Here's what can be done by leaders whose people have been committing murders and acts of terror against the other side over many years, people who are divided by being of two different parts of one faith:
The words of Ian Paisley are particularly moving and relevant.
Now, perhaps, left to their own devices, Sunni and Shia could eventually reach the same conclusion. They too have grievances dating back hundreds of years.They too have taken to killing one another. Both in the Irish case and the Iraq case the grievances are not,surely, about religion but about their society and the perceived injustices wrought by one community against the other over a very long time. These are dressed up as though a faith divide,but they have little to do with theology or which has the better religious claims to the true faith.
That said, it has taken the last thirty years of killing and hatred to reach this stage.
