Sunni-Shi'ite Division Within Islam

▪ 2008

by R. Scott Appleby  The division of Islam into two major groups, Sunni and Shiʿite, has its origins in the struggles over the proper line of succession to the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, who died in 632 CE. Muslims emulate Muhammad's words and deeds (his “way,” or sunna, which is codified in the Hadith) and consider him, as the recipient of the Qurʾan (“the recitation” delivered to Muhammad, on the Arabian peninsula, in Arabic, by the angel Gabriel), to be the Final Prophet—that is, the bearer of Allah's full revelation. They do not claim that he was divine, however, merely the most perfect and exalted of all human beings. On these basic affirmations the Sunnis, who constitute approximately nine-tenths of the worldwide Muslim population, and the Shiʿites, most of whom live in Iran, southern Iraq, Lebanon, and Bahrain, agree. Both groups also affirm the unity of God (tawhid), believe in the doctrine of Divine Judgment, and practice the five pillars of the common faith: its profession, the shahada (“There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his Messenger”); salat (obligatory prayers, performed five times daily); zakat, the paying of tithes, or alms, for the poor; the observation of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan; and, if physically and financially feasible, the hajj, a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, Muhammad's birthplace.

      The early Islamic community parted ways politically and theologically, however, in the struggle to define Islamic polity, or governance structure. Muhammad did not directly appoint his successor. Some of his followers thought it best to preserve the Prophet's special relationship to God (Allah) by recognizing his family as the inheritors of his authority. They envisioned rule of the Muslim community by a religious figure like Muhammad, whose charismatic authority, holy example, and inspired reading of the Qurʾan would embody the Muslim code of conduct (Shariʿah, the Islamic law derived from the Qurʾan and the Hadith). Accordingly, when it came time to anoint Muhammad's successor as leader of the Muslim community, they supported his cousin and son-in-law ʿAli ibn Abi Talib. This party henceforth was known as the Shiʿites (the “partisans” of ʿAli).

      The majority, however—those who became known as the Sunnis (ahl al-sunnah wa al-jamaʿah, “the people of custom and community”)—preferred a system built around an institution (the caliphate) and an elected leader who would oversee the enforcement of the Shariʿah via a predetermined system of rules and practices. Following the tradition laid down by the Prophet in a precise and conservative way was more important to them than the leadership of a charismatic religious virtuoso. These alternative views of qualifications for authority led the majority to select Muhammad's friend and adviser Abu Bakr to be the first caliph (khalifah, the “successor” who would govern according to the Qurʾan and the practice of the Prophet).

      ʿAli was passed over twice more before finally being selected caliph in 656, but the harmony did not last long. The Shiʿites, having rejected the first three caliphs as illegitimate, were outraged when ʿAli was murdered in 661. Heightening their anxiety was the majority's preference for the governor of Syria, Muʿawiyah I, as the successor to ʿAli, rather than ʿAli's son Hasan. The Shiʿites' growing conviction that the tide of history was moving against them was confirmed definitively when Husayn, Hasan's younger brother, was murdered, together with his family, in 680 by the forces of the Umayyad ruler Yazid following the Battle of Karbala in Iraq. (Husayn's beheading is commemorated annually during the Shiʿite feast of Ashura, when mourners flagellate themselves in a ritualistic expression of grief.) With the death of Husayn, the closest descendants of Muhammad were vanquished. Husayn was seen as a martyr to be revered, and his death sealed the division between the Shiʿites and the Sunni majority.

      The tragedies surrounding the deaths of ʿAli and Husayn made a lasting mark on Shiʿite consciousness. From that time forward, they were the minority party within Islam, overshadowed and often persecuted by hostile rulers, including forces aligned with the Sunni caliphate. In response to this predicament, Shiʿism diverged in at least two significant respects from the belief and practice of mainstream Sunnism.

 First, the Shiʿites, notwithstanding rare periods in which they were favoured by Persian imperial power, adopted the worldview of the underdog and came to see history as an extended era of suffering and persecution that would be reversed only with the return, at the end-time of fulfillment, of the Hidden Imam, who disappeared from a mosque in Samarraʾ around the year 875 CE. The 12th imam in succession from ʿAli, he is the divinely guided leader (Mahdi) who will return to establish justice on earth.

      Second, the leadership structure of Shiʿism revolves around learned teachers (imams), especially the ayatollahs, who are interpreters of the religious law and seen by their respective groups of disciples as “sources of imitation” (marja-a-taqlid). This reliance on authoritative and charismatic ayatollahs gives Shiʿism, if not exactly a hierarchy of religious authority, certainly more-concentrated power than the decentralized, more numerous, and geographically more-dispersed Sunnis.

      Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose supporters overthrew the shah of Iran in 1979 and ushered in the reign of the supreme ayatollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran, embodied both of these distinctive Shiʿite traits: he was a powerful charismatic leader who was awarded political as well as spiritual reign in the belief that the long nightmare of Shiʿite suffering was nearing or at an end. Some Iranians, as well as other Shiʿites worldwide, even referred to Khomeini himself as “the Imam,” returned at last from centuries of occultation.

      The Sunnis were empire builders from the beginning. Abu Bakr, the first caliph, ensured that Islam would be a religion of conquest, beginning with the Arabian tribes who had renounced the teaching of the Prophet. After subduing them and gaining their support, Abu Bakr challenged the powerful empires of the East: the Sassanians in Persia and the Byzantines in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. His successor, ʿUmar I, continued to demonstrate the viability of the Muslim state by extending Islam's temporal rule over Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Persia in a series of stunning military victories. Within four years of the death of the Prophet, the Muslim state had extended its sway over all of Syria and eroded the power of the Byzantines.

      The Ottoman Empire, defeated in World War I, was the last great Sunni stronghold; Sunnism entered its own period of crisis in the 1920s after the new ruler of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, abolished the caliphate and made Turkey a secular state. In the 1990s Osama bin Laden, the architect of al-Qaeda, launched a jihad (holy war) against what he saw as the insidious forces of secularism, including Europe and the United States, which he held responsible for subjecting and humiliating the once-proud Sunni Muslims.

      Relations between Sunni and Shiʿite Muslims fell to a low point in Iraq after the U.S.-led defeat of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the subsequent occupation of the country. When elections were held in 2005, Sunni parties boycotted them, and the Shiʿite parties won overwhelmingly, gaining control of the government after more than a millennium of feeling oppressed by the Sunni majority. The Sunni majority resented what it perceived to be arrogant policies of the Shiʿites in power and worried about revenge against their ranks for years of domination by the Shiʿite minority.

      The Shiʿites filled the ranks of the police and military, raising accusations from Sunni neighbourhoods of abuses of power and of killings. Some Sunnis, including those displaced from jobs in the security forces and police, responded by forming militias. Attacks took the form of bombings, and one group in 2006 blew up a Shiʿite mosque and holy place at Samarraʾ. The repercussions for Sunnis were bloody. The two groups continued to exchange violent attacks in 2007. In the broader Middle East, ethnic tensions rose as Arab leaders from nearby states saw Shiʿite Iran as having the ambition to control Iraq and gain wider influence over the Middle East.

R. Scott Appleby is a Professor of History and John M. Regan, Jr., Director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

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