Sunni Versus Shi`ite: on live TV. Today, on live TV, the state of Sunni-Shi`ite relations was exposed for all to see on Al-Jazeera's Al-Ittijah Al-Mu`akis. The host invited Mish`an Al-Jabburi (a former henchman for Saddam who later supported the invasion of Iraq) and another person who is not well-known but was expected to represent the "Shi`ite" point of view. The premise was fraught with tensions of course. The topic was Saddam's execution. Within minutes, the show degenerated into obscene exchanges and the two guests actually physically got into an altercation. The "Shi`ite guest" stormed out of the studio within minutes after he was accused of being an Iranian who actually had changed his name (he admitted later after he returned to the studio that he had indeed changed his name after being stripped of his citizenship by Saddam). Al-Jabburi (who was one of the first to profit from the massive corruption of the occupation--they all seem to have embezzled and bought houses in Amman, London, and Lebanon) heaped praise on Saddam and hailed the resistance although he used to appear on TV to support the occupation of Iraq. But the real thrust of the debate was made clear early on when the two--both of them--engaged in blatant hateful, sectarian vitriol. They resorted to the names of heroes and villains of Sunni and Shi`ite history to insult one another. It was exciting TV until you realize that their encounter is reflected in the blood on the streets of Iraq. And what is this with the Saudi-led campaign to refer to Shi`ites and to Iranians as "Safavids". The Saddamist Ba`thists started that and now it is commonly used by anti-Shi`ites in the Arab world. Walid Jumblat and the other sectarian forces of March 14th movement are now using it. They use Safavid as a pejorative word. Do they know about the Safavid dynasty and the great achievements under its rule? "In 1666, Isfahan, according to a European visitor, had 162 mosques, 48 colleges, 182 caravansaries, and 273 public baths, allmost all of them erected by `Abbas I and his successor, `Abbas II (1642-66)." (Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 294). Incidentally, this book is far superior to Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples. Hourani once told us, while he was still working on it, that he intended it as a corrective to Hitti's major history of the Arabs especially because Hitti treated the beginning of the Ottoman era as mark of dramatic decline of the Arabs. But Hourani's final product is, in my opinion, quite disappointing, and he did not want to upset anybody at the end of his career, so even on the Arab-Israeli conflict section, he did not want take a stand, and offered words of praise for the "Mandate" colonialism of the East. The books also feel rushed. Personally, our criticisms of classical Orientalism notwithstanding, and aside form clear methodological problems, I still like Philip Hitti's History of the Arabs. It is a very good read. Hitti knew how to spice up the narrative with the most interesting details. I always mention the section when, in talking about the splendor and ostentation of Baghdad in the classical Islamic period, he talks about one royal dinner that featured the tongues of fish as the delicacy. Where was I? Oh, the Safavid dynasty. Of course, I don't want to glamorize the Safavid dynasty; after all. There was a brutal imposition of Shi`ite Islam on the lands under its rule. That--not Islam as commonly assumed in Western writings (see Richard Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period)--was conversion by the sword.