Can this “Shia Crescent” also spread to other countries, like Bahrain and Pakistan?
Yes, particularly Bahrain. In the Arab world this phenomenon is of much more significance, because outside the Arab world, even though the Shias have been a minority, they have been more included in power. In Pakistan, for instance, Benazir Bhutto and her father, the country’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, they were all Shia. In Pakistan, you also have Shia generals and Shia ministers. And even in Afghanistan, after Hamid Karzai became President and the Taliban fell, the Shia’s were again included in the country’s Constitution and in the government. But in the Arab world it is now becoming far more bloody. In Iraq we are not seeing a peaceful transition. Now many countries are facing this issue of how do you share power between Shias and Sunnis, like Bahrain, but also Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon. They all have this issue of having different sizes of Shia population, from a majority in Bahrain to a minority in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. But everywhere the issue is the same: power-shari
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