Objective 1.4. - 1.7

Part 1: Origins 

1.  1.3 million Muslims are Shia

• Shia are minority
• Concentrated in Iran and southern Iraq
• Oil in Iraq and Iran
• Shiites predominate

1. 2. Sunni vs. Shia

• The split occurred after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in the year 632
• Shia believed that leadership should stay within the family of the prophet
• Sunnis believed that leadership should fall to the person who was deemed by the elite of the community
• Shia call their leaders imam with Ali being the first and Hussein the third
• Sunnis believe that some of the Shia are attributing divine qualities to the imams, and this is a great sin because it is associating human beings with the divinity
•  Shiites are looking for the coming of the Messiah.

Part 2: Mideast Turmoil/Rise of Shiites

1. Shiites History

• Shiites of Iraq and Lebanon were ruled by Sunni Ottoman sultans.
• The Shiites of Arabia were under the authority of Sunni tribal leaders.
•  Pahlavi changed the name of the state to Iran and set about creating a secular government, much to the dismay of some of the Shiite clergy.

1.  2. Revolution

• Khomeini's revolution had a powerful influence in Lebanon
• The powerful influence came after Israel mounted an invasion in 1982 to eliminate Lebanon as a base for guerilla attacks of the Palestine Liberation Organization 
• Most Sunni rejected the Iranian revolution as a model for their own societies

Part 3: Sunni Reaction

1. Shi’ism Islam

• The minority branch of Islam known as Shi'ism first became widely known in the U.S. and established the modern world's first Islamic State.
• The revolutionaries believed they could export their Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East and beyond.
• They encountered resistance from the Arab states led by Sunnis            

1.  2. Sunnis

• Islam's majority branch
• Resistance between Sunni and Shi’ism would be both subtle and violent
•  Their objective was to overthrow of secular governments and establishments of Islamic states,
• Wanted anti-Shi'ism.          

1. 3. United States’ Role in Revolution

•  President Ronald Reagan sent U.S. troops to Lebanon as part of a peacekeeping force
• President Reagan soon reversed himself and pulled U.S. troops out of Lebanon, leaving the divided nation to another six years of war
• The invasion of Iraq in 2003 unleashed forces of Muslim sectarianism unseen in the Middle East

Part 4: Iraq War Deepens the Divide

1. US Invasion

• The United States invasion of Iraq began on March 20th, 2003.
• Thought the war would be over quickly, and that Iraq would return to peace
• The U.S. claimed that Iran was responsible for much of the violence in Iraq        

1. 2. Shiite Clerics

• Shiite clerics led movements, advocating parliamentary rule and just governance in the Middle East
• Clerics took the lead because there's hardly any form of secular civil society in the country today that can act as the nucleus of an Iraqi political system
• Shiite clerics in Iraq worked hard to pursue their own model of government            

1. 3. Shia

• Shia never governed a modern Arab state.
• They were in control in Persian Iran, but the Sunnis led most Arab states in the Middle East

Part 5: US Policies and the Shia-Sunni Conflict

1. Conflict

• The sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni deepened
• U.S. aims changed as conflict deepened
• U.S. view of some Shiite forces in the Middle East is overtly hostile

 Sufism: The Heart of Islam

1. Living Sufism

• Started as a refuge for people to learn about Islam
•  Fate connected to action
• Only go with good action when you die
• Men go out to work
• Women work at home
• Sufi is a good Muslim who looks for meaning and traveler on a path of his heart          

1. 2. Eternal Life

• Life doesn’t end at death
• Live in the present      

1.  3. Losing Self

•  No necessary connection between Sufism and Islam
• Be yourself
• Get on with life, live life fully
• Trying to discover God within us
• Sufism: journey of slave to king
• Some people die never knowing they took this path in life

 PBS Frontline- Salafism

1. Salafism Background

• Salafism is an ideology that posits that Islam has strayed from its origins
• Salafists originally are supposedly not violent         

1. 2. Salafism Jihadists

• Constitute less than 1 percent of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims
• See life as being divided between the world of Islam and the land of conflict or war
• The origins of Salafi jihadism can be traced to the Muslim Brotherhood        

1. 3. Takfir wal-Hijra

• Takfir wal-Hijra emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood
• Inspired some of the tactics and methods used by Al Qaeda

 Salafism and the Arab Spring

1. 1.  Assassination

• The assassination of opposition leader Chokri Belaid plunged the country into its biggest crisis since the 2011 Jasmine Revolution
• The assassination was also the destabilizing threat of violent Islamist extremists has emerged as a pressing and dangerous issue       

1.  2. Salafists

• The Salafists are spread between three broad groups
• New small political movements that have formed in recent months
• Non-violent Salafists
• Violent Salafists and jihadists who, though small in number, have had a major impact in terms of violent attacks
• The main Salafist political parties have far more of a stake in democratic transition than in Tunisia and Libya.

Essay Question: How are the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam related and how do they impact one another?