r/geography • u/Necessary_Wing799 Geography Enthusiast • 14d ago

Oman - a country rarely spoken about. What's happening there? Discussion

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Oman is located in a area we heat about a lot for an array of reasons - there are many famous and newsworthy spots close by from dubai to Doha to Iran and Yemen...... what goes on in Oman? Let us know how life is here and any relevant info on its current state....

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u/AssumptionExtra9041 14d ago

Oman is stable, is relatively rich. It is not involved as much in international politics as its neighbors and it also does not prominently commit human right violations.

So, to keep it short: (almost) everything going on in the neighboring countries is also happening in Oman but to a much shallower degree.

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u/rorenspark 14d ago

Do you know if following Ibadi Islam helped with the stability?

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u/MoonMan75 14d ago edited 14d ago

It is kinda funny because the Ibadis are a off-shoot of the Khawarij, an absolutely insane sect of Islam which was responsible for starting tons of chaos in the early days of Islam. Imagine them as the original ISIS. They were despised by all the other Muslims and eventually crushed. However, they recruited from the impoverished and oppressed, so they have always stuck around in the background and manifest in different forms throughout Islamic and Arab history. There's some modern scholarly work which presents a different view of the Khawarij which is interesting.

Anyways, the Ibadis are a distinct sect, but in reality, they are almost identical to Sunni Muslims, with a few Shia influences. The main differences is political, the Ibadis have differing ideas on the caliphate and have some disputes with the Sunnis over esoteric Islamic philosophy.

But overall, I don't think following Ibadi Islam helped with the stability. Oman had a conflicts in the 1960s-1970s where thousands died. So it has a unstable history. The stability today just comes from Oman being pretty irrelevant overall, it likes to be a neutral party in most major conflicts, they are a dictatorship, and economically/social stable.

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u/solkov 14d ago

I think the policies of Sultan Qaboos to basically stay out of conflicts helped.