Gunner's Blog

US ambassador demands more, better staff in Iraq
Raw Story - Cambridge,MA,USA
The new US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to send more, better qualified staff to the biggest US embassy ...
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Moqtada al-Sadr Stepping into the Power Vacuum
Global Terrorism Analysis - Washington,DC,USA
Saving them, bringing them closer together and using them in the service of Iraq are better than excluding and marginalizing them" (al-Iraqiyah, June 7). ...
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Success in Iraq Determined at 'Macro Level,' Enlisted Leader Says
Media Newswire (press release) - New York,NY,USA
For the second measure, Hill said, "you can define winning by improving the life of the Iraqi people and bringing some form of normalcy back" to them. ...
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Iran is America's best hope for stability in the Gulf
Financial Times - London,England,UK
By Selig Harrison Iran is ready to help the US stabilise both Iraq and Afghanistan, but only for a price: a gradual accommodation between Washington and ...
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Richardson wants "zero troops" in Iraq
MSNBC - USA
"There is not a single sign that Iraq is improving," Richardson said. "...How many more Americans must die before we leave an Iraq that will be no better off ...
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DISPATCH FROM IRAQ Training The Future 1744th Transportation ...
MyWebTimes.com - Ottawa,IL,USA
Regardless, all of their attitudes have changed for the better." Spc. Michael Kaminky, of Ottawa, has developed a better understanding of what it takes to ...
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FEATURE-Misery in the desert for Iraq's dispossessed
Reuters AlertNet - London,England,UK
Similar camps are scattered around the mainly Shi'ite south of Iraq, where security conditions have been markedly better than in Baghdad and the surrounding ...
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Labels: "Zero Troops", 1744 Transportation, Iran, Misery in the desert, Moqtada al-Sadr, Shi'ite

Behind the Sunni-Shi'ite Divide
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007

By BOBBY GHOSH / BAGHDAD

"...I. ORIGINS
ISLAM'S SCHISM BEGAN IN A.D. 632, immediately after the Prophet Muhammad died without naming a successor as leader of the new Muslim flock. Some of his followers believed the role of Caliph, or viceroy of God, should be passed down Muhammad's bloodline, starting with his cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib. But the majority backed the Prophet's friend Abu Bakr, who duly became Caliph. Ali would eventually become the fourth Caliph before being murdered in A.D. 661 by a heretic near Kufa, now in Iraq. The succession was once again disputed, and this time it led to a formal split. The majority backed the claim of Mu'awiyah, Governor of Syria, and his son Yazid. Ali's supporters, who would eventually be known collectively as Shi'at Ali, or partisans of Ali, agitated for his son Hussein. When the two sides met on a battlefield near modern Karbala on Oct. 10, 680, Hussein was killed and decapitated. But rather than nipping the Shi'ite movement in the bud, his death gave it a martyr. In Shi'ite eyes, Hussein is a just and humane figure who stood up to a mighty oppressor. The annual mourning of Hussein's death, known as Ashura, is the most poignant and spectacular of Shi'ite ceremonies: the faithful march in the streets, beating their chests and crying in sorrow. The extremely devout flagellate themselves with swords and whips.

Those loyal to Mu'awiyah and his successors as Caliph would eventually be known as Sunnis, meaning followers of the Sunnah, or Way, of the Prophet. Since the Caliph was often the political head of the Islamic empire as well as its religious leader, imperial patronage helped make Sunni Islam the dominant sect. Today about 90% of Muslims worldwide are Sunnis. But Shi'ism would always attract some of those who felt oppressed by the empire. Shi'ites continued to venerate the Imams, or the descendants of the Prophet, until the 12th Imam, Mohammed al-Mahdi (the Guided One), who disappeared in the 9th century at the location of the Samarra shrine in Iraq. Mainstream Shi'ites believe that al-Mahdi is mystically hidden and will emerge on an unspecified date to usher in a reign of justice.

Shi'ites soon formed the majority in the areas that would become the modern states of Iraq, Iran, Bahrain and Azerbaijan. There are also significant Shi'ite minorities in other Muslim states, including Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Pakistan. Crucially, Shi'ites outnumber Sunnis in the Middle East's major oil-producing regions--not only Iran and Iraq but also eastern Saudi Arabia. But outside Iran, Sunnis have historically had a lock on political power, even where Shi'ites have the numerical advantage. (The one place where the opposite holds true is modern Syria, which is mostly Sunni but since 1970 has been ruled by a small Shi'ite subsect known as the Alawites.) Sunni rulers maintained their monopoly on power by excluding Shi'ites from the military and bureaucracy; for much of Islamic history, a ruling Sunni élite treated Shi'ites as an underclass, limited to manual labor and denied a fair share of state resources.

The rulers used religious arguments to justify oppression. Shi'ites, they said, were not genuine Muslims but heretics. Devised for political convenience, this view of Shi'ites solidified into institutionalized prejudice. Sunnis likened reverence for the Prophet's bloodline and the Shi'ites' fondness for portraits of some of the Imams to the sin of idolatry. Shi'ite rituals, especially the self-flagellation during Ashura, were derided as pagan. Many rulers forbade such ceremonies, fearing that large gatherings would quickly turn into political uprisings. (Ashura was banned during most of Saddam Hussein's rule and resumed only after his downfall in 2003.) "For Shi'ites, Sunni rule has been like living under apartheid," says Vali Nasr, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future.

But religious repression was uneven. Sunni Caliphs in Baghdad tolerated and sometimes contributed to the development of Najaf and Karbala as the most important centers of Shi'ite learning. Shi'ite ayatullahs, as long as they refrained from open defiance of the ruling élite, could run seminaries and collect tithes from their followers. The shrines of Shi'ite Imams in Najaf, Karbala, Samarra and Khadamiya were allowed to become magnets for pilgrimage.

Sectarian relations worsened in the 16th century. By then the seat of Sunni power had moved to Istanbul. When the Turkish Sunni Ottomans fought a series of wars with the Shi'ite Safavids of Persia, the Arabs caught in between were sometimes obliged to take sides. Sectarian suspicions planted then have never fully subsided, and Sunni Arabs still pejoratively label Shi'ites as "Persians" or "Safavis." The Ottomans eventually won control of the Arab territories and cemented Sunni dominance. The British, the next power in the Middle East, did nothing to change the equation. In the settlement after World War I, they handed the newly created states of Iraq and Bahrain, both with Shi'ite majorities, to Sunni monarchs...."
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The above is an portion of an article in the March 5 issue of TIME.

Over the last few years, I have spent many hours trying to get my mind around the conflict between the Shi'ite and the Sunni. TIME has a very, very good article that is the best I have read. I highly recommend the article to each and everyone. The article is a long one, but packed with information that is critical to understanding the problems faced in creating a government formed by the two factions with the additional problems brought to the table by the Curds.

You really should get the magazine, and read the full article.

~G

Labels: Caliph, Iraq, Muslim, Shi'ite, Sunni, Time Magazine