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Saudi Arabia`s execution of the Shi`ite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr is escalating tensions within the Muslim community. Iran is a Shi`ite theocracy whereas Saudi Arabia is a Sunni Monarchy. Iran`s supreme leader said there would be "divine vengeance" for executing the cleric, who was killed in a massacre alongside 47 other men. Sheikh Nimr has fought for equal political rights in Saudi Arabia, and neighboring countries. However, Saudi Arabia accused him for causing violence against the state.

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Sunnis and Shiites praying together on Sunday in Beirut, Lebanon, in protest of the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Credit... Hassan Ammar/Associated Press

Saudi Arabia's execution of the Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr could escalate tensions in the Muslim world even further. In the Shiite theocracy Iran, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by a Sunni monarchy, would face "divine vengeance" for the killing of the outspoken cleric, which was part of a mass execution of 47 men. Sheikh Nimr had advocated for greater political rights for Shiites in Saudi Arabia and surrounding countries. Saudi Arabia had accused him of inciting violence against the state.

Here is a primer on the basic differences between Sunni and Shia Islam.
What caused the split?
A schism emerged after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, and disputes arose over who should shepherd the new and rapidly growing faith.

Some believed that a new leader should be chosen by consensus; others thought that only the prophet's descendants should become caliph. The title passed to a trusted aide, Abu Bakr, though some thought it should have gone to Ali, the prophet's cousin and son-in-law. Ali eventually did become caliph after Abu Bakr's two successors were assassinated.

Shiite pilgrims at the shrine to Imam Hussein in Karbala, Iraq, in December. Each year millions visit the city to mark Arbaeen, the end of the 40-day mourning period for Imam Hussein, one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures. Credit... European Pressphoto Agency

After Ali also was assassinated, with a poison-laced sword at the mosque in Kufa, in what is now Iraq, his sons Hasan and then Hussein claimed the title. But Hussein and many of his relatives were massacred in Karbala, Iraq, in 680. His martyrdom became a central tenet to those who believed that Ali should have succeeded the prophet. (It is mourned every year during the month of Muharram.) The followers became known as Shiites, a contraction of the phrase Shiat Ali, or followers of Ali.

The Sunnis, however, regard Ali as well as the three caliphs before him as rightly guided and themselves as the true adherents to the Sunnah, or the prophet's tradition. Sunni rulers embarked on sweeping conquests that extended the caliphate into North Africa and Europe. The last caliphate ended with the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.
How do their beliefs differ?
The Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam encompass a wide spectrum of doctrine, opinion and schools of thought. The branches are in agreement on many aspects of Islam, but there are considerable disagreements within each. Both branches include worshipers who run the gamut from secular to fundamentalist. Shiites consider Ali and the leaders who came after him as imams. Most believe in a line of 12 imams, the last of whom, a boy, is believed to have vanished in the ninth century in Iraq after his father was murdered. Shiites known as Twelvers anticipate his return as the Mahdi, or Messiah. Because of the different paths the two sects took, Sunnis emphasize God's power in the material world, sometimes including the public and political realm, while Shiites value in martyrdom and sacrifice.
Which sect is larger, and where is each concentrated?
More than 85 percent of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims are Sunni. They live across the Arab world, as well as in countries like Turkey, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. Iran, Iraq and Bahrain are largely Shiite. The Saudi royal family, which practices an austere and conservative strand of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, controls Islam's holiest shrines, Mecca and Medina. Karbala, Kufa and Najaf in Iraq are revered shrines for the Shiites.

Saudi Arabia and Iran, the dominant Sunni and Shiite powers in the Middle East, often take opposing sides in regional conflicts. In Yemen, Shiite rebels from the north, the Houthis, overthrew a Sunni-dominated government, leading to an invasion by a Saudi-led coalition. In Syria, which has a Sunni majority, the Alawite Shiite sect of President Bashar al-Assad, which has long dominated the government, clings to power amid a bloody civil war. And in Iraq, bitter resentments between the Shiite-led government and Sunni communities have contributed to victories by the Islamic State.

