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alone we welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle divide within islam the shia and sunni the saudi invasion and suppression of the shia majority in my reign again highlights how sectarian differences can inflame passions and impact the geopolitical order in the arab world and how will these divisions be played out as the arab awakening continuous. live can see the slim. discuss the prospects for the arab awakening i'm joined by juan cole in ann arbor he's a professor of history at the university of michigan in cairo we go to he somehow he's a fellow at the center for research and ethnic relations at the university of warwick and in san francisco. we cross the steven schwartz he is the executive director of the center for islamic pluralism and another member of our crosstalk team in the hunger all right gentlemen this is cross talk you can jump in anytime you want one

can you give me your impressions what is the importance the geopolitical importance and maybe the religious importance as well of the so the saudi incursion into bahrain to suppress what people say suppressing the majority shia population in that island. well i think there are two dimensions here one is that you had these massive demonstrations and battering the object of which was to force constitutional change the batteries ruled is an absolute monarchy there is an appointed senate an upper house there's an elected lower house of forty seats but the districts are gerrymandered so as to make sure that the shiite majority doesn't get a majority in the lower house so one of the things that is being demanded here is that the better a monarchy move towards being a constitutional monarchy observe a rule of law and allow the majority population to express itself at the polls and

to live with that to live with outcome of that so that's one dimension here and i think that's the more important one than the security an issue because the. rain are not demanding a shiite government they're not demanding an overthrow of the sunni government there they're demanding a rule of law a constitutional monarchy and so forth and so the saudi intervention also has these two dimensions from one from one side the saudis are also absolute monarchy there is very little in the way of rule of law there is no no elections to speak of in saudi arabia and so an absolute authority area and government has been brought in to repress a crowd a mass that's the man being war democracy on the other hand the saudis do it here to the one hobby form of islam which historically has been extremely actually

shiite has attacked shiites has repressed them for the sunni monarchy of barrett to deploy what had beat saudi troops against his own people really we can see his legitimacy i think it's a it's a tragic and perhaps fatal error ok fatal error if we go to cairo a fatal error is that a good way of describing it. well there are several issues here first of all of the battering is existing behind the government by the saudis to come into their country under an agreement that was formed quite a number of years ago and was designed to protect property from external invasion or from extra north forces trying to invade bahrain the way that they've invited the saudis on this particular occasion is really about a domestic affair so it stands to be quite dubious on legal grounds and that's something that will need to be investigated by the authorities in the region whether or not an agreement that was done for protection against external threats

can be used to a century quell a domestic dispute there's also something to be certain about you know downplaying the sectarian nature of this the the way that the opposition has been formed to them but here in even amongst the shia that are protesting at the present time are divided into different groups the largest grouping either with iraq or are actually looking for a constitutional monarchy as your previous guest said there is a smaller set of groups but smaller in number that are actually calling for a republic all together to. demand that the royal family step down within the bahraini government as well there are different forces at play between the different parts of government and they don't all see eye to eye on this so to play it up as a more sectarian divide i think is simplifies the matter beyond comprehension for us stephen that's a very good point and you may have gotten to this point a little bit quicker than i anticipated how much of the difference between the two different takes the sunni and the shia being played out in media as to in regard to

what is actually going on on the ground is it just oversimplifying it for everyone or is it really spot on. no i think that it definitely plays a very important role because the gulf cooperation council the troops that went into boxing were actually from five different countries away. the united arab emirates oman and saudi with saudi arabia leading it i think that if we're realistic we have to see that this is part of the macro game in which saudi is poses the major sunni power in the area and iran is poses a major she of power in the area there's already been disruptions in iraq among she is there protesting against the in vestment of bahrain and frankly what i'm seeing on my internet is she is in pakistan she is in the united states

she is in other parts of the world are very very alarmed very upset are protesting about this and frankly i don't think they're trying to turn it into a sectarian conflict but i think for them it has very loud sectarian residences one in your first response to my first question is that you thought it was a tragic mistake and we're hearing that from other members of the panel here what do you mean tragic mistake being the division is already there in the in the islamic world and we heard iran being brought up here i mean this goes back to the geo political implications that i was trying to kind of tease out of you guys a tragic mistake is it really about geopolitics. well i don't think it's mainly about geopolitics although there are attempts to inject geopolitics into it the better it she. worries on the whole or there are other schools that's a school if she is them which more or less disappeared in iran which doesn't.

