I only wish someone would pose these questions to Bush in an interview.

white people don't know what browns think everybody would know...

my jewish trust fund baby friends didn't know what a hindu was

The nuances don't matter if the increasingly inevitable outcome is to exterminate all the brutes.

The difference between the Shinnis and the Sueites? I dunno, it's hard to remember.

No suprise here. Folks up top tend be the most clueless of em all.

Ask the same question to a US Special Forces Sergeant that is making chump change for a salary, he'll not only give you an answer, but one in a different language depending on the group/team he serves on (Dari, Pashto, Persian, Arabic, Korean, etc). Conventional troops doing FID (Foreign Internal Defense) type missions will know. Eventually, these guys will leave the service at some point. More citizens know what the differences are, eventually leadership will have to take notice.

As hopeless as leadership on the top is (Bureaucracy, politicans regardless of what party they're alligned with, self appointed 'experts'), there are plenty that do know because they've got far more riding on it (like their life) or others who choose to educate themselves because it is important to know the world.

Depressing - obv something they are expected to know. I'm not so sure that a lot of brown ppl know the difference either. Or know about differences among Shiites..Ismailis, etc.

Can I be totally honest? I don't know the diff (is there a diff?), but I'm always so frightened of mispronouncing "Shiite." There, I've said it. It's just not a comfortable word, if you know what I mean.

I'm much, much more comfortable with the Sunnis, you know, like, "Sunni side-up." That always puts a smile on my face. Makes me think of the Walmart sign. Sunnis are much much more family-friendly, so if we've got to choose sides, I'd say as Americans we should walk on the Sunni side of the street. That's part of what makes this country great, our optimism, and belief in a brighter day.

So, what I propose is we call the good muslims Sunni, and the bad ones Shiite, and that way everybody knows the difference. As I like to say, if you want to see a difference in the world, make a difference. Have a nice day!

It's easy to be horrified by the lazy ignorance of our leaders at all levels of government, but I'm not sure that parsing the Sunni/Shiite divide will matter as it relates to US policy. Iraq = Arab = Sunni and Iran = Persian = Shiite, except when there are Iraqi Shiites and Iranian Sunnis (like the Kurds).

Iranian Shiites stormed the American embassy in Tehran and held the hostages for 444 days in 1979, cost Jimmy Carter the presidency, and started the whole yellow-ribbons-on-trees thing. Sunni Arabs felled the World Trade Center, launched America on a Global War on Terror (TM), cost John Kerry the presidency, and started the whole take-your-shoes-off-at-the-airport thing.

Since the US government's current position is that Islam in all its forms is invalid as a belief system and basis for any sort of civic polity, I don't think a crash course on the succession of the Prophet and the descendants of Ali will do the Pentagon, the State Department, or the CIA any good.

#7, Mr. K, surpasses even your usual brilliance.

Iraq = Arab = Sunni and Iran = Persian = Shiite, except when there are Iraqi Shiites and Iranian Sunnis (like the Kurds).

But ah, Preston, by accidents of history and geography, Iraq (like Iran) has a Shiite majority. Saddam was Sunni, but now that he's gone, the long oppressed majority is in the mood to do some oppressing of their own. There lies the rub.

Thanks Nina. Sometimes the material just writes itself.

Mr Kobayashi, you put Ismail on my face too!

-- white people don't know what browns think everybody would know...

And vice versa. I wouldn't expect a Sunni Muslim in Iraq to recite the differences between the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches. And those two groups have the sense not to blow each other to Hell.

And those two groups have the sense not to blow each other to Hell.

Except that they did in Northern Ireland . . .

And vice versa. I wouldn't expect a Sunni Muslim in Iraq to recite the differences between the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches. And those two groups have the sense not to blow each other to Hell.

haha. thats funny and also offensive, neat trick

Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches. And those two groups have the sense not to blow each other to Hell.

Except when they do, of course.

Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches. And those two groups have the sense not to blow each other to Hell.

