• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Sunni and Shi'a - Comparisons

filcee

filcee

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jun 12, 2002
Messages
508
I've been watching the news regarding the Middle East recently, particularly that concerning Iraq (Please mods, don't merge this just yet...), and would like to know more about the schism in the Moslem faith that gave rise to the two different flavours - Sunni and Shi'a (and wether there are any more off shoots from the main Islamic faith).
I've done a bit of background reading - the Shi'a 'Ali (Partisans(?) of 'Ali) making an appearance after the death of Mohammed and supporting the succession of 'Ali, Mohammeds chosen successor to the position of Caliate(sp?), whereas the Sunni supported Mohammeds father-in-law(?), but I don't know how relevant this information is to modern Moslems of either flavour.
With so many people apparently taking advantage of the differences, are there any real similarities that could be used to bring the two groups together?
If the Caliate is still a recognised position in Islam, could the current one not extend some influence to reduce the tensions between them?
Any information would be much appreciated :) .
 
yep, it all originated in a succession dispute. The main, sunni line supported the principle of succession through nomination (although this was to solidify into a hereditary system after 661), while the Shii favoured a lineal descent through Hz Ali who was held to have been selected for the post by Hz Muhammad (aleyhi selam).

Liturgically, the two are not all that different - true, they follow different liturgical schools, the sunni gathering to pray 5 times as opposed to the shii 3 times a day, but in the essentials there is no real conflict bar over the legitimate leadership of the Islamic world.

The Caliphates...the shii Imamate has entered occultation (after the 7th or 12th Imam, depending on the school) and is deemed to operate at a subtle level. the sunni caliphate reigned in Baghdad til 1256, when the Mongols sacked the city and executed the incumbant. After that, the sole link to the lineage was takn into custody by the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, where it faded into the background. In the early 16th century the Ottoman Sultan Selim occupied the Mamluk domains and the title passed to the Ottoman line, although it was only emphasised in the late 19th century.

The Caliphate was 'abolished' by decree by Mustapha Kemal Atatürk in the mid 1920s.

Caliphal advocates still exist, but do not constitute a real political force. It has become the Muslim equivalent of Jacobite loyalism - romantic & doomed.
 
at school we did a term on ottoman empire in european history.

can't remember much but /do/ recall that there was the usual A4 not-on-the-exam summary of What Happened Next for the keenies....

and in that one of the two groups was portrayed as Good and the other as Bad....

will attempt to recall exactly what the grounds were... and even which way the distinction went :) as an interesting snippet on the teaching of it, not as anything aproaching reality!

Kath
 
probably refers to the wars conducted between the Ottoman & safavid empires from the 16th - 18th centuries. During the early 16th century in particular, atrocities were perpetrated against the 'kizilbasi' - Turk shii who were viewed by the Ottomans as a fifth column for the Shii Iranian Empire. The Kizilbasi are seen as the ancesters of the Alevi, a heterodox shii sect active in Anatolia, some parts of Syria and the Balkans.

I'd imagine it'd be sunni bad guys/shii good guys...though as always life is never so simple.
 
stupidly, I overlooked the most important part of the original question - is it all still an issue?

Answer - for some, yes.

Some Shii possess a very dark view of the Sunni due to the events of the 7th century - analogous to the commemoration of 17th century politics in Northern Ireland. for most, it is a matter of tradition that defines them as distinct from the majority, and nothing more.

Generalising about the Shii is impossible - they may be the minority branch, but they have branched an awful lot themselves.

From the Sunni side, it is not so much an issue - though some maintain that the Shii are not Muslim (something I vehemently reject). Typically, Sunni see the argument as one sided - they have no interest in reviving the memory of long past civil wars.

On the whole, outside the occasionally friction encountered in places like Iraq & India (where on closer examination other factors are more significant) Sunni and Shii can peacefully co-exist.
 
Alexius - I never cease to be staggered by the depth of your understanding, and your capacity to make meaningful analogies.

What is your opinion of Attaturk (sp), I would be glad to know?
 
shy :)

my view on Atatürk....believe it or not, as I am writing in Turkey, and the criticism of the man's memory being a criminal offence, I can't comment publicly.

