A brief but informative read about the hell is happening in Iraq.

Interview snips between New Republic and Olivier Roy, a professor at the European University Institute in Italy, and an expert on political Islam.

snip

What do you make of ISIS as a group? How do you see them as distinct from other violent Muslim groups?

Olivier Roy: ISIS is an offspring of Al Qaeda, so it is first a globalized international movement which is lacking deep roots in the local society and which does not have a "national" project (contrary to Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Jihad, or the Shia radical movements). Many foreign volunteers don't speak Arabic, and don't care about the local society. It does not have a project of "civil" society except a reference to sharia. ISIS is an army of militants, not a political party, nor a social movement....


snip


Do you see the Sunni/Shia rift as getting worse? Has it ever been this bad?

The rift has little to do with religion as such. It seldom became a geostrategic issue in history, except when Iran turned Shia in the sixteenth century. During the twentieth century there was no rift at all until the Iranian-Islamic revolution. The rift has been a consequence of the Iranian Islamic revolution that has identified Iran with militant Shiism, and it entailed a religious radicalization of a Sunni fringe (the so-called "Salafis&quot that has been encouraged by Saudi Arabia both for religious reasons and for thwarting the growing Iranian influence in Afghanistan, the Gulf, and Iraq. And the rift is growing, because the mutual distrust is growing. Shias in the Gulf are systematically perceived as an Iranian fifth column, something they were not seen as in the past...












http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118198/olivier-roy-isis-iraqs-civil-war-and-sunni-shia-rift