The myth of the 1,400 year Sunni-Shia war.

During the period of European rule over Rwanda, the Belgian colonial administrators of the territory accomplished an extraordinary feat in their subjugation of the local population - the deliberate manufacture of new ethnic divisions. By formulating ethnic categorisations based on subjective judgments of Rwandans' height and skin colour, the Belgians sought to keep the Rwandan people at odds with one another and subservient to them. Entirely fabricated histories and genealogies were concocted for the "Hutu" and "Tutsi" peoples, although these terms themselves had been taken from the dustbin of Rwandan history and had had little effective meaning for hundreds of years. This strategy of divide-and-conquer eventually resulted in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, a bloodbath which shocked the conscience of the world and claimed the lives of roughly 800,000 people. Hutus and Tutsis, themselves only recently fabricated identities, had come to believe in a false narrative in which they had been in opposition to one another since the dawn of time. Today it is increasingly common to hear talk of the existence of a "1,400 Year War" between Sunni and Shia Muslims. In this narrative, the sectarian violence of today is simply the continuation of an ancient religious conflict rooted in events which transpired in the 7th century. While some Muslims themselves have recently bought into this worldview, it would suffice to say that such beliefs represent not only a misreading of history but a complete and utter fabrication of it. While there are distinct theological differences between Sunnis and Shias, the claim that these two groups have been in a perpetual state of war and animosity throughout their existence is an absurd falsehood. The conflict now brewing between certain Sunni and Shia political factions in the Middle East today has little or nothing to do with religious differences and everything to do with modern identity politics. Just as in Rwanda, Western powers and their local allies have sought to exacerbate these false divisions in order to perpetuate conflict and maintain a Middle East which is at once thoroughly divided and incapable of asserting itself. False continuities Analyses of the roots of sectarian conflict in the Middle East tend to look at the historical schism between Sunnis and Shias as the original driving factor behind present-day tensions. In this reading of events, the 680AD Battle of Karbala in which the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (who are particularly revered by Shia Muslims) were killed was merely the first battle in a long and continuous sectarian conflict which today is being played out in Syria, Lebanon and other countries throughout the Middle East. Head to Head - What is wrong with Islam today? As described by the Saudi writer Abdullah Hamiddadin, this explanation of contemporary events is as absurd as explaining modern tensions between Turkey and the EU as being rooted in the ancient conflict between King Charles and the Empress of Byzantium. Positing that present-day political rivalries can be explained by examining ninth-century conflicts between European powers is transparent nonsense. However, the same logic is readily applied to conflicts within the Muslim world. Indeed, while modern political factions often make reference to theological differences, the usage of symbolism and rhetoric which draws upon the distant past (a tactic employed by political opportunists around the world) is very different than the existence of an actual continuity between ancient history and the present. However, thanks to the efforts of well-funded religious demagogues - themselves either ignorant of history or cynical manipulators of it - this patently ridiculous explanation of world events is gaining some purchase even among Muslims themselves. Remembering history in the Middle East For those who would seek to shamelessly fabricate a historical narrative in order to serve their venal political interests, it is worth restating some basic realities about the nature of sectarian relationships in the Middle East. While over a millennium of cohabitation the various religious communities of the region have experienced identifiable ups-and-downs in their relations, the overall narrative between them is vastly more of pluralism, tolerance and accommodation than of hard-wired conflict and animosity. For centuries, Sunnis and Shias (as well as Christians, Jews and other religious groups) have lived closely intertwined with one another to a degree without parallel elsewhere in the world. Even where they have exerted power through distinct political structures, the argument that this has equated to conflict does not stand up to even a cursory analysis. While the Sunni Ottoman Empire and Shia Safavid Empire experienced their share of conflict, they also lived peaceably alongside one another for hundreds of years, even considering it shameful to engage in conflict with one another as Muslim powers. Furthermore, despite seething protestations to the contrary from zealots of all types, "sects" have hardly been separately self-contained entities over