Entertainment News Latest Celebrity News, Videos Photos ABC News. What Is the Difference Between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Why Does It Matter Updated 6 1. Google Questions. Islam, Muslims, Shiites, Sunnisby HNN Staff. Related Links. The Islam religion was founded by Mohammed in the seventh century. In 6. 22 he founded the first Islamic state, a theocracy in Medina, a city in western Saudi Arabia located north of Mecca. There are two branches of the religion he founded. The Sunni branch believes that the first four caliphs Mohammeds successors rightfully took his place as the leaders of Muslims. They recognize the heirs of the four caliphs as legitimate religious leaders. Whole Muhammad: The Last Prophet Movie Online ' title='Whole Muhammad: The Last Prophet Movie Online ' />These heirs ruled continuously in the Arab world until the break up of the Ottoman Empire following the end of the First World War. Shiites, in contrast, believe that only the heirs of the fourth caliph, Ali, are the legitimate successors of Mohammed. In 9. 31 the Twelfth Imam disappeared. This was a seminal event in the history of Shiite Muslims. According to R. Scott Appleby, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame,Shiite Muslims, who are concentrated in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, believe they had suffered the loss of divinely guided political leadership at the time of the Imams disappearance. Notuntil the ascendancy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1. Another difference between Sunnis and Shiites has to do with the Mahdi, the rightly guided one whose role is to bring a just global caliphate into being. As historian Timothy Furnish has written,The major difference is that for Shiis he has already been here, and will return from hiding for Sunnis he has yet to emerge into history a comeback v. Artist depiction no real picture exists Muhammad led 27 military campaigns against innocent villages and caravans planned 38 others I am the prophet that. I/91TmHQkiE%2BL._SY445_.jpg' alt='Whole Muhammad: The Last Prophet Movie Online ' title='Whole Muhammad: The Last Prophet Movie Online ' />In a special 9 1. Journal of American History, Appleby explained that the Shiite outlook is far different from the Sunnis, a difference that is highly significant. Sunni Muslims, approximately 9. Muhammad Ali, Self When We Were Kings. Muhammad Ali beat more champions and top contenders than any heavyweight champion in history. He defeated heavyweight kings. Muslim world, the loss of the caliphate after World War I was devastating in light of the hitherto continuous historic presence of the caliph, the guardian of Islamic law and the Islamic state. Sunni fundamentalist leaders thereafter emerged in nations such as Egypt and India, where contact with Western political structures provided them with a model awkwardly to imitate. In 1. 92. 8, four years after the abolishment of the caliphate, the Egyptian schoolteacher Hasan al Banna founded the first Islamic fundamentalist movement in the Sunni world, the Muslim Brotherhood al Ikhwan al Muslimun. Al Banna was appalled bythe wave of atheism and lewdness that engulfed Egypt following World War I. The victorious Europeans hadimported their half naked women into these regions, together with their liquors, their theatres, their dance halls, their amusements, their stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and their vices. Suddenly the very heart of the Islamic world was penetrated by Europeanschools and scientific and cultural institutes that cast doubt and heresy into the souls of its sons and taught them how to demean themselves, disparage their religion and their fatherland, divest themselves of their traditions and beliefs, and to regard as sacred anything Western. Most distressing to al Banna and his followers was what they saw as the rapid moral decline of the religious establishment, including the leading sheikhs, or religious scholars, at Al Azhar, the grand mosque and center of Islamic learning in Cairo. The clerical leaders had become compromised and corrupted by their alliance with the indigenous ruling elites who had succeeded the European colonial masters. Osama bin Laden was a Sunni Muslim. To him the end of the reign of the caliphs in the 1. On the tape, broadcast by Al Jazeera on October 7, 2. What America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted. Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more than eighty years, of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated. Juan Cole, a well known historian of the Middle East, has pointed out on his blog, Informed Comment, that the split between Sunni and Shiites in Iraq is of relatively recent origin I see a lot of pundits and politicians saying that Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq have been fighting for a millennium. We need better history than that. The Shiite tribes of the south probably only converted to Shiism in the past 2. And, Sunni Shiite riots per se were rare in 2. Iraq. Sunnis and Shiites cooperated in the 1. British. If you read the newspapers in the 1. Sunni Shiite riots. There were peasantlandlord struggles or communists versus Baathists. The kind of sectarian fighting were seeing now in Iraq is new in its scale and ferocity, and it was the Americans who unleashed it. In 2. 01. 4 Professor Cole summed up the differences between Sunni and Shiite this way Shiites are more like traditional Catholics in venerating members of the holy family and attending at their shrines. Contemporary Salafi Sunni Islam is more like the militant brand of Protestantism of the late 1. God and the individual and actually attacked and destroyed shrines to saints and other holy figures, where pleas for intercession were made. In December 2. 00. New York Times reported that it is not just ordinary Americans who find it difficult to remember the difference between Sunnis and Shiites SURPRISE quiz Is Al Qaeda Sunni or Shiite Which sect dominates Hezbollah Silvestre Reyes, the Democratic nominee to head the House Intelligence Committee, failed to answer both questions correctly last week when put to the test by Congressional Quarterly. He mislabeled Al Qaeda as predominantly Shiite, and on Hezbollah, which is mostly Shiite, he drew a blank. Speaking only for myself, he told reporters, its hard to keep things in perspective and in the categories. Not that hes alone. Other members of Congress from both parties have also flunked on the spot inquiries. Indeed, some of the smartest Western statesmen of the last century have found themselves flummoxed by Islam. Winston Churchill in 1. Middle East asked an aide for a three line note explaining the religious character of the Hashemite leader he planned to install in Baghdad. Is he a Sunni with Shaih sympathies or a Shaih with Sunni sympathies Mr. Churchill wrote, using an antiquated spelling. I always get mixed up between these two, he added. And maybe religious memorization should not be required for policymaking. Gen. William Odom, who directed the National Security Agency under President Ronald Reagan, said that Mr. Reyes mainly needs to know how the intelligence community works. Yet, improving American intelligence, according to General Odom and others with close ties to the Middle East and the American intelligence community, requires more than just a organization chart. A cheat sheet is in order. The Review asked nearly a dozen experts, from William R. Polk, author of Understanding Iraq, to Paul R. Pillar, the C. I. A. official who coordinated intelligence on the Middle East until he retired last year, to explain the region. Here, a quick distillation. What caused the original divide The groups first diverged after the Prophet Muhammad died in 6. The group now known as Sunnis chose Abu Bakr, the prophets adviser, to become the first successor, or caliph, to lead the Muslim state. Shiites favored Ali, Muhammads cousin and son in law. Ali and his successors are called imams, who not only lead the Shiites but are considered to be descendants of Muhammad. After the 1. 1th imam died in 8. Shiites in particular came to see the child as a Messiah who had been hidden from the public by God. The largest sect of Shiites, known as twelvers, have been preparing for his return ever since. How did the violence start In 6. Buy Giratina And The Sky Warrior Online there. Alis supporters killed the third caliph. Soon after, the Sunnis killed Alis son Husain. Fighting continued but Sunnis emerged victorious over the Shiites and came to revere the caliphate for its strength and piety.