{"id":405,"date":"2018-12-31T12:40:54","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T12:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/?p=405"},"modified":"2019-03-21T15:04:07","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T15:04:07","slug":"the-syrian-war-what-is-it-really-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/the-syrian-war-what-is-it-really-about\/","title":{"rendered":"The Syrian War: What is it Really About?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The real issue in Syria is the fight between Sunni and Shi\u2019a Muslims.<\/p>\n

To understand the complications in the Middle East, we must understand the biggest conflict within the Muslim world: the big divide between Sunni and Shi\u2019a Muslims.<\/p>\n

The Sunni-Shi\u2019a conflict started 1,400 years ago, after the death of Mohammed in 632 AD. The prophet died without appointing a successor, which led to an argument among his followers. The argument was about who would be the next leader, whether he should be directly related to Mohammed\u2019s bloodline or not. The Sunni\u2019s believe that the Prophets\u2019 trusted friend and advisor, Abu Bakr was the first rightful leader of Muslims or \u201ccaliph\u201d, while Shi\u2019as believe that Mohammed\u2019s cousin and son-in-law, Ali was chosen by Allah to continue the rule. Eventually, both held the title \u2013 Abu Bakr first until his death, and after him two other caliphs who were assassinated. Ali became the fourth ruler. After Ali, a massive split occurred over who should rule next and dominate Islam. While Sunni Muslims argued that it should be their interpretation of Islam which follows the Sunnah (ways of Mohammed), Shi\u2019as argued that Ali was the rightful first caliph and only his descendants could claim to be the true leaders of Muslims.<\/p>\n

Sunnah is the body of traditional, social, and legal custom and practice of the Islamic community, based on the verbally transmitted record of the teachings, deeds and sayings, silent permissions (or disapprovals) of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (kind of Islamic oral law and Halacha, a path, a way, a manner of life). The Quran, the holy book of Islam, and the Sunnah make up the two primary sources of Islamic theology and law of the Islamic prophet that Muslims follow.<\/p>\n

The tension is intensified by the Hadith, a narrative in which the prophet Muhammad said, \u201cMy Muslim community will be divided into seventy-three sects and all of them will be in the Hellfire except one.\u201d Inevitably both Sunnis and Shias claim to be the one \u201cpure\u201d Islamic sect; hence a Sunni-Shi\u2019a split creating two denominations up until today, wherein each has developed its own unique culture, doctrines, and schools of thought, with a range of moderate to extremist followers in both.<\/p>\n

Sunnis are largely focused on the power of their God in the physical world, while Shi\u2019as look more toward the rewards of the afterlife.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The majority of Muslim people in the world are Sunni.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The vast majority of the Muslims in the world are Sunni, amounting to as much as 85% of the religion\u2019s adherents. They are spread all over the globe \u2013 from Morocco to Indonesia – and make up the dominant religion in North Africa and the Middle East. Only Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain have a Shi\u2019a majority, although there are also significant Shi\u2019a populations in Yemen, Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, and Qatar.<\/p>\n

The divide between the Sunni and Shi\u2019a branches of Islam is both ancient and still highly consequential today.<\/p>\n

The Kingdom of Bahrain, which is backed by Saudi has long been ruled by the Sunni House of Khalifa, even though there is a Shi\u2019a majority in the population. Many of the insurgent groups in Iraq today\u2013 including the Islamic State terror group \u2013 are Sunnis.<\/p>\n

The current civil war in Yemen has become a sectarian proxy war, with Iran backing the Shi\u2019a Houthi rebels who overthrew the country\u2019s Sunni-dominated government, while a Saudi-led coalition has since intervened to reinstall the Sunni leadership.<\/p>\n

Syria, which has a Sunni-majority population, is ruled by President Bashar al-Assad and his family members of the Shi\u2019a Alawite-sect. The fighting that began as an anti-government rebellion has taken on sectarian overtones. That has spilled over to Iraq, which is Shi\u2019a-majority and has a predominantly Shi\u2019a government but is increasingly troubled by Sunni rebels. And the region’s major powers have long pushed sectarian interests, with Shi\u2019a-majority Iran on one side and Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia on the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The real issue in Syria is the fight between Sunni and Shi\u2019a Muslims. To understand the complications in the Middle East, we must understand the biggest conflict within the Muslim world: the big divide between Sunni and Shi\u2019a Muslims. The Sunni-Shi\u2019a conflict started 1,400 years ago, after the death of Mohammed in 632 AD. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[30,59,24,61,60,62],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics-in-israel","tag-history","tag-muslims","tag-president-trump","tag-shia","tag-sunni","tag-syria","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yeshuatami.com\/newsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}