Soage, Ana Belen. "Islamism in the Middle East Sectarian Conflict". Middle East Institute, 29 August 2017.

Soage, Ana Belen. "Islamism in the Middle East Sectarian Conflict". Middle East Institute, 29 August 2017.

• Media often assumes that conflict in the Middle East has its root in sectarian conflicts between Shias and Sunnis, emerging organically out of this divide. 
• This interpretation is occasionally challenged by experts, who argue that these divides are encouraged by dictatorial government as a way of dividing the population and to build their own support base. 
• Islamism first emerged in Egypt as the Muslim Brotherhood, founded by Hassan al Banna in the 1930s as a mass movement. Its support grew further in the 1950s under Sayyid Qutb. 
• Islamism became a powerful political force in the Middle East in the 1970s, with the emergence of leaders like Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Pakistan's Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. These leaders used Islamism to attract support against their leftist competitors. 
• President Sadat, to counter opposition to his pivot towards the West from the Nasserite and Communist left, released hundreds of Muslim Brothers from prison, encouraged Islamist groups to form at universities, and publicly encouraged a popular image of himself as the 'believer president'.
• Islamist opposition to President Sadat quickly grew, however, after the 1978 Camp David Accords and he was assassinated by Islamic Jihad in 1981. This sparked a massive crackdown on the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups and a minor civil war, peaking in the 1990s with the return of foreign fighters from Afghanistan.
• Its growth was further facilitated by Saudi Arabia and other Arab kingdoms, who welcomed hundreds of Muslim Brothers fleeing other Arab countries.
• Saudi Arabia was not immune to the destabilizing effects of Islamism, and many Muslim Brothers resident there, including Sayyid Qutb's brother Muhammad Qutb, founded the Sahwa salafist group. Sahwa sought political reform and opposed the authoritarian monarchy, especially after King Fahd invited foreign troops into Saudi Arabia in 1990 to protect against Iraq. After this, Saudi Arabia shifted its support to Salafist groups and defunded the Muslim Brotherhood, which found a new backer in Qatar. 
• Islamism attracted a lot of support in its own right in the 1970s and 1980s, largely as a result of the social services in provided in crowded urban areas. 
• Although Iran is a Shia and Persian state, its Islamism drew from examples in the Sunni Arab world. Like Islamist movements there, the one in Iran was in opposition to a repressive government allied to the USA. Although the Islamic Revolution was diverse, it was eventually controlled by Ayatollah Khomeini, who wanted to export it from Iran. This posed a threat to states with large Shia populations, including Iraq, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. This fear of Islamism contributed to Saddam Hussein's decision to invade Iran in 1980 and that of the Gulf monarchies to support him.
• Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia gradually improved in the 1990s after both countries roundly condemned Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. At the end of the decade, Mohammad Khatami visited Riyadh and the two countries signed a security treaty in 2001. Cooperation continued to grow under President Ahmadinejad, likely because the Gulf states felt secure due to a heavy US presence in the region, and he became the first Iranian leader to attend a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in 2007.
• Regional politics in the Middle East changed after the election of Barack Obama, largely because of the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2011. The Obama administration, to the chagrin of Saudi Arabia, refused to prop up allied dictatorships and seemed eager to work with newly democratic governments in Egypt and Tunisia. This included not intervening in Syria, despite Iran's involvement there.
• Iran stepped in as the supporter of the Arab Spring, portraying it as an Islamist revolution that mimicked Iran's own. Iran allied itself with these groups, portraying itself as a champion against a regional order dominated by Israel and the United States. 
• Iran allied itself with many of these revolutionary government, with President Morsi attending a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran in August 2012 and President Ahmadinejad visiting Cairo in February 2013. Both the first state visits between Iran and Egypt since the 1979 revolution.
• Iran's message of supporting the Arab Spring revolutions faltered in Syria, where it was forced to support the Assad government against the revolution. It initially criticized the Syrian government, but eventually intervened on its behalf because Syria was a major Iranian ally and provided access to the Levant, which is needed for Iran to fund Hizballah and Palestinian groups. Funding from the Gulf states for Salafi groups also threatened to destabilize the region, necessitating Iranian intervention.
• Saudi Arabia funded Salafi groups in Syria to both destabilize, and possibly topple, the Syrian government and to force an Iranian intervention, which would ruin Iran's reputation as a champion of the oppressed and cast Iran as a sectarian Shiite actor.
• This Saudi propaganda has done a good job soiling Iran's reputation in the Middle East. It has severely damaged Iran's relationship with Hamas. Hizballah's reputation has also suffered due to its participation in the conflict.
• Qatar is willing to fund groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, when no one else is, because they do not face a significant domestic threat from Islamism. Both Saudi Arabia, which has significant Shia and disaffected Sunni populations, and Iran, which experienced pro-democracy protests in 2009 and 2010, do have to worry about domestic Islamist challenges.