That'll surely come as news to the one-hundred thousand European dead in the Peasant Wars of 1525.

Good sense my foot.

Can anyone really be surprised by this? This is just another layer of incompetence with respect to how the war in Iraq has been executed.

Just to be a wonk, and in the name of accuracy (since we're noting the intellectual ineptitude of our government) -- the Episcopal Church is an American institution, one regional offshoot of the Church of England. The worldwide Protestant body that grew out of the C of E is called the Anglican Communion. Such Protestants everywhere are called Anglicans. Episcopalians have never been engaged in a shooting war (whether bullets or longbows), just rhetorical ones about homosexuality, and they tend to battle only their Anglican brothers and not the Catholics. Henry VIII split from the Roman Church in 1534, the start date of the Protestant Reformation.

Siddhartha-bhai, don't Sufi in silence. Look on the Sunni side and keep Ismailing.

(we'll be playing here all week folks...)

Henry VIII split from the Roman Church in 1534, the start date of the Protestant Reformation.

Yo, don't do that! Wikipedia, google. Something.

He does work for them. Our boy Preston, despite his Parsi insides, is a Wasp on the out ;)

Whoops--English Reformation (not Protestant). Thanks!

Siddhartha and Mr. K seem to be craving punishment. ..

This is the kind of thing that makes me realize I live in an incredibly pathological bubble of weirdness. I can barely remember when I learned the differences. 9th grade? And then when people rise to the defense, trying to say why it doesn't matter, I'm just speechless.

Preston, just to clarify my somewhat murky comment, no disrespect intended...

Of course you're right about the Anglicans and Episcopalians, etc, but the Reformation proper started in 1517 with Luther's theses. By the late 1520s and early 30s, taken up (with various remixes) by the likes of Calvin and Zwingli, it had become the most pressing political issue in virtually all the European states. The law of unintended consequences ran riot, and for the next eighty years, the fallout was devastating.

Siddhartha it would be great to have some links with information on the real "differences" so those that aren't really aware can educate themselves. I for one have a lose religious idea of what the differences are but it would mean a lot to have actual references that I can read up on and understand better.

Indeed--I was caught up on the English part . . .

One very good reason for knowing what Shiites think is that Ahmadinejad-- second only to Kim Jong Il in the worldwide bad muthaf*cker stakes (sorry Chavez, you'll have to wait your turn)-- is a fundamentalist Shiite. With regards to the Twelfth Imam (the medieval cleric Ali, around whom Shiism was founded, and on whom messianic hopes are pinned), Max Rodenbeck recently wrote the following in the NYRB:

There are those in the present age who believe that this return is imminent. One of them is the populist president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who often declares that his government's main task is to prepare for the Mahdi. The President is rumored to be close to a radical messianic group known as the Hojjatieh. Detractors claim that this group seeks to hasten the Mahdi's return by creating chaos on earth. [link]

In other words, the messier things get, the happier Ahmadinejad is.

It's a long but helpful article. It would be too much to hope, I suppose, that our policy makers and dogs of war would actually take the time to read such things.

One could read all the arcane pronouncements and tomes from leaders in the modern Islamist movement, but this is like pouring over the millennialist Left Behind rantings of the Christian Right in the USA. They are not policy statements or white papers so much as narcissistic ramblings designed to score points with a constituency. Ahmadinejad, just like Osama, doesn't have clerical standing. He can pontificate all he wants, but the substance of his writings only matters inasmuch as it proves he's crazy. He doesn't speak for Shiism (just as Osama doesn't speak for Sunnism). Ahmadinejad is also not the Supreme Leader of Iran. He can't even go to war since he doesn't command the army.

Mr. K, JOAT,

The 12th Imam of the Shia is actually Muhammad al-Muntazar al-Mahdi. He is said to have disappeared and people are waiting for his return. Here is an article that lays out the differences very simply. Yeah, the source is the BBC. There are many websites about Islam but they tend to be from one school or another, and complex, as well as not very well laid out. Certainly if some of the Muslim brothers and sisters here would care to comment on this article's reliability, that would be appreciated.

