**1. Introduction**

Violence and conflicts across the Shia–Sunni divide have increased during the last decades. In fact, a disproportionate share of battle-related deaths falls upon armed conflicts that occur along the Shia–Sunni fault line (Finnbogason et al. 2019). Previous research has demonstrated how the increase of violent identity politics, by political elites and authoritarian leaders in the Middle East, but also in other parts of the wider Muslim world, has reactivated intra-Muslim tensions that had laid dormant (Abdo 2017; Byman 2014; Hinnebusch 2016; Larsson 2016). A well-established scholarly consensus recognizes that tensions between Shia and Sunni communities are not cases of primordial "ancient hatred" but rather that recently, these historical group identities have been instrumentalized by various political actors to maximize political gains and influence (Ahmed 2011; Behuria 2004; Hasheemi and Postel 2017; Nasr 2007; Wehrey 2017). The Shia and Sunni communities can be seen as what Benedict Anderson labeled "imagined communities," a concept that was originally developed to describe the socio-cultural construction of nationalism (Anderson 2006). In the Middle East, the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been crucial in fomenting sectarian tensions, as their governments have utilized identity politics as measures to improve dominance and influence in a multi-sectarian region (Salloukh 2017). Moreover, the so-called Islamic State (IS) has carried out a brutal campaign against Shia Muslims across several countries outside the Middle East. Although the Shia–Sunni rift is only one divide in a region plagued by many multi-layered social conflicts (Phillips and Valbjørn 2018), it has risen to become the main identity cleavage in the Middle East: "Today, although there are myriad sects and forms of religious identity in the Middle East, the overarching intra-Islamic Shi'a-Sunni divide is the 'master cleavage' [ ... ]" (Sisk 2017, p. 266).

However, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to contemporary institutional attempts to bridge this divide. We do not wish to add to the vast amount of research on the causes of conflict, but rather focus on their management. Our study builds upon what we identify as the puzzle of the Shia–Sunni interreligious dialogue deficit in contemporary politics. While the UN and other major international organizations have made dialogue, mediation, and peacebuilding e fforts in some of the most violent conflicts with a Shia–Sunni dimension, organizations specialized in interreligious dialogue and peacemaking have ye<sup>t</sup> to play a role here. As we will show in this article, although there are some historical examples of dialogue between Sunni and Shia Muslims from the 20th century, these initiatives are no longer active. Thus, we do not know how, and to what extent, interreligious dialogue and peacemaking occur across the Shia–Sunni divide.

A note on the terminology and scope of this study is needed before we proceed. There is no consensus as to what exactly terms such as "interreligious peacemaking," "interreligious dialogue," or "interfaith cooperation" capture. For instance, Cheetham et al. (2013, p. 1) criticize that many authors use the terms "interreligious dialogue" and "interreligious relations" interchangeably, ignoring the fact that they capture different things. The authors view dialogue as one form of relational engagemen<sup>t</sup> within the field of interreligious relations. Cornille and Corigliano (2012, p. 1) define interreligious dialogue as a category that implies "the engagemen<sup>t</sup> between different religious traditions oriented toward mutual understanding and growth." Accordingly, Cornille (2013, p. xii) distinguishes interreligious dialogue from other forms of interreligious interaction, such as neutral religion studies, or traditional apologetics, as a form of "constructive engagemen<sup>t</sup> between religious traditions."

Here, we examine interreligious peacemaking attempts to bridge the Shia–Sunni divide, incorporating but not limiting our attention to interreligious dialogue. Instead, we look more specifically at the institutional perspective: interreligious peacemaking initiatives tailored to conflicts between Shias and Sunnis. Nonetheless, more research is needed to shed light upon existing local strategies to foster dialogue between Shias and Sunnis in violent conflicts.

By exploring intra-Muslim sectarian tensions, peacemaking across the Shia–Sunni divide, and challenges for religious identity politics, our study aims to set an agenda for a reinvigorated research endeavor into the contemporary challenges for interreligious peacemaking and dialogue. As sectarian tensions between Shias and Sunnis can be locally anchored but also transcend existing national boundaries, there is a regional perspective to Shia–Sunni tensions. Besides this dimension, future research should also consider the question of time, i.e., when do conflicts occur and under what conditions are Shia–Sunni divisions utilized, and when do they cease to have a rationale for spurring continued conflicts.

