One of Foreign Policy's Best Five Books of 2013, chosen by Marc
Lynch of The Middle East Channel Beginning with the 2003 invasion
of Iraq and concluding with the aftermath of the 2011 Arab
uprisings, Frederic M. Wehrey investigates the roots of the
Shi'a-Sunni divide now dominating the Persian Gulf's political
landscape. Focusing on three Gulf states affected most by sectarian
tensions-Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait-Wehrey identifies the
factors that have exacerbated or tempered sectarianism, including
domestic political institutions, the media, clerical
establishments, and the contagion effect of external regional
events, such as the Iraq war, the 2006 Lebanon conflict, the Arab
uprisings, and Syria's civil war. In addition to his analysis,
Wehrey builds a historical narrative of Shi'a activism in the Arab
Gulf since 2003, linking regional events to the development of
local Shi'a strategies and attitudes toward citizenship, political
reform, and transnational identity. He finds that, while the Gulf
Shi'a were inspired by their coreligionists in Iraq, Iran, and
Lebanon, they ultimately pursued greater rights through a
nonsectarian, nationalist approach. He also discovers that
sectarianism in the region has largely been the product of the
institutional weaknesses of Gulf states, leading to excessive alarm
by entrenched Sunni elites and calculated attempts by regimes to
discredit Shi'a political actors as proxies for Iran, Iraq, or
Lebanese Hizballah. Wehrey conducts interviews with nearly every
major Shi'a leader, opinion shaper, and activist in the Gulf Arab
states, as well as prominent Sunni voices, and consults diverse
Arabic-language sources.
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