In 1959, the Shaikh of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, traditionally one of the foremost Sunni authorities, said in a fatwa that Shia was a legitimate interpretation of Islam (see here, scroll down). More broadly, Sunni and Shia recognize one another as Muslim. Political and ethnic differences are clearly another matter.

Again there are others here more qualified to speak on such matters than I am :)

Salaam

Hold the fatwas please. Imam Ali, the cousin of the Prophet (PBUH), is not the 12th Imam. Repeat, Imam Ali is not the 12th Imam.

here is an interview with the Aga khan that reflects this general lack of knowledge and how education
can help this problem .....

See why members of the House Intelligence Committee don't care to know the difference between a Shiite and Sunni? ;>)

That linked interview of the Aga Khan starts off by saying that he's a descendant of Muhammad. Which sounds all cool and special until you do some fairly straightforward math and realize that everyone in Europe is a descendant of Muhammad. And no one, obviously, is descended from Jesus.

"There was a date in the not-too-distant past at which all individuals were either ancestors of everyone alive today, or ancestors of no one alive today." [link]

Kobayashi: It would be too much to hope, I suppose, that our policy makers and dogs of war would actually take the time to read such things.

While those mentioned in Stein's article may have been ignorant, the policy maker who caused the Iraq war, Wolfowitz was very well informed. In fact, one of his good friends is Azar Nafisi, whom he actively encouraged to write Reading Lolita in Tehran. Also, he is going out with an Arab, after his divorce.

I don't totally agree with the NYRB article. This theory (mentioned by others too) seems to suspiciously follow the doomsday scenario outlined in the pre-2003 period leading up to the Iraq war. It is quite interesting to note what Iranians themselves have to say about that topic. No specific links to blogs at this point. I recall reading them through this main link though.

The descendants of the prophet are a kind of subcaste in Islam. It's not a genetic thing, but Muslims defer generally to the groups thought to be direct descendants of the prophet.

Shia-Sunni struggle:

The battle starts with who should have been the first caliph after Muhammad.

Shia version: The first caliph should have been Ali the son in law of Muhammad (ali was married to muhammad's daughter fatima. They say Muhammad appointed Ali as the person to follow him as the leader (1st caliph). They say Ali was wronged when he was not made the first caliph after muhammad's death.

Sunni version: The first caliph Abu Bakr (muhammad's father in law, his wife ayesha's husband) was rightfully made the first caliph because Muhammad (who would usually lead the prayers) once stopped in the middle of the prayer and asked Abu Bakr to lead the prayer thus letting the believers know that he wanted Abu Bakr to be the first caliph.

Anyway, Muhammad dies and Ali the fighter (he truly was a great fighter) is busy with funeral preparations and the other believers appoint Abu Bakr as the first caliph. Ali finds out and refuses to give bayat (oath of allegiance to Abu Bakr at apparently Fatima's bidding who was majorly pissed off) and the cold war starts which only turned into open warfare once Ali became the 4rth caliph later on.

Ali also missed out the chance of becoming the second caliph (omar) and the third caliph (osman). Ali became the 4rth caliph eventually and then the Muslims split into Sunnis Umayyad Caliphate led by Muawiyah Sufyan and Shias by the imam series where ali was the first imam, and then hasan, hussain, ali-zayn and so on.

So, what I propose is we call the good muslims Sunni, and the bad ones Shiite, and that way everybody knows the difference. As I like to say, if you want to see a difference in the world, make a difference. Have a nice day!

Ha. The difference was explained by my 9th grade redneck world history teacher with a droopy 'stache- "The difference is that Shiites take no shit. Shiite, shit, see its simple." Ha. Same teacher who thought world history means 31 out of 33 chapters on Europe.

i posted on this here.

but Muslims defer generally to the groups thought to be direct descendants of the prophet.

in which case, they should defer to everyone who is descended from eurasians in the last 1,000 years since everyone probably can trace a lineage back to the prophet :)

Oh, I'm quite certain that Iranians themselves aren't in agreement with Ahmadinejad and Khamene'i... but the question to ask is who will have control of the nuclear codes, or who has the wherewithal to launch rockets in Israel.