history. Shia and Sunni Muslim scholars have long engaged in dialogue and influenced the religious thought of one another for centuries, blurring the already largely superficial distinctions between the two communities. As a legacy of this, today the greatest seat of learning in Sunni Islam also teaches Shia theology as an integrated school of thought. Modern Dark Ages The contrast between this history and the unconscionably brutal wars of religion which for centuries ravaged Europe could not be starker. When describing tensions between factions in the Middle East today, Western analysts (and increasingly, many Muslims) tend to view events through a historical lens which is derived from a distinctly Western experience of intractable religious conflict. Indeed, far from being ancient history, Europe's dark obsession with religious hatred reached its nadir mere decades ago in the form of the Holocaust - perhaps the ultimate religious "pogrom" against the long-oppressed Jewish population of the continent. For every sectarian terrorist group or militia, there are countless ordinary Shia and Sunni Muslims around the world who have risked their lives to protect their co-religionists. In recent decades however this dynamic has been largely reversed. Europe has taken great strides in enshrining tolerance, while the Middle East's once unrivalled religious pluralism has degraded to the point where even co-religionists of marginally-different sects are now often violently at odds with one another. European leaders now regularly lecture their counterparts in the Middle East on the need to protect the rights of minorities; something which may be tolerable today but which would have been thought unconscionable throughout most of history. While contemporary Muslim societies have regressed to the point where Europeans can now claim moral authority to lecture them on religious diversity, looking at history it should be noted that the periods of greatest religious tolerance within Islam have historically corresponded with the peaks of political power among Muslim empires. The lesson contained herein is something which modern leaders and religious figures - many of whom are disdainful at best towards minorities - ignore at their great peril. A dangerous myth Those who ignorantly claim that progress can be attained through the enforcement of strict ideological purity should take heed of the past and resist the temptation towards religious chauvinism. The conflict which some claim exists today between Sunni and Shia Muslims is a product of very recent global events; blowback from the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the petro-dollar fuelled global rise of Wahhabi reactionaries. It is decidedly not the continuation of any "1,400 year war" between Sunnis and Shias but is driven instead by the very modern phenomena of identity politics. Factions on both sides have created false histories for their own political benefit and have manufactured symbols and rituals which draw upon ancient history but are in fact entirely modern creations. Furthermore, Western military powers have sought to amplify these divisions to generate internecine conflicts within Muslim societies and engineer a bloodbath which will be to their own benefit. While neoconservatives practically salivate in anticipation of Muslims committing mass-fratricide against one another, away from the political sphere ordinary people continue to live with the deeply engrained sense of tolerance that has traditionally characterised the once-global civilisation of Islam. For every sectarian terrorist group or militia, there are countless ordinary Shia and Sunni Muslims around the world who have risked their lives to protect their co-religionists as well as the religious minorities within their societies. For every story which discards the nuances of todays' conflicts and casts them as part of a narrative of spiralling sectarian violence, there are others which point resolutely in the opposite direction. In the words of an 80-year old Pakistani farmer, a man older than his own country: "I've witnessed this Shia-Sunni brotherhood from my childhood, you can say from the day I was born." In Rwanda a people who came to believe a false history about themselves ended up being driven towards madness and self-destruction. Today, the Rwandan government has done away with the artificial colonial categorisations of "Hutu" and "Tutsi" and has formally recognised all Rwandan citizens as being of one ethnicity. Similarly, it is incumbent upon Muslims to reject crude myths about a 1,400 year sectarian war between themselves and to recognise the dangerous folly of such beliefs. Indeed, the simple truth is that if such a war existed Sunnis and Shias would not have been intermarrying and living in the same neighbourhoods up to the 21st century. Furthermore, were they truly enemies, millions of people of both sects would have stopped peacefully converging on the annual Hajj pilgrimage many centuries ago. If Islam is to continue as a constructive social phenomenon it is important that these traditional relationships and ways of life are not destroyed by modern ideologies masquerading as historical truths.

