Lindsey Stephenson

The Political Underpinnings of Kuwaiti Sectarian Polemics

I am hesitant to write about sectarianism because I once heard that writing about divisions only increases awareness of them and deepens them. But regional commentators—and some international ones—seem to be writing about sects in the Middle East in a purely polemical manner. However, the Kuwaiti case is instructive for understanding that sectarianism isn’t necessarily a fact of life in the Gulf, and that the polemics employed throughout the region at present, while they ...