oblige people to give unthinking obedience to the grand ayatollah so the better a knees are arabs they're not iranians and the form of she isn't that the majority of them practice isn't even the same as in iran so there are the saudis attempt to portray what's going on in bad rain as an iranian instigated uprising to portray it as an attempt by iran to assert its soft power in the arab gulf as the saudis see it but that is a fantasy it's a kind of paranoia the. arabs and they're doing this for the sake of bettering for its majority population. with regard to the legitimacy of the monarchy remember that monarchies in the middle east have poland

one by one we went to a republic in egypt in one nine hundred fifty two in iraq in one nine hundred fifty eight and it's difficult to keep a monarchy going in the modern world unless it becomes a cause to show monarchy and i think when you have a monarchy that clings to power by bringing four and hated foreign forces to repress its own population. that's a i don't know how you come back from that is what i'm saying i don't know how the bad raney's will ever again look at the monarchy as legitimate and i think it probably is going to. over time with the majority party more towards that republican stance stephen schwartz mentioned some of the minority groups. in cairo if i go to you maybe we can just kind of go in a different direction here i mean the saudis are actually terrified of the shia

minority in their own country in the east is this a big part of the play here i mean you see things going on in the region in the saudis are just battening down there all of the any loose screws they see out there because they see a threat from the outside well i spoke to a sunni source in baqubah in earlier today peter and sugar up two very interesting points the first was that there's a feeling amongst some people in bahrain this is essential in message through the shia populations elsewhere in the arabian gulf so that's one the second was that she wasn't entirely sure what the end game of all of this was because the rain and be a rain in dimension within the bahraini protesters hasn't exactly been played either in the past few weeks from the protesters themselves people are going protesting and behind for several weeks now and although they had ample opportunity to start

talking about bringing in an iranian style regime into the country they haven't done so and there hasn't been any real statement to that effect by anyone from the opposition that i'm aware of and i stand to be corrected on that point what they have been constantly talking about is the rule of law a constitutional monarchy and so on and they were driven to do this not by memories of the nineteen seventy nine revolution although i'm sure the iranians would our the syrian regime would prefer to ignore that aspect of it but they were really driven to do it by the images of this on the t.v. screen of here in cairo ok stephen if i go to you before we go to the break i mean i think i had i was going to go to you anyway i think actually a sham. i has sharma's made interesting point and it's a point that i would make this in persian into bach brain actually in a certain sense is risky for both saudi and iran because the block raney democratic process can have an exemplary impact on both countries and can encourage the

slow growth of a civil society and democratizing process in saudi at the same time as it can encourage support for the green opposition movement in iran and reading the iranian reactions official reactions to the incursion into iraq it was striking how how low key they were compared with the material being put out by shia mosques since they pakistan and other countries are a gentleman to this point i'm going to have to jump in after a short break we'll continue our discussion on the shia sunni divine state with r.t. . to. start .

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the go. video on demand keys mindful of costs and r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. mission. call . the a. welcome after cross talk i'm curious about to remind you we're talking about the divided arab world. the same. system.

but first let's see what russians think about events playing out in that part of the world. the visions in society what will be the result but brain has been paralyzed by protests talk of stone political reforms then one term here a country for nearly two hundred years has been ruled by a sunni minority many say the protests in bahrain are inspired by those in tunisia and egypt but could there be a similar outcome since both tunisia and egypt are predominantly sunni countries the russian public opinion research center asked citizens what is behind the uprisings in the arab world forty five percent say it's all because of low living standards fourteen percent blame long terms are rulers thirteen percent see authoritarianism at fault still can religious divisions in the arab world impact the course of events developing in the region. ok i want to find go to you and look

at all the different layers that we have in play here first of all we have to carry on differences are being played there on the ground obviously in the arab world in the air in the greater middle east but in then we have different trends of political forces occurring on the ground we have a part what i guess all of us would agree a positive one of seeing changes in egypt and in tunisia a reversal of fortune to say the very least in libya and now we have saudi arabia expressing its influence in the region which way is it going to go how does it play into the state carrying difference or is it just one more complicated layer on top of everything that's going on in what people are calling day the arab awakening. well i think the poll you'll do the right results which is the fact that tunisia and egypt are relatively homogeneous societies they're mostly arab and sunni made it easier for their revolutions to succeed quickly because the elites in both

countries weren't afraid that some other group which had it in for them would come to power and marginalize them one of the bad effects of the american invasion of iraq in two thousand and three was that it was vindictive the sunni arabs who had been disproportionately in power in iraq before two thousand and three in the ba'ath party were targeted they were fired in the tens and thousands from their jobs their their state owned factories and enterprises were dissolved they were reduced to the lowest of low and shiites were brought in to replace them in those jobs and. took over the main leavers of power well having seen that most sunni regimes in the region that have a substantial shiite population are now afraid of the shiites and that's certainly

the case in barry and i think what happened in iraq can help to convince the sunni monarchy to dig in its heels and not risk having a shiite majority legislate in the battery legislature so there is this divide but if you look carefully although the overthrow of saddam and the rise of a shiite government in iraq gave a lot of hope to shiite communities throughout the arab world in every case what they say they want in the way that they have mobilized is form a better deal economically and also politically in their own countries so his bill law in lebanon has played the role of a lebanese political party not as a not a transnational one with battery. it once more jobs for shiites as well as a better deal with regard to cars to show arrangements the same thing in kuwait in saudi arabia in each case it's a national demand for for a better place at the national cable ok. in cairo but it's not always being played