That perhaps speaks of his legacy.

For a hagiography, Lord Kinross's 'Atatürk' is a fine study.

For a more down to earth assessment of the aftermath of that particular reign, just read the newspapers: every poor boy returning to his village in a coffin from Hakkari or Bingöl says all that need be said.

Amnesty International can tell you the rest.

üzgün, üzgün perdeleri düsür... gözyasimsi yagmur yagur...
 
What about Sufi? How does that fit in with the others?
 
in modern turkey? illegal. has been since 1925.

most orders meet in secret; some have been forced to shift from location to location, one step ahead of the police. arrests are now rare, but there was a bad time in the late 20s when there were hangings.

now it's just a matter of maintaining omerta in public.

as for where the sufi fit into the Sunni/Shii pattern: their are sufi orders on both sides, as well as other spiritual associations such as the futuwwah/jawan mardi brotherhoods & the guilds.

Attitudes towards sufism vary. Modernists and radical revivalists reject sufism (on the whole - there are exceptions); traditonalists & classicists tend to accept it to a greater or lesser extent.

Case in point - the Taleban. When the Taleban first appeared around Kandhahar in the early 90's, they drew support from the radical Deobandi medresas (radical revivalists) and some portions of the Naqshbandi & Qadiri circles (sufi). Gradually, the radical agenda ame to the fore and the sufi were pushed to the side; the more unorthodox orders, suh as the Chishtiyeh (wonderful people) were banned outright. Now the Taleban have been swept away, the orders have sprung back into life.

In general, the sufi tend to have a stabalisng influence due to their being largely pacific. There are exceptions; the wars in the Caucasus have been long associated with the Naqshbandi & Qadiri orders (the slide towards terrorism suggests a loss of influence over the movement). In Northern Iraq, the Naqshbandi were at the sharp end of the insurgncy against Saddam Hussein. However, Turkey is a good example of the norm: the prevalence of sufism at a popular level has ensured violent radicalism has hardly taken hold. Ironic, given the official stance.

I should emphasise that the modern Islamic world is a mess, and generalisation across all the different sects and branches is impossible. I have had to paint with very broad strokes.
 
Alexius, thanks for a sane voice in these discussions of Islam.

I, for one, fully understand the respect you hold for Ataturk
 
Alexius, thanks for your insights into Islam. I had always assumed Islam was Islam (good old CofE ignorance:rolleyes: ), and there was, somewhere, a senior religious figure to whom all other Moslems were responsible.
 
Hasn't been a unified leadership since 632, when the prophet passed...been a story of fragmentation & periodic coalescence ever since.

Certainly, at the moment, there is no centre whatsoever. Whether we are heading towards Renaissance or Dark Age remains to be seen.

I belong to the Classicist, 'dreaming of Al Andalus' party...less politics, more Aristotle & Galen, chess & music ;)
 
Thanks! There is a Sufi charity shop in town, I'll have to check it out sometime.
 
ah, now if that is Glastonbury, I know those folks...pass my selams - the proprietess is a wonderful woman ;)

they often have open meetings - worth checking out.

:)
 
Salam Alaikum, Alexius
Not sure if you've seen the latest FT and the review of the book, "Egyptian Mystics: Seekers of the way" by Moustafa Goudalla. If you have could you give your comment, as our resident Sufi and Islamic scholar, on the theory that Sufism developed from the Egyptian cult of Zikr via Dhu 'l-Nun?
 
aleykum selam :)

ooh, that sounds interesting...actually, I haven't seen the latest edition (regrettably hard to find in Istanbul).

Dhul Nun was an early sufi...will dig you up some details of his life and work today.

Zikr (or Dhikr) means 'remembrance', and has two main connotations: the liturical repetition of words or sentences, and the deeper sense of the consciousness of Allah.

Did sufism orginate in an older cult? the idea has been mooted before, with Eastern Christianity & Mihraism touted in their time. The thing is that although elements of other faiths certainly seem to have been assimulated (for instance, the 'lataif' anatomy as formulated by the Middle Asian orders is very reminiscent of the chakra system) the most important pointsseem to be wholly derived from Islamic, arab sources. Lataif again - indeed, the formulation among the Naqshbandi & Kubrawiyeh seems rather Buddhist, but the meaning and doctrine seems wholly Muslim.

