Struggles
between Sunni and Shia forces have fed a Syrian civil war that
threatens to transform the map of the Middle East, spurred violence that
is fracturing Iraq and widened fissures in a number of tense Gulf
countries. Growing sectarian clashes have also sparked a revival of
transnational jihadi networks that poses a threat beyond the region.
<span>Islam’s
schism, simmering for 14 centuries, doesn’t explain all the political,
economic and geostrategic factors involved in these conflicts, but it
has become one prism by which to understand the underlying tensions. </span>
