Sunni-Shi'a conflict?

Amidst the copious media rhetoric surrounding a clash between Sunni orders and an emergent 'Shia arc' it is wise to return to an short yet apt comment on this issue by Fouad Ajami:

'The wellsprings of this impasse are to be found in the more prosaic impasse between order and its radical enemies.'

One can only begin to understand the complexities of the alliances formed in the Middle East once we shed this simplistic framework of modern middle east conflict. Thence the apparently absurd ties formed between radical Sunni (Hamas), authoritarian Allawi (Asad regime) and radical Shi'a (Moqtada Al-Sadr) can be understood as the protagonists are clearly more ideologically flexible than most analysts would give them credit for.