Last weekend, news attention was focused on the battle between the Islamic State and Kurdish forces. At the same time, the Islamic State set off bombs in and near Baghdad that killed 45 people, including the police chief of Anbar province.
Anbar is a largely Sunni area, and yet the Sunni militants chose to attack there. Baghdad is governed by a rickety coalition with a Shia Prime Minister – from the militants’ perspective, an attack on Iraq’s seat of government is not only an attack on weakling Sunnis, but also on Shia leadership.
In Iraq, and in many places throughout the Islamic world, militant Muslims are fighting not just those of other faiths – Buddhists in Thailand, Christians in northern Nigeria and the Central African Republic – but they are also fighting other Islamic sects and secular governments headed by Muslims. To say that Islam is fighting itself stretches a point, but not that far.
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