A Kingdom Divided: Could The Hatred Between Two Warring Islamic Ideologies In Syria Ignite World War 3?

As the sea and the waves roar, we have America, Europe, the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia and Turkey in one corner. In the other we have Hezbollah, Iran, Russia and Syria. And Israel is in the middle of it all …

Daniel 2:41, “Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay.”

Mark 13:8a, “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles …”

By Michael Burleigh, Mail Online – “The crisis in Syria may appear to be no more or less than a civil war in a country many people would struggle to place on a map.

But it’s much more than that: it is rapidly becoming a sectarian struggle for power that is bleeding across the Middle East, with the potential to engulf the entire region in a deadly power struggle between two bitterly opposed Muslim ideologies, Sunni and Shia.

Already, the war inside Syria has resulted in 93,000 dead and 1.6 million refugees, with millions more displaced internally. And those figures are escalating rapidly amid reports of appalling atrocities on both sides.

The conflict started in 2011 with peaceful protests against the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad, the seemingly mild successor to his father Hafez, who between 1970 and 2000 ruled Syria with a rod of iron.

Hafez’s response to dissent from the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood was to wipe out a town of 20,000 people.

Fearing that Syria faced the kind of protests that had toppled the rulers of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya during the ‘Arab Spring’, Bashar al-Assad’s security forces used tanks and gunfire to crush the demonstrations. But it only stoked the fires.

The opposition developed into an armed insurgency, and now Syria has been engulfed in a civil war which has degenerated into a vicious sectarian conflict.

On one side are those who follow President Assad, who belongs to the Alawites — a splinter sect from Shia Islam.

On the other are a loose affiliation of insurgents drawn from the majority Sunni population, some of whom have close links to the Sunni jihadists of Al Qaeda.

The level of savagery is appalling. This week, up to 60 Shia Muslims were reported to have been slaughtered in an attack by opposition fighters in the eastern Syrian city of Hatla.

A gloating cameraman who filmed the aftermath said: ‘This is the Shia carcass, this is their end.’” Read more.

Flashback: A Kingdom Divided

• Hardline Lebanese Sunni Muslim Cleric Warns That ‘War Is Coming To Lebanon’
• Jordanian Sunni Jihadist Leader Calls For Showdown Against Shiite Hezbollah
• Sunni Hamas Loses Shiite Funding From Iran For Backing Syrian Rebels
• Egypt: Cleric Says Morsi Told Him Shiites Are More Dangerous Than Jews
• World’s Most Influential Sunni Cleric Calls For Global Jihad Against Shiite Muslims In Syria
• Lebanese Sign Up For Jihad Against Hezbollah, Parade Pro-Assad Syrian Through Streets With Noose Around Neck
• Arab Spring Begins Weeding Out Christians as Sunni and Shia Ideologies Lock Horns Over Control of New Islamic Kingdom
• Sunni Rebels In Syria Issue Warning Against Shiite Hizbullah After Nasrallah Vows To ‘Not Allow Syria To Fall’ To Apostate Sunnis