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Although Sunnis make up the majority of Muslims, not every Muslim belongs to the same Islamic sect. A Muslim's Islamic beliefs may take one of these forms:

Sunni Muslims include 84%-90% of all Muslims. Sunni means "tradition," and Sunnis regard themselves as those who emphasize following the traditions of Muhammad and of the first two generations of the community of Muslims that followed Muhammad.

A number of movements to reform Islam have originated mainly in the 20th century. Some are limited to one country and others have a broader influence. Most are Sunni movements, such as the Wahhabis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Jama`at-i-Islami.

Shi`ite Muslims comprise 10%-16% of all Muslims. Shi`ites are the "party of `Ali," who believe that Muhammad's son-in-law `Ali was his designated successor (imam) and that the Muslim community should be headed by a designated descendent of Muhammad. Three main subgroups of Shi`ites are Twelvers (Ithna-`Asharis), Seveners (Isma`ilis), and Fivers (Zaydis).

Sufis are Islamic mystics. Sufis go beyond external requirements of the religion to seek a personal experience of God through forms of meditation and spiritual growth. A number of Sufi orders, comparable to Christian monastic orders, exist. Most Sufis are also Sunni Muslims, although some are Shi`ite Muslims. Many conservative Sunni Muslims regard Sufism as a corruption of Islam, although most still regard Sufis as Muslims.

Baha'is and Ahmadiyyas are 19th-century offshoots of Shi`ite and Sunni Islam, respectively. Bahai's consider themselves the newest of the major world's religions but recognize that historically they originated from Shi`ite Islam in the same way that Christianity originated from Judaism. Ahmadiyyas do regard themselves as Muslims. Most other Muslims, however, deny that either group is a legitimate form of Islam and regard members of both groups as heretics - people who have corrupted and abandoned Islamic belief and practice.

Druze, Alevis, and `Alawis are small, sectarian groups with unorthodox beliefs and practices that split off from Islam. Druze and Alevis do not regard themselves as Muslims and are not considered Muslims by other Muslims. `Alawis have various non-Islamic practices, but debate continues as to whether they should still be considered Muslims.

This article is from the book:

About the book author:

Professor Malcolm Clark taught in the Department of Religion at Butler University for 30 years.

This article can be found in the category:

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Muslims Adhere to Different Islamic Sects - dummies

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Although Sunnis make up the majority of Muslims, not every Muslim belongs to the same Islamic sect. A Muslim's Islamic beliefs may take one of these forms: Sunni Muslims include 84%-90% of all Muslims. Sunni means "tradition," and Sunnis regard themselves as those who emphasize following the traditions of Muhammad and of the first two generations of the community of Muslims that followed Muhammad.

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Introducing our first book:

1001 Facts to Make your Brain Explode!

Even if you visit Factslides.com every day to get your dosis of new facts -just like over 1 million visitors do every month-, in this book you'll find facts you've never seen before!
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Introducing our first book: 1001 Facts to Make your Brain Explode! Even if you visit Factslides.com every day to get your dosis of new facts -just like over 1 million visitors do every month-, in this book you'll find facts you've never seen before! Check it out on Amazon "

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1,400 Years of Christian/Islamic Struggle: An Analysis

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I was very disappointed to see that U.S. News would publish a clearly false article, adopting the world's clearly false, politically correct (PC) view of the place of the Crusades in history. What makes it even worse, the article hides its views under the additional headline falsehood, "The Truth About the Epic Clash Between Christianity and Islam."

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Time was, across the Arab world, that it was simply rude to ask people their religion or sect, even if it was obvious from their name, their accent, from where they lived or worshipped or the pictures on their walls that they were a Sunni Muslim, Shia, or Christian.

In the glory days of the post-colonial era the focus was on creating an overarching Arab and national identity. Syria, with its mosaic of Sunnis, Alawites, Druze and many Christian communities, boasted of being the "beating heart of Arabism". Even in Lebanon, with its elaborate power-sharing arrangements, confessional identity remained a private matter. Intermarriage was common.

The Ba'ath party, which ruled in both Baghdad and Damascus, was the creation of a Christian ideologue, Michel Aflaq. Two radical Palestinian leaders, George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh, were Christians. So was George Antonius, the great historian of Arab nationalism.

In Iraq, carved by the British out of three Ottoman provinces, a poor, largely rural, Shia majority, a Sunni minority, and the Kurds were the predominant groups. Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, tried to co-opt them all; all were oppressed.

