田思怡譯
The Shiite leaders of Iran and the Sunni rulers of Saudi Arabia traded insults over the deaths of hundreds of Iranian pilgrims near Mecca. The government of Bahrain, long criticized for repressing the country's Shiite majority, expelled the Iranian ambassador, after accusing Iran of shipping arms to Bahrain and trying to foment "sectarian strife."
And a group of hard-line Sunni clerics in Saudi Arabia, fired up by Russia's intervention in Syria, issued a scathing sectarian call for holy war.
信奉什葉派伊斯蘭教的伊朗領導人和屬遜尼派穆斯林的沙烏地阿拉伯統治者，為了幾百名伊朗朝覲者在麥加附近意外喪生而互相辱罵。長期被批評打壓國內什葉派多數人口的巴林政府，在指責伊朗運送武器到巴林試圖扇動「教派衝突」後，驅逐了伊朗大使。
還有，沙烏地阿拉伯一群強硬派遜尼派教士因俄國介入敘利亞衝突而勃然大怒，發布措詞嚴厲的教派聖戰召集令。
Events over the last few weeks have raised fears of an accelerating confrontation between the region's Shiite and Sunni Muslims, with Saudi Arabia and Iran escalating their power struggle, extremists attacking Shiite mosques in the Persian Gulf and armed conflict aggravating religious differences in Iraq, Syria and now Yemen.
But as the violence flares and crosses borders, national and religious leaders seem as eager as ever to stoke the fires, mobilizing followers using implicit or naked sectarian appeals that are transforming political conflicts into religious struggles and making the bloodshed in the region harder to contain, scholars and analysts say.
過去幾周的事件令人憂心這個區域什葉派和遜尼派穆斯林之間的衝突正在加劇：沙烏地阿拉伯和伊朗升高權力鬥爭；激進分子攻擊波斯灣的什葉派清真寺；武裝衝突加深了一些地方的教派分歧，先是伊拉克和敘利亞，現在又加上葉門。
但學者和分析家說，在暴力爆發並越過邊界之際，各地的國家和宗教領袖似乎仍急於火上加油，用暗示或赤裸裸的教派訴求動員追隨者，把政治衝突轉變為宗教鬥爭，使得這個區域的流血衝突更難遏抑。
"This is unprecedented, and we don't have a road map," said Rami Khouri, a senior fellow at the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut. "When political dynamics fail, people turn back to religion. We are in this terrible moment of transition where sect is very high in people's minds."
"Radical individuals are deliberately fomenting this violence," he added. "And irresponsible governments allow it to happen."
貝魯特美國大學伊薩姆．法里斯學院的資深研究員拉米．胡里說：「這是前所未見的情況，我們沒有路線圖。當政治動能起不了作用時，人們回到宗教。我們處於可怕的過渡期，人們教派意識高漲。」
他接著說：「激進的個人刻意扇動這種暴力，而不負責任的政府任令它發生。」
The perils of sectarian polarization have been evident for more than a decade, since the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. In the last few years, tensions have been inflamed by the war in Syria.
The latest violent turn has been "ratcheted up by the Iranian-Saudi conflict," Khouri said. Iran's latest broadsides over the pilgrims' deaths near the Saudi city of Mecca during the hajj came as the gulf states have taken an increasingly hard line against what they call Iran's meddling in the region — going so far as to mount a large-scale military offensive in Yemen aimed at defeating a rebel group they say is allied with the Iranians.
打從美國帶領聯軍入侵和占領伊拉克起，十餘年來教派兩極化的危險一直顯而易見。過去這幾年，敘利亞戰爭引發了緊張情勢。
胡里說，最新一輪的暴力「被伊朗與沙國間的衝突步步激化」。伊朗最近為朝覲期間沙國聖城麥加附近朝覲者意外喪生事件而發飆，正逢波斯灣國家對他們所謂伊朗在此地區的干預行動態度日趨強硬之際，甚至強硬到在葉門發動大規模軍事攻勢，目標是擊敗他們指稱與伊朗人結盟的一個叛軍組織。
As the Sunni monarchies have rallied their citizens for war, the rulers seem ill-prepared for the potential fallout: Several times over the last few months, Sunni extremists have carried out deadly attacks on Shiite mosques in the Persian Gulf.
Troubling another fault line, Russia's decision to intervene in Syria alongside the government of President Bashar Assad, Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, brought calls for retaliation from hard-line Saudi clerics known as Salafis, but also mainstream Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which referred to Assad as a "treacherous Alawite criminal."
當各遜尼派王室號召國人前赴戰場時，這些統治者似乎並沒有為可能出現的後果做好準備：過去幾個月有好幾次，遜尼派激進分子對波斯灣地區的什葉派清真寺執行侵奪人命的攻擊。
另一個挑動分歧的發展是，俄國決定介入敘利亞衝突，與阿塞德總統的政府、伊朗和黎巴嫩的什葉派民兵組織真主黨並肩作戰，以致稱為薩拉菲派的強硬沙國教士號召報復，埃及的穆斯林兄弟會之屬主流伊斯蘭組織也有反應，稱阿塞德為「大逆不道的阿拉維罪犯」。
The Saudi clerics, denigrating their longtime adversaries, including Shiite Muslims and Alawites, who practice an offshoot of Shiite Islam, also took aim at the "Orthodox crusader Russia," which they said, was picking up where the Soviet force driven from Afghanistan by Muslims more than a generation ago had left off.
In an online statement signed by 55 clerics, they warned that if the "holy warriors" were defeated in Syria, Sunni nations would also fall "one after the other."
沙國教士詆毀他們長期的敵人，包括什葉派穆斯林和阿拉維教派（後者信奉伊斯蘭教什葉派的一支），並攻擊「東正教十字軍俄國」，他們說，俄國重操一世代前被穆斯林趕出阿富汗的蘇聯軍隊的舊業。
在由五十五名教士簽署的網路聲明中，他們警告，敘利亞的「聖戰士」若被打敗，遜尼派國家也會「一個接一個」倒下。
Madawi al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the Middle East Center of the London School of Economics, said the strong sectarian tone of the statement represented the sort of pronouncements that have made the region's hostilities harder and harder to arrest.
"The language of sectarianism involves elimination and purification, and these are very dangerous words to use in any conflict," al-Rasheed said. "It makes it more difficult to see a space for dialogue and political solutions or compromises. Religious conflicts are more difficult to resolve than political ones."By invoking Afghanistan, the letter "conjured the image of martyrdom and fighting the infidels," she said, portending "a longer war."
倫敦政經學院中東中心的訪問教授瑪達薇．阿拉希德說，這項聲明教派論調強烈，代表這類宣示已使得此地區的敵意愈來愈難遏制。
阿拉希德說：「教派主義言論涉及滅絕和淨化，在任何衝突中用這些字眼都十分危險。這讓人們更難看到對話和政治解決或妥協空間。宗教衝突比政治衝突更難解決。」她說，藉由喚起對阿富汗的記憶，這封信「召喚殉道者和對抗異教徒的形象」，預告「一個更長期的戰爭」。
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