Sunni & Shia - What is (really) the difference?

we often hear about the sunni-shia divide today in media coverage about conflict or political situations in the Middle East one sort of gets the impression of a perpetual war between two branches of Islam and often with very little nuance when these branches are explained or are talked about by experts or journalists war in videos here on YouTube they often present a simplified version of the historical and contemporary differences often boiling it down to an event that happened after the death of Muhammad but as you might expect at this point it is a lot more complicated than this so what are the differences between the Shia and the Sunni and how did they come about [Music] so as you may have heard the story begins arguably with the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 ad this event sort of sent shockwaves through the entire community and immediately this started discussions on who should succeed him there was one group one camp who believed that his close friend abu bakr should be the first halifa or caliph but not everyone agreed there was another group who believed that his cousin and son-in-law Ali was the rightful heir the first group who favored Abu Bakr sort of won this argument and he became the first in a line of four so-called rightly guided caliphs followed by Omar Othman and eventually Ali himself and who were all elected by a kind of semi democratic process you could say this first group who favored Abu Bakr we could call the proto Sunnis it is this group who would later become the Sunni the other group of favourite Ali was often called the Shia Ali which means the party of Ali and this is where the word Shia comes from this is usually where the story ends for a lot of people that this divide is simply a difference in the succession of Muhammad and that it kind of ends there but there's a lot more to this story over the following decades and centuries there would be great conflicts of authority who should lead the Muslim community we can't really talk about a Sunni versus Shia conflict here because these two distinct groups hadn't even emerged yet in that sense there were many proto Sunni groups like the umayyad and abbasid dynasties that you've probably heard of and many other that would compete for who should be the rightful leader there were also the descendants of Muhammad and Ali the Shia who favored or sort of their idea was that the rightful leader of the Muslim community should belong exclusively to the prophet's family his descendants in the line of ali to the shia ali was the first so-called imam both a worldly and spiritual successor to Muhammad who had been given the secrets to understand and interpret the religion correctly after Ali there is thus a line of mom's that will succeed him as as Imams as leaders which begins with his son Hasan and then Hussein now Husein started a kind of revolt against the earlier Maya dynasty and was very famously martyred and killed by Umayyad forces in Karbala this is a very important event to Shia and Muslims and is commemorated every year in a festival or are they called Ashura after his saying his son became the next Imam and then his son and then his son and so on most of these Imams favored a kind of quietest approach to generalize living somewhat secluded lives with a group of followers despite often being persecuted by the Umayyad and later Abbasid caliphs as a threat to their leadership the proto Sunnis in later Sunnis were led by the caliphs leaders who had mostly worldly secular power although some of the other caleb's did call themselves imams - and did with significant religious authority as many of you know these includes the caliphs of the dynasty as I mentioned like the umayyad and abbasid empires now because things insist on always being complicated the Shia so-called branch isn't a homogenous group either in fact they're divided in many branches of their own already by the fifth Imam or after the fourth there appeared as a conflict of succession on who the next Imam should be there was one group who favored a guy called Isaiah they've been Ali who became the these IEDs the Sayyidi Shia or the also known as the five are Shia and these are still alive today in makeups a significant portion of the population in Yemen and then while later there appeared another conflict of succession in the first sort of line by the fifth or sixth depend on your asking mom jafar as-sadiq there were some who favored his oldest son a smile even Jaffa who became known as the is smile ease or seven or Shias which is the second largest group of Shiites today another faction rather viewed his younger son Musa al-qasim to be the rightful successor and these became known as the if Natasha or Twelver Shia sometimes also called the Imam is Shia and this is this is the largest group today it is the twelve or former shiism that is dominant in Iran today and it's the state religion of Iran the smiley is on the other hand is quite complicated too they eventually established the Fatimid dynasty and further developed into more branches the Nazari and mas tally is my lease the former is the largest of these and it's the only group of Shia who still have a living Imam in Agha Khan the fourth the latter group is represented by a group called the Boris who exists primarily in India today my reason for retelling this general history is to point out that the Shia is not a homogenous group and neither are the Sunnis we shouldn't therefore a view history as this kind of clear dichotomy between these two Sunni versus Shia in some kind of conflict because this divided these this grouping didn't exist historically in the way that we conceive of it today ok so historical facts aside we should also recognize that since the Sunni and Shia often had completely different ideas about Authority this of course affected their own sort of doctrines and ideas too not only was this sort of divided political early on it also eventually became philosophical theological and legalistic because the Shia and Sunni viewed different companions of Muhammad as more or less trustworthy this also affected greatly the the transmission of hadith the stories about the prophet and his companions so the Sunni and Shia often used different collections of hadith from each other which is also the basis of much Islamic law and ritual not only that but the Shias also view the hadith of the Imams as authoritative and not just those of Muhammad and these hadith SAR also frequently used in legal matters as well as time went by theological differences appeared to generally one can say that the more rationalistic Lee based theological school of the Motta's ala which eventually became a minority in the Sunni world was adopted to a much larger degree by the Shiites especially by the twelve or anxiety branches then what does Allah favored a more metaphorical and allegorical reading of Scripture and had a more transcendent view of God without any anthropomorphic features for example what does Allah school was quite popular early on for the Sunnis as well but soon thereafter it lost its prominence to another school called Arshad ISM a more literalist approach which is still the mainstream today the Smyly is in turn went in their own direction heavily inspired by new platonic philosophy their theology is very unique in this context having very different ideas about revelation and metaphysics for example and features many esoteric aspects when it comes to question of thick or jurisprudence there are differences here too while the Sunnis eventually developed to gradually discard things like personal rational efforts by the jurist in favor of the revealed sources like the Quran hadith and analogy and and so on the Shia market a