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    Early this morning in Baghdad, unknown persons detonated a series of bombs inside the al-Askari mosque in Samarra, Iraq. This mosque is of significant importance to Shiite Islam because it is the burial place of two of the Prophet Muhammad’s direct descendents, who the Shiites believe were the ordained leaders of Islam after Muhammad’s death.
    Such an attack cannot be characterized as anything other than an attack against Shiite Islam itself, and whomever the perpetrators might have been designed this attack to create division and turmoil in Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world. Such an attack reveals the deep divisions behind the Western misconception of monolithic Islam.
    Indeed, behind all of the recent visions of Islamic solidarity in protests and attacks against the West lie deep sectarian divisions that the West needs to understand. These divisions are not just limited to Sunni and Shiite. Even within those divisions there are further divisions, the Sunnis and the Shiites divided into dozens of sects, none of whom agree with one another. In fact, we see this reality played out in Iraq among the Shiites with the divisions between the ayatollahs al-Sistani and al-Sadr.
    This reality of division makes the reality of Muslim radicalism that much more threatening to the West, because it becomes almost impossible to predict how anyone in the Muslim world will react to anything. Who could have predicted that some political cartoons published months ago in a Danish paper could incite the kind of response that is seen now throughout the Muslim world?
    Yet, there is an opportunity in this division for the West to reach out to such groups within Islam that seek peace and to live peaceably with their neighbors. Within these divisions, there are Muslims who want to see an end to the violence, and even those who want to bring Islam into the modern world.
    If the West truly wants to achieve peace in the Muslim world, it must simultaneously stand in the gap between these divided and violent people while encouraging those groups that want more than violence and hatred. If the West can successfully accomplish these things, then Iraq and the Muslim world will have truly been set free.
DLH
