Building towards another Samarra?

The New York Times this morning makes the same observation I made yesterday: Despite the huge amount of anti-Shi'a violence over the last two months, Iraq's Shi'a population has exercised tremendous restraint. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has cautioned against any violent retaliation; Shi'a militia groups have not surfaced.

Even Moqtada's counseling caution:

"Sayid Moktada al-Sadr has told us in his instructions that we have to follow the orders of the howza," said Sheik Jalil al-Sarkhey, the deputy head of the Sadr office in Sadr City, the huge Shiite slum in Baghdad. "We are all agreed; there will be no spilling of Iraqi blood."

Still, the pessimist in me wonders how long this will last. The Times mentions the 2006 shrine bombing in Samarra as a sort of spark that caused an explosion of sectarian violence. But tensions had been brewing for two years before the Samarra bombing -- they provided the fuel for this hypothetical explosion.

I can't help but wonder if we're building towards a similar tipping point.