Fight my ignorance on Islamic Sects, please

Factual Questions
1

Let’s start with the reason why I am putting a thread on religion in GQ as opposed to GD: I would like to keep this factual. If you don’t like sect A (for whatever reason), you are free to post facts (by which I mean verifiable statements) about said group, but, please no judgemental statements.

Now, that aside, it’s pretty much what the title says. I know that “Sunnis”, “Shiites,” and “Kurds” are the major factors involved in the (internal) Iraqi conflict, but I know little about why there is a conflict, or even what the differences are. I am hoping that the teeming millions will be able to explain to me (possibly in small words - I can be slow…) some of the basic differences here. (location, belief, traditions, etc.) Links are always handy and helpful.

One last detail - I probably won’t get too much of a chance to get back to the boards until this evening. If I don’t respond right away, please forgive me.

Thanks
-Geek

2

Sunnis and Shi’ites are the two major sects of Islam. The differences go back to the death of the Prophet Muhammad, when they split over who should be the first Caliph (successor to the Prophet.) The Shi’ites lost out and refused to recognise the Caliph chosen by the Sunnis, or any of his successors. Since then they have diverged over various points of doctrine, so even though there hasn’t been a caliph for about a century (the Ottoman Tukish sultans were the last to claim the title), they’ve still got enough to disagree about.

Kurds are not a religious sect but an ethnic group, based not only in northern Iraq but also in southeastern Turkey. They are mostly Sunni but have a large Shi’ite minority. They’d like to have a separate state but it isn’t going to happen because the Turks are worried about the Kurds in Turkey wanting to join any Kurdish state, and will do whatever is necessary to sto one being formed.

3

To expand somewhat on this, the difference between the Shia sects arise due to who was to be whose successor. The Shias, literally, the Party of Ali, were convinced that Ali was the rightful successor to Muhammad, based on an incident during the return from the Prophet’s last pilgrimage from Medina to Mecca. The pilgrims stopped at a place called Ghadir-e-Kuhm, and according to Shia tradition, the Prophet had a revelation at that time, and declared that “Whoever’s guide I am, Ali shall be his guide.” Thus the initial split between Sunni and Shia.

The further splits amongst the Shias then come down to who succeeded whom. Tamerlane and I hash through a fair bit of it in this thread, mainly posts 8, 11, and 16

4

Note also that the present conflict between non-Kurdish Sunnis and Shi’ites in Iraq isn’t due to doctrinal differences so much as to past political clashes. That is, the dictator Saddam Hussein belonged to a Sunni Iraqi ethnic group and favored the Sunni minority, often severely repressing the Iraqi Shi’ite majority.

Now that the formerly-ruling Sunnis (and the political party to which many of them belonged, the Ba’ath Party) are out of power, many of them are fighting to destabilize the new rulers from the Shi’a majority. As with the Protestant/Catholic conflicts in Northern Ireland, the major issue here is not abstract disagreements over points of theology, but rather the recent history of ethnic/sectarian/political power struggles.

5

Other Islamic sects: what is the origin of;
-the Alawites ( the Syrian sect, which is the religion of the ruling tribe)
-the Druse (a sect found in Lebanon)
-the Saudi sect Wahabites)
-the Sufi sect
-the Ismailist sect (headed by the Aga Khan)
Do all of these sects regard the others as heretics?

6

See my link above for that one. Short answer: the Ismailis followed Ali (hence are Shia), then at the time of the 5th Imam (under Ismaili terminology, 6th under other Shia terminology) Imam Jafar-al-Sadiq, we diverged as to who would be the next Imam – the Ismailis believed that the son named Ismail was the legitimate successor, hence the name. The Ismailis that follow the Aga Khan are more accurately termed Nizari Ismailis, and the product of another split slightly later on.

Ismailis prefer to be called Ismailis rather than Ismailist, and they most certainly do not regard anyone else as a heretic.

7

I’m totally confused about these religion/sects too. What would really, REALLY help is that someone do a detailed orginazation chart, say, in Powerpoint.
Any takers? :slight_smile:

8

I’ll give it a try tonight, seeing as I probably will have nothing better to do.

9

Just to add to that: The Sunnis have been in power much longer than just Saddam, although he represents a uniquely brutal phase of that development. This dates back at least to the establishment of Iraq as an independent state (under British control) after WWI. Maybe someone faimilar with rule during Ottoman times can clarify if the province(s) of that empire that now make up Iraq were adminstered by Sunnis or Shiites or some combination prior to WWI.

10

As with Christianity, the differences within Islam are as much about political power and ethnicity as they are about “religious” (theological/ethical) issues.

The major dichotomy is between Sunni and Shi’a. And they are in agreement that after Mohammed’s death, authority as regards Islam was supposed to pass to a khalifah (Caliph), meaning authorized successor. However, the Shi’a believe that this should properly have only gone to lineal descendants of Mohammed through his daughter Fatima and son-in-law Ali – though they accept that Ali gracefully and humbly permitted the first three Caliphs, who were collateral relatives of Mohammed, to precede him in his rightful position (in their eyes). The Sunni, on the other hand, consider the Caliphate elective and not confined to Mohammed’s descendants. (Ironically, neither group actually has a recognized Caliph today – descendants of Ali being scarce on the ground, and the Sunni Caliphate having passed to the Ottoman Turks and having been dissolved by the last Sultan at his abdication in 1922.) There is also a strong divergence between them on how much authority to give to the Hadith, the oral tradition accompanying the Koran, in regulating the legal and moral behavior of Muslims. As noted, the Shi’ites are broken into smaller groups based on disagreements as to who the rightful Caliph at various times properly was.