Rival groups in Egypt reject transition plan.

The Muslim Brotherhood has rejected a transition timetable set out by the military-backed interim president Adly Mansour, as the National Salvation Front, Egypt's main opposition bloc, denounced a decree which invests the new leader with extensive powers. The rejection from rival groups in Egypt came on Tuesday, as the transitional administration named the Prime Minister as Hazem el-Beblawi and appointed liberal opposition chief and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei as vice president for foreign relations. Essam el-Erian, a senior Brotherhood figure and deputy head of its Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, dismissed the transition timetable on Tuesday, saying it would take Egypt "back to zero". "The cowards are not sleeping, but Egypt will not surrender," he said. "The people created their constitution with their votes," el-Eiran wrote on his Facebook page, referring to the constitution that Islamists pushed to finalisation and then was passed in a national referendum during former President Mohamed Morsi's year in office. Egypt's interim administration published a timetable for a transition to a new democratic government hours after the army shot dead scores of people outside the elite Republican Guards' headquarters in Cairo on Monday. The plan includes holding parliamentary elections by 2014, after which a date will be announced for a presidential ballot. The country will have five months to amend the current draft constitution, suspended following Morsi's removal last week, ratify it in a referendum, and then hold parliamentary elections, according to the text of the 33-article decree published online. The process will take no more than 210 days, according to the decree, meaning elections will be by February at the latest. "The National Salvation Front announces its rejection of the constitutional decree," the group said in a statement. The NSF complained of a lack of consultation before the charter was adopted. "We call for it to be amended and will propose our own amendments to the president," the group added. Earlier, the grassroots Tamarod campaign, which organised the mass protests that led to Morsi's overthrow, also complained it had not been consulted on the transition plan. Tamarod spokesman Mahmud Badr said the movement would itself make proposals for changes to the blueprint. For its part, the US cautiously welcomed the plan. "We are encouraged the interim government has laid out a plan for the path forward," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told a daily briefing. "The details of a path back to a democratically elected civilian government are for the Egyptian people to decide," she added. Military issues warning The Egyptian military on Tuesday issued a statement defending the legitimacy of the interim government,. Defense Minister Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi warned against anyone who would put "the homeland at the people in jeopardy" and any attempt to disrupt the country's "difficult and complex" transition. Elsewhere, Egypt's prosecutor general on Tuesday began investigating 650 people suspected of involvement in violence on Monday, although it is not clear who, exactly, is under investigation. Meanwhile, one of the leading critics of Morsi's government, the United Arab Emirates, has pledged $3bn in loans and grants to Egypt's new government. The Gulf state alleges that Islamist groups backed by the Muslim Brotherhood have sought to topple its Western-backed ruling system. Saudi Arabia also approved a $5bn aid package to Egypt, which is to include $2bn in central bank deposits, $2bn in in energy products and $1bn in cash.

Egypt's Brotherhood rejects cabinet offer.

