid dynasty. This event marks the origin of the great Islamic schism between Sunni and Shia, and of the power struggle which ensued in the name of the legitimate succession of the Prophet. The schism as a major element really became significant from the sixteenth century onwards,⁽²⁾ with the emergence of a Shia Iran in the heart of a rapidly evolving Arab-Muslim empire. The Sunni Arab space thenceforth had an unfriendly, growing Shia Iranian neighbour.