We seek to contribute to the development of a research agenda for how to address the puzzle of the Shia–Sunni peacemaking deficit. After situating the latter against a backdrop of increasing levels of violence that have included a sectarian dimension, this article proceeds by discussing what we consider to be the three most potent potential hypotheses for how this puzzle may be understood. First, we discuss the possibility that Shia–Sunni dialogue does not exist because Shia–Sunni tensions are epiphenomenal and there is, in essence, no Shia–Sunni divide to bridge in the first place. Second, we discuss whether the lack of Shia–Sunni dialogue is simply a reflection of interreligious dialogue,

as such, being a Western, Christian innovation that carries little weight in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. Third, we discuss the possibility that the apparent lack of Shia–Sunni dialogue can be explained by arguing that dialogue and peacemaking occur through other institutional channels or informally through local actors, for example tribal leaders, village elders, or other local authorities. Of these three explanations, our analysis suggests that the third and last is most promising and warrants further attention. By examining these three hypotheses, we take the historical trajectory of Shia–Sunni "ecumenical" developments into account, as well as the track record of the intergovernmental approaches to conflicts across this divide and how the divide has been shaped by the inter-state rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia and their proxy wars in the Middle East. While this study aims to set a research agenda, by identifying and discussing what we argue to be an under-studied and little noted puzzle of a lack of institutional attempts to engage in interreligious dialogue in Shia–Sunni conflicts, we do not aspire to provide the full answer to solve this puzzle. Our discussion around the potential explanations should be seen as explorative, and the hypotheses are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The exploration of these potential explanations may hopefully enlighten further discussion and pave the way for a closer examination as to why there is so little institutional religious dialogue along the Shia–Sunni dimension, when the need for such dialogue is, as we suggest, evident.

### **2. Presenting the Puzzle: The Deficit of Shia–Sunni Dialogue**

### *2.1. The Increasing Levels of Violence with Shia–Sunni Dimensions*

Before discussing three hypotheses about what could help explain the apparent lack of Shia–Sunni dialogue, it is important to illustrate why we consider such dialogue to be necessary in the first place. Haddad (2014, 2017) has criticized what he describes as an indifferent and inflationary use of the term "sectarianism" in the regional context of the Middle East. In particular, he highlights the common failure to distinguish between the social, political, and religious dimensions that can create tensions between Shia and Sunni communities. Against this background, our study departs from the recognition that violence across the Shia–Sunni divided has increased substantially over time. Finnbogason et al. (2019) provide a conceptual framework of different sectarian dimensions of armed conflicts. Their empirical analysis, which builds upon the Religion and Armed Conflict (RELAC) dataset (Svensson and Nilsson 2018) on the religious dimensions of state-based conflict, as well as the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) on one-sided violence (Eck and Hultman 2007) and non-state conflicts (Sundberg et al. 2012), demonstrates how levels of violence with different Shia–Sunni dimensions have increased over the last two decades. The authors distinguish between three dimensions of Shia–Sunni conflict: an identity-dimension, an alliance dimension, and an ideological (explicitly sectarian) dimension. Since 2014, an increasing number of fatalities has occurred in conflicts that share at least two such Shia–Sunni dimensions, and a notable share of these fatalities occurred in conflicts that shared all three Shia–Sunni dimensions (Finnbogason et al. 2019, p. 45). In other words, armed conflicts with multiple Shia–Sunni conflict dimensions have become increasingly violent in recent years.