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How Do Sunni and Shia Islam Differ? (Published 2016)

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Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Saudi Arabia's execution of the Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr could escalate tensions in the Muslim world even further.

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Saudi Arabian women are not allowed to perform everyday activities such as work and travel without permission from a male. If a women is divorced or widowed her son is then in charge of determining whether or not she can remarry. A woman can be put in jail for disobeying a man, for example in 2017 a women's rights activist was put in jail for 3 months for leaving her house without permission. Saudi Arabia`s sexism has also led to physical violence, however sexual and physical abuse can not be easily stopped because women can rarely escape and report the violence.  Women`s rights in Saudi Arabia are very low and it is very hard for women to do something about it because that could be considered a crime.

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The murderous brutality of the Saudi regime is rightly condemned for the killing and dismembering of courageous dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the merciless Saudi war in Yemen. Many observers correctly call for the U.S. to reform or even end its alliance with the Saudi government unless there is accountability and justice for Khashoggi's murder and an end to the Yemen conflict that is causing one of the world's worst humanitarian catastrophes. Yet the Saudi crime with the greatest number of victims - the state-sanctioned repression of more than 15 million Saudi women and girls - is almost never included in the list of Saudi human rights atrocities that must end. All too often, the suffocation of women's rights is treated as an issue that may be important enough to mention but not important enough to be stopped.

How bad is it? Saudi women are not free to go where they want to go and do what they want to do without permission from a male. Saudi male "guardianship" laws for women require that every woman have a male guardian, and that women get permission from men (or boys, because male children can be guardians) for everyday activities - college, work, travel, marriage. A divorced or widowed woman can be ruled by a son who can refuse to let her remarry.

The U.S. State Department concluded that the Saudi system caused "violence and official discrimination against women" and that courts are "occasionally upholding a guardian's right to obedience from his female dependents." A woman can go to jail for disobeying a man, and a man can report a woman if she ventures out without permission. This stifles political dissent as well as women's freedom - a women's rights activist was imprisoned in 2017 for three months for leaving her house without her male guardian's approval.

There are no women judges in Saudi Arabia, of course, and Saudi law requires judges to give women's testimony half the weight of men. The 22 percent of Saudi women who work is among the world's lowest (placing the country just above war-torn nations like Syria and Yemen). That so few Saudi women work is unsurprising given how much permission they need for daily activities.

Saudi sexism leads to physical violence, too. Human rights groups and the U.S. State Department agree that Saudi women are inadequately protected against sexual and other violence. A United Nations report blamed violence against women on male guardianship and gender segregation, which limit women's ability to escape or report violence.

Saudi women are equal to men in one terrible way - the regime will kill them or throw them in prison when they have the courage to speak out for human rights. Israa al-Ghomghan, a female activist, is sentenced to beheading for protesting in marches and on social media. Many Saudi women who led the successful campaign for the right to drive-and who call for more sweeping reform to give women full equality - are themselves jailed.

Here is how some victims of Saudi apartheid described it to the New York Times:

"My experience as a female is very sad. I cannot go out of the house unless my older brother gives me permission, as if I were a prisoner."

"I am subjected to violence and beatings and am denied the most basic rights, including the ability to go to a hospital. I have been insulted and cursed in ways that are anathema to Islam.

"I have been denied the opportunity to study or work. I am forced to wear the black abaya and to cover my face and eyes. I am forced to remain inside the house. I am prevented from going out even to buy my essential needs."

"Only in this room I am allowed to do what I want to do . . . My father owns me."

"I don't remember the last time that I saw the light of the outside world. I am giving myself one year. If life doesn't change, there is no solution except suicide, as many other girls have done."

To call this gender apartheid is too polite. The Saudi system is misogynist apartheid. Yet there is an inexplicable silence about Saudi suffocation of women's rights. For example, over two days in the Washington Post, a U.S. Senator, an academic foreign policy expert, and a former senior Bush administration official rightly demanded accountability and action against the Saudi government for human rights atrocities - without a single mention of its state-sanctioned second-class citizenship for women. A prominent foreign policy commentator, while alluding to the arrests of women's activists in a link, failed to include in his list of Saudi wrongs the nationwide discrimination and violence against women that the activists were protesting. To be fair, a Washington Post op-ed included discrimination against women among the reasons for ending American deference to Saudi human rights violations.