Change was driven by Iran's Islamic revolution of 1979, a cataclysmic moment in Middle Eastern history and an inspiring one for downtrodden Shia everywhere. Saddam's invasion of Iran in 1980 was billed as an Arab war against Persians - and was bankrolled by the Arab and Sunni Gulf states. In 2003, when Saddam was overthrown, Iraqi Shia celebrated by invoking the martyrdom of their revered Imam Hussein at the hands of the Sunni Umayyads at the battle of Kerbala in 680.

Sectarianism reflects real religious differences and defines "otherness", but it has always been linked to power, resources and territory. In Bahrain, the Sunni Al Khalifa dynasty rules over a Shia majority denied its rightful place in the system, but Manama blames Tehran for fomenting unrest. Saudi Arabia similarly accuses Iran of causing trouble in the Shia-dominated east. In both cases the accusation masks genuine local problems.

Over the past four years the vicious war in Syria has amplified sectarian sentiment so that Alawites are now identified en masse with Bashar al-Assad and Sunnis with the opposition. Lebanon's Hezbollah, a militant Shia group backed by Iran and supporting Assad, reinforces this binary narrative. But disputes exist of course within sects while other ties transcend religious identity.

Extremist Sunni preachers based in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait abuse Shia as "idol-worshippers" - the intolerant language of Wahhabi exclusivity. Iranians are scorned as "Safawis", a pejorative reference to the 16th-century Safavid dynasty. Fanatical jihadis such as the Islamic State justify the killing of "apostates" under the doctrine of " takfir".

In its heyday, al-Qaida targeted the "far enemy" - America in particular. But the Islamic State has placed anti-Shia sentiment at the centre of its poisonous ideology. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, its "caliph", has ignored pleas by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's successor, to refrain from the indiscriminate killing of Shia and, instead, to attack the Shia-dominated and Alawite regimes in Iraq and Syria.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the influential Sunni cleric given a platform by al-Jazeera TV, famously denounced Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah (the "party of God") as the leader of the "party of Satan".

So sectarianism has certainly raised its ugly head in recent years - but a lot of people have worked hard to make that happen. And social media has made it easier than ever to spread toxic and intolerant messages.

Yet sectarianism is not the main cause of divisions in the Middle East. Yemen's deepening crisis involves the rebel Houthis of the Zaydi sect, linked to Shia Islam but close to the country's majority Sunni doctrine. The support they get from Iran is primarily about winning allies and projecting power - the main reason the Houthis face armed intervention from Saudi Arabia.

To say that Iran backs the Houthis for religious reasons "is like assuming that Scottish Presbyterians will always support Southern Baptists because both are forms of Protestantism", says Juan Cole, a US academic and commentator on the Middle East. It is the geopolitical context that gives this conflict its sectarian hue, not the other way round.

Egypt's Muslims are monolithically Sunni but the 2011 revolution and its divisive and repressive aftermath have seen the Coptic Christian minority identified as supporters of the old regime and targeted by Islamist extremists.

In the Maghreb, where the Arab spring began so hopefully with the Tunisian uprising, sectarianism is not an issue, though extremism has spread back poisonously from the war in Syria and the growth of Isis. In Libya, Morocco and Algeria, Berber rights and identity are important, but not the focus of a crisis.

It is worth remembering that the Arab awakenings began everywhere with calls for secular reform. "Whatever tribe, clan, religion, sect or ethnic group they belonged to, citizens asked for 'dignity' before anything else," wrote Talal Salman in the Lebanese paper al-Safir. "It was only over time that sectarian tendencies came to the forefront. As transitions appeared to be regressing, people increasingly chose to identify themselves along tribal or confessional lines, rather than political ones.

"Arabs today are like brothers and enemies at the same time. Each subgroup brandishes its religious or ethnic identity to confront the other subgroup in a futile war, in which all will lose ... In short, the fall of Arabism as a unifying identity will mark the start of a series of civil wars among brothers. And once those wars start, nobody knows when or how they will end."
Topics

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Sunni v Shia: why the conflict is more political than religious

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Time was, across the Arab world, that it was simply rude to ask people their religion or sect, even if it was obvious from their name, their accent, from where they lived or worshipped or the pictures on their walls that they were a Sunni Muslim, Shia, or Christian.

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If Islam were just a religion, it would be of no concern except for potential converts. But Islam is a complete civilization. It is the completeness concept that makes Islam a threat to all other civilizations. There is no issue so small that Islam does not have an opinion, position or rule.

