Word: sunnis
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Yesterday, after Sunni terrorists—or, in the current lingo, insurgents—destroyed the golden dome of the Golden Mosque in Samara, one of Iraq’s four sacred Shiite shrines, Iraqi Shiites released their fury across the country with an unprecedented illustration of the delicate fault-line running through present day Iraq in the ongoing struggle between Shiites and Sunnis. In the two days since the Golden Mosque bombing, sectarian violence has claimed the lives of at least 138 Iraqis, most of them Sunni Muslims. Additionally, the Interior Ministry has confirmed attacks by sectarian militias...
...there is one respect in which the Shiite response to the bombing of the Golden Mosque should not be restrained at all, and that is in the verbal condemnation of the Sunni minority in Iraq by the Shiite majority. Shiites in Iraq, as well as world-wide, have a rare opportunity to disassociate themselves in the eyes of the international community from the ceaseless violence of their Sunni counterparts. One of the key revelations of the Muslim world’s reaction to the cartoon scandal was that many in the Muslim community are deeply frustrated by the West?...
Iraq doesn’t need a civil war—there is plenty of unrest as it is. Instead, in the wake of yet another act of terrorism by Sunni insurgents, Iraqi Shiites, and the global Islamic community, need to wage a new type of war, one in which suicide bombs and death threats are conspicuously absent: a civil war of words. Wordplay aside, such a campaign would be targeted not at the usual suspects of America and the West, but at the internal evil that has given Islam such a bad name. Once again, Jihad Momani, addressing...
Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was ruled by a mostly secular Sunni Arab elite, which viciously suppressed the Shiite Arab majority and the Kurdish minority. But the toppling of Saddam's regime has altered the power balance between those groups, who are waging an increasingly bitter power struggle...
...divide between Sunni and Shiite Arabs is currently Iraq's most volatile. The distinction between the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam dates back to a 7th Century split over who would inherit the leadership of Muslims after the passing of the Prophet Muhammad. The Shiites believe that the Prophet had passed the mantle of leadership to his own descendants, first to his cousin and son-in-law, Imam Ali, who in turn passed it to his own son (and the Prophet's beloved grandson) Imam Hussein. They rejected the three Caliphs chosen by consultation among the Prophet's followers...