**4. Avenues for Future Research**

This study has tried to identify and establish the puzzling empirical phenomenon of the Shia–Sunni interreligious dialogue deficit. This may encourage future research to devote greater attention to the lack of institutional Shia–Sunni dialogue initiatives, which is surprising against the backdrop of the escalation of organized violence that has occurred along the intra-Muslim sectarian divide. Organized violence between Shia and Sunni Muslims represents one of our most pressing security challenges: over the last few years, almost half of all fatalities in organized violence in the world occurred along the Shia–Sunni rift. In this context, special attention should be paid to state-based armed conflicts, that is, conflicts that involve at least one governmen<sup>t</sup> of a state as a conflict party. Between 1989 and 2017, approximately 90 percent of all fatalities in conflicts with Shia–Sunni dimensions occurred in conflicts that involved state-level actors (Finnbogason et al. 2019, p. 43). Research needs to understand why there are so few institutional attempts to bridge this divide.

Of the three explanations we have discussed in this study, the third one appears most promising for future research to pursue. In particular, what is needed are studies that help clarify how institutional attempts, primarily by the UN as well as informal attempts at the lower societal levels, can bridge the Shia–Sunni divide. In this context, we wish to highlight that the second and third hypothesis in this study are not mutually exclusive: we have illustrated local, less institutionalized instances of Shia–Sunni dialogue that have occurred, for example the initiative by al-Qaradawi in Iraq after the escalation of sectarian violence in 2003. Such cases of Shia–Sunni dialogue do in fact indicate, with respect to our second hypothesis, that interreligious dialogue is not necessarily a Western phenomenon, and with regards to our third hypothesis, that it may occur through other channels. Still, more research is needed to systematically assess to what extent such local initiatives are taking place in non-Western countries a ffected by Shia–Sunni violence. Future research should also examine the conditions under which interreligious dialogue is successful in creating processes of de-sectarianization and how religious actors, leaders, communities, and organizational resources can be incentivized to create e ffective channels for dialogue and for the reduction of tensions.

The variations in group relationships need to be explained, not by extrapolating medieval-based historical animosities, but through modern political processes that involve the political elites. There are good reasons to believe that theological di fferences have been used for promoting discord between groups and individuals in both past and present (e.g., (Bengio and Litvak 2011; Maréchal and Zemni 2013). In some cases, the rhetoric use of a religious vocabulary has been employed for harassing and whipping up aggression against the religious "other." The latest wars in Syria and Iraq, but also the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the following Iran–Iraq wars, are illustrative cases. Political elites with authoritarian agendas and aspirations, in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, have had self-interests to construct and maintain antagonistic sectarian identities and have acted in ways to fane sectarian violence. Moreover, Western governments fueled these dynamics by providing strategical support for sectarian regimes, on the one hand, and by military interventions that dramatically increased sectarian violence, such as the 2003 United States-led invasion in Iraq, on the other hand. Countries with significant Shia or Sunni minorities in which sectarian identities have been politicized su ffer from unfulfilled state-building processes and a lack of social cohesion. Together with the Iran–Saudi Arabia rivalry, this has contributed decisively to sectarian violence as well as to a lack of dialogue.

We have shown in this study that while the rise in organized violence with Shia–Sunni dimensions can be explained by certain specific developments—in particular, the critical junctures of the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Arab Spring in 2011—the lack of dialogue is driven by other processes. The 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent turmoil in the country provided fertile soil for the growth of IS and its conflict with the governmen<sup>t</sup> of Nouri al-Maliki. IS was able to draw on the resentment in Sunni communities toward the increasingly sectarian policies of al-Maliki's government, which favored Iraq's Shia majority population. The Arab Spring in 2011, on the other hand, provided

the backdrop for the civil war in Syria that would come to have repercussions for the entire region, not the least by providing IS with an opportunity to spring back to life and reignite sectarian violence.

Clearly, in some of the contexts experiencing violence with Shia–Sunni dimensions, the space for interreligious dialogue and peacemaking is extremely small, especially where conflicts involve Al-Qaeda- or IS-linked groups. In some conflicts, the targeting of the community of the religious "other" is part of the rationale for the conflict. For example, radical Sunni groups target Shias due to (at least partly) theological reasons. For successful interreligious peacemaking to take place, the involved actors must acknowledge that there is room for growth in their understanding of the truth, as well as to acknowledge that their religion is somewhat interconnected with the religious "other." Moreover, "hospitality" is required, which means that actors recognize actual truth, at least to some extent, in another religion, and that they view it as possible to include this into their own religion (Cornille 2013, p. 28).

