Engaging Iran
Document Actions
Send this page to somebody
Print this page
Vali Nasr tells Der Spiegel why America must talk to its increasingly powerful Islamic adversary.
Spiegel Online
October 26th, 2006
SPIEGEL: Mr. Nasr, in your book "The Shia Revival," you paint a
dire picture of the future of the Middle East. You predict that the
conflicts between Shiites and Sunnis will dramatically increase.
Nasr: Sectarian identity and sectarian tensions will be the backdrop of all the other issues in the Middle East. We saw this in Lebanon where a war that was initially an Arab-Israeli war -- a war that belongs to the old conflicts of the region -- very quickly became all about the Shiite-Sunni issue. Some Arab governments and radical Sunni clerics came out and characterized this as a Shiite power grab and said Hezbollah cannot legitimately fight for the Palestinian cause because it is Shiite and a heretical organization.
To read the rest of this article, click here.
Paid Advertising
We are an international community of people of many faiths calling for social justice and political freedom in the context of new structures of work, caring communities, and democratic social and economic arrangements. We seek to influence public discourse in order to inspire compassion, generosity, non-violence and recognition of the spiritual dimensions of life.
