Religious Conflict in the Middle East

Through out history the Middle East has seen plenty of conflict. The region has been described as "a region where political boundaries were often contrived by outside forces"(Finlayson, 2019). This has caused a lot of issues with the relationship between different kinds of religions. One example we can see of this is in the state of Israel. Which was created after World War II by the United Nations. The plan was to "partition the British-controlled Palestine into Arab and Jewish areas"(Finlayson, 2019). This lead to a lot of wars between different states in the area. After the fighting was over, Israel has gotten control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. These two areas were originally supposed to be for Palestine. To this day there is still plenty of conflict between Israel and Palestine. The Middle East and North Africa have seen their fair share of conflict, especially when it comes to religion.

There is still plenty of conflict going on in the Middle East and North Africa. We are going to focus on a conflict that has been dominating the headlines, Israel vs Palestine. Since October of 2023, Israel has been fighting the group Hamas. Within the first month of fighting it is estimated that "approximately 1,300 Israelis and 10,000 Palestinians were killed"(Center for Preventive Action). There was an effort in 2023 to broker some peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. However, that was thrown out of the window with the recent fighting. Saudi Arabia is known to have "advocated for the rights and safety of Palestinian Arab populations in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza"(Center for Preventive Action). There still could be an agreement met between Israel and Saudi Arabia, as Saudi Arabia has shown interest in it still. Israeli forces began a siege on Gaza, rejecting any humanitarian aid to the area. Over a million Palestinians have evacuated Gaza and fled to countries like Egypt and Jordan. This conflict is still going on to this day, who knows when it will end.

If you look at an overarching map of the Middle East, you will see it is mostly Islamic. However, if you look a little deeper, you will see there are some differences in the religion. There are two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia. If you look at the numbers today, "about 85 percent of the approximately 1.6 billion Muslims around the world are Sunni, while 15 percent are Shia"(Pruitt). The divide happened centuries ago when Muhammad passed away not leaving an heir. After some initial fighting, the dust settled and the two sides lived in harmony for many centuries, that is until the 20th century. After World War I, the Allies divided the territory of the Ottoman Empire, "cutting through centuries-old religious and ethnic communities in the process"(Pruitt). Coming out of the Islamic Revolution in Iran was a radical branch of Shia Islam. This branch was highly different from the conservative Sunnis, and would lead to some fighting. To this day there is still conflict going on. There was a mass uprising in the Middle East and North Africa, called the Arab Spring. Which was a series of anti-government protest and rebellion. The division between the Sunni and Shia lead to a long running civil was in Syria. The whole area was endured a lot of fighting for some time now.

While the on-going conflict in the Middle East and North Africa is complicated, I see one major cause for it. That cause being outside forces drawing the borders and ignoring religious and cultural groups. Say after World War I, when splitting up the Ottoman Empire, the Allies had considered the different religious and cultural groups, I think they would be far less conflict. Now I think there would still be conflict around oil and land, but conflict that is rooted from religious differences, I think would be far less. As for a current solution to the problem, I honestly don't know. It is a very complicated mess that needs to be dealt with delicately.

Center for Preventive Action. (n.d.). Israeli-palestinian conflict | global conflict tracker. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/israeli-palestinian-conflict

Finlayson, C. (2019, June 14). North Africa and Southwest Asia. World Regional Geography. https://pressbooks.pub/worldgeo/chapter/north-africa-and-southwest-asia/

Pruitt, S. (n.d.). Islam’s Sunni-shia divide, explained. History.com. https://www.history.com/news/sunni-shia-divide-islam-muslim