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THE MOSLEM WORLD: THEORETICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS
2018.04.009. URAL SHARIPOV. GEOSTRATEGIC ROLE OF THE WEST IN EXACERBATING POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST // "Sotrudnichestvo Rossii i Irana v politicheskoj, ehkonomicheskoj i kulturnoj oblastyah kak faktor ukrepleniya mira i bezopasnosti v Evrazii: materialy mezhdunarodnoj nauchno-prakticheskoj konferencii," Moscow, October 19, 2017, P. 12-24.
Keywords: Middle East, conflict, Sunnism, Shiism, West.
Ural Sharipov,
Dr.Sc.(Politics), Chief Research Associate, Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS
The Middle East is a very troublesome region politically and militarily in the modern world, the author notes. Among the crucial factors of international tension in the Middle East inhabited by a greater part of the world Muslim population a sharp exacerbation of Sunna-Shia relations was one of the gravest events... In a number of countries of the region military hostilities are going on between pro-Sunna and pro-Shia elements to this day. There are also cases of interference of neighboring countries in these conflicts, as well as countries situated far from this region. The author writes that the present tragic situation in the Middle East had major negative consequences for many Muslim countries during the first years of this century. Hundreds of thousands of local people have been killed and there are millions of refugees moving to various European countries. Hundreds of thousands of
towns and villages are destroyed, and economic activity of entire regions has been stopped, which causes further impoverishment of the local population and other calamities.
1. The egoism of the Arab countries' leaders with exorbitantly high incomes from hydrocarbon deposits in the Middle East is the main reason for the strategic backwardness of the Arab community and its failures in geopolitical international relations.
As is known, the author notes, the 20th century was the period of the crumbling of the world colonial system, the political establishment of peoples' sovereignty and their search for development roads within the framework of new national states. However, in the sphere of the economy the Middle Eastern region was unable to use the entire potential of its natural resources and opportunities, which determined its place in the world community.
The Middle East possesses gigantic deposits of hydrocarbon raw materials, which are in high demand by the modern economy. Thanks to the vast export of oil and gas products to many regions of the world which are short of these strategic goods, the countries rich in hydrocarbon resources have received enormous incomes to their budgets for several decades. It would seem that historical destiny gave an opportunity to the one-time backward Middle East with a big population, many big cities and vast agricultural lands, which had been in colonial dependence on western powers, to develop at a very high rate.
However the hydrocarbon wealth and colossal incomes of the region have been used only for enriching the local ruling circles and part of the elites of a limited circle of the Arab countries. The remaining Arab countries (there were many more of them and with much bigger population were forced to get along with their own limited resources. As a result, the Arab area with a population of about 400 million has lagged behind technologically, in the GDP volumes, and the vital indices of the local people's life, especially as compared to the living conditions of the population of other regions of the world, notably, the seven industrially developed countries of North America, Western Europe and the Far East. In
essence, the present-day Arab world has been left without strategically important industrial and military branches, missile and space technology, etc.
In the modern international relations characterized by acute national and inter-regional contradictions this circumstance has made the Arab world quite vulnerable for expansions and political and economic domination from the outside world. This circumstance is actively used by quite a few present state formations, their special services, and political and economic structures. The Middle East region, apart from Iran and Turkey, finds it ever more difficult to oppose the growing expansion of the outside forces.
2. What is more important - confessional or political reasons for the exacerbation of interstate and domestic crises in the region? An active foreign political or military interference - is the main factor determining the present tragic situation in the Middle East.
If we view the Middle East problems only in the confessional aspect, the author writes, they will seem as ideological and political contradictions among the followers of Islam, which flared up after the death of Prophet Mohammed. The main question then was: "Who should inherit supreme power in Muslim society?" Another controversial issue was: "What were the main premises and vectors of that faith?" As is known, one group of Muslims believed that it was necessary to do things on the basis of the Sunna, which contained the rules and regulations following from the words and deeds of Prophet Mohammed, and embodied the main Muslim traditions of the Arabs. The new head of the Muslims - Calif should have been elected by the Supreme Council of elders. This trend of Islam was called "Sunnism."
