Episode Reviews

Kevin's take on Shia vs Islam sounds academic. It's not consistent with my lived experience. It may be 'more recent' and provoked by outsiders, but the tension in Bahrain was akin to Protestant/ Catholic tension in Belfast back in the day. The Sunni's in the Gulf (GCC) generally have all the opportunity and government jobs, etc while some of the populations like Bahrain are highly majority Shia. This causes tension. I have no doubt that Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Iran, and Egypt are very populace Islamic nations, but Mecca is in Saudi and Islam was exported from Saudi, was it not? I'm not sure how Kevin can pretend that Arabic isn't the birthplace and source of Islam - The Koran is only printed in Arabic, they pray to Mecca five times per day and take a pilgrimage there at least once. It's not the same as the Vatican, Italian and Rome although some loose parallels. Neil.