Red State Blue State, Sunni Shiite- it strikes me as identity politics (fought by younger peeps)...
Across Arab World, a Widening Rift
Sunni-Shiite Tension Called Region's 'Most Dangerous Problem'
CAIRO -- Egypt is the Arab world's largest Sunni Muslim country, but as a writer once quipped, it has a Shiite heart and a Sunni mind. ...
The syncretic blend makes the words of Mahmoud Ahmed, a book vendor sitting on the shrine's marble and granite promenade, even more striking.
"The Shiites are rising," he said, arching his eyebrows in an expression suggesting both revelation and fear. ...
"To us Egyptians," said writer and analyst Mohammed al-Sayid Said, the sectarian division is "entirely artificial. It resonates with nothing in our culture, nothing in our daily life. It's not part of our social experience, cultural experience or religious experience." But he added: "I think this can devastate the region."
It seems to be their whole "Red-State/ Blue-State," "Clash of Cultures- with say old England and Europe over the idealogical differences that led to the Revolutionary War" IE Old Politics but not necessarily forgotten or taken seriously by most normal people. Identity-Culture warfare fought with bombs seem to be the new type of war promoted by those who would be leader-capitalists in the new world economy. There will always be doubting political people who need to make their case by polarization, who are seldom visionaries but often make good "idealogical lietenants" and their followers either idealogical soldiers, or real soldiers with real bombs.
We're in an akward period of history, lots of people have been educated in the last century and are insecure: how many people have come from families who have gotten an education in the last 20-50 years (50-150 years)? They are the last generation or two of their families and the people who have inflated senses of self as they are the first in their family to attend school or college. We have essentially at this point a large group of people who have been educated to be middle class but act apathetically and like a wealthy working class in political terms, in real terms a neuveaux middle class that is used to how things are now but haven't gotten comfortable sticking around a bit and mixing in controvery.
The first part of development tends to be the austere "self made man," the flip side being the flamboyant entreprenuer personality that falls into the consumer culture attitudes which come with mobility but a feeling of just fitting in. Few people have taken up the politiical role in more then just a historical capacity and the last group to do so was pretty raucus and inexperianced, a bit too proud of themselves over it but they did take command. In a simplistic timeline large scale middle class life is just slightly ahead in Western Countries then Developing Countries, who have been working on economic growth for 40 years instead of 70-150.
While we have had an investor class since the inception of the country most families have not been middle class for very long, very few people owned their own businesses during the middle ages and before political power was wrested from kings: memory takes time and yet intuition can be developed in an instant, and innovation is as likely at this point in people from Africa as it is in people who are citizens of more established Western Nations. That is globalization.
Sunni-Shiite Tension Called Region's 'Most Dangerous Problem'
CAIRO -- Egypt is the Arab world's largest Sunni Muslim country, but as a writer once quipped, it has a Shiite heart and a Sunni mind. ...
The syncretic blend makes the words of Mahmoud Ahmed, a book vendor sitting on the shrine's marble and granite promenade, even more striking.
"The Shiites are rising," he said, arching his eyebrows in an expression suggesting both revelation and fear. ...
"To us Egyptians," said writer and analyst Mohammed al-Sayid Said, the sectarian division is "entirely artificial. It resonates with nothing in our culture, nothing in our daily life. It's not part of our social experience, cultural experience or religious experience." But he added: "I think this can devastate the region."
It seems to be their whole "Red-State/ Blue-State," "Clash of Cultures- with say old England and Europe over the idealogical differences that led to the Revolutionary War" IE Old Politics but not necessarily forgotten or taken seriously by most normal people. Identity-Culture warfare fought with bombs seem to be the new type of war promoted by those who would be leader-capitalists in the new world economy. There will always be doubting political people who need to make their case by polarization, who are seldom visionaries but often make good "idealogical lietenants" and their followers either idealogical soldiers, or real soldiers with real bombs.
We're in an akward period of history, lots of people have been educated in the last century and are insecure: how many people have come from families who have gotten an education in the last 20-50 years (50-150 years)? They are the last generation or two of their families and the people who have inflated senses of self as they are the first in their family to attend school or college. We have essentially at this point a large group of people who have been educated to be middle class but act apathetically and like a wealthy working class in political terms, in real terms a neuveaux middle class that is used to how things are now but haven't gotten comfortable sticking around a bit and mixing in controvery.
The first part of development tends to be the austere "self made man," the flip side being the flamboyant entreprenuer personality that falls into the consumer culture attitudes which come with mobility but a feeling of just fitting in. Few people have taken up the politiical role in more then just a historical capacity and the last group to do so was pretty raucus and inexperianced, a bit too proud of themselves over it but they did take command. In a simplistic timeline large scale middle class life is just slightly ahead in Western Countries then Developing Countries, who have been working on economic growth for 40 years instead of 70-150.
While we have had an investor class since the inception of the country most families have not been middle class for very long, very few people owned their own businesses during the middle ages and before political power was wrested from kings: memory takes time and yet intuition can be developed in an instant, and innovation is as likely at this point in people from Africa as it is in people who are citizens of more established Western Nations. That is globalization.