Wolfowitz is knowledgeable, I don't doubt it. Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld are both very smart people too. Much knowledge, but also much hubris.

But our lawmakers, as well as our "intelligence" agencies, are a sorry lot. They haven't much knowledge to go along with their hubris.

Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld are both very smart people too

of course, we all know that condy is a "student of history." we know cuz she told us.

This is a very interesting thought though.

When I saw the movie Hotel Rwanda, I couldnt for the sake of my life tell the difference between Hutus and Tutsis. But apparently to them it was obvious. Same thing with lots of other ethnic conflicts.

So, if aliens from Mars were looking down on us, they wouldnt be able to tell white from black from brown?

Kobayashi...that is not really what I was alluding to ..it was the fact that "educating" the masses is a first step in solving this dilemma.....
did you at-least get a chance to finish the interview or did you get stuck once the decendent thing got hold of you ??

Incidentally, getting back to Siddhartha's post, if someone wants to know more about Shias/Sunnis, Catholics/Protestents, Bulghars/Buggers etc, they can do no better than to read the cartoon history series by Larry Gonick. [Quite leftist, but not a bad place for a quick start.]

it was the fact that "educating" the masses is a first step in solving this dilemma.....

I did read it, wandegya_boy. But these arguments about Christian vs Muslim don't really interest me much. It's like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus arguing about who's more real.

The Aga Khan is talking about education in terms of "each side needs to know what the other believes." Yes, that's good, in a sort of obvious way. But once we know the differences, then what? What about the content of those beliefs? What about the exclusive nature, in theory or in practice, of many major religions?

I'd say much of the conflict is not from "misunderstandings" but from human willingness to kill and die for religion. While it might be politically expedient to describe Christianity or Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism as "religions of peace" the reality is very different from that.

So, the real educational service, in my opinion, would be for leaders to start weaning people from their religions, until only the cool cultural elements remain, and all the strident "belief" is whittled away.

But do I think that'll ever happen? No.

Quizman and Mr.K :

While those mentioned in Stein's article may have been ignorant, the policy maker who caused the Iraq war, Wolfowitz was very well informed.

Wolfowitz is knowledgeable, I don't doubt it.

It's not clear if Wolfowitz was knowledgable about the region before he invaded. For example he did not know about the "holy" cities of iraq. Before the war he said :

US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz had voiced high expectations for a Shi'ite-ruled Iraq, telling National Public Radio on February 19 last year: "The Iraqi population is completely different ... The Iraqis are among the most educated people in the Arab world. They are by and large quite secular. They are overwhelmingly Shi'ite, which is different from the Wahhabis of the peninsula. They don't bring the sensitivity of having the holy cities of Islam on their territory."

Those were the days before Najaf, Karbala etc were familiar place-names.

And those two groups have the sense not to blow each other to Hell.

Except that they did in Northern Ireland . . .

The Protestants of Northern Ireland are Presbyterians, not Anglicans/Episcopalians.

I hope this thread doesn't vanish because I'd like to draw upon the wisdom of the commenters here.

This summer I was fortunate to sit-in on a special topics course in int'l political economy on the subject Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism. The lecturer was a proponent of a school thought that was entirely new to me and caused many sleepless nights. He referred to his position as the 'myth of ethnic conflict' where ethno-politics & conflict originates from the creation of the modern state, post Treaty of Westphalia, in the 18th-19th centuries. The Sri Lanka and Yugoslavia case studies were the most heavily featured in support of this position.