Another ideological trend came into being under the rule of the "righteous califs." According to it, supreme Muslim power should have been inherited by descendants of Prophet Mohammed along the line of his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali ibn Abu-Talib, Mohammed's cousin. Thus, a new Islamic trend formed -Shia't'Ali - the party of Ali and his descendants were named imams and considered to be the only legitimate leaders of the Muslims.
Further on, internal Islamic confessional division between these trends consolidated still more, mainly on the basis of ethnic groups: Arabs, Persians, Turks, etc. This division became deeper and played a greater role in international relations in the Middle East.
Confrontation between states under the banners of these confessions, for example, in the Middle Ages, between the Sunna Ottoman Empire and Shia Persia showed that the main causes of conflicts in the Middle East were national and dynasty interests.
The author notes that, attempts have been made to bridge the gap between the two trends and neutralize at least ideologically the differences between the postulates of the two main trends of Islam, but all of them failed. At the same time, in contrast to intra-Christian sharp differences and wars in Europe, they were more tolerant to each other.
The 20th century was a period of the political formation of the sovereignty of many peoples in the Middle East. This is why the situation in the region should be viewed by countries in the 20th century and in the first decades of the 21st century confessionaly and politically.
The author notes that the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran became the banner of the worldwide Shi'ism and the restoration of the equal rights of the Shi'ites in the Muslim world. But this called for changes in the confessional and political structures of several Arab states with predominantly Shi'ite population, as well as those where Shi'ites were in minority.
The ruling circles of these countries could not agree with such turn of events in these countries and the entire region. Baathist Iraq and the Arabian monarchic regimes of the Gulf began to undertake efforts to prevent the development of the Shi'ite process.
Having committed whole series of major anti-Iranian actions in the financial, economic and political spheres and taking into account the new socio-political situation in the region, the United States, along with some other western countries, began to use the factor of the growing Shia - Sunna contradictions.
First, they used the growing Iraqi-Iranian confrontation. The Sunnite President of Iraq Saddam Hussein, supported and helped by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as the United States hurled his armed forces on Iran, hoping that the formerly mighty army of that country became much weaker and would not stand against the onslaught of the Iraqi troops.
Iraq was actively assisted by the pan-Arabic states, especially Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf monarchies; their credits to Iraq reached a sum of over $ 100 billion. As to the United States, it increased its military presence in the Persian Gulf region. Thus, Washington with its provocative role sort of joined the Iranian-Iraqi war. Its deplorable results are well-known, as to the United States, politically and militarily it has gained ground in the Persian Gulf region.
In the 1990s using the invasion of the Saddam Hussein's army of Kuwait, one of the richest states of the region, the U.S. administration has changed its position towards Iraq. This time its policy was against the Baghdad regime, and the United States established its military control over almost two-thirds of the Iraqi territory (in the south and the north of the country). Thus, it actually made prerequisites for the division of Iraq into three parts.
Apart from that, strict international punitive sanctions were imposed on Iraq. At that stage the Americans were opposed in Iraq by both Sunnites and Shi'ites, but on the whole Baghdad ceased to be among serious enemies of Israel and Saudi Arabia. At the same time the neighboring Islamic Republic of Iran was also kept under strong pressure of international sanctions by the West. The latter gave political initiatives among the Muslim countries of the region to the monarchic Sunnite regimes of the Arab Peninsula headed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The United States became the guarantor of the protection of the said monarchies from outside threats. This century the West's expansion to the Middle East with support from Sunnite monarchies has been further intensified. At the beginning of 2002 the U.S. government proclaimed a new foreign-policy concept in accordance with which it assumed the right to
overthrow any government whose policy, in Washington's view, was not to the liking of the United States. Washington did not even have a pretext of human rights violations by one or another country in order to undertake any act of aggression against it, or achieve a change of its political regime.
In order to carry on its aggressive actions violating international law and sovereignty of states not to its liking Washington uses any pretexts now. The terrorist act of September 11, 2001 in New York was used by Washington urgently in Afghanistan in less than a month's time - in October 2001 without the UN sanction - the country was simply occupied by U.S. troops.