Now, some writers (the late Idris Shah being a good example) have gone out of their way to decontextualise sufism. The logic seems to be that Sufism is groovy but Islam is square, so the two must be different. Not so - sufism can be best seen as the heart of Islam - maybe it's purest manifestation - and it is in fact very hard to view it otherwise. Nonetheless, there are a number of interests out there (including radical secularists in countries like Egypt and Turkey & Islamic modernists & revivalists) who have an interest in explaining away how sufism differs from their received notion of how Islam should be.

Bearing that in mind, the thesis you describe strikes me as being one such exercise. But I would need more information before I can make a judgement. Could you post up some more information on the thesis?
 
Alexius said:
ah, now if that is Glastonbury, I know those folks...pass my selams - the proprietess is a wonderful woman ;)

they often have open meetings - worth checking out.

:)
Click to expand...

Thats the one! (in fact, OT, I lived above the shop for 11 years but it wasn't a Sufi shop then!)
 
rightey-ho - Dhul Nun

According to Farid ad-Din Attar e Nishapuri, writing in the 12th century, Abu 'l Faiz Thauban ibn Ebrahim al Mesri was born in Upper Egypt c. 796 and died in Cairo in 861.

He was a notable early sufi, about whom a rich body of anecdote exists; but he was also famed as an alchemist who was reputed to have been able to understand the hieroglyphic script. In 829 he was arrested upon a charge of heresy, and tried in Baghdad - however, unlike the famed Al Hallaj, he was acquitted and allowed to return to his studies.

Now, does sufism originate with Dhul Nun? Nope! There were other, earlier or contempory figures of greater significance - Junaid in Baghdad, Bistami in Khorosan, Rabia in Basra. The debate over the relationship of mysticism to orthodoxy focused on the Baghdadi & Khorasani schools- if Dhul Nun fits in, it is as one of many figures active reviving classical or Hellenistic learning at a time of tremendous intellectual ferment. Dhul Nun certainly seems to have been on the Neo-Platonic side, which was an undercurrent - the main school of thought was Aristotelian.

Was Dhul Nun an interesting character, drawing upon Hellenistic Egyptian tradition? Certainly looks that way. But to assert he was the well-spring of sufism as a whole flys in the face of an awful lot of evidence to the contrary.

Sources to browse: Attar 'Lives of the Muslim Saints' and Anne Marie Schimmel's general works on Sufism dedicate some time to him, if I recall.

Here is a typical Dhul Nun anecdote:

One day, Dhul Nun gave one of his postulants a special task - carry this box to a Sheikh in a neighbouring town - then bring it back. Whatever you do, he said, don't look inside!

So, off the lad trots...the box starts moving...the lad looks inside..and out leaps a mouse...scarpers.

Lad goes back to Dhul Nun with the empty box. Can I be a sufi now, he asks?

No way! Says Dul Nun. Think about it; if I can't trust you with a box of fekking mice , how can I entrust you with the deepest secrets of the human condition?

Obviously, Dhul Nun wouldn't have said 'fek'....well, maybe...;)
 
Alexius writes

my view on Atatürk....believe it or not, as I am writing in Turkey, and the criticism of the man's memory being a criminal offence, I can't comment publicly.

That perhaps speaks of his legacy.

For a hagiography, Lord Kinross's 'Atatürk' is a fine study.

For a more down to earth assessment of the aftermath of that particular reign, just read the newspapers: every poor boy returning to his village in a coffin from Hakkari or Bingöl says all that need be said.

Amnesty International can tell you the rest.


I write

I find it a very interesting and revealing anomaly that you do not feel it prudent to reveal your views on certain aspects of the previous century's political adventures. For some of my turkish-cypriot friends, the person in question is a hero, because he was a nationalist, who helped them develop a sense of national identity..


I don't do hagiographies without thowing up.

