(3/2011) Book Review: Eclipse Of The Sunnis By Deborah Amos

‘Eclipse of the Sunnis’: Muslim Divide Contributes to Yet Another Refugee Crisis

Mark Twain is famously said to have proclaimed: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” After reading Deborah Amos’ “Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East” (PublicAffairs, 256 pages, index, $15.99) I’m not so sure about the rhyming aspect and more and more convinced about the repeating one.

Hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslims displaced or exiled by the conflict in Iraq have spread across the Middle East, unbalancing that sensitive region. From Amman to Beirut and Damascus, Deborah Amos, an outstanding reporter for National Public Radio, travels the region reporting on the impact of one of the great migrations of modern times.

To me, this is the aspect of history repeating itself, a 21st century version of the Christian religious wars of centuries ago in Europe that resulted in hundreds  of thousands of deaths and major population shifts. To take just one example, consider the conflict between the Huguenots, French Protestants, and the Roman Catholic majority of France and ponder such historical events as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. (Check both out on Wikipedia).

Unlike reporters in the Middle East who tend to blame everything wrong with the region on the Israeli-Arab conflict and the displacement of Palestinians, Amos focuses on the Sunni-Shiite divide in Islam, with Muslims lining up on either side of the divide. A cynic (and I tend toward this view because it’s an occupational hazard of journalists) might say the problem of the Middle East — and the world in general — is too much religion.

Amos also touches on the flight — and the plight —  of Iraq’s various Christian sects from a country that once had a degree of tolerance — even under Saddam Hussein —  toward non-Muslims. This subject is worthy of a separate book.  She even discusses refugee Jews, as she notes that Iraq’s vital and enriching Jewish community of 120,000 strong was forced to flee from 1948 on. This was a community that predated Islam itself in Mesopotamia.   If the strength of a country can be measured by its tolerance and diversity — as I think it should be — today’s Shiite dominated Iraq is the poorer for its lack of diversity.

With the ascendency of Shiite Muslims in Iraq, many Sunnis have fled to Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and eventually Europe and the U.S., Amos reports. She reports on one poignant relocation of an Iraqi couple to northern California, under the sponsorship of a California National Guard noncom.

The history of the Middle East tells us that one of the greatest problems of the last forty years has been that of a displaced population, angered by their inability to safely return home and resume ownership of their property—as they see it. It may be oversimplification, but too many people want to live on too little habitable land. Now, the pattern has been repeated. A new population of exiles, larger than the Palestinians, has been created.This particular displacement stirs up the historic conflict between Sunni and Shia. More significant even than the creation of colonial nation states a century ago, the alienation of the Sunni middle class has the capacity to cause resounding resentments across the region for generations to come.

The Sunni refugees have an uneasy life in the countries they’ve fled to, countries with many Deborah Amosproblems of their own and ruled by dictators of the kind we hear about every day with the reporting from Libya. Amos, a woman who, judging by her photo in the publicity material, wouldn’t look out of place at a public library front desk, tells of dressing up and accompanying Iraqi refugee women to a sex club in Damascus. It’s both funny and tragic and her telling it is pitch perfect. The refugees are not allowed to work in their host countries, most of which have few jobs for their own citizens.

I’ve discovered that Deborah Amos is one of the reporters from the Middle East that I can count on to tell the story without worrying about alienating the politically correct types. “Eclipse of the Sunnis” proves my point beyond a reasonable doubt. Everyone in every branch of the government — and everyone in general — should read this important and well reported book.

Editor’s note: About that saying attributed to Mark Twain, I found this on a Google search: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.This is very often attributed to Mark Twain, but is not found in his works. The earliest publication yet located is a verse which might involve a deliberate invocation of poetic license in John Robert Colombo’s poem, “A Said Poem,” published in Neo Poems (1970), which reads: “ ‘History never repeats itself but it rhymes,’ said Mark Twain.”

About the author

Deborah Amos’s reporting can be heard on NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. Before joining NPR, she reported for TV, including ABC’ World News Tonight and Nightline and the PBS programs NOW with Bill Moyers and Frontline. She lives in New York City.  Amos began her career in 1972 after receiving a degree in broadcasting from the University of Florida at Gainesville.

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