Sectarian War Quotes & Sayings

The refusal to take part in all war under any conditions is an unworldly view bound to remain a sectarian doctrine. It no more challenges the state's authority than the celibacy of priests challenges the sanctity of marriage. — John Rawls

Everybody wants to talk about sectarian conflicts of the war in Iraq, but the fact of the matter is, Sunnis have lived with Shias in harmony more in the confines of Iraq, in that land, than they have been in conflict. That's an historical fact. — Jack Keane

We are asking if thought can be aware of itself. That is rather a complex question, and requires very careful observation. Thought has created wars through nationalism, through sectarian religions. Thought has created all this; God has not created the hierarchy of the church
the pope, all the robes, all the rituals, the swinging of the incense, the candles. All that paraphernalia that goes on in a cathedral or in a church is put together by thought, copied, some of it, from the ancient Egyptians, from the ancient Hindus, and Hebrews. It is all thought. So "God" is created by thought. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Women, who enjoyed a high social status and levels of education under Saddam, saw terrible setbacks as Iraq fell into civil war. As a result of the sectarian violence from 2005-2007, women retreated to their homes and fell from public view. — Richard Engel

We remember the specter of sectarian violence
al Qaeda's attacks on mosques and pilgrims, militias that carried out campaigns of intimidation and campaigns of assassination. And in the face of ancient divisions, you stood firm to help those Iraqis who put their faith in the future. — Barack Obama

We must not let history repeat itself in Iraq. The reality is there is no military solution in Iraq. This is a sectarian war with long standing roots that were flamed when we invaded Iraq in 2003. Any lasting solution must be political and take into account respect for the entire Iraqi population. — Barbara Lee

were Huguenots who abhorred the Church to which it belonged. That huge donjon, built by the Counts of Poitiers, was still a place of formidable strength; but Richelieu would soon be in power and the days of local autonomy and provincial fortresses were numbered. All unknowing the parson was riding into the last act of a sectarian war, into the prologue to a nationalist revolution. At — Aldous Huxley

If you mean by "military victory" an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible. — Henry A. Kissinger

We condemn the view that the (U.S.-led) occupation's existence is beneficial for the Iraqi people because if it ended, there would be sectarian war - as if sectarian war has not already begun. — Muqtada Al Sadr

The latest developments in Iraq are deeply troubling, but as the United States considers military and diplomatic responses to the actions of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) action, we should be clear that U.S. troops on the ground cannot go a million miles near a sectarian civil war-it's simply not an option. — Sean Patrick Maloney

We are particularly frustrated that so much of our politics today consists of lines first written during the clashes, domestic and foreign, of the 1960s. This "Groundhog Day" approach to replaying the culture war's tropes is perhaps nowhere in greater evidence than in how Americans talk about patriotism. Patriotism, as an idea, has been co-opted over the course of a generation by right-wingers who use the flag not as a symbol of transcendent national unity, but as a sectarian cudgel against the hippies, Francophiles, free-lovers and tree-huggers who constitute their caricature of the American left. The American left, for its part, has been so beaten down by this star-spangled caricature that it has largely ceded the very notion of patriotism to the right. As a result, the first reaction of far too many progressives to any talk of patriotism is automatic, allergic recoil. Needless to say, this reaction simply tightens the screws of the right's imprisoning caricature. — Eric Liu