Perhaps if we forgot all history we could start again.  How many modern day conflicts have their roots still in a past that no longer exists?  I wonder if all participants to conflict can consider finishing with the past and focusing on the future they want to have?  Is it one filled with conflict or is it living side by side in harmony?  This can be difficult when people are schooled since childhood to see the other as an ‘enemy’.  I remember growing up in Canberra, Australia, our society is multicultural and some of my friends were Croation and Serbian.  I remember my first realisation that there had been a war between the Croats and Serbians and that hatred had been passed to the next generation.  I was truly astounded that the children carried on the hatred even they lived in another country and there was no reality of conflict happening now.   I realised the parents were either hurt or they had lost family members so they kept the hatred alive believing they were honouring those that passed over.  They felt if they kept the conflict alive they keep the loved ones alive or the idea they didn’t die for no reason.  Yet more individuals or families will suffer through the conflict if it is not resolved and put to rest in peace.

What I realise is that people project onto the other a past hatred or story believing it is real today and the other reads the history and becomes that past playing out a conflict with a past enemy.  Yet the players today are different people but holding the same story of a past.  They connect their identity to this past believing it is truth and if they do not honour that past they are disrespecting those who have died. Yet time moves on and truths change. 

How powerful is projection?  Imagine if we truly were able to let go of the past with forgiveness and recreate a new future, a new story.  I find that prospect fascinating.

What if the only universal truth was ‘only love is real’.  Imagine that being adopted as a mantra.  Where would that leave old hatreds?  I can dream… perhaps love was the answer to conflict resolution. Yet I know people would find the word ‘love’ too strong a word, better to use ‘friendship’, ‘tolerance’ or ‘co-existance’ or even better ‘acceptance’. Yet love is an energy that reveals the beauty in others, it is the loving look of a parent into the eyes of their child. Those very children become someone’s enemy. How does the parent feel? What if love was seen as real and all children were our children, what then? Maybe my dream becomes real.

Here is a perspective on the Shia and Sunni conflict. I wonder if they can heal and realise there is no difference when love sits at the table rather than a violent past story.

http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h17isl.html

Iran, the Safavids and Ottoman Expansion

War between Shia and Sunni | The Ottoman Empire Expands to Egypt and in Europe | The Safavids, Bloodletting and Shia Politics to 1629 I Shah Abbas opens Iran to the West | The Ulama in Safavid Iran | Safavid Decline and Fall

Ottoman Empire and Tributary States, 1566 to 1699

War between Shia and Sunni

While under the rule of the Mongols, in the 1200s, the Persians had given up on politics and militarism and had submerged themselves in Islamic devotion, Sufism and religious eclecticism. During these times, Iran had Mongol and Turkish immigrants who adopted the Persian language and Persian customs. In the 1300s, a dynasty founded by a grandson of Genghis Khan, Hulagu, ruled in Iran. It wavered between Christianity and Islam and chose Islam. Meanwhile a militant Islamic order, the Safavids, appeared among Turkish speaking people, their home base at Ardebil, west of the Caspian Sea. And the Safavid order survived the coming of Timur (Tamerlane) in the 1300s.

By 1500 the Safavids had adopted the Shia branch of Islam. Safavid males wore red headgear for identification, and they were eager to advance Shi’ism by military means. They viewed their religious leader as a perfect guide as well as an able military chieftain, and they viewed their leader’s position as rightly passed from father to son – in the Shia tradition.

In the year 1500, the thirteen-year-old son of a recently deceased Safavid leader set out to conquer territory. In 1501 the Safavids seized Tabriz and made it their capital. And they conquered in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Khurasan. The Safavids became the strongest force in Iran, and their leader, Isma’il, now fifteen, was declared Shah (king).

The area of the world thought of as Iran was mountainous and it had a variety of nomadic tribes with egalitarian traditions not yet completely erased. In addition to Persians, Iran had Kurds, Arabs, Turkomans and Baluchis to name a few. At Isma’il’s court a Turkish language was spoken, but having adopted much of Persian culture the Safavids were thought by outsiders to be Persian. To help organize the state the Safavids used Persian bureaucrats with a tradition in administration and tax collecting, and they tried to create religious unity. Isma’il described himself as a descendant, on his father’s side, of the Prophet Muhammad. Shi’ism became the state religion, Isma’il denigrating the Sunni branch of Islam and trying to force people to become Shia – a difficult task as his authority with a variety of tribes had been little accepted.

The Ottoman sultan, Bayezid II (ruled 1481-1512), a Sunni Muslim, congratulated Isma’il on his military victories and suggested that he and his Shia followers stop destroying the graves and mosques of Sunni Muslims. Convinced of the righteousness of their cause and the evil of the Sunni branch of Islam, the Safavids ignored Bayezid.

In 1512 the aged Bayezid was ill. His three sons fought each other for his throne at the Ottoman capital, Constantinople. Those special warriors, the Janissaries, were a power behind the throne and chose as the new sultan the son that was most warlike: Selim. Bayezid was dethroned, and Selim secured his rule by having his two brothers and their sons executed by strangulation.

Selim embarked on a war against what he saw as the heresy of Shi’ism. He is reported to have exterminated thousands of Shia Muslims in Asia Minor. Then he launched a war against the Shia king of Persia: Isma’il. Selim’s armies advanced through northern Mesopotamia, and in August 1514, just west of Tabriz, Selim’s army defeated the Safavid army, which had cavalry with only spears, bows and swords against Ottoman artillery and muskets.

Isma’il had been accustomed to victory, and he and his Safavid followers had believed that Allah was on their side. They were bewildered by their defeat. Isma’il found relief from psychological depression in wine.

Isma’il died ten years later at the age of thirty-seven. His dynasty lived on, Isma’il succeed by a son aged ten. The family dynasty lasted for two centuries and was to leave a legacy in Iran of Shia Islam as the official state religion, into the 21st century.