| > Wars between different factions of the same religion are the rule, not the exception Exactly. For example, the US and Saudi supported "rebels" in Syria are Sunnis. Assad is Alawite Shia, Iran too. Now look at who's with whom. ISIS are inspired by Wahabi teaching, which was effectively able to grow thanks to Saudi Arabia and Oil, but consider any Muslim who's not ready to accept Wahabi view apostate, that is, somebody who is, according to their religious views, to be killed(!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism The chaos in Iraq after US invaded to "bring them democracy" resulted in de-facto war between the Shia who got to the power and Sunnis who lost the influence. Yemen, where Saudi Arabia performs military actions now, has large Shia population. Etc. It sounds complex, but it's not, once you understand what's going on and see how obviously groups support or fight one another exactly based on the religion, you can't even imagine that people can ignore the predominantly religious background for the most of the conflicts. If you don't make a difference between Sunni, Shia and Wahabi, it's your problem, but people lose lives because of that in the Middle East, in hundreds of thousands. Which is not to say that it's not even much worse (proportionally) for minorities like smaller religious Muslim groups and even worse for Christians there. |