Knowledge Trivia Stuff

Various Iranian propaganda sources like Press TV and Islamic Pulse have released content claiming that Sunnis are a respected people and treated fairly in Ir. Produced by Reem.

A Helpful Map Of The Shia Sunni Divide In The Middle East Geopolitics

With Shiite Iran on the cusp of nuclear arms and with demonstrated victories by Irans proxies in Iraq Lebanon and Gaza the Saudi rulers cannot afford to be seen coddling local Shiites.

Iran is sunni or shiite. Sunni Muslims are the second-largest religious group in Iran. There are 1000015000 Sunni mosques all over Iran with 9 in Tehran alone. The vast majority of Kurds are Sunnis.

Saudi Sunnis expect their leaders to defend the honor and position of the Sunni majority lest Shiite victories reverse the age-old dominance of the Sunni. According to the Iranian law Shias are not allowed to build mosques in Sunni majority areas and vice versa. Some countries in the Middle East have significant numbers of Islamic sectarian minorities.

In modern times the split. In a remotely similar but far more lethal vein the 1400-year Sunni-Shiite rivalry is playing out in the streets of Baghdad raising the specter of a breakup of Iraq into antagonistic states one. Turkmen are mostly Sunni.

It wasnt until 1974 that the Alawites were officially recognized for the first time as Shiite Muslims by Musa Sadr a Lebanese Twelver Shiite cleric. The two major powers in the Middle East are Saudi Arabia an Arab population ruled by a Sunni majority and Iran a Persian population ruled by a Shia majority. Sunnis in Iran run multiple religious schools and own mosques that can accommodate thousands of worshipers at any given time.

According to some surveys almost all of Irans 82000000 people are Muslim with 90 of those being Shia almost all of these from the Twelver sect. Specifically Sunni Islam came to rule in Iran after the period Sunni were distinguished from Shia through the Ghaznavids from 975 AD followed by the Great Seljuq Empire and the Khwarazm-Shah dynasty until the Mongol invasion of Iran. Another 10 are Sunni most of them Kurds Achomis Turkmens and Baluchs living in the northwest northeast south and southeast.

1 These two groups have been at odds for centuries. Sunni Islam returned to rule when Ghazan converted. While Shia represent the majority of the population in Iran Iraq Bahrain and Azerbaijan and a plurality in Lebanon Sunnis are the majority in more than 40 other countries from Morocco to.

And although attached to their unique cultural traditions most Alawites are staunch Syrian. Reuel Gerecht Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies explains how Iran uses the split between Sunnis and Shiites to expand its influenc. In Iraq Shiites are a majority.

Saddam Hussein was a Sunni dictator in a largely Shiite country. Moreover Alawites are ethnic Arabs while Iranians are Persians. Alawites were never part of the mainstream Shiite structures.

Shia constitute about 10 to 15 percent of all Muslims and globally their population is estimated at less than 200 million. Iran is a Persian Shiite country while the leadership of Iraq is predominantly Sunni Muslim and Arab1 Most Sunni Muslim governments supported Iraq during the war. In many Middle East states Islamic movements are the main opposition force and there has been increased activity by Islamic revolutionary groups.

The argument in essence is that the Muslim Brotherhood -- with Hamas as its Palestinian branch -- is a natural partner of Iran with which it shares a common set of values and a joint vision of the revival of the caliphate despite the divide that historically separates Sunnis from Shiites and often sets them against each other. The differences between Islams two main branches -- Sunni and Shiite -- date back to a long and bloody leadership dispute after the death in 632 of the fo. The power play of these two countries causes constant friction within the Middle East.

Throughout the Middle East Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran compete for influence and supremacy via proxy wars in Yemen Iraq and Syria. According to the CIA World Factbook currently around 9095 of Iranians associate themselves with the Shia branch of Islam the official state religion and about 510 with the Sunni and Sufi branches of Islam. Whereas Sunnis dominate the Muslim world from West Africa to Indonesia.

Wahhabism the leading stream of Islam in Sunni Saudi Arabia is extremely anti-Shiite. Within the Arab population of Iraq the Sunni and Shiite doctrines are not related in any way to any ethnic or racial differences. Iran is primarily Shiite and has been led by a Shiite Supreme Leader since its Islamic Revolution in 1979.