out the way i think it what ron has face very interesting is that we have seen in the next few hours few days and weeks obviously how iran is going to play this card because as many would say the saudi intervention is actually open the door for what people would call iranian meddling in their backyard in it was this agreement somehow that rain would stay kind of neutral stay in the middle it wouldn't be contested a lot of people are saying now the saudis have opened a door for more contests what do you think about that. well this is something that people in dr in and out of dr in berlin through the hearing opposition are now saying quite openly that the saudi intervention does open that sort of door but i still feel that we're not being cautious enough about playing up the sectarian aspect of this with them by the moment it's not simply a sunni bloc unified against the shia bloc a unified it's much more complicated and complex than that and even now the way

that the protests have been going on over the past few weeks the bid up the ante in the last week. trying to march against the world powers for example blocking the roads which meant that around eighty percent of bahrain is going to go to work this actually turned a lot of public opinion with them but in which went beyond the sunni population against supporting the protesters with you know one hundred percent of their favor it's a very complex sort of situation even on the ground in battery and a country that i visit the number of times and which. i'm quite hopeful for for the future within the sectarian this as we might describe it isn't pronounced on the ground level between people there's anything there will be now there's a lot of things will be now what will be will there be now become more discrete because of the incursion i don't i don't i don't i don't think within battery and it will be i do think that in the region as a whole and the relationship between the train and the rest of the region and the

perceptions of normal but her a needs to the rest of the region i think that will be a factor quite strongly i don't think and i hope that within behind itself that kind of sectarian attitude won't go through the roof what do you think about that steven i mean we did so he really is actions open the door for more reigning in influence in the backyard of the saudis. well there are two things that i think are being neglected in general discussion of this first is that bachmann has been a kind of safety valve for saudis who go across the causeway to do normal things like in boxing women can drive cars they are not forced to wear by niqab and so forth and saudi arabia is concerned that it democratizing process in bach rain could be contagious and especially towards the shias in the eastern province the second thing is it is in my view true that the new arab revolt is essentially about

economics and it's about the sapping of the weak links in the global system of economic power and the the problem for me is that the democratizing way the process of democratization that we saw beginning in tunisia has now encountered two very serious obstacles the first the rampant bloodshed in libya which is a terrible disincentive for anybody in the in the arab world to launch any kind of democratization movement and second now we have the specter of democracy they should movement and dissolve into a sectarian conflict as happened in iraq so both of these will now be obstacles to the broadening of iraq it is a shame movement for the new arab revolt or whatever we want to call it i think it's it was unfortunate that saudi arabia did this and i think it will be interesting to find out because saudi is a more open society it was in the past it will be interesting to see how this plays out in saudi political commentary in the as far as the internal conflicts in the

saudi royal circles and so forth because this is basically economically based and politically based phenomena go ahead jump in go ahead go ahead something something that i've been observing from my vantage point within the region is the the the reaction from most arabs in the region to the saudi incursion into bufferin was so . another g.c.c. countries will intervene and buy her a and what is essentially a domestic dispute but they won't send troops to libya and that's a feeling that i think is very pronounced amongst many many people in this region that while attacking his own people the arabs will not send troops in order to help but they will send troops and battering it's very interesting one if i could the libyans want something the libyans will not forget and i don't think it's something that public opinion in this region will forget either one and i think

really in this it's a tangent that we just heard here the americans must somehow just be believed i mean they have a huge naval base on the armory and on the island itself the must be relieved that it's least protected ok and that well there saudis are allies with the united states anyway i mean behind closed doors a little bit of relief because you had six has been caught so flatfooted in the arab world over the last few months the needy this one they got it right their allies. well it's of course one doesn't know what's going on behind closed doors but what the americans are saying publicly. is not that they are happy about what's happened in back rain in fact they seem to have been urging the king of in fact to take steps towards becoming more of a constitutional monarchy meeting some of the demands of the shia majority and i think hillary clinton and secretary of defense bob gates have

a theory of this thing that the shia majority and better a needs more of a safety valve it needs to move the country towards more of a constitutional monarchy precisely in order to assure future stability and assure the functioning of that naval base the headquarters of the fifth fleet in the gulf and i think they're afraid that the movement towards polarized nation the sending of foreign troops into the country the crushing as we have seen today thursday of of the protesters at the pearl roundabout the beseeching of the hospitals the arrest of even moderate opposition leaders that this process of repression is going to polarize things and is going to assure instability into the near and medium term and that's what's bad for the american geo political position in the gulf ok stephen let me give you the last word on this

program the saudis going to regret this i think everybody in the arab muslim world is going to end up seeing it as having been either a mistake if it slows down the democratization process a new arab revolt or an opportunity that could end up because of the contagion of democratization having a positive effect in both saudi arabia iraq and iran but i think it's too. all right gentlemen have to leave it there many thanks to my guess a day in cairo san francisco and in ann arbor and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t. see you next time and remember across the.

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