The Shia Revival:
How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future
by Vali Nasr

This book really helps to make sense out of what is happening in the Middle East. The Shia have been shit on for 1,400 years by the Sunni. Now that the Shia are asserting themselves, the Sunni are freaking out. Our fearful leaders obviously have no clue what we stepped in the middle of. In fact, we have brought the Shia to prominence. You really have to read this. Really.

The Shia Revival

As nations around the world struggle with the threat of militant Islam, Vali Nasr, one of the leading scholars on the Middle East, provides us with the rare opportunity to understand the political and theological antagonisms within Islam itself. The Shia Revival is a penetrating historical account of sectarian conflicts in the Muslim world, showing that the future rests in finding a peaceful solution to the ancient rivalries between the Shias and the Sunnis.

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The above review has a linkg to a PDF excerpt.

Muslim Against Muslim

Americans may be paying more attention to Muslim conflicts now. They had better. In “The Shia Revival,” a fast-moving, engaging and ultimately unnerving book, Vali Nasr writes that wars within Islam “will shape the future.” A professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and an occasional adviser to the American government, Nasr argues that Operation Iraqi Freedom has tilled the soil for a “new” Middle East — one fueled less by the ideal of democracy than by an age-old animosity between Islam’s two major sects, the majority Sunnis and minority Shiites.

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