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Originally Posted by PaulFXH  Do you really believe that their religion is the only common feature in the cultural environment of the people from the two countries you mentioned? Don't they both speak (more or less) the same language? Isn't there a great ethnic similarity between the peoples from these countries?
I am forced to come back to the example of Northern Ireland again to illustrate that, although the international media insisted on describing the conflict there as a religious war, adherence to a particular religion may indeed be only a minor part of a vast and complicated array of commonalities that constitute a cultural entity. |
Egypt's issue with Israel comes about due to the shared border. Iran doesn't share that border, and the Egyptian cultural background is quite different from the Persian one. Were it not for the shared religion causing Iranians to identify with Egyptians (ie: "They're Muslims too, and the Jews in Israel are causing problems with Muslims, so they're also causing trouble for us"- this is obviously oversimplified but you get my point) it is quite likely that Iranian extremists wouldn't have the same focus on Israel and Judaism.
Trying to separate religion from language is a hard thing to do, as they're pretty well tied together, anthropologically speaking.