SUNNIS SHOULD HATE SHIAS AND VICE VERSA.
Muhammad (PBUH) and his dearest companions and for many generations after that – did not discriminate against all those he did not agree with. Nor should we. Despite divergent beliefs let alone, deep and radical disagreements between our communities, especially between us the Sunnis and the Shias, we desperately need to look for ways to co-exist like centuries before in a better world around us.
For those angry men calling themselves Muslims who can’t tolerate the idea of Sunnis not hating Shias, it may be worth considering what Muhammad (PBUH) did time and again when he and his family and companions were verbally and physically attacked by fellow Arabs, various tribes, idol worshippers, the betraying Jews of Medina, intolerant atheists and other nonbelievers, that is, repeatedly.
Never did he – Muhammad (PBUH) or any of his companions, his children nor even his grandchildren once pray for their destruction but instead asked that God-Allah guide them. Period. Therefore, does it not make sense for us to do the same instead of giving into fear and mistrust of each other as the political power brokers in Saudi Arabia and Iran and other international proxies (who want nothing more than to prepare Sunni Muslims for war against the Shia Muslims and vice versa) would like us do?
THE SUNNI-SHIA WAR IS A CENTURIES-OLD ONE.
It is important to understand the unnecessary divide between the Sunnis and the Shias today is nothing more than a political-based sectarian conflict masked as a religious war fought by proxies supported by primarily Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The article below (excerpts) explains its best: The ‘Sunni-Shia conflict’ narrative is misguided at best and disingenuous at worst, suggests the author. Today it is increasingly common to hear talk of the existence of a “1,400 Year War” between Sunni and Shia Muslims. In this narrative, the sectarian violence of today is simply the continuation of an ancient religious conflict rooted in events which transpired in the 7th century. While some Muslims themselves have recently bought into this worldview, it would suffice to say that such beliefs represent not only a misreading of history but a complete and utter fabrication of it. While there are distinct theological differences between Sunnis and Shias, the claim that these two groups have been in a perpetual state of war and animosity throughout their existence is an absurd falsehood . . . However, thanks to the e orts of well-funded religious demagogues – themselves either ignorant of history or cynical manipulators of it – this patently ridiculous explanation of world events is gaining some purchase even among Muslims themselves . . . For centuries, Sunnis and Shias (as well as Christians, Jews and other religious groups) have lived closely intertwined with one another to a degree without parallel elsewhere in the world. Even where they have exerted power through distinct political structures, the argument that this has equated to conflict does not stand up to even a cursory analysis. While the Sunni Ottoman Empire and Shia Safavid Empire experienced their share of conflict, they also lived peaceably alongside one another for hundreds of years, even considering it shameful to engage in conflict with one another as Muslim powers . . . Shia and Sunni Muslim scholars have long engaged in dialogue and in influenced the religious thought of one another for centuries, blurring the already largely superficial distinctions between the two communities. As a legacy of this, today the greatest seat of learning in Sunni Islam also teaches Shia theology as an integrated school of thought . . . Indeed, far from being ancient history, Europe’s dark obsession with religious hatred reached its nadir mere decades ago in the form of the Holocaust – perhaps the ultimate religious “pogrom” against the long-oppressed Jewish population of the continent. In recent decades however this dynamic has been largely reversed. Europe has taken great strides in enshrining tolerance, while the Middle East’s once unrivalled religious pluralism has degraded to the point where even co-religionists of marginally-different sects are now often violently at odds with one another. European leaders now regularly lecture their counterparts in the Middle East on the need to protect the rights of minorities; something which may be tolerable today but which would have been thought unconscionable throughout most of history. While contemporary Muslim societies have regressed to the point where Europeans can now claim moral authority to lecture them on religious diversity, looking at history it should be noted that the periods of greatest religious tolerance within Islam have historically corresponded with the peaks of political power among Muslim empires . . . The conflict which some claim exists today between Sunni and Shia Muslims is a product of very recent global events; blowback from the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the petro-dollar fuelled global rise of Wahhabi reactionaries. It is decidedly not the continuation of any “1,400-year war” between Sunnis and Shias but is driven instead by the very modern phenomena of identity politics. Factions on both sides have created false histories for their own political benefit and have manufactured symbols and rituals, which draw upon ancient history but are in fact entirely modern creations. Furthermore, Western military powers have sought to amplify these divisions to generate interne- cine conflicts within Muslim societies and engineer a bloodbath, which will be to their own benefit. While neoconservatives practically salivate in anticipation of Muslims committing mass- fratricide against one another, away from the political sphere ordinary people continue to live with the deeply engrained sense of tolerance that has traditionally characterised the once-global civilisation of Islam. For every sectarian terrorist group or militia, there are countless ordinary Shia and Sunni Muslims around the world who have risked their lives to protect their co-religionists as well as the religious minorities within their societies . . . Similarly, it is incumbent upon Muslims to reject crude myths about a 1,400-year sectarian war between themselves and to recognise the dangerous folly of such beliefs. Indeed, the simple truth is that if such a war existed Sunnis and Shias would not have been intermarrying and living in the same neighbourhoods up to the 21st century. Furthermore, were they truly enemies, millions of people of both sects would have stopped peacefully converging on the annual Hajj pilgrimage many centuries ago. (Source: The myth of the 1,400-year Sunni-Shia war on 9 July 2013 by Murtaza Hussain, Al Jazeera.com)
Siddiq Bazarwala 