A Cataclysmic Purge in the Middle East

A Cataclysmic Purge in the Middle East

The governments of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria must each assume some direct responsibility for the current unfolding horror. The Saudi government is locked into a quasi-suicidal symbiosis with a bloated religious establishment to which much of the reductionism in ideology and regimentation in behavior can be traced. Through acts of commission and omission, Saudi Arabia continues to foster the global onslaught on the diversity and pluralism of Islamic heritage, manifested in its vilest forms today in the so-called "Islamic State." Iran, with the diversion offered by the facade of reformers - possibly well-meaning, certainly powerless - is engaged in a historic revision of the Shi‘ia heritage of Islam along lines more compatible with the ideology of the Saudi religious establishment than with the tradition of dissent and pluralism with which it is conventionally associated. Both Saudi Arabia and Iran cynically utilize the fruits of their ideological outreach for immediate political advantage, but the damage to the texture and integrity of societies that host their respective vassals is permanent.

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