Legacy of western imperialism
The sectarian conflicts raging in Iraq and Syria will be lasting and cause significant damage, noted historian from Rice University of the USA Ussama Makdisi said at a seminar in Dhaka yesterday.
“The various problems of sectarianism in the Middle East, in other words, have been manufactured by Western, Israeli, Iranian and Arab actors using readily available social and political and historical material,” he said.
Ussama, the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University in Texas, USA, gave a lecture on “The Historical Roots of the Current Sectarian Crisis in the Middle East” at Brac University.
The professor who was born in the USA but raised in the Arab world observed that sectarianism found in today's Middle East was a legacy of Western imperialism that had done enormous and lasting damage to the inhabitants of the region.
“Western colonialism set the peoples of the Arab Levant on a very different trajectory than they had been on in the late Ottoman period.”
In a power point presentation, the professor said, “Since World War II, the US has aggressively supported Zionism, bolstered anti-democratic Saudi Wahabbism because of oil interests, and, of course, invaded Iraq in 2003.”
“But the sectarianism we see today is also a result of the political decisions and interpretations of history made by various individuals, groups and communities in the Arab world itself.”
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