Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (left) founded the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. He hand-picked Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (right) as his successor for Supreme .Leader

By Ali Aziz:

Along with a religious and ethnic mosaic, the Islamic and Arab world is divided into numerous Islamic sects. There are two large sects that represent majority of Muslims: Sunnis and Shiites. The Sunnis are the majority, and according to many sources, the Sunnis constitute more than 85% of Muslims, while the Shiites constitute 10% or slightly more. This sorting has a long history that took shape since the beginnings of Islam, after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

Briefly, after the death of the Prophet, most Companions, including Abu Bakr and Omar (the first two Caliphs) met in Saqifa (a place in Medina) and decided on the political system that the Umayyad and Abbasid empires had inherited, which later the Ottoman Turks became the inheritors of this Caliphate,extending over centuries. On the other hand, during the death of the Prophet, his cousin Ali bin Abi Talib, and some of their relatives, were busy shrouding the Prophet, and therefore they did not participate in the conference that was held in Saqifa, where Abu Bakr was appointed as the first Caliph of the Muslims, arranged by Omar and other companions who were originally from Mecca. Ali and his loyalists were not satisfied with the results of the conference and refused to acknowledge it, constituting an opposition to the resulting formation of the political system led by Abu Bakr, then Omar, and after them Othman (with whom the Umayyad Empire was established). Therefore, Ali became the first opponent of the Islamic Caliphate that was formed after the death of the Prophet. Ali’s family, implicitly the Prophet’s family, and those loyal to them, continued to oppose the political system throughout the ages and centuries. For this, Ali and his family paid a heavy price with their lives, as most of them were exterminated in extremely cruel and violent ways, most of them through assassinations. However, those loyal to the Prophet’s family (called Shiites) continued to oppose Islamic political system. However, Shiites formed powerful states and emirates too, but dominance remained with the Sunni states. Among the Shiite states come the Fatimid Ismaili state (annihilated by the Kurdish Ayyubid family), the Safavid empire (founded by a dynasty of Kurdish origin dating back to Sheikh Safi al-Din al-Ardabili, who was a Kurdish Shafi’i jurist), and currently the Islamic Republic of Iran as the most prominent political coronation station for the Shiites in history.

The Sunni countries were preoccupied with invasions and conflicts with the Romans, Persians, and later Crusader and then colonial Europe. These invasions and conflicts continued from the beginning of Islam until the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Ottoman Empire fell in October of 1923. This path created a noticeable and rich asset for the Sunnis, consolidating in them the belief that they are upon the correct path of Islam and the resistance to external forces. The Shiites, because of being subjected to oppression and persecution by Sunni states, and due to the conflict between the Sunnis and Shiites, the Shiites were unable to build a rich legacy in the conflict with external powers, especially Europeans. Most of the Shiite conflict and wars remained with the Sunni states, and a few of them were with external powers. This reality generated a historical-psychological complex among the Shiites which showed them among the Sunnis as a group complicit with external powers, forcing the Shiites to continually deny this accusation that was rooted in history. In contrast to this reality, and in our contemporary time, while Muslims and Arabs in general suffer from weakness and backwardness compared to the Western world, the Shiites, led by Iran, found an opportunity to correct this historical notion about them.

Two issues helped spread the distortion of the Shiite image. The first is that Iran is Persian and simultaneously the main hub for Shiites globally. This caused the Shiites historical hostility with the Arabs on a national level, and with the Sunnis on a sectarian level. The second is the cooperation of Iran and the Shiites with America to occupy Iraq in 2003. The year 2003, Khomeini’s slogan, “America is the Greatest Satan,” was subjected to severe ridicule, and then greatly diminished, making it lose credibility on the ground. Therefore, since 2003, Iran and the Shiites have been trying to correct the distortion and ridicule they were subjected to because of their support for America’s occupation of Iraq, an occupation that benefited them, as the Shiites took control of the government in Iraq that came under Iran’s influence.