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INTERNATIONAL

Je Suis Tehran

  • 08 June 2017

 

The unprecedented attacks by Daesh (IS/ISIS) on the Iranian Parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini in which at least 12 people were killed and 39 injured come at an incredibly sensitive time for all countries in the Middle East.

While Daesh, like Al Qaeda, is increasingly a brand name for claiming terror attacks rather than its actual coordinator, the fact that footage of this attack was published on the Al Amaq broadcaster (the in-house channel for Daesh in the Middle East) strongly suggests that these attacks, unlike others, really was the direct work of the entity which still controls parts of Syria and Iraq.

It will be interesting to see whether people change their Facebook pictures to the Iranian flag or post 'Je Suis Tehran' hashtags in solidarity with these latest victims. The sad thing is that they probably won't — people in the West have largely been programmed to see Iran as an enemy and to ignore the fact that it, as much as the West, has been near the top of the list of enemies for Daesh, Al Qaeda and their kin.

There is no space here to explore the complex history of the rift between Sunni and Shi'a Islam. Suffice it to say that, despite their often bitter historical rivalry originating in competing claims to the succession to Mohammed, most Sunni and Shi'a have historically been content to live side by side, recognising each other's claims to be legitimate expressions of Islamic faith.

What is often obscured by commentators is that much of the present violence in the Middle East is political, not religious, even though religious labels are used as a shorthand for the competing blocs (in much the same way as 'Catholic' and 'Protestant' were used during the Troubles in Northern Ireland).

The (Sunni) Saudi kings see themselves as the guardians of true Islam because of their access to Mecca and the Holy Places while Iran, a Shi'a governed, hybrid theocracy-democracy, sees itself as having combined the best of both. Both governments are 20th century phenomena: the Saudi state dates to 1932 and the present government of Iran dates only to the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Both compete for influence in the region and both have a miserable record of preserving the rights of religious or political minorities: given that the attackers spoke Farsi and accented Arabic, some have suggested an attempt to spur support for Daesh among disaffected Iranian

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