The position is summarized here:

Much recent discussion of international affairs has been based on the misleading assumption that the world is fraught with primordial ethnic conflict. According to this notion, ethnic groups lie in wait for one another, nourishing age-old hatreds and restrained only by powerful states. Remove the lid, and the cauldron boils over. Analysts who advance this idea differ in their predictions for the future: some see the fragmentation of the world into small tribal groups; others, a face-off among several vast civilizational coalitions. They all share, however, the idea that the world's current conflicts are fueled by age-old ethnic loyalties and cultural differences. 1

This notion misrepresents the genesis of conflict and ignores the ability of diverse people to coexist. The very phrase "ethnic conflict" misguides us. It has become a shorthand way to speak about any and all violent confrontations between groups of people living in the same country. Some of these conflicts involve ethnic or cultural identity, but most are about getting more power, land, or other resources. They do not result from ethnic diversity; thinking that they do sends us off in pursuit of the wrong policies, tolerating rulers who incite riots and suppress ethnic differences.

In speaking about local group conflicts we tend to make three assumptions: first, that ethnic identities are ancient and unchanging; second, that these identities motivate people to persecute and kill; and third, that ethnic diversity itself inevitably leads to violence. All three are mistaken. [End Page 3]

Contrary to the first assumption, ethnicity is a product of modern politics. Although people have had identities--deriving from religion, birthplace, language, and so on--for as long as humans have had culture, they have begun to see themselves as members of vast ethnic groups, opposed to other such groups, only during the modern period of colonization and state-building.

The view that ethnicity is ancient and unchanging emerges these days in the potent images of the cauldron and the tribe. Out of the violence in Eastern Europe came images of the region as a bubbling cauldron of ethnonationalist sentiments that were sure to boil over unless suppressed by strong states. The cauldron image contrasts with the American "melting pot," suggesting that Western ethnicities may melt, but Eastern ones must be suppressed by the region's unlikable, but perhaps necessary, Titos and Stalins.

So, my question is to what extent is the Sunni/Shia division not only differences in theological interpretation but also ethnic? Maybe 'ethnic' in this context is not the appropriate word but a divergence occurred per chance, became internalized and later institutionalized over time into political/economic relations.

Is their a place for Sunni/Shia factionalism in the 'myth of ethnic conflict' model? Is the original split inherently political, as I interpret AMfD's post?

Re: In defense of ignorance

Nothing wrong with being ignorant. Nancy Pelosi does not need to know the details of the affair of the necklace, battle of the camel, the arbitration agreed to by Ali at the Battle of Siffin, or the bloody finger of Uthman displayed in the mosque in Damascus. They are not the reason death squads raom Iraq, killing people of the opposing sect.

In fact, knowing all this would probably make it harder for a policymaker to make sensible decisions about Americans in Iraq and in America. A theological conference resolving Ali's claim to the caliphate is not going to stop the sectarian killing.

(Yah, sure, it is worth having some knowledge, but I'm making the case for ignorance here.)

A theological conference resolving Ali's claim to the caliphate is not going to stop the sectarian killing

Ya Ali Madad!

In fact, knowing all this would probably make it harder for a policymaker to make sensible decisions about Americans in Iraq and in America. A theological conference resolving Ali's claim to the caliphate is not going to stop the sectarian killing.

If you have studied policy for long enough (and I hope against hope that the pols have), then I highly doubt that knowing the differences would come in the way of making good policy. I think this post should viewed in the larger context in which it is placed, that is, that this government has never had the slightest clue what they were trying to do in Iraq. The WMD debacle, the deBaathification fiasco and the ostensible link between 9/11 and Saddam were not aberrations. It is symptomatic of a series of clueless decisions.

Right. The author of the Op-Ed said very clearly that he wasn't asking his interviewees about theology. He was asking them the much simpler question of who is Shiite and who is Sunni in the various conflicts the US in engaged in. Anything else they could answer was gravy.

The theology and history is happening here because some of us are interested in deepening our understanding, and others are willing to share...

Interesting Sikh-related historical facts in relation to Shia Islam:

Ali is regarded by many as the "father of Sufism", which of course has some overlaps with Sikhism too.