The Muslim Brotherhood has rejected an offer to join Egypt's transitional cabinet, as new interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi announced he would start work on forming an interim government once he meets with liberal leaders. Beblawi told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday that he accepted that it would be difficult to win the unanimous support of Egyptians for his new government. "Of course we respect the public opinion and we try to comply with the expectation of the people, but there is always a time of choice, there is more than one alternative, you cannot satisfy all of the people," he said. Meanwhile, Egypt's main liberal coalition, the National Salvation Front, withdrew its earlier statement rejecting the transition plan for interim rule and issued a statement containing milder criticism, Reuters said. Beblawi, a liberal economist and former finance minister, was named the new prime minister on Tuesday. Liberal opposition chief and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei was also named vice president and head of foreign relations. The appointments were followed by an announcement that ministerial posts in the new government would be offered to members of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, and to the Nour Party. Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh, reporting from Cairo, said that some of the opposition groups like Tamarrod said that they were not consulted, and that the plans for the interim government was a rushed political process done in the dark. Political 'manoeuvring' The administration moves come almost a week after the military overthrew President Mohamed Morsi and chose chief justice Adly Mansour to head the Arab world's most populous country. ElBaradei was initially tipped to lead the cabinet but his nomination was rejected by the Nour party. The head of the party added that it was still studying ElBaradei's appointment as vice president. Beblawi now faces the daunting task of trying to reunite a deeply divided country and rescue its battered economy. Shortly after the Islamist parties made their statements, Egypt's army chief went on state media to say that the military will not accept political "manoeuvring". Defence Minister Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said that "the future of the nation is too important and sacred for maneuvers or hindrance, whatever the justifications". The blueprint unveiled by Mansour is intended to replace the controversial Islamist-drafted constitution which he suspended following last week's coup. A committee will be set up to make final improvements to the draft before it is put to a referendum. Parliamentary elections will then follow within three months and Mansour will announce a date for a presidential election once the new parliament has convened. Beblawi and ElBaradei Both Beblawi and ElBaradei are well-known on Egypt's political scene. Beblawi, 76, studied in Cairo and Paris, where he obtained a doctorate in economics. Egypt in turmoil as rivals reject interim leader's plan. During his long career, he worked in public and private institutions, both at home and abroad, including as head of Egypt's Export Development Bank between 1983 and 1995. He has also taught at several universities around the world and has written numerous books and articles on finance in Arabic, French and English. Beblawi was appointed as deputy prime minister and finance minister in the "Revolution Cabinet" after a popular uprising saw the ousting of long-time President Hosni Mubarak. Egypt's military council rejected Beblawi's resignation in October of 2011, when he quit in protest over deadly clashes that left at least 26 people dead. ElBaradei, who has the backing of the June 30 Front - an amalgam of several groups opposing Morsi - is widely respected in Egypt and has received the country's highest honour, the Nile Shas, in 2006. The former director of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, 71, has had a long career on the international scene. ElBaradei served as an Egyptian diplomat to the UN and later as an aide to Egypt's foreign minister. He was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency for nearly 12 years. He and the IAEA shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. ElBaradei was tipped to be the new deputy prime minister last week, but Egyptian media later negated the reports.

US Bin Laden raid was an act of war,report says.

The unilateral decision by the US to launch a military operation to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden on Pakistani territory constituted "an act of war", a Pakistani government investigation has found. The report of the Abbottabad Commission, which investigated the circumstances around the raid and how the al-Qaeda leader came to live in the country for nine years without apparently being detected, was exclusively released on Monday. The report of the commission, formed in June 2011 to probe the circumstances around the killing of bin Laden by US forces in a unilateral raid on the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, had earlier been suppressed by the Pakistani government. The raid illustrated Washington's "contemptuous disregard of Pakistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity in the arrogant certainty of […] unmatched military might", the report concluded in its "Findings" section. In the same section, the report also details the "comprehensive failure of Pakistan to detect the presence of Bin Laden on its territory for almost a decade". The report draws on testimony from more than 200 witnesses, including members of Bin Laden's family, Pakistan's then spy chief, senior ministers in the government and officials at every level of the military, bureaucracy and security services. Scathing report The commission's 336-page report is scathing, holding both the government and the military responsible for "gross incompetence" leading to "collective failures" that allowed both Bin Laden to escape detection, and the US to be able to violate Pakistani sovereignty by carrying out an attack on its soil without the knowledge of the military or the government. View the Abbottabad Commission report It singles out the military for particular criticism on this front, citing an "overall policy bankruptcy" amongst both the political and military leadership, when it came to securing the country’s western border against possible violations of Pakistani territory or airspace. The commission’s investigators were told by the Pakistani Air Force that low-level radars were on "peacetime deployment", and hence were not active on the western border with Afghanistan. It is through this lack of radar coverage, and the fact that the US forces carried out the raid in stealth helicopters, flying fast and low, they were told, that the US SEAL team was able to evade detection. Pakistani Air Force jets were only scrambled in response to the threat after US forces had already left Pakistani airspace, after having spent approximately three hours in Pakistani territory and airspace. It concluded that Pakistan’s defence policy was "outdated" and reactive, with major policy documents not having been updated since 2004 (the Defence Policy) and 2007 (the Joint Strategic Directive). The two documents designate India as being the only country to be considered "hostile" to Pakistan. "There was no pro-active anticipatory policy or policy planning," the report says, in detailing how the Pakistani military apparently had no contingency plans in place to respond to a unilateral US raid. It also noted that such a raid had been alluded to in public statements by senior US officials. "Is it official or unofficial defence policy not to attempt to defend the country if threatened or even attacked by a military superpower like the US?" the report asks several top military officials, including the chief of the air force and the director-general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). 'Too weak' Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, then director general of the ISI, moreover, told the commission that Pakistan had become "too weak" and dependent on Washington to take necessary actions to defend itself against US policies, according to the report. Spotlight Al Jazeera's exclusive coverage of the leaked Bin Laden files "We are a very weak state and also a very scared state," Pasha told the commission. He said that the case of Bin Laden was one "not so much of specific individual or institutional failure, but [one of] collective and systemic failure". Pasha went on to allege that Pakistani society was "deeply penetrated" by US intelligence and other services, quoting a US intelligence officer as having told him: "You are so cheap … we can buy you with a visa, with a visit to the US, even with a dinner … we can buy anyone." The report also makes detailed allegations against Hussain Haqqani, the former Pakistani ambassador to the US, regarding the procurement of an extensive number of visas, without proper authorisation, for US nationals. Haqqani denied these charges both to Al Jazeera and to the commission in his written testimony. The commission also found, based on testimony from officials from the ISI, that Pakistani intelligence had effectively closed the book on the hunt for Bin Laden after the CIA stopped sharing information on his possible whereabouts in 2005. The ISI was provided with four telephone numbers in 2010 related to the hunt for Bin Laden, but they were not told the significance of the numbers. The commission concludes that the ISI was "paralyzed by the CIA’s lack of cooperation", and should have been able to track the al-Qaeda leader on its own territory more effectively. The report also details "culpable negligence and incompetence at almost all levels of government" in both the violation of sovereignty constituted by Bin Laden’s stay in the country for nine years, and the US raid that killed him in 2011.