Since Islam is based upon the principle of submission, there is nothing so small that it must not submit to the Islamic civilization. Art, history, literature, human rights, equal treatment of all citizens under the law, free speech, critical thinking, names, education, sports, TV, movies, government and food must all be under Islamic rule of law-Sharia. This is a process of civilizational annihilation. It is the same process that took a Christian Turkey and transformed it into a 99.7% Muslim nation.

Bill Warner

This article is reprinted from the ACT, West Nashville website and gives an insight into the problem of political Islam.

Civilizational Conflict

by D. L. Adams

President Obama recently assured the "Muslim World" that we are not war with Islam, and never will be. The response has been less than encouraging. The lack of buy-in to Obama's message of friendship and pandering to the "Muslim World" is because while we may not be at war with them, they are certainly at war with us.

Throughout history there have been civilizations that are so fundamentally different from one another that no interaction or accommodation between them could be possible. This is the situation with Islam. Because Islam is at war with every kafir state and religion everywhere and forever, accommodation or understanding with Islam in the Obama model cannot be successful.

The doctrine of Islam states that no religion is acceptable other than Islam; it asserts Islam's superiority over every political and religious system anywhere and for all time. Adherents to the ideology of Islam are required to "fight in Allah's cause" even though they'd not prefer to be involved in such things. Allah commands that all must be involved in Jihad or at least support those who are. Islam is much more than a religion, it is also a political, cultural, legal, and military system that encompasses the entirety of existence from birth to death; it is a comprehensive ideology.

Because the majority of the Koran discusses how adherents are to interact with non-believers the Koran is the foundational document of a political ideology whose purpose is the conversion and destruction of all non-Muslim states and cultures and peoples everywhere and forever. This conversion and destruction of non-Muslim peoples is acccomplished through Jihad.

Jihad is asymmetrical war. This is the kind of warfare we now face in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is about propaganda, street violence, assassinations, church burnings, brutality and barbarism and small unit actions of violence and mass-murder that terrify the kafirs into inaction. There are no mass armies on the move in this war (though some jihad actions in the past have involved such kinds of warfare), no massive air bombing campaigns like those of WW2 there is only constant strife and conflict at the street level and into the institutions of the host culture whereby they are undermined and prevented from mounting an effective defense.

There are two phases of Islamic jihad, active warfare and hudna. Hudna is not peace because no Mulsim is bound by any treaty of word or paper with a non-Muslim. Treaties between Muslims and kafirs are worth less than the paper that they are printed upon. Mohammed broke treaties, and encouraged lies and deceptions in Jihad and that is exactly what we see today.

"The Quran also allows them to be "disobedient towards the disbelievers and their governments and strive against the unbelievers with great endeavour." (25:52) - Shoebat, Why We Want to Kill You, p214

Westerners confuse the temporary period of non-fighting which is "hudna" with actual peace. The truth is that hudna is just a period of time that passes without conflict while the forces of jihad regroup, rearm and wait for new opportunities to fight the kafir unbelievers. Mohammed used this tactic to great success as do all of his followers over time.

There is no peace with Islam and with Jihad, there is only a temporary pause as the jihadists await better opportunities. For many it is difficult to conceive that this status quo of fighting punctuated by pauses could be a tactic rather than a situational response to political conflict (e.g., Israel-Palestine). Our leaders say that we are not at war because they cannot conceive that this kind of warfare can be real, but it is. This is entirely an ignorance-based position. We are very much at war with Islam but we do not defend ourselves because our leadership has deluded itself into believing that the war is not real.

But the war is very real, and we are losing it because we will not take action for defense.

We are overrun and in retreat everywhere even as we apologize to our enemies and pretend that their culture is foundational to our own, which is false. We cannot fight a war that is waged against us when we pretend that it is not happening. Jihad has never stopped since the founding of this ideology, it only pauses. So long as the trilogy doctrine of Islam requires adherents to "fight in Allah's Cause" everywhere and forever, we are at war with Islam because they are at war with us. This is not a matter of opinion it is rather a matter of the acceptance of an ugly reality.

In the Islamic world honor and pride override all boundaries and linkages of kin and morality. Those who offend the honor and pride of their Islamic families do so at their peril. Family bonds and responsibilities are subsumed by the demands of Islam. The Umma of Islam is the family to adherents. This is contrary to our western concepts of the overriding value of family connections. One's connection to Islam is more important than one's connections to family, father and children, sister and brother, etc.

In their investigation, PCHR said police sources "revealed that the victim's father issued a confession to the police" that he had killed his daughter to "preserve family honor." (Maan News, see link above)

In the first incident of its kind, a Palestinian family has killed its 15-year-old son in the West Bank after accusing him of "collaboration" with Israel. Raed Wael Sawalha's body was discovered in the basement of a house in his village of Hijjah in the Kalkilya area on Wednesday.