Poor boys returning in coffins are such a pervasive feature of Irish hagiography that I tend to distrust them as anything except the fashion of the moment. They are horribly and cynically discarded when the political fashion suits the situation. I am talking about the past two hundred years here. And My ancestors fought on various sides. And still I have come to the conclusion that if I were to be given the gift to go back and change history I would not.


My view on Attaturk is that he was trying to force Turkey into Europe.

He had reasons for doing this, but he perhaps went about it in a way which alienated people that he should have been persuading in a more civilised fashion.


No-one from Western Europe, or Asia, or the Middle East fully realises the "Compromise" culture that has allowed people of differing religious and political beliefs to live alongside each other in the Caucasus for more than a thousand years without exploding. I believe that people in this region are natural diplomats, and should be left to decide their own modus operandi, without interference. It is also sad that you are the only person who represents islamic culture here on the notice-board, as it is exhausting for you to try to defend such a wide-ranging belief on your own.

In any case, I would welcome your views on the situation.
 
Complex, multi-faceted situation - children are taught to venerate the man in school - every class room, by law, holds his portrait & his 'address to youth', which warns the youth of the country to defend the march of progress against enemies with in and without...

Yes, a hero to many; but also a justification the repressive imposition of a narrow breed of secularism and nationalist chauvinism.

For myself, I have to live with the comforting thought that my peaceful, law-abiding religious affiliation may lose me my livelihood should it be exposed, and that everytime I leave home to partake of a sacrament, there is a very small but ever present chance I may not return - I may never have to hear the boots on the stairwell, but I can never wholly discount it.

Hero? Depends where you happen to be, and who you are. The biggest question for many people is why there hasn't been a civil war. The answer seems to be that folk just don't want to settle it that way ( certainly on our side). A Fabian approach to reform is favoured, which strikes me as wise given the petulence and immaturity of the forces we have to contend with. There is a faith in Turkey outgrowing the absurdity of it all, and definite signs of it beginning to happen. Just a question of showing people who have been educated to despise and fear that there is, in fact, nothing to fear, and that what they despise possesses nobility.


As for the forging of national identity....Turkish nationalism, perhaps like all nationalisms, is a mythology paraded as fact. Turkey is trying to recover from the stringent cultural engineering of the 20s and 30s - perhap may never fully recover from the cultural impoverishment it incurred when, for intstance, an authority was formed to purge the dictionary of non Turkish terms and words...about 60 per cent of the language was officially discarded.

A beautiful thing, the destruction of words...
 
oops, me again...

just noticed the tag about modus vivendi in the region. It did exist, although it has been badly upset by the adoptation of nationalist doctrines unsuited to the area (perhaps unsuited for anyone, anywhere).

It orginates in the absense of a tradition of convertion. Sure, in the very early years of the expansion of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula, a policy of forced conversion was pursued, but once the movement broke out from the homeland it ceased. As Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Iran fell under the Caliphate, the indiginous Christian, Jewish & Zoroastrian population were granted freedom of worship and the administration in civil cases within their community in return for a poll tax.

This tradition developed under the Ottomans into a system of effectively devolved 'millets' - for instance, the Greek Orthodox Patriachate levied taxation from the faithful on behalf of the Caliphate, administered justice through it's own courts, possessed it's own prisons, and organised it's own educational and social institutions.

Unrest usually occured as a response to the abuse of the system, rather than the system itself - the widespread practise of tax farming in from the late 16th century onwards led to abuses, as it did in France during the same period. The wind only really changes when the nationalism of the early 19th century filtered down into the Balkans, and led to a reinvention of identity.

Intercommunal tensions existed - for example, Easter was the traditional Greek Orthodox rioting season, when Jews were attacked in the streets - but the existence of an over-arching authority tended to keep the ferment to a tolerable simmer.

The Ottoman system of goverment through all its phases is a vast subject, and perhaps a timely one. Arguably, the constitutional monarchy, complete with traditional checks and balances, that emerged in the writings of the Young Ottoman movement in the late 19th provides a viable alternative to the imposition of Western models, as it is grounded in the Caliphal tradition of goverment while being compatible with western ideals of comprehensive representaion and accountability. Sadly, it was overtaken by Turkish Nationalism in 1908, and is now a memory.

