Download 133676_Primers Prototype - Part 1 Kamran

Kamran – Sunni-Shiite split – 12:33
http://mediasuite.multicastmedia.com/player.php?p=z2xlwgkv
Primers Prototype A
The Sunni-Shiite Split, Part 1: Roots of the Divide
Kamran Bokhari, director of STRATFOR’s Middle East analysis, explains the
original schism that divided the Muslim faith into two sects. (Audio file, 3 min. 43
sec.)
The Shia and the Sunni constitute the two main principal sects of Islam. The differences
are rather complex. There has been an historical evolution in which these differences
have shaped themselves.
If you go back to the origins and the early period of Islam, at the time of the death of the
Prophet Mohammed, that’s where you see the stirrings of this divide. The divide goes
back to who will succeed the Prophet as leader of the Islamic community. In the Islamic
faith, there are no more prophets after Mohammed. That’s a core doctrine in the Islamic
religion, therefore he is the last of the prophets that began with Adam going through
Abraham and Moses and Jesus all the way to Mohammed. So the question is one of
succession.
According to Sunni understanding of the religious tenets, the successor is a political
figure called the caliph. And the caliph is someone who is elected by the people. In those
days it was through the representatives -- the influential people in society got together
and then they through a show of hands would elect or pledge of allegiance to the caliph.
In contrast, the Shia believe that the successors are from the family of the Prophet, in
other words the bloodline. Now the Prophet did not have any son that bore children, the
Shia recognize the line coming from his daughter, Fatima, who was married to the
Prophet’s cousin Ali. The children of Ali and Fatima are seen as the legitimate successors
of the Prophet.
And this is why, when the majority community in Mecca at the time agreed to elect Abu
Bakr --who was a close associate -- as the first caliph to succeed the prophet, the family
of the Prophet led by Ali disagreed with that. But at that point in time it was a political
difference as to who should succeed the Prophet, the Sunnis saying the person should be
elected by the Muslims, the Shia saying it should come from the family of the Prophet.
Views of the ‘Rightly Guided Caliphs’ – 2:19
If you look at the initial four caliphs, which is considered to be a period of the so-called
“rightly guided caliphs” – this is how Muslim scholarship looks back at this time period.
This time period is called the period of the rightly guided caliphs.
Four of them, the first three were companions, associates of the Prophet Mohammed. The
fourth one is Ali, who of course is his companion and associate, but he is also a cousin
and son-in-law.
During this period, it was clear that the idea that the succession is supposed to take place
in accordance with the wishes of the Muslim community, and the caliph should be an
elected leader as opposed to someone who is inheriting by relation of blood. The Shia
view of this time period is that the first three caliphs actually usurped the right of Ali to
take over from the Prophet.
3:14
It was not until circa 900s, some 300 years after the Prophet established the first Islamic
state in Medina, that we see the flowering of Shia religious thought in the form of
jurisprudence. And the person that is most revered in this respect is a man by the name of
Jaffar AsSaddiq, who is the sixth imam in the line of 12 imams that the Shia revere as
being the legitimate successors of the Prophet.
In other words, we moved from a political difference between the sects to a more
religiously rooted divide.
---- (End Part 1 primer)