the Centrist

            I tried a little experiment about a week or so ago.  I asked some pretty savvy people basic questions on the War on Terrorism, or as I call it, World War III.  They were two separate groups, both consisting of educated men and women, both a mix of liberals and conservatives, both requested I address the group as a result of this column.  I started with some basic questions: what were the only two majority Shiites nations in the world … the basic difference between the Shiite and the Sunni sects of Islam … and finally, of the major four jihadists terrorist groups, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, and Hamas, which groups belonged to Shiite and which to Sunni?  For the most part, they didn’t know.  If we do not understand our enemy, how can we expect to win, asked I?  Moreover, this complexity alone confuses people and issues, but make no mistake, no matter their label their goals are the same, exterminate Israel and America.  This war is undeclared by the West, but make no mistake they have declared war on the West.  This war is a war without borders, a war with combatants amongst the people rather than on the front lines, and a war whose goal is to destroy our very existence. 

            Those were academic questions, but questions that must be answered to fully understand our enemy.  Perhaps a good place to start would be why do these opposing groups hate each other enough to cause civil insurrection in Iraq, while merely a couple of hundred miles away, in Lebanon, are willing to join forces against Israel.  Perhaps the old Arab proverb, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, is the answer.  Common enemies have made for strange bed fellows throughout the ages, and this is no exception.  That common enemy is Israel, and in this four thousand year grudge there has never been peace between the two factions. 

About 2600 hundred years before Mohammed was born (See W.D. Bellavia’s “Rebirth Pains”) the Book of  Genesis records that Abraham, the father of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, had traveled to the Promised Land (present day Israel and Jordan, also called Canaan, the Land of Milk and Honey, and Palestine), from Babylon (Iraq).  Once there he was promised a son by the one God of Israel.  As the years passed his wife Sara ebbed beyond the age of child bearing.  Abraham and Sara gave up hope of having children of their own, and both accepted her plight … that of being barren.  They concurred that it would be good for him to father a child by Sara’s handmaiden, Hagar.  This son was named Ishmael.  Miraculously, years later, Sara became pregnant at the age of 90, and bore that promised son, Isaac.  Sara became jealous of the relationship that Abraham had with Ishmael, and he and his mother were cast out of the clan. God made a great nation from Ishmael, the Arab nation, as well as a great nation from Isaac, the Jewish nation.  Whether or not one accepts this story as truth or allegory, the first recorded enmity occurs in Genesis.
When the Arab Prophet Mohammed came on the scene, 600 years after Christ, he redacted the 2600 year old history of how Abraham was asked to sacrifice his “only son, the son that he loved, Isaac”, as stated in the Book of Genesis, to Ishmael, and penned it as part of the Koran.
After Islam seized, desecrated and destroyed many of the Christian Holy sites the Christian response was a number of invasions known as the “Crusades”.  This occurred from about 900-1200 A.D..  The overzealous Christians took their wrath out on the Jewish communities along the way, as well as Islam in the Holy Land.  Yet Islam eventually won the region and it fell into general disrepair under the Turkish Ottoman Empire (1451-1918).  Both Arab nationalism and Zionist movements began in earnest in the late 19^th century and came to a zenith after World War I when an agreement for partition of Palestine was forged in the League of Nations, the Balfour Declaration. This partitioned Palestine into two nations split at the Jordan River, Jordan to the east and Israel to the west.  After agreement the Arab Nations rejected this partition.  Yet Jordan became a nation shortly after World War II, while Israel began her tumultuous existence, encountering at least a major war a decade, on May 15, 1948.  It should be stressed that until the actual partitioning of Jordan and Israel all people in both nations, be they Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, were known as Palestinians. These people became Jordanians, Israelis, and Palestinians after 1948.
            Oh, you’d like to know those answers?  The only two majority Shiite nations in the world are Iraq and Iran.  The basic difference between a Shiite and a Sunni is that a Shiite believes that leaders, ayatollahs and mullahs, must be direct descendants of Muhammad, Sunnis contend that leadership must be proven, earned. All of the terrorist groups mentioned above were Sunni except the Shiite force of Hezbollah.  Sunnis are the vast majority of Muslims in the world.