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Politics : Idea Of The Day
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To: JEB who wrote (43229)9/3/2002 5:41:36 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF  Read Replies (2) of 50167
 
The fault lines of Islam ..

Zachary Latif...Arab East Trilogy ii: in continuation of his first article on Arab East Trilogy i:The Saudi State now..

The fault lines of Islam..

This is perhaps an exceptionally vital field that will have to be explored in the future. Samuel Huntington in his deeply flawed treatise, “Clash of Civilisations”, discussed at length the fault lines between civilisations by mentioning the litany of wars in Islam’s bloody borders. He continually referred to the Nargono-Karabakh conflict in the Caucasus and the Bosnian debacle in the Balkans. Nevertheless what is even more pertinent to understand, for those who profess an interest in the Islamic Crescent, is knowledge of the fault lines within Islam itself and particularly that of the Middle East.

Islam’s nucleus has historically been and will continue to be the Middle East! To be cast out of this region is to be on the periphery of the Islamic Crescent. For Islam’s adherents are to be found primarily in the alluvial plains of South Asia or the tropics of South East Asia* nevertheless mere numbers cannot counteract the Arab “imperial**” hegemony within the Crescent. Pakistan is perhaps the only such nation to have any authority and influence in the Crescent***. Nonetheless the cliché is true, to know the Middle East is to understand the nature of Islam.

There are tautological observations that can first be made with even a sparse knowledge of the Middle East. Nevertheless it is vital to discern and peer through the nations states to elucidate the political and cultural fault lines.

The are three fault lines in the Middle East, two of them are minor and the other deep:

1. The Maghreb and the Levantine-Red Sea Coastal strip.
2. The intermediate buffer zone consisting of the Kurdish highlands and the Arabian Desert to the South.
3. The Western Persian Gulf and Iran.

These are the centres of civilisation in the Middle East and form opposing spheres one that is quintessentially Sunni Arab whilst the other Shi’ite Persian. This is the fundamental duality that exists within the region and is a reminiscent of the ancient geopolitics of the region****.

Maghreb:

The Maghreb is a regional entity in its own right and ranges from Morocco to the Libyan border with Egypt. North Africa, on the periphery of the Arab world, never regained its influence on the course of the Islamic crescent following the end of the Moorish kingdom. The nations are Arabicised only to an extent (following the expulsions from Spain the Arab-Moorish component formed ten percent of the North African population) with remnants of the Berber population forming significant non-Arab minorities in Algeria and Morocco . The wastes of Libya contrast with the fecundity of the Nile Delta in Egypt (a subtle ...continues on his blogg..

latif.blogspot.com
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