The Trump administration will not demand equal rights for women in Saudi Arabia. Trump considers arms trade with the Saudi regime a higher priority than keeping the regime from killing people or suffocating their lives. Awful as this is, Trump is not the first American to value Saudi money and oil above human life and moral principle.

Leaving Trump aside, other Americans - Congress, human rights groups, and citizens - should demand that the Saudi regime honor women's rights and aspirations. This would benefit Saudi society as much as the women who live in it by tapping their enormous talent and potential.

Some might favor restraint in challenging Saudi repression of women by noting that some Saudi women prefer restrictions on rights and dress. Others may characterize demands for reform and gender equality as colonial-style imposition of Western norms that risk destabilizing a society in which restrictions on women reflect deeply held religious and cultural traditions.

But there is nothing about guaranteeing equality that would stop women from dressing conservatively, living restrictively, or even following the direction of men, if some women choose to do so to express their religious or social preferences. There are women wearing the hijab in the trendiest neighborhoods in London and others who live very conservative lives all over the world. Equal rights would simply afford women the freedom to make other choices.

As to cultural-relativist arguments to delay or stop reform completely, these arguments have been made about racial equality in South Africa, democracy in South America, even capitalism in China. Indeed, opponents of civil rights for African Americans criticized the movement for going too fast. All of these countries managed societal transition that was broad and deep, and so would the Saudis if they had allies at home and abroad in promoting women's rights.

More than that, it is the right thing to do. Women and girls should not live in a state-constructed prison. The brutal suppression of half the human beings in Saudi Arabia is not a peripheral issue to be put on the back burner. Human rights violations on this scale aren't usually compartmentalized. It is not surprising that a regime that denies basic human rights to half its citizens will also kill dissident journalists or innocent civilians caught in the crosshairs of its wars.

In the fleeting time when there was hope that Khashoggi had not been killed, one expert rightly wrote, "It is impossible to look away from Khashoggi's disappearance." But for decades it has been all too possible for America to look away from the Saudi regime's marginalization and abuse of women.

Not everyone ignores the plight of Saudi women. One observer in America spoke the truth plainly: "Women today should have the same rights as men." The writer was Jamal Khashoggi. In September 2017, he wrote, "I can speak when so many cannot." Now that his brave voice has been horrifically silenced, the rest of us should speak for him and for the rights of Saudi women.

IMAGE: Saudi women cheer for their football team during a friendly match between Saudi Arabia and Iraq for the "Superclassico" championship at King Saud University Stadium in Riyadh on October 15, 2018. (Photo by FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images)

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Misogynist Apartheid - Saudi Arabia's Original Human Rights Sin

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The murderous brutality of the Saudi regime is rightly condemned for the killing and dismembering of courageous dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the merciless Saudi war in Yemen. Many observers correctly call for the U.S.

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This relates to the article and video by showing that Saudi Arabia is majority Sunni, and Iran as well as many neighboring countries are Shi`ite Muslim.

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This relates to the article by showing the difference between the two religions, what countries specifically practice each branch of the religion, and what conflicts come from that.

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Saudi Arabia vs. Iran: The Sunni-Shiite Proxy Wars

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This is a cartoon showing the conflict between the two branches of Islam.

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Video explaining the split of the Shi`ite and Sunni and more conflict/tension that is present in todays society.

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Breaking down conflicts between Sunnis and Shiites

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Saudi Arabia women and their long road to gain basic rights.

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Saudi Arabia women and their long road to gain basic rights.

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This video relates to the article by showing the hardships women have faced and the many years it has taken for women to be able to do everyday things.

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Women in Saudi Arabia: A long road to equality

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This map relates to the article and to the video by displaying the gender gap within these countries. The color of Saudi Arabia is the bright red. This represents the countries with the greatest gap between men and women. The few countries with this red color  are countries where women have very little rights and their lives are dictated by men.

