They try. Pan-Arabism used to be a thing, and a good proportion of postcolonial countries in Africa or the Mid East have major sectarian or secessionist groups. However they have not yet been through the process of ethnic cleansing that Europe has, which I think is probably inevitable.
History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VII
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They try. Pan-Arabism used to be a thing, and a good proportion of postcolonial countries in Africa or the Mid East have major sectarian or secessionist groups. However they have not yet been through the process of ethnic cleansing that Europe has, which I think is probably inevitable.
Ethnic groups aren't some fixed, divinely-ordained things - they're ideas created by people on a constant and ever-changing basis. We redefine who is 'us' and who is 'them' at least every few decades, if not centuries. In most cases, the state has historically preceded the nation - see Germany, which on its creation had a sizeable Polish minority and whose governments spent decades trying to sell Germanophone, Protestant 'German' identity with relatively little success, or Italy, where something like 2% of residents spoke 'Italian' on unification, or France, which had religiously, culturally and linguistically 'alien' populations into the Great War, or Australia, which is a more tragic example.
I would also take issue with the idea that Middle-Eastern national boundaries try to draw lines around ethnic groups - in practice, they draw lines at the point where two great powers pushed up against each other and couldn't make the other budge. See Iraq and Syria.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
Yarp. As soon as we see a barge with Syrian immigrants our armed forces send them to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. They are a threat to the purity of the European population!
No, I meant that nationalism would make people act in order to secure sovereignty for themselves. In some ways ISIS can be seen as a Sunni rebellion against the Shiite south.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
More like a Sunni rebellion against everything not Sunni everywhere.
Perhaps, but I think that's still tacitly accepting the nationalist idea that nations are eternal things, rather than arbitrary divisions drawn by people - it creates the myth that there are natural communities of people just waiting to rise up against human-created boundaries and return to those imposed by nature. Historically, nationalism has been used to reinforce the state as much as to undermine it, if not more so.
Well, a reaction to the Shiite south.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
In any case, Sunni vs Shiite is not quite an ethnic as much as religious distinction. Sure religion can be a marker of ethnicity as well, but this is a very tricky thing. French as a nationality is quite problematic in that sense. It's a nationality borne out of the state rather than ethnicity which has in the end homogenized most of its population (disregarding colonial and post-colonial migrations). Of course this process that equates nation to state tends to happen elsewhere. I believe that it only goes awry when this is enforced over a particular ethnic or national perception which then revolts.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Yeah, I was trying to figure out if he mixed up East and West.
I'd say in the case of Iran and the eastern Arabs Shiism really does blur the line between the two. Even in places like Lebanon or Syria they act and are treated as an ethnic group despite rejecting the label.
A good indicator of an ethnic group is a belief in its own importance or destiny. Islam as a whole can arguably fit the label, at the most general level.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
Weird. I always thought it was religions that dreamt of conquering the world. (Also deluded individuals)
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
Isn't the most important part of an ethnic identity arguably a common mythos? If that's the case, I'd agree that Shia in a way acts as an ethnic identity, since the Shia have managed to create their own distinct mythos while in opposition to the Sunni orthodoxy.
Hence why often it's more useful to talk about ethnoreligious identities. :3
Firstly, there's nothing ethnic about Shia. Shiites may have ethnic qualities, but that's not quite the same thing. Secondly, religions don't act: they're phenomena. They occur.
To elaborate on this - I think it might be confusing to someone hearing it for the first time - what a religion 'means' in terms of how it differentiates people and drives them to act is less a function of the religion itself (the content of the holy books and so on) and more a matter of the interests of those practising it. People always choose to emphasise, ignore or embellish bits of their beliefs, and that usually ties in with whatever interpretation makes them the most powerful or look the best.
Religions have overriding themes and values, and these can still carry over in a much more powerful way than a doctrine.
What are those? If Christianity's is mercy, where do the Crusades and 'Gott mit Uns' come from? If Buddhism's is peace, why do we have Buddhist terrorists? These 'eternal themes and values' are themselves always up for negotiation.
No, I mean how the religion relates to their ethnicity. Islam was founded as a single unifying 'tribe' of the faithful, while Christianity, if not a personal affair, was characterized by a separation of the secular and spiritual. Hence, ISIS can be seen as fulfilling the eschatological role of Muslims while in Christianity this role was claimed by the Church. That's one example.
(Of course there are exceptions, where Islam was seen as a simple faith and Christianity was incorporated into ethnic mythology. I'm just saying that they make certain viewpoints much easier to take.)
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
It took a really long time to manage to do something like that. And Great Britain is still a sort of theocracy.
Not really. Yes, the head of state is the nominal head of the Church and there are bishops in the House of Lords, but the head of government (nor any of his ministers) is not a clergyman and people aren't even excluded from the line of succession due to being related to Catholics any more.
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