In general, although armed conflicts with Shia–Sunni dimensions are relatively rare, if compared to the overall number of armed conflicts, their share of fatalities in organized violence has increased dramatically over the past decade: since 2011, the share of fatalities in organized violence with at least one Shia–Sunni identity dimension, of the total number of all fatalities in organized violence worldwide, lay at least above 40 percent (Finnbogason et al. 2019, p. 42). To a substantial extent, this high share can be explained by the Syrian Civil War, which includes multiple Shia–Sunni dimensions, as well as the growth of the so-called Islamic State and its violent campaign against Shia Muslims in several countries around the globe. Still, organized violence with Shia–Sunni dimensions also occurred elsewhere, for instance between tribal groups in Pakistan, and in the context of the ongoing civil war in Yemen (Finnbogason et al. 2019). Thus, although it should be noted that much of the organized violence with Shia–Sunni dimensions can be traced back to other contentious issues that may be partly overlapping with sectarian questions, the empirical trajectory of armed conflicts in the Middle East and parts of the wider Muslim world substantiates the claim that the Shia–Sunni divide constitutes a prominent cleavage in contemporary conflicts and that it has become increasingly militarized during the last decade.

Peacebuilding and dialogue are always a challenge in identity-based conflicts that have become militarized (Cox et al. 2017), but they might be even more so if they involve Shia–Sunni dimensions due to a number of complicating factors. The religious dimension to the conflicts transcends state borders, which creates a set of complex interactions between local political dynamics and transnational power relations. The local dynamics typically include the strategic instrumentalization of sectarian identities by authoritarian governments as well as the introduction of majority-based semi-democratic systems. The latter has, in these contexts, often led to ethnic and sectarian-based electoral mobilization, which further intensified ongoing cycles of violence (Sisk 2017, p. 260). In addition, high-level peacebuilding efforts are often undermined by regional powers that compete over strategic influence in the region, most importantly Iran and Saudi Arabia. However, despite the multifold challenges and the complexity of peacebuilding in conflicts with Shia–Sunni dimensions, the literature on identity-based conflicts has suggested several ways in which peacebuilding can work to effectively manage sectarian conflict and enhance social cohesion. Examples of successful peacebuilding efforts in sectarian conflicts include the cases of Northern Ireland, Bosnia, or Sri Lanka (Sisk 2017). As recognized by previous research, the building of peace and social cohesion "requires progress in extending the presence of an inclusive, resilient, and responsive state—especially at the local level" (Sisk 2017, p. 274; see also Cox et al. 2014). In other words, although these conflicts provide particular challenges, their complexity should not by itself explain the lack of peacebuilding initiatives and interreligious dialogue, which we empirically outline in the following section.

### *2.2. The Low Levels of Institutional Peacemaking Dialogue along the Shia–Sunni Fault Line*

If we explore existing databases on interreligious dialogue and peacemaking, we find that the prevalence of organized violence across the Shia–Sunni divide is not reflected in a similar prevalence of institutional attempts for dialogue and peacemaking. The most comprehensive list of international organizations engaged in interreligious dialogue and peacemaking is provided by the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) and is called the KAICIID Peace Map. It identifies 463 internationally operating organizations that are specialized in interreligious dialogue and peacemaking (KAICIID 2018). For this study, we have coded the religious communities targeted by the interreligious dialogue initiatives of these organizations, based on the information in the original dataset.<sup>1</sup> Table 1 provides an overview of our coding, displaying the most common interreligious relations addressed by peacemaking organizations listed in the KAICIID Peace Map. As can be seen in Table 1, only eight of these organizations (or 1.7 percent) have Shia–Sunni dialogue as an explicit mandate and/or have had concrete programs aimed at creating dialogue across the Shia–Sunni divide. By far the largest number of organizations addresses relations between Christian and Muslim communities, although still one hundred organizations address Christian–Jewish and Jewish–Muslim relations, respectively. In fact, it is worthwhile to mention that there are many organizations that specialize in relations between all the three Abrahamic religions. This is the case for 70 organizations.

<sup>1</sup> Our coding is based on the following variables provided in the original dataset, for every of the 463 organizations: "IRDActivities" (Column Q), "Activities" (S), "Aim" (AB), "IRDdefinition" (AC), "Events" (AD), and "Publications: (AE). We examined whether an organization worked to address a certain form of interreligious relations, for example, Christian–Muslim, Intra–Muslim, Intra-Christian, etc. The Peace Map with our additional coding can be accessed under the link that is listed under Supplementary Materials. The variables that we have coded ourselves can be found in columns AJ to BB.


**Table 1.** Type of interreligious dialogue promoted by organizations in King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) Peace Map 1.