The United States and Britain, and in the spring of 2003, the American-British forces, even prior to the adoption of a corresponding decision by the UN Security Council perpetrated an act of aggression against the Saddam regime in Iraq with a view to completely destroying it. The power of a new coalition government was proclaimed in Baghdad formed mainly by Shi'ites and Kurds, and the Sunnites, who supported the previous regime, were ousted. The aggressive actions of Anglo-Saxon imperialism in the Middle East and its impunity had a serious influence on the political situation in the region, as well as the growing impact of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It should be taken into account that at the end of the first - beginning of the second decade of this century the displeasure of the Arab public circles with the impotence of the ruling circles of their countries and their submission to western penetration in the economic, political, and military spheres of the Middle East should have reached an "urgent challenge" to liberate Muslim territories from the contemporary "crusaders." This was why, when at the beginning of the 2010th the Middle East was swept by the waves of the "Arab spring, which gripped Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and other countries, all mass media of the West were almost unanimous in asserting that the new stage of the exacerbation of the political and social crisis in the Middle East would contribute to the broadening of the Shi'ite positions in the region. And this threatens not only the status quo of the local states,
but also the strategic hydrocarbon interests of international corporations, and the entire world community. In this connection it should be taken into account that the highly-developed powerful computer systems are serviced by highly-skilled specialists, who have predicted and calculated a great many possible development variants in connection with each region, country and government, political situation, group, or individual. Information on each element was constantly checked and revised (if need be) in order to take more optimal decisions by the U.S. government services concerning a solution of various problems in the Middle Eastern region.
The monograph entitled "American Concept of 'Greater Middle East' and National Tragedies in the Middle East" published in 2014 noted that from the beginning of the second decade of this century the West has considerably increased the territory of its militant "safari" in Libya, Syria, partly in Egypt, in Yemen, threatened to invade Iran, and also promised to use sanctions against Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. Western "policy-makers" did not forget Afghanistan and Iraq in their large-scale and small-scale operations. They take all steps possible to maintain control over the region and its major states.
In actual fact, the author writes, the West has brought back the Middle East, politically and economically, to armed colonialism of the first half of the 18th century - first half of the 20th century. A case in point was Libya.in 2011.
When Syria was in the grip of a civil war with a strong confessional tint there was only Iran in the Middle East, which could oppose western expansion.
At that stage in western Middle East policy a general regional crisis was staged, in which a major role was given to the confessional factor. The fact of the growing influence of Shi'ism in the Middle East under the influence of Tehran was taken into account and counter-operations of the Sunnite monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Arabian Peninsula monarchies, Egypt and a number of other Sunnite states of the region were undertaken to oppose the
spreading and consolidation of Shi'ism. Thus, conditions have been created for organizing frontal clashes of big local armed units, as well as whole states coming out under the banner of Sunnism, on the one hand, and Shi'ism, on the other. This circumstance has provided broader opportunities for the procolonial interference of world powers in the life of the Middle East. The major arenas for such political armed clashes called confessional or intra-Muslim, were in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya.
The author concludes that international strategic contradictions and collisions connected with the Middle East have been determined by the political interests of the ruling circles of the local states, and also foreign state. However, the important inciter of intra- and interstate conflicts was the Muslim confessional factor, which now plays the major role in international relations in the Middle East. Besides, in some Arab countries, where military hostilities are taking place between pro-Sunna and pro-Shia forces, an active role belongs to armed groups and individuals from other countries which are far from the Middle East.
Author of the abstract - Natalia Ginesina
2018.04.010. ALEXANDER FILONIK. THE ISLAMIC FINANCIAL INDUSTRY AND MODERN CHALLENGES // "Aziya i Afrika Segodnya," Moscow, 2016, № 8, P. 31-37.
Keywords: Islamic banking, Islamic financial industry, financial business, assets, conventional banks, micro-financing, challenges.
Alexander Filonik,
PhD(Economics),
Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS
The researcher notes that Islamic banks operate softer than classical ones, which is especially important now, when extreme