The Palestinian Authority security forces announced that they have arrested a number of the boy's family members in connection with the killing. (Jerusalem Post)

This kind of barbarity is fundamentally in opposition to our concepts of morality and family relationships. This is a civilizational conflict.

Recently in Pakistan a Christian man was murdered for drinking from a cup that was designated for Muslims only. He was beaten to death with "stones, iron rods and clubs" by 14 Muslim men. This is barbarism and this is a civilization opposed to our own. A recent public beating in Afghanistan by a Taliban man puts on clear display the totalitarian brutality of Islam and those states that follow Sharia law.

Several weeks ago, a US Army private was killed in front of an army recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas. The killer was a Muslim jihadist. A memorial service for this victim of Islamic jihad was held in Little Rock. A Muslim woman in a burka showed up at the event screaming Islamic supremacist and Jew hatred slogans, interfering with the memorial. This was all captured on video. (See below).

Why would someone interfere at a memorial event for an innocent American murdered by a new-fangled Muslim jihadist killer? Interfering in the service was this woman's jihad, fighting in Allah's cause against the kafir. No compassion is extended to the kafir unbelievers in jihad, no basic courtesy even in mourning is given. Kafirs are less than human, they do not merit any courtesies from Muslims. Terrorizing kafirs, confusing them, and preventing them from following their own traditions of remembrance and respect are all jihad actions.

The kafir culture and kafirs themselves merit no respect by Islam and its adherents. Because kafirs have not accepted Allah and Mohammed so they are therefore the enemy. Islam knows its enemies - all non-believers wherever they might be. We do not know ours. "The sheep do not know the wolf, but the wolf knows the sheep." (Walid Shoebat)

Deconstruction of western traditions and even funeral observances are all part of the ongoing jihad. This is asymmetrical warfare in this civilizational conflict. We pretend it is not real - but it will not go away nevertheless.

Bill Warner

Copyright © 2009 CBSX, LLC
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Civilizational Conflict - Political Islam

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If Islam were just a religion, it would be of no concern except for potential converts. But Islam is a complete civilization. It is the completeness concept that makes Islam a threat to all other civilizations. There is no issue ... Read More

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Islamic place of worship

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Allah is the "God"

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[This post was originally published on September 11, 2014, but it's worth revisiting in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, which killed over 100 people and for which ISIS claimed responsibility.]
Conservatives reacted harshly to President Obama's claim on Wednesday night that the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) "is not Islamic," accusing the commander-in-chief of naiveté and ignorance. "What kindergartner briefs the President on terrorism?" Ron Christie, a GOP strategist tweeted. "ISIS says it's Islamic, lots of people say it's Islamic, only the president won't," George Will told Fox News shortly after the speech.

But the full context of Obama's remark points to an important distinction between Islam and the extremist ideology that's sweeping parts of Iraq and Syria. "No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim," Obama said. "ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way."

Indeed, even from the viewpoint of a casual observer, ISIS is an abomination to Islam. Explosions tend to capture the media's attention more than peaceful coexistence, and a minuscule minority of extremist groups claiming to be Islamic have exploited this fact as a way to reinvent Islam as a "violent" religion. But just because you shout God's name while committing murder doesn't make your actions righteous. Islam, as millions of Muslims can attest, is a peaceful religion that calls on its followers to choose community over conflict, or, as it says in Surah al-Hujurat of the Qur'an (49:13): "O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise [each other])."

Even from the viewpoint of a casual observer, ISIS is an abomination to Islam.

But ISIS clearly has little regard for this or other fundamental tenets of Islam. They have sparked the rage of Iraqi Muslims by carelessly blowing up copies of the Qur'an, and they have killed their fellow Muslims, be they Sunni or Shia. Even extremist Muslims who engage in warfare have strict rules of engagement and prohibitions against harming women and children, but ISIS has opted to ignore even this by slaughtering innocent youth and using rape and sexual slavery as a weapon.

And despite the conservative backlash, Obama's analysis has received support from an unlikely voice: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). During an appearance on Fox News' Hannity, the potential 2016 presidential candidate, praised the president for differentiating ISIS ideology from the beliefs of Muslims in America and around the world. "Well, I think there was one important point that he was making about them not being Islamic or a form of true Islam," he said. "I think it is important not only to the American public but for the world and the Islamic world to point out this is not a true form of Islam. This is an aberrant form that should not represent most of the civilized Islamic world."

