Braindroppings

I really like Jon Stewart. He can be extremely funny, but he also has a very serious side. I have seen him interviewed on news talk shows and his insights and opinions on important topics demonstrate that he is very intelligent and thoughtful person.

I am glad that you are writing on this topic because I do not have a very good understanding of the differences between Sunni and Shi'a either. I have observed that Shi'a seem to form personality cults around their religious leaders, carrying around giant pictures of their favorite Ayatollahs and Imams. I know that very important shrines have been erected over the burial sites of famous Shi'a Imams, such as the famous golden mosque in Samarra. I have heard that it is a religious tradition among Shi'a to expect a certain ancient Imam to be resurrected, sort of like the expected second coming of Jesus for Christian fundamentalists. Regarding Sunni Muslims, though, I know very little. Most of what I have learned comes from reading the posts of my Iraqi blog friends (most are Sunni). Basically, all that I have learned is a few things about religious holidays.

I am curious, did Muhammad make no provision for how his empire would be governed after his death?

There is certainly a very marked separation between church and state in Turkey, but I'm not sure there is much if any daylight between the two in Saudi Arabia. Of course, I know that the Saudi's are Wahabs (not that I know much about what that means!). I wonder, what if Laurence of Arabia had died in his crib?

The question of Sunni and Shi'a differences is certainly a most pertinant one in Iraq today. All of my Iraqi friends have said that they never cared if their neighbors were Sunni or Shi'a before the U.S. invasion. Some of them have mixed families. Well, I suppose that I am getting my information from a very small cross-section of the best educated young Iraqis from the upper levels of what used to be their society. I certainly haven't read any blog posts written by Madhi Army Death Squad members or Sunni Baathist insurgents. You know, I think that the violence isn't really about religious belief, at least not at the level of those who plan the attacks. Its about power and who has it after the American troops leave Iraq.

Shiites interpret the Koran, and by that it is meant that they try to fit it into their acutal situation, while Sunnis take it more literally.

Khodadad correctly points out the fact that the Shiites were a minority. Shiite, or Shia' in fact also means "branch" as Sunni means "tradition." But because the "branch" was always smaller, it is also more unforgiving. Khodadad writes elsewhere of the great golden age of the Khalifs with Harun Al-Rashid and all the international court they'd summon, and the rest of it, but that was precisely because it didn't have the weak branchy inferiority to it. And that brings me to the one point of Khodadad's article which caught me most, the key definition of course:

"the Shi'a believe that a society needs both a spiritual and political leader, while Sunnis consider the leader of the Islamic society is only a political leader".

Shi'a - spiritual/political leader
Sunni - the leader of the ISLAMIC society/political leader

That's the same!!! Unless spiritual and Islamic are exclusive.

Trouble with them is, you see, one reads the text and tries to interpret it to justify what it wants to do on earth, while the other one reads it, and takes it absolutely literally. Both are disastrous.

In Lebanon, my sense was that the Shiites are generally more alive and fired-up about new things, while the Sunnis would with much less self-deception, entertain more tribal life-styles which would more stem from the Koran, than having to fit into it. (Here I'm not talking of the "secular" Sunnis and Shiite and Christians etc.)

But since you David, seem to be a Middle East enthusiast and try to keep up with the distinctions and such, you must consider those who are in the margins of the Shiites and Sunnis, and there are a whole list of them, and that would perhaps give you a better way of seeing it than fitting the whole thing into a binary, easily digestable narrative. Some of the other ones, as far as I've experienced, have the most interesting takes. One case is in the context of Lebanon, the Druzes who consider themselves a break-off from the Shiite break-offs and until quite recently (and even today) the Shiites and the Sunnis consider them infidels. They don't build mosques, they just have dinner parties and talk about God; they have women priests and are amongst the oldest population of Lebanon together with the Maronite Christians, but they recite the Koran very well also. Thing about them is that, while the Sunnis take it at face value, the Shiites interpret it, the Druze use it as inspiration and basically more freely interpret, but this freedom of interpretation allows for the lossening of tight definitions which would turn into literal, "academic" fundamentalism.

In Iraq too, one quite often forgets about the Assyrians and Caldonians and Yazidians and all the other little groups. The mean of measurement when it comes to solving such issues, my dearest liberal democrats who would love to be ernest in your peaceful problem solving hopes, is to look at the smallest of smallest minorities, and then one can judge the majorities from that position.

Lack of a proper "humanistic" education is the reason why there are still academic literal and figural laws at work, together with the police and the plain clad security force etc... keeping to the tradition, or the tradion of the branch... none of which has anything to do a human being as a human being. Lack of humanities is also why they think that shooting guns or redesigning the scientific wheel and the Uranium Enrichment Cycle are the signs of intellect or greatness or something...

Amir, I didn't know that there were so many different variations on the theme of Islam. However, I am not really surprised. There are hundreds of different takes on Christianity, and at least dozens of different traditions among Jews. I suppose that the same would hold true for any very old and well established religious belief.

I freely admit to a vast ignorance about Islam and its associated cultures, but I am not sure that things are as simple as Shiites interpreting the Koran and Sunnis taking it literally. I am aware that the Mullahs in Iran, and Shiite leaders elsewhere, routinely issue fatwas which are, as I understand them, their personal interpretations of the Koran with respect to some matter of interest. However, from Khodadad's previous writings, I know that historically there have been great interpreters and expounders of Islamic thought among the Sunni. Khodadad, please help me out here!