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Olde Tyme Religion
Sunni vs. Shi'a: It's Not All Islam
2007-02-15
By Ralph Peters

Among the worst members of the it's-all-a-conspiracy pack are those who insist that every Muslim is in on a vast Jihadi conspiracy to make Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks wear a chador (not a bad idea, aesthetically speaking). But those most anxious to condemn Islam in its entirety skip over annoying facts: Overwhelmingly, the victims of Islamist terror have been other Muslims; even the Taliban or the Khomeinist regime never rivaled the Inquistion's ferocity; and Europeans, not Muslims, long have been the heavyweight champions of genocide (with the Turks a distant runner-up).

All monotheist religions have been really good haters. We just take turns.

But the biggest obstacle to establishing the Caliphate in California is that Shi'a "Islam" never bought into the Caliphate at all. At bottom, it's a different religion from Sunni Islam. They're not just different branches of a faith, as with Protestantism and Catholicism, but separate faiths whose core differences are more-pronounced than those between Christians and Jews.

Technically, Sunni militants are correct when they label the Shi'a "heretics." Persians and their closest neighbors, with long memories of great civilizations, were never comfortable with the crudeness of Arabian Islam--which the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss aptly called "a barracks religion."
Posted by:Steve White

#10  mhw, I'd be willing to counter bet that most Jews have no idea where or when Maimonides lived, only the key bits of what he wrote. Probably most don't know he was one of the leading physicians of his day.
Posted by: trailing wife   2007-02-15 20:51  

#9  All monotheist religions have been really good haters. We just take turns. BFD. All monotheistic religions that I know of have left the persecution and actual hate in the past. All except Islam. It is incapable of moving out of the 7th Century.
Posted by: Deacon Blues   2007-02-15 19:27  

#8  AH

You've made a good point re: Spain. Almost every world history student learns about the horror of the Spanish Inquisition. However, very very few learn about the horror of the Islamic persecutions of Christians and Jews from about 1300 to 1492. I would be willing to be that most Jews (including graduate school educated ones)believe Maimonides left Spain because of Christian persecution when it was actually Islamic persecution.
Posted by: mhw   2007-02-15 14:34  

#7  Dear Mr Peters. While original ideas usually arouse controversy, the vice versa is not true.
Posted by: gromgoru   2007-02-15 13:31  

#6   When the Spanish inquisition is blamed for killings, the number of political killings carried out by the former Muslim rulers of Spain must also be included (note that it never is). Do you think it is just a coincidence that the Spanish become so rigid in their rooting out of infidels after they took their land back from the Muslims?
All generalities are false, including this one. Nevertheless noting dominant characteristics of collections of anything & anyone can be useful even if not politically correct. Descriptions of the essentials of Islam (jihad, sharia, death for apostasy & blasphemy, its other fascist aspects) for the Kufr are especially useful nowadays.
I want to give a nod to the Muslim sheikh who gave a talk in Muslim Spain in the 12th century. To paraphrase: "You would scoff if I were to predict that a piece of matter as big as a pea could utterly and in an instant destroy this city and its surroundings for a great distance." The volume of uranium in the Hiroshima bomb that actually did the damage was the size of a pea. The rest of it was blown away by the force of the explosion before it could actually undergo fission. Know your enemy but avoid gratuitous hatred.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2007-02-15 11:31  

#5  "The struggle has never ended between the ascetic, intolerant Bedouin faith of Arabia, with its fascist obsession on behavior, and the profound theologies of Persian civilization that absorbed and transformed Islam. "

actually this is a rather simplistic view of SUNNI Islam, which has moved very far from Beduin roots, and became an urban faith, with influence from Persian (and to a lesser extent Greek) culture, and was quite as sophisticated as medieval Shia. The identification of civilization with Shia, and barbarism with Sunni, is as distorting as it would be to identify Protestantism with modernism (pace extreme fundamentalism) and Catholicism with medievalism (pace Vatican 2, and the last couple of hundred years of Catholic civ)

There are extremist in both the Shia and Sunni camps, and moderates in both, even if there isnt quite a Shia equivalent of Salafi fundamentalism.
Posted by: liberalhawk   2007-02-15 10:01  

#4  Mr. Peter's (Colonel, ret'd, I think) big picture is all very well, but our immediate concern must be that both Sunni (mainly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) and Shia (Iran, aided by Alawite Syria) are actively sponsoring terror groups that are aimed at Western interests, ie actively at war with us as well as each other... not to mention that both sides are sponsoring groups putatively belonging to the other side. We simply cannot throw up our hands at their stupidies and wait for them to get over it.
Posted by: trailing wife   2007-02-15 08:29  

#3  Ralph Peters seems to be willfully ignorant of the Islamic genocide against Hindus and Bhuddists.

He also attacks the straw man of "...every Muslim is in on a vast Jihadi conspiracy."

The only point he gets right is the fact that Muslims are the principle victims of Islam and even that point he fuzzes up.
Posted by: mhw   2007-02-15 06:07  

#2  even the Taliban or the Khomeinist regime never rivaled the Inquistion's ferocity

The Sapnish inquisition killed 12,000 people in 300 hundred years. Fourty persons per year.


Europeans, not Muslims, long have been the heavyweight champions of genocide


100 million people in India alone but Muslims are pure as white now


BTW who is that idiot?
Posted by: JFM   2007-02-15 04:45  

#1  I agree Saudi funded hate is a bigger problem to West than the Persian people who i feel would love to get rid of their leaders with the help of the West!!!!
Posted by: Ebbolump Glomotle9608   2007-02-15 04:42  

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