The two man branches of Isalm are the Sunnis and Shiites. The original division between the two groups stems from the disagreement on who they believe is the is the true successor of Prophet Muhammed after his death in 632 CE. One group believed that it was Abu Bakr, a follower and friend of the Prophet who should be the successor while another believed that it was rather Ali, kin and son-in-law to the Prophet. The former group became known as the Sunnis whilst the latter became Shiites.
Today there are ca 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and the majority of them, 85-90% are Sunni Muslims. The rest, 10-15% are Shiite.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf States are mostly Sunni Muslims while Iraq and Iran are the main followers of the Shiite tradition.
Tense relations between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran
The most influential Sunni and Shiite countries are Saudi Arabic and Iran respectively, where the relationship has a great deal of tension. The Iranian revolution in 1979 led the movement for an Islamic republic in Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini (the supreme leader) took power. Prior to the revolution Iran was considerably more liberal and westernised. After the revolution, the sectarian tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran increased. Saudi Arabia has a more amiable relationship with the United States while western ties with Iran have been poor. Eventually western -Iranian relationships are improving as oil sanctions were lifted in the summer of 2015 after a new deal on decreased Iranian nuclear activity was signed. Saudi Arabia and Iran are similar in that neither separates state and religion and their economies are heavily reliant on oil production and sales.
Sunni and Shiites in a Wider Geopolitical Context 2001 - 2015
In September 11, 2001 the Al-Qaeda terrorist group flew into the World Trade Center twin towers of New York. The US Government believed that removing Saddam Hussein from his dictatorship in Iraq would help relieve terrorism in the region, free the Iraqi people and also curtail the production of weapons of mass destruction. In 2003, the Saddam Sunni-lead regime was toppled. However, after the US-lead invasion, a power vacuum loomed in Iraq and a population of mostly Shiite majority was left without any proper leader. Amidst the uncertainty, new militant groups emerged.
The Arab Spring in 2010 erupted in the streets of Cairo, Egypt (prominently Sunni country) which lead to the overthrowing of President Hosni Mubarak who had been in power for nearly 30 years. This lead to other springs in countries such as Bahrain and also Syria. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria (an Alawite Shiite) however was not keen on leaving office after protests which began, first peacefully, in Syria 2011. Increased tensions lead to violence and insinuated the movement of rebel groups.
After the Iraqi invasion and the Arab Spring, two prominent terrorist groups crystallised in Iraq and Syria that were taking a more aggressive front than their al-Qaeda predecessor - ISIS and the al-Nusra front. ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria - is a terrorist group lead under the Iraqi-born Sunni leader Abu Bakhr al-Baghdadi. ISIS aims to create a Caliphate, a theocratic unified government, in Iraq and Syria - and probably even beyond these territories. The name in Arabic is "Daesh" or ad Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham. The other prominent Salafist terrorist group is the Jabat al-Nusra front, Sunni-lead with origins in Syria and, like ISIS, have a desire to create a caliphate.
This text highlights the Sunni and Shiite divide in a wider geopolitical context. The sectarian divide from 1,400 years ago, after the death of Prophet Muhammed, is a factor in today's geopolitical context of the Middle East. There are tensions between governments of different religious groups, there are tensions between governments and their people of different groups, but also religions, language and culture, and there is also rising terrorist jihadist groups that spread calamity and pandemonium while acclaiming themselves to different religious sectors, but bear no relation to other followers of the religion.