Zuma sacks three ministers in reshuffle.

South African President Jacob Zuma has reshuffled his cabinet for a fourth time, sacking three ministers, including a former anti-apartheid activist and a critic of his administration. Tokyo Sexwale, who has been human settlement minister, was fired on Tuesday along with embattled communications minister Dina Pule and the minister of traditional affairs, Richard Baloyi. The reshuffle, announced less than a year before Zuma seeks re-election for another five-year term, followed Sexwale's criticism of the president's stewardship of the economy, Africa's largest. Sexwale, a wealthy businessman, was jailed on the Robben Island like Nelson Mandela, the country's first black president and an anti-apartheid icon. The businessman was among a group of senior African National Congress (ANC) members looking to replace Zuma last year. However, Zuma is almost assured of being the party's presidential candidate in 2014 after winning an ANC leadership contest in December. Analysts say he has high chances of winning the 2014 election given his ruling ANC's stranglehold over politics but international credit agencies have downgraded South Africa in the last year, citing his ineffectual leadership among other long-term risks. Shady deals One of the dismissed ministers has been facing allegations of being involved in shady deals. Pule stands accused of giving preferential treatment to a firm run by her then-boyfriend - a charge she denies. The ministers of energy and transport swapped portfolios while the much-maligned basic education minister, Angie Motshekga, at the centre of scandal in which textbooks went undelivered for months to a province, kept her post. Many ANC veterans feel Zuma has steered Mandela's former liberation movement away from its idealistic beginnings and into a morass of graft, cronyism and a culture of self-enrichment. Mandela, now 94 years old, has spent a month in hospital battling a lung infection that has left him in critical condition. South Africa was mired in recession when Zuma came to power, but since then has struggled to pick up to pre-2008 growth rates of around 5 percent. Since the ANC assumed power after the end of apartheid in 1994, the government has built hundreds of thousands of houses and provided basic service to millions of poor blacks left by the wayside during white-minority rule. But festering labour strife in the mining sector, a poor education system and a rigid jobs market have been eroding South Africa's economic competitiveness.