1 Organizations covered by the KAICIID Peace Map also focus on interreligious dialogue with other religions, including Animist, Buddhist, Druze, Hindu, or Sikh communities. Still, none of these religions are explicitly targeted by more than nine organizations. Finally, 206 (of a total of 463 organizations contained in the dataset) promote interreligious dialogue on a more general scale, without focusing on the relations between specific religious communities.

With regards to the eight organizations that have addressed Shia–Sunni relations, the degree to which these organizations focus on Shia–Sunni relations varies considerably. For instance, whereas the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, based in Jordan, defines its main goal as advancing dialogue between the seven Islamic schools of jurisprudence, the UNESCO Association for Interreligious Dialogue, and the International Council for Inter-Religious Cooperation adopt a much broader focus, although they have previously organized events and seminars addressing Shia–Sunni relations. The US-based Salam Institute for Peace and Justice primarily promotes dialogue between Muslim and non-Muslim communities, but has, for instance, also organized meetings with religious authorities in Iran to discuss Shia–Sunni relations. Another organization that partially addresses Shia–Sunni relations is the Malaysia-based International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies. The Association for Conflict Transformation (ACT) of the Cordoba Foundation of Geneva (CFG) is particularly active in di fferent parts of the Muslim world and has thus also worked in contexts where it sought to foster dialogue in violent conflicts with a Shia–Sunni dimension. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), despite promoting dialogue between the di fferent Islamic sects, su ffers from several problems, which are discussed to a greater extent in relation to our third hypothesis (Section 3.3). Finally, since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, the MENA Council of Religions for Peace (RFP), an international organization created in 1970, has sought to advance dialogue between religious authorities, including Sunni and Shia representatives. It is noteworthy that, apart from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), none of the eight organizations that are listed in the KAICIID dataset has o ffices in a country that has both sizeable Shia and Sunni populations.

While we recognize limitations with regards to the comprehensiveness of the KAICIID Peace Map, as it may fail to include *all* such organizations, we see no reason to expect that this would introduce a systematic bias against the information gathered about Shia–Sunni dialogue. We therefore consider the fact that only 1.7 percent of the listed organizations focus specifically on Shia–Sunni relations to be indicative of a general interreligious peacemaking deficit when it comes to addressing Shia–Sunni tensions and violence. We have also consulted two other sources on interreligious peacemaking and dialogue, and both reveal a similar empirical picture. One such source is provided by the Directory of InterFaith and InterReligious Organizations (Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace 2018). It lists a total of 42 additional organizations not covered by the KAICIID list, none of which seems to explicitly address the Shia–Sunni divide. Moreover, in their 2005 report, Bouta et al. (2005) report on a large number of Christian and Muslim faith-based peacebuilding organizations. While providing strong evidence that besides Christian organizations, there is also a substantial number of Muslim peacebuilding organizations (particularly in Africa), only a small share of these organizations specifically focuses on interreligious peacemaking and dialogue, and none seem to specifically address Shia–Sunni relations.

Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, there has been an increasing prevalence of organized violence and armed conflicts along the Shia–Sunni fault line, which has further escalated over the past decade (Finnbogason et al. 2019). However, this does not seem to have prompted the creation of new organizations and institutional attempts focusing on Shia–Sunni relations. In fact, only two of the eight organizations mentioned here were founded after 2003—in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

Taken together, the two empirical trajectories that we have identified above present us with a puzzle. In 2017, 44 percent all the world's fatalities in organized violence resulted from conflicts with Shia–Sunni dimensions (Finnbogason et al. 2019). Still, very few institutional mechanisms and organizations have been set up to explicitly address this fault line. This deficit of peacemaking and dialogue has neither been noted nor discussed in previous research, regardless of whether that research focusses on Shia–Sunni sectarianism (or sectarianization) (e.g., Byman 2014; Haddad 2017; Hasheemi and Postel 2017) or rather on interreligious dialogue and religious peacemaking (e.g., Cheetham et al. 2013; Haynes 2007; Smock 2002). In this study, we seek to explore why so few interreligious peacemaking initiatives seem to be targeted at conflicts between Shias and Sunnis, when the need for such dialogue is evident.
