Oops, I never did answer what I meant by the Islamic
(Middle Eastern, specifically) view of sovereignty I
mentioned in a previous e-mail of mine.
Like all other religions, Islam believes that it
should dominate the world at the end and all muslim
countries should be together. Properly, that would
mean that there should not be a border between muslim
countries and the borders among between muslim
countries and other countries will be temporary.
However, any tribe who was within your sphere, you
have the right to tax and the ones outside, you don't.
The idea of a big muslim country broke down long time
ago, but the idea of taxation of a tribe equalling
sovereignty remained until late. As many of the
tribes were nomadic Bedouin tribe, boundaries as lines
were not really used until the British came in the
middle east.
The problem in Zubara was originally one of taxation
only. Bahrain used to collect taxes from the Bedouins
there, but otherwise the place was not in their
control. However, when the west imposed their ideas
of boundaries plus the fact that sovereignty of land
probably meant control over oil, the Bahrain-Qatar
dispute became one of land dispute.
Arif

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