It's always a tricky business decrying a religious tradition that is not your own.

Granted, it's always a tricky business decrying a religious tradition that is not your own. Also, while many faiths have internal hierarchies with judges that decide what is or isn't proper behavior, Islam is a decentralized religious tradition that - as much as ISIS claims otherwise - lacks a single religious authority. But just as the diverse collective of Protestant Christians listen to each other, the opinion of a broader Islamic community always matters, and President Obama's condemnation of ISIS is backed up by a global chorus of Muslim voices that are working to rebuke the group's claim on Islam. Virtually every single American Muslim organization has publicly disavowed both the ideology and the practices of ISIS, and just hours before Obama's address, dozens of Muslim American clerics and community leaders distanced their religion from the beliefs of the terrorist extremists. "ISIS and al Qaeda represent a warped religious ideology," Faizal Khan, imam of the Islamic Society of America mosque in Silver Spring, said during a press conference with Muslim-American leaders from Indonesia, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Sudan and Trinidad. "Either we reject this violence in the clearest possible terms, or we allow them to become the face of Islam and the world's perception of us for years to come."

Countless Islamic groups around the globe have also vehemently rejected ISIS. French Imams are blasting the militant group from their pulpits. Britian's largest Mosque has declared them "Un-Islamic." Sunni and Shia clerics in Iraq have distributed a fatwa to nearly 50,000 mosques announcing that ISIS is "not in any way linked to [the Muslim] faith" and warning that failing to stand up against the group is effectively a sin. Even Egypt's Grand Mufti has lambasted the group, and Dar al-Ifta, one of the most influential Muslim schools in the world, has launched a global campaign to strike the word "Islamic" from ISIS's title, seeking to rebrand it as "al-Qaeda Separatists in Iraq and Syria," or QSIS, saying the organization has "tarnished image of Islam across the globe."

As one Libyan tweeted: "If you think Muslims aren't condemning ISIS, it's not because Muslims aren't condemning ISIS. It's because you're not listening to Muslims."

"If you think Muslims aren't condemning ISIS, it's not because Muslims aren't condemning ISIS. It's because you're not listening to Muslims."

This issue, of course, isn't unique to Islam. The Ku Klux Klan burns crosses and preaches hate in the name of Jesus Christ, and the ostensibly Christian "Lord's Resistance Army" regularly ravages villages and recruits child soldiers in Western Africa. Hindu extremists burned mosques and sparked violence in India in the 1990s. Buddhist extremists exist, and are spewing hatred in several parts of Asia. But in all of these cases, the vast majority of believers worked or are working to disavow the actions of fanatics and preserve the core, peaceful principles of their faith - just as Muslims are now doing with ISIS.

Ultimately, the decision of whether or not one is or isn't religious is left up to God. But we are all tasked with religious life here on earth, where the opinion of a religious community should matter, and Muslims the world over have made their position clear: No matter how many people they kill to gain power, how many fellow Muslims they terrorize into submission, or how loudly they scream their self-righteous blasphemy to the heavens, ISIS is not - nor will ever be - Islamic.

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This post was originally published on September 11, 2014, but it's worth revisiting in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris , which killed over 100 people and for which ISIS claimed responsibility.] Conservatives reacted harshly to President Obama's claim on Wednesday night that the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) "is not Islamic," accusing the commander-in-chief of naiveté and ignorance.

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1. Faith or belief in the Oneness of God (Allah) and the finality of the Prophet hood of Muhammad, peace be upon him
2. Establishment of the 5 daily prayers;
3. Concern for and almsgiving to the needy;
4. Self-purification through fasting in the month of Ramadan.
5. The pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.

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"Islam means to submit freely to The Commandments and Will of The One and Only God (Allah). This submission should come from within, from sound belief in and conviction to Allah, with no doubt. It should also come from love, trust, and affection."

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Different branches of Islam                    

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Different branches of Islam                    

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"The Muslims you might meet and talk with  will probably not all hold the same set of beliefs and doctrines.  Just as within Christianity there are different denominations, and varying individually held beliefs within each. However several main denominations can be identified.

Many Muslims are very peaceable and friendly.

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Muslim population of South-eastern Asia population

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Muslim population of South-eastern Asia population

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"Beliefs are important in Islam. Right beliefs about God, the universe, and humanity is of primary concern to Muslims. The Quran, the sacred text of Islam states, "Righteous is he who believes in Allah and the Last Day and the Angels and the Scriptures and the Prophets" (2:177). Belief in these doctrines, as well as many others, are important to Muhammad's followers, both past and present."