Sunni, Shi’a—What The Bleep’s the Difference?
By: Susan Scharfman
Rugged as the Blue Ridge Mountains of the American East were those roughhewn giants that settled on opposite shores of the winding Tug Fork River. The Hatfield’s of West Virginia and the McCoys of Kentucky turned their backs on the genteel society of their Virginia homeland, and set out for the freedom of the untamed Appalachian wilderness.
From the moment those two clans took root in those mountains, the Hatfields and the McCoys never stopped hating and slaughtering each other. Granted their visceral animosities are a remote microcosm of Islam’s war between Sunni and Shi`a sects. Yet, like the Protestants and Catholics of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Palestinians and Israelis, Sudan’s Muslim lighter-skinned Janjaweed slaughter of Sudan’s Muslim black-skinned people—and sundry racial, religious and ethnic dogfights—humanity’s rose is a rose is a rose.
The legendary blood feud between generations of Hatfields and McCoys belongs to 19th century American history. Gunfights, murders and spit-in-your-eye lawlessness dominated their lives while a lethal American Civil War served to divide their families even further. Add the tragic love story of Roseanna McCoy and Johnse Hatfield and you have the kind of lusty eastern Western romanticized by 20th century Hollywood. But what is romantic about the brutality and violence those clans perpetrated for almost half a century?
On a grander scale, is the slaughter of millions of Native Americans by white Anglo Saxon immigrants a romantic story? Is there a difference between the 1,400-year-old Islamic sectarian butchery of innocents, and the ethnic cleansing policies of President Andrew Jackson two centuries ago? “Jacksonian Democracy” with its greed and racially motivated hatred advocated total annihilation and/or “relocation” of Native American Indians. Only when the dirty deed was done, did the American government bury the hatchet.
Sadly, maybe today’s awful truth is that Islamic zealots, the extreme fundamentalists within Sunni and Shi`a sects, can only bury the hatchet in each other. Foreign military forces cannot decide the Sunnis’ and Shi`a’s place in modern society. Only they can. If they continue on their present path they will be left behind in the dust of 7th century ghosts, doomed to a Fourth World economy, doomed to fight on for all eternity like a scene from an old Star Trek movie. I doubt whether the Prophet Mohammed had that in mind for his followers.
In the hopes that Allah will forgive me for this oversimplified primer, the religion of Islam started by the Prophet Mohammed has existed since the 7th century A.D. It has many sects and has undergone many transformations—political, theological and metaphysical. The two largest sects are Sunni and Shi`a. Steeped in spiritual realization are the Sufi mystics who exist in both the Sunni and Shi`a sects.
Sunni is the largest clan or sect, estimated at about 85% of the Muslim population. For the record, Saudi Arabia is mostly Sunni. Pakistan’s Sunni outnumber Shi`a by 77% to 20%. Syria is mostly Sunni, Iran is Shi`a. Shi`a Islam also thrives in Bahrain, and to a lesser extent in the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia as well as southern Lebanon, small sections of Syria and northern Yemen. The Shi`a minority is now in power in Iraq. Fragmentation and exodus has made today’s Iraq demographics anybody’s guess. Even if we wanted to, who could keep track of all this except those whose business it is to know the difference between Sunni and Shi`a? But do they? See my next article, Sunni and Shi`a—Counterintelligence 101.
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A writer/editor, I work with one client at a time for a cost effective solution to your writing and editing needs. Visit me at http://www.susanscharfman.com My novel The Sword & The Chrysanthemum is available in paperback everywhere, and in eBook form at http://www.AuthorHouse.com