I don't see much difference between Sunni and Shiite sects and for that matter I had to determine the difference between Shi'a and Shiite. The last one is easiest as Shi'a is the noun and Shiite is the adjective for the same sect. Sunni is e same either way. The difference between the two different versions of Islam is now quite large, but in the beginning it came down to one main difference and that is it. When Mohammad died/ascended to Heaven, there was a successor to his power. The Shi'a say that the leader was a relation of Mohammad and his power was hereditary through history unbroken to today and the Sunni say that it was four elected or popular leaders including the one that the Shi'a consider the leader. That is it, the only difference that seems to really matter.
I know it seems really stupid, but then we should look at the differences between Christian religions. Catholic and Anglican differ, initially, only with the allowance of divorce and the head of the Church resting in London as opposed to Rome. All the other splits from Roman Catholic are initially minor and each subsequent split is only slightly different from the ideas that they split from. Now there are Christian religions that are radically different from others, but that is after many many splits and divergences.
Shia and Sunni are comparatively to that, identical. But just because they are comparatively identical does not mean that they get along well together. The funny thing is that they did get along well together for centuries, just not anymore. The current center of Shia dominance is the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through Iran with pockets along the Mediterranean (in Syria and Lebanon) and in Yemen.
This was all light research. But in the course of things I happened upon other research angles. Wahhabism. This tiny tiny religion has practitioners numbering about five million world wide and it has a history that is more than two hundred fifty years in the making. It is by far one of the scariest things that I have read on Wikipedia. They are fundamentalist Sunnis and they believe that everyone who does not believe what they believe should die. They are very strict monotheists and that means there is only one being at you can name in a prayer, God and Mohammad is his prophet— but not prayed to. The other Muslim 'Saints' are not to be named in prayers. The dead can not be named in prayers to help gain the ear of God and that doing any of the above implies polytheism and therefore is a Capitol crime. And right from nearly the new branch of Islam has been associated strongly with the Saud family. Indeed, there very first joint conquest in the Arabian peninsula was a city where they killed almost everyone and the second they merely beheaded every man and enslaved every woman and child. Sound familiar?
Who do they, the Wahhabi, consider beneath their contempt? They hate the polytheistic, they hate the Shi'a and they hate any Sunni who does not follow their strict version of islam, but these last people are given a chance to repent to avoid execution (again, sound familiar?).
In addition to their reckless slaughtering, they also destroyed religious monuments and places of worship, sound familiar?— the Taliban in Afghanistan swept through that country demolishing anything that was not Islamic, religious sites that predated the founding of Islam, everything. Daesh also demolishes temples and holy sites, but they sell the artifacts on the black market. The Taliban leaders were mostly from Saudi Arabia, there is no clear proof that they were Wahhabi, but it fits the pattern. Daesh does follow the tenants of Wahhabism, they destroy other religious sites, force the conversion of other Islamic sects and behead all others. They even admit Wahhabi ties.
It is all complicated and not clear cut. Islam is diverse a religion as Christianity was a few hundred years ago. Each branch of the religion has additional branches and those branches have more branches. I heard once that there were over two thousand different takes on Christianity, a religion that had a four hundred year jump on islam age wise. In another four hundred years I suspect there will be that many flavours of Islam.
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