A neoconservative hypothetical: What if Mecca and Karbala are nuked by their respective fundamentalists, noting that Israel could be a variable in this tip-for-tap exchange.
Sidney Lumet and Stanley Kramer have thought about the possibility of nuclear exchanges between relatively evenly matched adversaries: Fail-Safe and its parodic Doppelgänger Dr. Strangelove are modeling exercises useful to this circumstance
In the former narrative, a compensatory attack on the US is launched to provide a proportional reciprocation as compensatory for the initial, accidental attack on Russia.
Would such an actual or threatened attack be similarly compensatory for Isam, given the possibility of limited nuclear war in the 21st Centiry. And would a possible outcome be a permanent peace between the warring sectarian factions not unlike the ecumenical UNITATIS REDINTEGRATIO between Protestants and Catholics.
So guess what the terminally paranoid House of Saud is up to: Lay their hands on a nuclear bomb to counteract the non-existent "Iranian bomb", which Tehran, via Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, has consistently abhorred as un-Islamic, and wouldn't have it anyway because of stringent inspections bound to be part of the final nuclear deal.
The proverbial "former Pentagon official" has leaked to a Rupert Murdoch paper that the House of Saud is bound to buy a ready-made nuclear bomb from Pakistan. The choice of media already offers a clue; Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is one of News Corporation's leading shareholders.
Islam split into its Sunni and Shi'ite branches during a war over the succession to the leadership of the faith in the generation that followed the Prophet Mohammad's death in 632.
The hadith, or sayings of the prophet and his companions, have been handed down orally over the centuries and are the most important sources of authority in Islam after the Quran itself. Many date back to those medieval battlefields in what are now Syria and Iraq, where the two main Islamic sects took shape.
The historical texts have become a powerful recruitment tool, quoted across the region from religious festivals in Iraq's Shi'ite shrine city of Kerbala to videos released by Sunni preachers in the Gulf, and beyond.
"We have here mujahideen from Russia, America, the Philippines, China, Germany, Belgium, Sudan, India and Yemen and other places," said Sami, a Sunni rebel fighter in northern Syria. "They are here because this what the Prophet said and promised, the Grand Battle is happening."
Both sides emphasize the ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic state which will rule the world before total chaos.
Although some Sunni and Shi'ite clerics are privately skeptical of the religious justifications for the war, few in the region express such reservations in public for fear of being misinterpreted as doubters of the prophecies.
"Yes some of the signs are similar but these signs could apply at any time after the fall of the Islamic state (1,000 years ago)," one Sunni Muslim scholar in Lebanon said, asking that he not be identified. "There is no way to confirm we are living those times. We have to wait and see."
In Fail-Safe:
Before completion of the accidental attack on Moscow, the President realizes the severity of the situation and seeks a resolution to the matter that will avoid reprisal from the Russians and, ultimately, an all-out nuclear holocaust. With this threat in mind, the President orders an American bomber toward New York City, which otherwise would be destroyed by the Soviets, along with many other American cities, in any counter-attack. Upon failure to stop the destruction of Moscow, the President orders General Black, whose wife and child are visiting New York (Dan O'Herlihy), is flying the bomber that is to drop the same nuclear payload which struck Moscow in the hope that it will appease the Soviets. After releasing the bombs, Black commits suicide.
The Pakistani bomb was funded by Saudi Arabia as a Sunni bomb. We had no end of evidence, but Clinton-era apparatchiks refused to face the embarrassing facts.
On the eve of Pakistan’s first nuclear detonation, Islamabad’s leading luxury hotel filled with Saudis. On the day of the blast, the phone lines (in those days before cells) lit up from the test site back to the hotel, then from the hotel to Riyadh. According to one well-placed American witness, the information was suppressed.
Now Sunni Muslims have their bomb, the Shi’a are determined to have theirs, and the truly horrific religious war in the coming years may not be between terrorists or murderous Islamist governments and the West, but between Muslims. The sectarian hatreds within Islam (as well as between the Persian and Arab civilizations) pre-date any resentments toward the United States by many centuries.
It should surprise no one that the great bloodlettings of the 21st century will be over religion. The shock may be over which masses of believers slaughter each other.
Friday, 27 December 2013
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s statements that the Shiite holy city of Karbala must be the Qibla - the direction to which Muslims pray - has stirred controversy among Islamic scholars.
“Karbala must be the Qibla of the Islamic world because Imam Hussein [the Prophet Mohammad’s second grandson, and an important figure in Shia Islam] is buried there,” Maliki said this week, Iraqi media reported on Friday.
Saudi religious scholars described his statements as incitement to strife and a call to divide Muslims.
“This issue is already agreed upon by all Muslim scholars, both Sunni and Shiite. They all agree that the Qibla is the Ka’bah [the shrine in Mecca towards which Muslims pray],” said Nasser al-Honeini, professor of religion and general supervisor at the Center of Contemporary Thought in Saudi Arabia.
Honeini added that Maliki’s statements distort Islam because the faith does not say that Muslims should pray in the direction of tombs.
Khaled al-Mosleh, professo of jJurisprudence at the University Qassim in Saudi Arabia, described Maliki’s statements as “nonsense” and incompatible with Islamic sharia law.
For the faithful, the hadith chart the course of Syria's conflict from its beginning in March 2011, when protests erupted over the alleged torture of students and schoolboys who wrote anti-Assad graffiti on a school wall in Deraa.
"There will be a strife in Sham (Syria) that begins with children playing, after which nothing can be fixed," according to one hadith. "When it calms down from one side, it ignites from the other."
">Hadith on both sides mention Syria as a main battlefield, naming cities and towns where blood will be spilled.Hundreds of thousands of people will be killed. The whole region will be shaken from the Arabian Peninsula to Iraq, Iran and Jerusalem, according to some texts.Saudi Arabia will collapse. Almost every country in the Middle East will face unrest. One statement says "blood will reach knee-level".
A widely circulated hadith attributed to Mohammad says Sham, or Syria, is God's favored land. Asked where the next jihad will be, he replies: "Go for Sham, and if you can't, go for Yemen ...(though) God has guaranteed me Sham and its people."