Another divergence is on the proper intrpretation and application of the Shari’a, Koran- (and Hadith-) based Islamic law. There are five main schools of opinion. Surprisingly, there is very little conflict between them in the sense of arguments between, e.g., Catholic and Protestant, or Episcopalian and Southern Baptist, more the sort of intellectual debate one might find between constitutional lawyers or historians.

Finally, there are some strong sectarian tendencies over how firmly and strongly various aspects of Shari’a should affect members of Islamic communities. The Wahhabis who have strong influence in Saudi-Arabia (having been among the earliest and strongest supporters of Ibn Saud) are an example of a fundamentalist Sunni sect who believe that their interpretation of Shari’a should be binding on the entire community. The Ayatollahs of Iran are an example of a moderate conservative group among the Shi’a. And the divisions are strongly felt, deep, and complex, giving rise to a very arcane and intricate set of sects, whose doctrinal differences are as opaque to outsiders as the views of the Associate Reformed Presbyterians and the Free Will Missionary Baptists are to the average Doper.

The Sufi are a group of Islamic mystics. The Druze are a group partly theologically and partly ethnically divided from other Muslims, strong in Lebanon and Syria. The Kurds and Azeris (Azerbaijanis) are ethnic groups occupying parts of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and of course Azerbaijanistan. It’s important to remember that while the original Muslims were Arab and most Arabs (but by no means all) are Muslim, there are a lot of Muslims who are not Arab. The five countries with the largest Muslim population, to the best of my information, are Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, India, and Pakistan – none of them “Arab” countries.

11

A kind of family tree, yes. That would be helpful. I’m sure I saw a website that did this, but it might have been for the Christian sects. Maybe that old standby Wikipedia has something… well, I found a listing, but I’m not sure it helps.

12

To all who have responded: Thank you very much for your answers! Has anyone managed to read a good, non-partisan book that describes the “family tree” of Islam?

A couple more questions: are countries such as Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey, etc. largely one sect, or are their populations made up of a hodge-podge? If so, would you call those countries a _____ nation? For instance, the large majority of France is Catholic. I would call France a “Catholic country”, whereas I would classify the USA as a “Christian country” (as the large majority of the population is Christian, but there is no one major sect).

If you manage to have the time to do this, I would be most appreciative!

13

:smack:

By “If so,” of course, I mean: “if the former”

14

Right, I’ve managed to knock something together, which can be found here (PDF!). I’ve mainly covered the Shia splits and haven’t included the Druze or the various Sunni factions as I don’t know enough about them to do justice to them. I apologise for any mistakes, and am willing to add more to this, given the information. If I have time tonight, I will go through my copy of Lapidus, if I have it here, and try to flesh it out some more.

As for books, I’ve taken most of my information from Farhad Daftary’s The Ismailis, which is mainly concerned with the development of the Nizari Ismaili sect but has a couple of very detailed chapters on the development of early Shiaism. I seem to recall that Tamerlane put together a rather good reading list for anyone who was interested, and there’s a good link here. I’d recommend Lapidus’ for a general introduction.

15

The vast majority of Muslims are Sunnis, and the Shiites tend to be grouped in certain geographical areas. Iran’s Muslims are almost all Shiites, there’d be a slight majority of Shiites in Iraq. Bahrain has more Shiites than Sunnis, I believe. I think all the other Muslim countries are mostly Sunni, including Indonesia, Egypt and Turkey.

16

Some of the “divisions” go back a lot longer than Islam, too. Violent factional infighting is pretty normal in the Middle East and has been for several thousand years, and some of those ethnic/tribal conflicts of today have origins *way * back when.

17

What I have a hard time comprehending is how someone discovers who is Sunni and who is Shiite, just by looking at them. I know that sounds terribly ignorant, and it is, but I’m looking at this situation through Western eyes and trying to compare it to my daily life, and here is the difficulty I have. Say a new neighbor moves into my neighborhood. I have no way of knowing if the family is Baptist or Catholic or Jewish, or if the husband is one and the wife is another, just by seeing them in the yard. I can’t tell if they are Democrats or Republicans by their name, or their mode of dress, or their skin color. I can’t tell if their ancestry is Italian or Slovene or German by their looks or even by their name. Unless I ask them about these things, it takes a lot of detective work to discover, and in the long run it’s all meaningless to whether we can live peacefully as neighbors.

But everyday we hear that a family fled Pakistan because the wife was Sunni and the husband Shiite, or that someone was shot and killed merely because they were one or the other, or that neighbors were harassing them because they were the wrong sect. So if you can’t tell by skin color or mode of dress or a stamp on a passport or ID card, how does one determine someone’s sect without them admitting to it?

18

I was just having this conversation the other day with some of my Iraqi staff. They said that they can’t tell (although some forms of traditional dress can give it away). It is often reported that certain first names are one way, but that isn’t always true either, according to my staff. Even last names aren’t always telling, as some tribes have both Sunni and Shi’a members.

The sectarian violence in Iraq is forcing people to choose up sides and draw the distinctions more sharply than they had been in recent memory. I’ve been in Iraq since 2003 (with a substantial break during most of 2005) and I really notice how much more of an issue sectarianism is now, versus then.

19

There are certain names that are generally considered Sunni or Shia. There are styles of dress that will give you away. The clues are very very subtle unless you know what to look for, and really hard to describe.

20

Azerbaijan is mostly Shi’a.

Lebanon is mostly Muslim, although there is a very sizeably Christian minority. Most of the Muslims there are Shi’a, although getting exact numbers tends to be dicey since they split up government seats according to religion, and there hasn’t been an official census in decades. Current estimates put it at 40% Christian, 35% Shi’a, 20% Sunni, and then a few other sects making up the rest.