From Palestine to Iran: This is Not a Religious War — It is a War on Religion
By Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo
The greatest mistake one can make in trying to understand the violence consuming Palestine and the region is to call it a religious war. It is not.
A religious war suggests opposing camps driven by competing theologies, each claiming God as its exclusive mandate. That is not what is taking place. Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians, whether Muslim or Christian, Sunni or Shia, are not mobilized in some grand sectarian crusade. They are resisting siege, occupation, bombardment, humiliation, and erasure.
What we are witnessing instead is something darker: a war on religion itself.
This war manifests in many forms. It appears in the destruction of mosques in Gaza, in the tightening grip over Al-Aqsa Mosque, in the harassment of Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem, in attacks on churches and shrines, in the mockery of sacred language, and in the growing contempt shown toward spiritual symbols and religious authority across the region. It is not theology that unites these acts, but power. It is domination stripped of restraint.
In Gaza, the Israeli part of this war is by now undeniable.