Why religious affiliations hardly count as a reliable classification of conflicts

January 17, 2007 on 11:00 am | In Philosophy |

From today’s New York Times

CAIRO, Jan. 16 — The botched hanging of Saddam Hussein and two lieutenants in Iraq by its Shiite-led government has helped to accelerate Sunni-Shiite sectarianism across an already fragile Middle East, according to experts across the region.

The chaotic executions and the calm with which Mr. Hussein confronted the gallows and mocking Shiite guards have bolstered his image among many of his fellow Sunni Muslims.

But something else is happening too: a pan-Muslim unity that surged after the summer war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, is waning.

And while political analysts and government officials in the region say the spreading Sunni disillusionment with Shiites and their backers in Iran will benefit Sunni-led governments and the United States, they and others worry that the tensions could start to balkanize the region as they have in Iraq itself. (full article)

In my eyes an interesting analysis of the current situation in Iraq. However, I feel uneasy with the word “to balkanize”. Doing history in a scientific way I know how one needs to be very careful with comparisons. I don’t know exactly the writers original intentions, but I think a comparison with the Irish civil war would be better, although just slightly better. As far as I understand, the Balkan wars took place between followers of two different religions (Christianity and Islam) whereas the Irish civil war and the current sectarian clashes in Iraq are fought out between subdivisions of the same religion.

If we look up the difference between the Shia and Sunni Islam in the wikipedia, it seems insignificant:

Shias believe that they adhere to the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and the religious guidance of his family (who are referred to as the Ahl al-Bayt). Unlike Sunnis, Shi’ites do not consider the first three caliphs to have been “Rightly Guided”; the fourth, Ali, was to them the first rightful caliph. (wikipedia on Shia Islam)

Whenever we do history, we are confronted with the phenomenon that let their religious affiliations strongly define which side they choose in a conflict, yet when we look at the religious differences they don’t serve as a satisfactory explanation for the conflict. Instead we dip into socio-economic and nationalistic reasons on the search for an answer.
At school I have been taught that the late reason for the Irish conflict are the different living standards between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that gets fueled with social welfare money from the United Kingdom. However, we also find the socio-economic roots in the origin of the Irish conflict:

From 1874, but particularly from 1880 under Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish Parliamentary Party moved to prominence with its attempts to achieve Home Rule, which would have given Ireland some autonomy without requiring it to leave the United Kingdom. It seemed possible in 1911 when the House of Lords lost their veto, and John Redmond secured the Third Home Rule Act 1914. The unionist movement, however, had been growing since 1886 among Irish Protestants, fearing that they would face discrimination and lose economic and social privileges if Irish Catholics were to achieve real political power. Though Irish unionism existed throughout the whole of Ireland, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century unionism was particularly strong in parts of Ulster, where industrialisation was more common in contrast to the more agrarian rest of the island. (Any tariff barriers would, it was feared, most heavily hit that region.) (wikipedia on the history of the Republic of Ireland)

So is Iraq being balkanized? I seriously doubt it. Is Iraq the new Ireland? I don’t think so. I hope to show with my article how religious affiliations are no adequate means to classify the nature of a conflict and how comparisons should be avoided as it’s hard to find a fitting match.