The Middle East is more stable than it should be, apparently.
There's a saying about the Middle East; everyone there was killing each other for millenia before Israel showed up. Now they have a common enemy, so they've mostly stopped. When Israel goes down, they'll go straight back to killing each other.
Yup, I am glad I brought my questions up.
Tailless answered regarding the Alawites, which clears things up. I am finding the impression that religious denominations appear to take precedent in distinguishing regional identities instead of ethnicity. This appears to be true for Alawites and Druzes, but I am wondering if it also holds true for Ibadi's and Sufi's as well as other groups I might not know?
There's a lot of truth to that. I think - and this is purely opinion here, I've not read on this particular subject - that a lot of that likely has to do with the proliferation of large empires in the region. There was seldom a single ethno-religious groups that controlled a territory for a very long time, and thus had the capacity to impose itself upon that territory in a distinct way. Exept for the inaccessible regions tk spoke of, much of the Middle East has been contested by multiple empires, with the Ottomans eventually emerging triumphant.
The Ottomans had a policy of not really giving a damn about religion except where it became a political threat, so they mostly let their people govern themselves, so long as the Ottomans got the taxes and troops they demanded. Most of the other empires that ruled the region, with the slight exception of the various Arab sultanates during the Crusader period, felt pretty much the same. The Romans taxed the territory pretty heavily, but otherwise never really centralised its rule the way they did in most of their empire, I assume for reasons of distance and corruption; very few Emperors actually cared about the Asian provinces, so the governors did as they pleased.
The Crusader period itself helped perpetuate the religious diversity in the region, since the Crusaders had a tendency to massacre Muslims and Jews, which kept the Christians from being completely marginalised. This was especially true the Crusader state based around modern-day Lebanon; hence the large proportion of Christians there compared to the rest of the region. The Muslims only rarely committed such atrocities, so when they reconquered the Levant, the Christians weren't similarly slaughtered.
With no long-term polities to be loyal to, except possibly for a city or tribe, religion tended to play a pretty important role in the region. Combined with a level of religious tolerance and a region that had many isolated areas where new heresies and religious off-shoots could propagate, it led to the ethnoreligious patchwork now extant.
What about all those Yemeni kingdoms that were present in pre-Islamic Arabia? There were several of them I am aware of.
Most of them were separated from the rest of the Peninsular by deserts and highlands. With the exception of Saba (Sheba) none of them seem to have extended their territory very far inland, preferring to remain coastal, trade based empires. And Saba spread as far into Ethiopia as it did into Arabia, anyway. Similarly, a few Ethiopian kingdoms spread into Yemen. That area is as much Ethiopian as Arabian, culturally.
Also you mentioned Lebanon being a nightmare, care to explain?
I know little of the Lebanese Civil War, if someone has a source or reading to recommend on the topic that would be fantastic.
I don't have any sources, unfortunately. Just a lifetime of reading bits and pieces here and there on the subject.
Lebanon was an artificial state, deliberately constructed by the French in order to give themselves an ally in the region when they were eventually forced out. The French knew they weren't going to be able to stay in the Levant, but they needed a proxy to conduct their policies through. Lebanon was to be that proxy. They deliberately made the state as large as possible while keeping a Christian majority, the theory being that that majority would need to look for France for protection from big, bad Syria.
What kicked off the Civil War was that the incumbent President, a Christian, attempted to extend his rule past his constitutionally permitted period. While initially he was successful in this, largely due to playing on fears of both Israel and Lebanon's increasingly large Palestinian refugee minority, eventually rival Muslim and Christian militias formed and began fighting one another. These initial groups eventual blossomed into dozens, if not hundreds of factions, some of them the size of a largish street-gang, others dominating whole provinces. Hezbollah, the most famous, practically controlled all of South Beirut at one point, left it when the Israelis showed up, but came straight back as soon as the IDF left.
Syria, seeing a chance to annex Lebanon, blatantly interfered in the Civil War by supporting various factions, primarily Hezbollah. Israel, both concerned about Syrian influence and as part of the butcher Sharon's ridiculous idea for "peace from Antioch to Alexandria" launched its own invasion, which primarily succeeded in turning public opinion globally against Israel due to the mass-rape of Palestinian refugees in camps by Israel's Christian militia allies. Israel's invasion also achieved the remarkable side-effect of getting every Muslim militia in Lebanon to briefly unite to kill as many Israelis as possible.
The IDF stayed just long enough to give the illusion that they were leaving of their own free will, then promptly limped home with their tail between their legs, having at a single stroke destroyed Israel's reputation as a nation that only acted in self-defence. Hezbollah had stood back and allowed most of the other Muslim militias to get killed fighting the Israelis, so it actually became the largest militia in the country following this, absorbing or destroying the majority of the others.
Eventually a peace deal was brokered, with most of the militias disbanding and handing their weapons over to the new government. In practice, most of the militias didn't actually hand over their weapons, but Syria was only interested in funding Hezbollah, Iran had also focused on Hezbollah, the USSR was pro-Syrian and most of the rest of the planet supported the new government, so the arms shipments the militias had depended upon dried up. The illicit weapons trade couldn't compete with the sheer size of Hezbollah's trade with Syria and the government's trade with the US, France and other powers. So between them, Hezbollah and the army crushed all but a handful of militias, which never really threatened Lebanon's stability again.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, had become powerful enough to virtually control the southern half of the country and was able to gain an official exemption from the government to continue carrying weapons. The reason for this was largely because the government didn't trust its own soldiers to police the border with Israel and had a tentative plan to incorporate Hezbollah's armed elements into its own security arrangements. That plan never got off the ground, and Hezbollah is essentially a state-within-a-state these days. It prosecuted the 2006 war with Israel entirely on its own, for example. It is also very much immune to Syrian or Iranian pressure nowadays, though it does still rely on them for arms shipments. Syria and Iran (not so much Syria at the moment, for obvious reasons) are stuck in the quandary of being blamed for Hezbollah's actions when they have less and less control over them. Much like Soviet weapons shipments to North Vietnam, the continuing Iranian and Syrian relationship with Hezbollah is as much to keep what little influence they have left as it is to actually increase their influence.
Hell, I think Turkey and Iran are also "part of the Arab world" according to your average American.
I know a lot of Americans who think Persians are Arabs, so you may well be right there. I don't recall ever hearing any similar sentiments directed at Turks though. Possibly because of the close relationship during the Cold War, the most I've ever gotten from an American on the Turks is "I like them."
Since the statement was extremely clear to anyone in possession of higher language capacity than a three-year old, I'm going to have to decline to respond as I suspect that you aren't asking me a sincere question.
My three-year old's higher language capacity will rock your socks off, Herr Mouthwash.
