What has led to the recent chaos in Iraq, Syria and the Gulf?

The Middle East is fractured and is in flux. Renowned speaker, author and authority on Middle Eastern politics,  Dr Toby Matthiesen, discussed the rise in the prominence of sectarian politics of the Middle East, in particular the Sunni-Shia conflict.

Toby Matthiesen is a Research Fellow in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.  He was previously a Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science.  Dr Matthiesen’s first book, Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t, was published by Stanford University Press in 2013.  From 2007 to 2011 he wrote his doctorate on the politicisation of Saudi Arabia’s Shia community at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.  His second book, The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism, which is based on his PhD, has been published by Cambridge University Press in 2015.  He has published in The New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Middle East Report and various scholarly journals and has appeared on numerous radio and television stations.

This video was filmed on 19 May, 2015 at Dyason House, 124 Jolimont Road, East Melbourne, 3002.