DIVISIONS IN ISLAM

(This is a talk prepared for a county teachers'
dinner meeting.)

What's Europe's fastest-growing religion? If
you said, "Islam," you were right. Anyone
know why? Me neither. But two facts stand
out: (facts without opinion are dull, opinion
without facts is futile.) 1) Birthrate: there
are one billion, 300 million Muslims in the
world, and they are reproducing three
times as fast as we are, including the
Europeans. 2) Dead Christianity. Church
attendance is under 5% in Europe. In many
countries it's only two or three per cent.
Secularism has won. Will it water-down
and degrade European Islam with
materialism, as it has it's Christianity?

That brings us to the different kinds of
Islam. There are many: almost as many
as there are varieties of Christians. The
two most important divisions however,
are the one between seculars and
Islamists, and the one between Shia and
Sunnis. The latter is probably the most
decisive of all, even though only 15% of
the world's Muslims are Shia. 85% are
Sunnis. The key fact about this is that
the Middle East is about equally
divided between Shia and Sunni. That's
because most of the world's Shia are
concentrated in that area, in Iraq (60% of
the pop.), Iran (90%), and Bahrain (70%).

It all began about 1400 years ago, when
an illiterate camel driver went to pray in
a cave and was visited by the angel
Gabriel, who commanded him to "recite."
That resulted in the Koran, the holy book
of Islam. Muhammad was invited by the
people of Medina to set up religious rule
of their city, where he presided wisely and
well. Christians and Jew resided there with
his blessing, along side his religious
followers. They were not regarded or
treated as "infidels."

Muhammad died in 632 a.d. without
naming a leader to succeed him. That
omission caused unending mischief. One
segment of followers accepted the
prophet's able assistant to replace him.
This group would be the Sunnis (followers
of the example.) To them, the leader's
character and ability were the main
concern. But there was another group,
who wanted to follow someone who was
directly related to the prophet's family.
They chose to follow Mohammad's son-
in-law, Ali, a cousin of the prophet, and
husband of his oldest daughter. This
repeatedly led to power struggles
resulting in violence, hatred, and the
bitterness that has now come to
distinguish relations between the two
factions.

The Shia (followers of Ali) have long
been abused, misused, reviled and
humiliated wherever and whenever
they lived among Arabs, who often
deny that Shia are even Muslims,
and regard them as sub-human.
They have been particularly ill-used
in Iraq under Saddam, even though
they are a large majority there. They
are now demanding majority rule in
Iraq, a demand backed by their
fellow Shia next door in Iran. The
Sunnis, much like Southern whites
in the U. S. after the civil war, are
incredulous that they are expected
to let inferiors in every way be
allowed to rule over them. It is
unthinkable to them, and they
will fight to the death against
allowing that to happen. They
are backed by Sunnis in Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, Syria, and other
nearby countries. We were warned
that removing Saddam would take
the lid off this ancient quarrel, to
Iran's advantage, and would
invite total chaos. The warnings
were ignored as groundless, as
were other warnings that more
troops would be required than
were being planned.

Needless to say, there is little we can
do now to stop this civil war in Iraq,
other than get our troops out of the
middle of it, if we even have the sense
to do that much.

Now my time is gone, because I want to
leave some time for questions. The other
division that is crucial in Islam is the one
between the secularists, who are basically
pro democracy and want to live peacefully
with the West, and on the other hand, the
Islamists, who want religious rule, and may
or may not advocate violence to extend
their rule. "Secular"means, basically,
nonreligious. These people are not devout.
They are like nominal Christians who would
rather fish on Sunday, or play golf than go
to church. They are the majority of
Muslims, worldwide. We need to work
with them to extend the rule of reason
and cooperation in the fight against
terrorism. They have as much to lose
as we do if the crazies win.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net