We leave it to future research to examine the conditions under which interreligious peacemaking and dialogue can be effective. Previous research shows that faith-based mediation and religious peacemaking are most frequently utilized when the conflict issues are not defined in religious terms and when the religious identity can serve as a bridge between the antagonist parties (Johnstone and Svensson 2013). Moreover, previous research points toward the importance of religious communities: they represent key actors in religious conflicts, whose networks should be used by peacemakers to foster dialogue (Smock 2006). They can also play an important role due to their moral authority, which allows them to gain the trust of people who may live under corrupt and repressive regimes, as well as their direct access to the population, due to their long-term involvement in grassroots work in conflict settings (Halafoff 2013, p. 268). On the other hand, if international peacemakers decide to collaborate with certain religious organizations or actors, in the absence of functioning state institutions, there is a risk of reinforcing existing feelings among the population of clientelism and ethnic or faith-based service delivery. In other words, by focusing too narrowly on religious identity in peacebuilding, those identities may be inadvertently further inscribed, thereby exacerbating tensions (Cox et al. 2014, p. 2). Interreligious peacemaking may be more likely to be successful, where it is linked to secular and political processes and authorities (Smock 2006, p. 36).

The deficit of Shia–Sunni interreligious dialogue can be partly understood as a function of an undersupply of vibrant and free civil society organizations, and potentially a reflection of a wider democracy deficit in the Middle East and other parts of the wider Muslim world. The latter has been the subject of a long, still ongoing academic debate about Middle Eastern or Muslim exceptionalism, after several authors characterized political developments in these countries as exceptional, unusual, or unique (Bellin 2004; Borooah and Paldam 2007; Stepan and Robertson 2003). Some authors linked these developments to Islam itself (Huntington 1996; Lako ff 2004; Rowley and Smith 2009). Especially after the Arab Spring, but also earlier (Sørli et al. 2005), this notion of Muslim exceptionalism has evoked increasing criticism by authors who have instead highlighted the importance of political and colonial history (Hariri 2015), ethnolinguistic factors (Mabry 2015), or gender (el-Husseini 2016) to understand what is often perceived as a democratic deficit in the Middle East and the Muslim World. Others have pointed out how actors in Muslim democracies in fact often use Islamic concepts to contribute to democratization (Kubicek 2015). The existence of a civil society that transcends religious or ethnic cleavages is an important explanation for the capacity of societies to maintain civil peace, particularly in light of external provocations and turmoil (Varshney 2002). Organizations that can clarify misunderstandings and kill rumors help to work against negative stereotypes and prejudices, threat perceptions, and hostile attitudes. Resilience and social cohesion are lacking in the Middle East due to a colonial past and unfinished state-formation processes, weak state institutions, or lack of independence of, and space for, the civil society. To su fficiently address this issue lies beyond the scope of this article. Still, it would be worthwhile to examine whether the Shia–Sunni communities in the diaspora, some of which are living in societies with stronger institutional frameworks allowing for more civil agency, may in fact be more engaged in such dialogue. In a more general sense, future

research can help to shed light upon factors that explain the occurrence (or absence of) interreligious dialogue in conflicts with Shia–Sunni dimensions.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, I.S., G.L.; methodology, I.S.; formal analysis, D.K.; investigation, D.K., I.S., G.L.; data curation, D.K.; writing—original draft preparation, D.K., I.S., and G.L.; historical and theological research, G.L.; writing—review and editing, D.K., I.S., and G.L.; visualization, D.K.; supervision, I.S.; project administration, I.S.; funding acquisition, I.S.

**Funding:** This research was funded by STIFTELSEN RIKSBANKENS JUBILEUMSFOND, gran<sup>t</sup> number NHS14-1701:1.

**Acknowledgments:** We thank Daniel Finnbogason for grea<sup>t</sup> collaboration on the data-collection. We also appreciate comments on earlier drafts from Julia Palmiano Federer, Jason Klocek, Mimmi Söderberg-Kovacs, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Desirée Nilsson.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.
