Confusion Thy Name is "Middle East"

If you have not read any of my earlier blog entries you will not have noticed my efforts to empathize on a religious level, to whatever extent I am able, with the general population and their more immediate leadership within the Muslim communities of the Middle East. However, I always knew I was missing a great deal but have always, until now, been too busy or distracted to try to discover the answers and thereby rid myself of the confusion I have been feeling when trying to understand the issues, major and otherwise. I feel I have made some very small inroads* into this area and I will share my minute wealth of knowledge, such as it is and such of which most well-educated people may already be aware:

I have learned that the two main factions (I do not know if this is an appropriate term to use here) within the religion and culture of Islam are the Sunni and the Shiite. Each group has its own political/paramilitary arm; the Sunni branch has Hamas and the Shiite branch has Hezbollah. Despite the fact that many muslims from both groups may no longer practice their religion as strictly as the clergy in the nations in question may desire, they are still very attached culturally to their heritage and find it offensive that anyone from one group or the other might take any liberties whatsoever at proselytizing the other groups members, and accusations of this fly thick and fast on occasion. The division between the two groups traditionally goes back to the death of Mohammed and the disagreements surrounding who was to have taken his place as leader of the religion which, as seems to be the case in most of these stories, was settled by violent action, thus creating an unbreachable schism between the groups forever. Iran, which used to be Persia, is Shiite, while most of the rest of the Muslim world is Sunni. This is part of the reason for the severe tensions within the Middle East itself, exclusive of any traumas imposed by other, non-Muslim, factors and nations, as Iran ramps up its nuclear weapons program. The Sunni Muslims see the Shiite Muslims as being heretical and it seems as if they would just as soon deal with some of them in a way similar to the methods employed by our early American forbears who dunked/drowned, hanged, torched, imprisoned, starved, tarred and feathered, etc., etc., anyone who deviated too greatly from the established norm of religious and governmental tolerance.

I have also been taking a quick peek at the Arabic language, although I am not going to be studying it, or attempting to do so, until I have mastered French. As I am singularly lacking in talent and drive in that direction, it will be quite sometime before I do more than merely glance at the books I have acquired, however just going through some of the vocabulary can be very enlightening. As I have looked through some of the more idiomatic (?) words and phrases used in the Arab speaking world, I have noticed that there are not any real equivalents to many of our ruder or more blunt English words and phrases. The Arab author of the particular book I have seen has used certain words that he assures the reader are approximate to the rude words in English, but he does not tranlate them, so anyone using them will not have any idea what they are actually saying should they be of a mind to try to express themselves rudely in Arabic. I think this is mean.

There are also words and phrases that do not have the same meanings in Arabic cultures that they do or do not hold within American culture with certain phrases taking on a much more serious connotation in Arabic than in English. This is also true in other languges as well and has led to some fairly serious misunderstandings both personal and political throughout human history, which is merely my observation as I think back to certain political fiascoes of the past hundred years, or so.

So far, this is the extent of my self-education on the Middle East, although I am trying to keep up more with the current events side of things as the election debacle and ensuing violence and the nuclear issues in Iran continue to unfold.

I once met someone from Iran. He was nice but talked far too much about how people of Persian descent often had blue or green eyes (I have green eyes but am of French, English, and German descent. I have also been told the same thing about people of Isreali descent.) and then he went on to describe some romantic dish made with chicken and pomegranite seeds or something like that. I thought it was a little obvious and a little silly, but he was a friend of my parents and I did not want to offend him, so I did not say much of anything.

So much for my forays into international circles. Sigh!

Hopefully, things will be resolved in the Middle East before any part of it ends up glowing in the dark for the next thousand years. It would be wonderful if people could just for a moment, forget their reasons for hating one another and think of more reasons to get along instead. Perhaps this would add the needed desperation to efforts at peace that have always been so lacking.

Love and Best Wishes,
Izzlebug