Incidentally, a friend of mine commented recently that Iraq was known during the Ottoman era as 'The Realm that Rends Itself'. The Ottoman solution was not to unify, but to establish a balance of interests within a greater whole. Which seems to be the key to the Ottoman system; as an Ottoman civil servent commented to an American journalist during the opening sitting of the Parliament of 1876 when asked to point out the different nationalities: There are no nationalites - we are all brothers within the family of Osman.
 
It is also sad that you are the only person who represents islamic culture here on the notice-board, as it is exhausting for you to try to defend such a wide-ranging belief on your own.
Click to expand...


a-hem... incorrect.


* sad?

* only person?

* defend?


Couldn't possibly comment on Alexius's degree of exhaustion but have always appreciated his vigour.

Kath
 
True enough - I have seldom seen anything approaching an assault on Islam on this board (bar occasional ill-informed comments that have always -as a rule- been jumped on by other posters) and so there has been no call for me to defend nuffink.

which is nice.

I seem to recall other Muslim posters in the past...but maybe none at present. for the vast majority of threads it is not really relavent, in anycase - it only comes into play when I can give an insider's view.

sad? well, I've never thought of it that way. doubt anyone else wants two of me ;)

exhausted? nope. banging at the keyboard about a thing I love is not exhausting. may exhaust others, though, for which I apologise :)

only thing that exhausts me is ghastliness. fortunately, a very rare occurance in these climes.

(Incidentally, nothing I write should be taken as gospel - I'm not an expert on anything; just someone with a curious museum of a mind. ;))
 
Hi Alexius, or should I say merhaba?

Pretty much OT, but related to your last comments about the 'creation' of the Turkish language, I wondered if you'd read Orhan Pamuk's "My Name is Red"? It tells a similar story about the death of miniturist painting, especially the stylised form, where humans, animals and plants adhered to strict templates, only to be destroyed by the advent of personalised human faces and renaissance techniques such as perspective. An interesting read.

I'd also be interested to know more about the origins of modern Turkish and it's precursors. Having the unenviable pleasure of watching Indonesian MTV here in Thailand, I was struck by it's outward simularity to turkish, arabic base words, rather contrived and lengthy words with multiple additional suffixes etc. What was the original Turkish language (or languages) aside from arabic (which I assume was mostly used for religious purposes), and does anyone speak any of them anymore?

Having spent a delirious 3 months in Istanbul I'm highly jealous that you live in what is, IMHO, one of the most fascinating cities in the world.

Gule gule :)

Dot23
 
merhaba dot canim ;)

Where does Turkish come from? Considered by linquists to belong to the Uralic-Altaic group (although I believe there is some controversy of what that groups consists of), related to the Turkic languages of Middle Asia, Korean, and some say with a distant relationship to Finnish and Japanese.

Like all the languages of the Islamic heratland, Turkish has absorbed a lot of Arabic (merhaba is arabic) and through the dominance of Farsi as the language of literature until the 19th century, has a fair scattering of Persain as well. Add to that 19th & 20th century borrowings from French and occasionally English, and some older loans from Italian & Greek, and you have modern Turkish.

The diffeence between Modern Turkish and the older Ottoman dialects lies in the degree of outside influence. The reforms of the 20s and 30s set about trimming off what they considered to be alien usage in favour of authentic Turkic words (in some cases revived from very old texts and reintroduced to balance the loss of comparable Arabic or Farsi terms. If you imagine an attempt to purge English of words and grammar originating in Middle French, Latin or Greek, then you get some idea of the effect it has had.

Ottoman was a remarkable language - the synthesis of Turkish, Arabic & Farsi, harmonising elements from three distinct language groups. Some people can still read it and a few can speak it, but as a result of study...most folk cannot make head nor tail of it, which has cut them off from their literary and textual heritage.

That said, quite a few folk from the Eastern provinces of Anatolia in particular speak a form of Turkish that is close to the older norms, especially if their mother tongue is kurdish, zaza or arabic.

will try to track down the Parmuk novel, as it sounds good :)
 
This is fast turning into a an Alexius appreciation thread.

