OK, I’ve read that renouncing Islam and becoming a Christian or atheist or whatever can have pretty dire consequences, even fatal. But what about changing your beliefs within Islam? Can a Shi’ite become a Sunni, or vice versa, without having to watch his back for the rest of his life? Do the two sects actively proselytize and try to seek converts from the ranks of their rivals? Some Wahhabi cleric in Saudi the other day insisted that Shi’a weren’t even Muslims. Does that notion have much traction among mainstream Sunnis?
Please tell me what’s a “mainstream Sunni” and I’ll answer that.
The problem that you (like pretty much all Westerners) have is that you look at the Shia-Sunni as a Catholic-Protestant like divide when its not like that all. Yes it is a divide, but its not based upon differences in belief like Catholic and Protestant to a large extent are.
Coming to the main issue, the answer is “that depends”. On the place and the people. In some areas (say the S Asian subcontinent and Iraq before “freedom”) inter-sect marriages are/were common. In other places, (S Arabia, the Levant) not so much.
I don’t think they seek converts usually, as in many places where there is a division, its also tied up in ethnic or tribal affiliation. Not so in Mesopotamia or the subContinent, but then as stated those places see much more mixing.
There was very recently(i.e. the court case is current) a case of a British girl of Pakistani heritage who was allegedly murdered in Pakistan by members of her extended family for converting to Shi’ite Islam to marry her new husband. Of course taking what AK84 I assume by “conversion” rather than a formal process it meant she affiliated with a different mosque.
Sama Shahid? The current police investigations seem to point to a jilted ex.
Certainly, families can and do raise objections over a person’s sect.
Yes
Depends
In many cases where a person would have to watch their back, it would be because of their (perhaps perceived) reasons for 1) changing and 2) being open about changing in light of their surroundings. A Shia in Lebanon right now who gets up and tells everyone he’s a Sunni is probably making a bigger statement than a change in spiritual beliefs.
As AK84 noted, the identities don’t really work like that, and calling out misunderstandings about the way this works matters because the misunderstandings have real consequences. An example: The U.S. government is perpetually worried about Sunni Tajiks becoming Shias in the mold of their Iranian cousins, and the Tajikistan government has taken advantage of this (mostly unfounded) fear to extensively to shut down opposition leaders and other people they don’t like. They describe it as “He was doing non-traditional Shia rituals, proving he is an extremist”. What Shia rituals? Marking Ashura (a holiday) in the non-government approved way? Who knows.
No, but in my experience, it’s not uncommon to hear certain Shia practices criticized by Sunnis. This again with the caveat that in many places without substantial Shia populations, it doesn’t really come up. However, I’ll note that Saudi Arabia, which persecutes its Shia citizens and calls them grave-worshipping heretics in their school textbooks, still lets most if not all Shia go to Hajj, but they don’t do that for every group that claims to be Muslim.
A recent story on NPR news talked about some places where Shia and Sunni Muslims live in the same neighborhood and get along well. Some of them call themselves Sushi Muslims, making no big deal of the difference.
Sunni and Shi’ite in Iraq/Mesopotamia is very much tribal.
I work with a few people who identify as Non-denominational Muslim. To them, it’s not “converting” from one faith to another, but rather rejecting the politically- or tribally-driven practices and traditions that they say is not rooted in Islamic texts.
Interestingly enough, the World Values Study surveys from Lebanon a few years ago indicated that Maronite/Catholic and Orthodox Lebanese dislike each other even more than Sunni and Shia do. (Muslims have a greater degree of unity relative to the Christians).
In terms of religious jurisprudence (fiqh), it’s really a very small matter to switch from one of the 4 Sunni schools to the Shi‘ite one, almost as trivial as switching from one of the 4 Sunni schools to another one.
In terms of theology, all theological disputes between Sunni and Shi‘ism are purely extensions of the political ones. (The theologically “extremist” (ghulat) Shi‘i sects are another matter.)
In terms of tribalistic politics, enforcement of the border crossing between Shi‘i and Sunni factions is just as dire and hate-filled as people choose to make it, or not.
Not sure what you mean by that, but the Shammar tribe (Iraq’s largest) and the Jibur tribe (another large tribe) have both Sunni and Shi’a members.