Guru Gobind Singh owned one of Ali's swords, which I believe is presently housed at a gurdwara in Punjab (Anandpur Sahib, I think -- someone please confirm). It is also rumoured that Ali's sword was used by the Guru during the Khalsa baptism ceremony at the first Vaisakhi in 1699 -- he used it to stir the "amrit" mixture which was then given to inductees to drink as part of the ceremony.

I'm not sure if this means that the Guru was indirectly supporting Ali's claim as the rightful heir to the leadership of the Ummah, but it's an interesting idea.

Actually Indians (both non-Muslims and Muslims) should be interested in finding out the differences between Shias and Sunnis.. I guess almost all the terrorist attacks carried out so far are by Sunni groups such as Lashkar-E-Toiba / Jaish-e-Muhammed etc.. don't know if that means Shias in India are relatively better placed.. I don't know if I can safely assume people with 'Ali' in their names can be treated as Shias.. and 'Omar' as Sunnis..

Yeah, it's probably more useful for US policymakers to learn about the historical relationship between Sunni and Shia (btw - you can just say "Shia," Shiite is an old-fashioned way of saying it, though with much more comic potential ;) in Iraq than the history of the schism in the early years of Islam, and the theological difs...I'd rather they read Yitzhak Nakash than old fiqh texts. Or Nikki Keddie and Juan Cole on Shia political mobilizations.

Juan Cole, btw, wrote his first book/diss. on Indian Shia, and it's quite interesting - Avadh/Oudh was a major Shia centre and the Nawabs of Avadh had close ties with Najaf and Karbala, and were patrons of religious establishments in those Shia centres of learning (I think some members of the Avadh royal clan even used to go there to die). There are streets named after the Nawab of Avadh in either Najaf or Karbala, I forget.

If you go to Lucknow even today, you'll see the classic taziyas that are shiny colourful reproductions of the mosque of Imam Ali in Karbala. Indian Shia are not crazy about the Sunnis (esp of the Deobandi variety) and have set up their own Personal Law Board, and a few years ago even allied temporarily with the BJP in Lucknow, IIRC, to piss off the Sunnis. Shia in general have a stronger clerical structure and give more importance to a marja' (or exemplary person/cleric, rather like a guru) so in a sense are more concrete-community-driven and maybe that's why they haven't been drawn to the kind of radical idealism that some Sunnis have been....

To respond to no von Mises' comment which I just saw - there's less "ethnification" of religious difference between Shia and Sunni in the Middle East the way there is between Hindu and Muslim in India. But Iraq probably comes close, because Shia here, even though ethnically Arab for the most part, had close clerical-religious ties to Iran and were often suspected of being pro-Persian (and "Ajami" or "persian" was a common epithet for Shia throughout the region). Where you'll find more ethnification of the Sunni-Shia distinction is in Pakistan, actually, because many of the muhajirs who came across from UP were Shia, so the religious distinction fed into the sons-of-the-soil vs muhajir clash.

Some very interesting comments, SP. Taziyas, btw, can be quite beautiful. Here is a picture of a taziya being prepared in the great city of Ahmedabad.

To add to the interesting trivia: Ayatollah Khomeini's family has an Indian connection (to Oudh, actually). From the NYT :

Khomeini's family are Musavi seyyeds; that is they claim descent from the Prophet through his daughter's line and the line of the seventh Imam of the Shi`a, Musa al-Kazem. They are believed to have come originally from Neishabur, a town near to Mashhad in north-eastern Iran. In the early eighteenth century the family migrated to India where they settled in the small town of Kintur near Lucknow in the Kingdom of Oudh whose rulers were Twelver Shi`a — the branch of Islam which became the official state religion in Iran under the Safavids and to which the majority of Iranians adhere today. Ruhollah's grandfather, Seyyed Ahmad Musavi Hindi, was born in Kintur and was a contemporary and relative of the famous scholar Mir Hamed Hossein Hindi Neishaburi whose voluminous history of the religion, the Abaqat al-Anwar, is sometimes described as the pride of Indian Shi`ism.

Thanks, SP, for the knowledge!