I was well aware of the influence and worship of Ataturk (my father had him tattooed on his arm) but I had no idea that the Turks had religious differences as the traditional view is that they are very 'low-key' Muslims. I can only go on my own experience but the Turks I've known have all had the attitude that Islam is very important to their lifes but they take the tenets as they see fit.

I had no idea about the purging of the language either.....maybe I should pay more attention to my heritage.
 
Folk tend to dismiss the Turks as Islamic light weights, but as with all genralisations it topples on closer examination. While it is certainly true that Turkish Islam tends to be flexible and tolerant (a very good thing) it also runs deep: during the 20s, the attempt to impose Turkish upon the litugy was resisted by force of arms, and in the late 70's the Nationalist Front was bolstered by ordinary folk who were emotionally opposed to the threat they saw implicit in the assertion of Leninist/Maoist groups.

On the other hand, Kurdish folk are often more vigorously Muslim, as are the Arabs. The Black sea peoples hold to their own, tolerant tradition of Islam (which a lot of them would gladly fight for, given the chance).

Add to that the enormous affiliation to the sufi orders and other associations, and you have a very complex picture. The most striking thing is the virtual absense of radical Islamism - the recent bombings here surprised and shocked everyone.

Given the pressure exerted upon those who have chosen the older outlook on life due to the laws passed in February 1998 (bans on religious dress in schools and official posts, and such like) the absense of violent ferment is remarkable, and heartening. The violent impulse seems to lie with the far left and nationalist groupings, who fortunately seem to be diminshing as a new generation embrace MTV.
 
OK, Lemonpie - here it is ;)

How to set up your own Islamic polity.

Actually, I'm about to describe the classic method of making important decisions involving three or more people - it was intended to work at all levels, with appropriate adjustments (applying it to a city of 17 million people requires constituencies and ballet procedures - working it with your mates down the pub does not).

First, on its origins. Islam has two sources of scriptural authroity: the Quran & the Sunnah. The Quran, being the voice of God mediated by the angel Gabriel and faithfully recited by Muhammad, is held to have precedence over the Sunnah, which is the record of Muhammad's actions reported by his companions (there are sunnah collections for the first four Caliph as well, those these are correspondinly lower).

The system for political organisation is derived from Sunnah, and thus is not binding - being not invioable, it can be modifyed to suit environment, as long as the spirit of our religion is not violated.


So, it goes like this: first principle is to have a chosen executive who is advised by a committee of chosen representatives. The executive has the last say. So, for example, the Ottoman sultan was advised by the Divan, who also formed the leadership of the Imperial civil service. In the late 19th century, the system expanded into a parliamentary model - effectively adding a second tier of advisers to the assembly - no violence done.

The second principle: selection on merit. Representatives are selected due to their personal qualities - skills, experience, but above all virtue. Dishonesty, for instance, debars a person from participation till they have shown they can be trusted again (it being a redemptive & restorative system, rather than retributive).

The third principle: injust behaviour leads to removal from office. A representative is eligible for office in so far as they are capable and virtuous - should they cease to be whilst in office, they may and should be prevailed upon to stand down.

The principle check to the assembly's power is the shariah - the system of laws and principles inferred from the Quran and the Sunnah. Decisions in accordance with the spirit of the sharia are sound - those that violate it are unsound, and cannot be ratified.

As can be seen, it is a system possessing tremendous scope for adoptation - and like any system, abuse. A lot hangs on the interpretation of the sharia, and the willingness of participants to be actively involved - things usually slide when folk take a backseat and leave t to the loudest.

As it is derived from Sunnah, it is not obligatory - other models could be adpted provided they are in keeping with the principles of the religion. However, a representative system possessing its own rationale and dynamic does already exist within Islamic culture, and has been applied in many ways in many places at many times with success. Hence my comments about the West being presumptious in lecturing us about democracy.

Incidentally, the tradition of Shah, Sultans, committees of indentured eunuchs and the like was derived from Persian or Byzantine models - the purest tradition of goverment in Islam is representative and participatory to the point of anarchism, rather than authoritarian.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top