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Article Summary:
This article below explains the conflicts that has came up because of some people wanting to preserve the language of French and the people that are younger, and would rather has English as ever first language in Quebec, but French is the official language of Quebec leaving students to learn the language. Throughout the years the government has tried to contain the tension between French preservers and the others by making laws in place. This is hard for them to contain because French is still the official language and till that changes there will be a conflict between the two neighboring people.

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This week has seen a re-emergence of the long debated language 'war' in Montreal, Quebec.

In Canada, 59.7% of the population speak English, 23.2% French and 17.4% speak both.

Both Canadian English and Canadian French are Canada's two official languages, having equal status in federal courts, Parliament, and all federal institutions.

But in the province of Quebec, French is the official language through the Charter of the French Language, also known as Bill 101, and it is in Montreal where the language divide is most significant and conflicted.

85% of French-speaking Canadians live in Quebec.

Politically sensitive issue

The re-emergence has come about after the magazine L'actualité produced a special language report in their recent issue. The cover featured a frog holding a sign reading "Ici, on parle English" (We speak English here).

This sparked a return of the language debate into the political agenda.

If the magazine cover was not cause alone to set the debate rolling, a columnist within the issue went on to state that the results of the report indicated that Anglo-Quebecers were not concerned or felt responsible for the future of the French language.

Though this is just the columnist's interpretation of the results of one of a number of questions put forward to a selection of Anglophones and not the outright conclusion of the report.

Questions raised about the future of French in Montreal

Now politician Pierre Curzi has called for a reform of the original language bill to create a tougher language law, as he believes English is becoming too commonplace in Montreal:

"If we don't do anything, then we will be in a bilingual Montreal and I don't think that's a good thing
for anybody in Quebec."

Curzi believes that laws should be implemented to limit the spread of English.

Bill 593, a new Charter of the French Language?

Under the proposed language law, children would be forced to attend school in French up until university, even in private schools and employers would be forced to provide an explanation for a job posting requiring knowledge of a language other than French.

As for retail shops, a trade name in English would be tolerated, but a generic French term would be required to be added, for example Canadian Tire would become Les magazines generaux Canadian Tire according to CTV Montreal.

Linguicism

If this bill was imposed (and by the public outrage it has generated it is as yet but a distant dream for Curzi), what will have happened to democracy?

In a democratic country it should not be the case where you are forced to use a language, the bill would not control what language people chose to speak in the home and I certainly hope children would not be punished for speaking their own language on the playground.

Linguistic discrimination and linguistic imperialism through force, is most at home in dictatorships, not in a country which is said to have one of the highest standards of living in the world.

An ideal situation would be not the prevalence of either French or discrimination of English in Montreal but the domination of bilingualism, after all, the rest of Canada exists in bilingualism.

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This week has seen a re-emergence of the long debated language 'war' in Montreal, Quebec. In Canada, 59.7% of the population speak English, 23.2% French and 17.4% speak both. Both Canadian English and Canadian French are Canada's two official languages, having equal status in federal courts,

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This picture realates to the article by explaining that the conflict of Quebec French speakers and their English speakers. Since French is the official language it has to be first. Even though many people don't believe French sould be used.

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This video explains the conflict behind Quebecs separating of languages. This video creates a deeper understanding overall of why Qubec is the way it is.

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Article Summary:
The article below explains the tension between African Americans and Whites right now in North America. Many African Americans believe to be a minority compared to Whites  and other races in the United States today. This has been caused by the dhootings that have occured mixed with the past of slavery and segregation. Causing African Americans to riot and protest. Some of these protest have become violent on both sides of protesting.

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This picture relates to the articel by illustrating the protest that have up rose in this between African Americans and the rights they feel they need more control over.

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This map is a map illustrating how segregation has occured. Throughout this map you can see all races spread out and little to no parts blended.

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This video explains in dept the racial tensions in America. The video talks about how the number of people that feel like racial tension are sky rocketing.

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This map illustrates that Quebec is separated by its langauages, and because of this its causing a conflict of what the official langauage really should be.