ABSTRACT
Many of the more fanciful explanations may never appear in print, but some find their way into the vast market of booklets and periodicals where traditionalists, militant fundamentalists and secular chauvinists propagate their ideas. Many of these explanations remain unknown to the public at large. But spectacular events such as the bloody incidents of Friday, 31 July 1987 at Mecca, involving Iranian pilgrims, do prepare the ground for media “disclosures” which, under other circumstances, would not have been made. Some Sunni polemicists do not hesitate to portray Khomeini as a secret ally of the United States and Israel and to describe his revolution as part of an international “scenario.” In proof of that, the most far-fetched “clues” are offered not only by politicians and journalists, but also by academics and religious writers. Islam has witnessed a number of attempts by both Shi’i and Sunni ulama, intellectuals and politicians to achieve unity or, at least, a rapprochement between the two communities.
