[a_Turk]

ping..

[Wombat101]

Left unsaid: the issue is Kurds. What scares people more than a unified Shi'ite brotherhood between Iraq and Iran, is the Kurds will demand an independant state, with the resulting bad news for Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.

I wouldn't worry about Shi'ites lining up to shake hands across the Iran/Iraq border. Both have lived under dictatorship (one secular, the other religious) and hate it. Those shi'ites are more likely to build two Western-style democratic republics then they are to join forces to spread Islamic fundamentalism (and we do mean mental).

[Piranha]

Thanks for the ping, a_Turk.

I think it's oversimplification to say that the Arab world won't support Operation Iraqi Freedom because almost all of those countries are Sunni, and Iraq has a Shiite majority.

I also don't think President Bush will -- or should -- delay his push for reform in the Muslim world until Islamic sectarian hatreds are healed through ecumenical dialogue (however positive and valuable that dialogue would be for its own sake).

The fact is that the blood feud between Shiite and Sunni sects is irrelevant to the West, because neither group seems more inclined than the other to advocate peaceful coexistence with the non-Muslim world -- with the apparent exception of Turkish Muslim culture (is this because Turkish Muslims are Hanafi Sunnis and not Wahhabi Sunnis?).

A thought, though: England tried to carve up the land masses of the former Ottoman Empire and failed to bring peace. Perhaps population transfers should have their day in the sun once again.

[Kenny Bunk]

Yet, while Christianity has mostly moved beyond intra-religious hatred in the modern times, Islam has not quite done so. There is no Muslim equivalent of the Second Vatican Council, the World Council of Churches or the tradition of intra-religious dialogue that so characterizes the Christian faith today.

Jeez, what an original thought. This guy definitely desrves a place on the speakers list for the Interfaith Breakfast I am sponsoring in the Parish Hall of Our Lady of Riyadh Church. FARTWAHS permitting, of course.