generally has maintained the importance of something called a jihad which could be translated as personal interpretation or personal efforts to interpret while they didn't like things like analogy as much as the Sunnis did when talking about the Sunni world that is often stated that the door to each D had closed around the Year 1000 and this of course isn't true at all since the people still kept interpreting and are still interpreting today but that's a subject for another video we should remember that these are huge generalizations and that I'm speaking primarily from a historical perspective in fact the concept HD HUD has very much resurfaced in the Sunni world especially in the last two centuries with the emergence of certain reform movements like what is often called Islamic modernism in which people have started to reinterpret and use HD had again to reinterpret the original sources like the Quran which has led to everything from Islamic feminism to al-qaeda so the Sunni schools of law the mother hubs which are the Hanafi the Shafi the Maliki and the Hanbali are independent and difference from the various Shia schools the the the 12er school of jurisprudence is often referred to as the Joffrey school the Sayyidi school is called the Zion school and these smileys have the Smyly school very simple of course these Smiley's at least the in the Saudis mildly still have a living Imam which means that he still has the highest authority and last word when it comes to interpreting the Quran and derive or adapt its lost to current society in fact this is one of the main doctrines of Shiism the Shia Imams are not simply worldly leaders of the Muslim community they are the spiritual leaders and authority as well it is thought that Ali was given the inner secrets to interpret the Quran a spiritual wisdom that he handed o to the next Imam who handed it over to the next and so on to the Shia the Koran isn't complete in that sense but must always be interpreted and understood by the living Imams the descendants of the Prophet himself the Sunnis on the other hand while the early caliphs did have some authority over religious matters and the law this authority eventually fizzled out and they became more secular leaders religious matters then being dealt with by groups of jurists theologians and to some degree Sufis Sufi sheiks we should remember to avoid viewing this divine as some to clear factions that are at perpetual war or something the war conflicts of course and the minority group was often persecuted and oppressed by the majority these are just a few of the multitude of different perspectives and ideas that existed within the larger Muslim community many Sunnis were inspired by Shias and vice-versa I would argue that they didn't appear a clear Sunni versus Shia dichotomy as we think of it today until the rise of the so called gunpowder empires in the early modern period let us let's say between the 16th and 18th or 19th centuries so on the one hand we had the Ottoman Empire who ruled large portions of the Middle East from Istanbul were predominantly Sunni and then on the other hand we had what is in modern Iran the Safavid Empire whose state religion was 12 or Shiism and so here for the first time we have two empires one who is very clearly Sunni and the other Shia and who were not always on the best of terms these empires and the culture and religion practice there were often very distinct from each other to the point that they can sometimes feel like completely different religions for example in XI Safavid Empire Sufism began to be viewed in a very suspicious light many of the jurists of the Safavid Empire were very opposed to Sufism and it was often persecuted which is especially weird since the the Safavids were founded by and named after a Sufi order the Safavieh and this stands in stark contrast to the two other Sunni empires the ottomans and the Mughals both in which Sufism flourished this negative stance towards Sufism that started during the Safavid dynasty has left its mark even to as many of the Sufi orders in Iran like the new Mutulu he order is severely oppressed still today so even though the gunpowder empires don't exist anymore its effect can very much still be felt the lands that were ruled by Ottoman and Mughal empires are still dominated by Sunnis in terms of population in contrast Iran and the larger Persian region has a majority of Shiites with emergence of the nation-state system these conflicts aren't as clear as they were back then although there clearly are still tensions as we can see today in the region that's what is important to remember is that the big Shia Sunni tension that we see today isn't that old either it has really only become worse in the last 70 years or so with the increase of divisive politics in the Middle East and the subsequent spread of fundamentalist groups also important to remember is that a lot of groups and religious leaders from both sides of the spectrum are working hard today to establish a religious unity between these two groups and solidarity there's a lot of examples of this kind of syncretism both in the contemporary world and also historically to conclude the difference between the Sunni and Shia are not simply a question of the succession after Muhammad this initial division led to many other developing distinctions between the two they often differ on how the Quran should be interpreted or even conceived they have different views and authority their theologies have developed in different directions they often use different collections of hadith by different narrators and thus the loss or their Sharia and rituals often differ they celebrate distinct holidays like the Ashura in in the case of the Shia the doctrines of the Imams is also a significant distinction as is the more prominent focus on top wheel and Shiism and as we've seen the Shia themselves are also divided into multiple branches that are often very distinct from each other as well as are the many branches within Sunni ISM there are even differences in very central sort of ideas and concepts like the so called five pillars of Islam while the Sunnis and twelvers have five pillars these smileys actually have seven so as you can see the differences are often much larger and significant than we are led to believe but at the same time and as I've stated multiple times in this video we should also avoid drawing to clear a dichotomy between these two groups as if they were like the Catholic or docks churches in medieval times or these two branches that are constantly at perpetual war instead history has shown a complicated myriad of schools and ideas that have sometimes been in opposition to each other there have been periods in history like right now or during the gunpowder empires where the division appears much more prominent and other periods and places where it hasn't been everything I've said in this video is of course generalizations too but I hope I've given you a bit a more nuanced and complex view of these two movements within Islam let me know what you think and and please correct me if I've made any serious mistakes I'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Let's Talk Religion

Views: 1,669,709

Keywords: sunni vs. shia, sunni shia, sunni shia debate english, sunni shia debate, sunni shia difference, sunni shia split, sunni and shia unity, Islam, Islamic branches, Islam debate, Islamic history, Sunni, Shia, debate, religious debate, Muslim groups, different forms of Islam, Religious history, Middle east, Iran, Sunni & Shia what is the difference?, What is the difference?, sunni vs. shia fight, conflict middle east, Sunni and shia history, Shia history, Sunni history

Id: AQARp3gyyG0

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 27 2020