Hate Amid the Ruins

In the world of the Jihadis, not all hate is saved for Israel, the US, or the West. Some is reserved for those Islamic sects one disagrees with, particularly along the Sunni/Shia split. Beyond the various factions fighting in Iraq, a good reminder of this came out recently in an speech on a pro-Al Qada website reportedly given by Sheikh Abu Abdul Rahman. In it, he refers to the "infidel Hezbollah" and the "most corrupted regimes of Syria and Iran."

Lest we forget, part of the unrest that has gone on in Iraq has long been a Sunni (represented by the Saddam-controlled Baathists) and various Shia groups, and that much of the in-fighting that happened in Fallujah and other places was augmented by foreign Sunnis who had come to fight the infidel, and very often that infidel was not the US forces, but the Shia majority. In Lebanon, there is a tricky balance of power between the various Christian groups, the Sunnis, the Shias (of whom Hezbollah is the most important militarized face) and Druzes.

The jihadists in each tradition dream of reestablishing a Caliphate to rule all of the Islamic world, but there is a struggle within the larger Islam to say who will be the rulers. Iran dreams of earlier Persian empires. The Sunnis long for their own.

Within this then, watch and see as the internal war between the two groups heats up from time to time. Iran has been in the news with their reaching for nuclear power and their backing of Hezbollah. But those Sunni forces allied with Al Qada and similar groups are not merely going to roll over either, as the recent Pakistani based bomb plot in Britain should remind us.

Yes, there is hatred for Israel which all these groups use as a rallying call. But there is plenty of hatred left over for each other, and when the occasions allow for it, it will be well demonstrated.