by Rakib Ehsan, Telegraph
A shared hostility towards Israel and the West is helping to repair the relationship between Sunni and Shia communities
While Sunni-Shia tensions continue to exist across much of the Islamic world, they are increasingly being set aside because of an overarching hatred of Israel and hostility to the West – specifically, a desire to see US “hegemonic” power in the international system consigned to the dustbin of history. The same is true in Britain.
With the Iran conflict escalating to a full-blown regional war following the surprise US-Israel airstrikes, my new report for the Policy Exchange think-tank finds that British Muslims view the world order very differently to the general public: they hold much warmer views on not only Iran, but also China and Russia (despite the two countries having a history of persecuting their own Muslim citizens).
Relatively high levels of British Muslim support for Iran suggest that geopolitical considerations are increasingly trumping forms of denominational tribalism.
One obvious explanation for this is the stronger forms of hostility towards Israel among British Muslims. Iran, by contrast, is viewed as the “lone ranger” in terms of taking the fight to it – both directly and through proxies such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.