What are the major differences between Shia and Sunni Muslims? A significant root of the political maelstrom that characterizes the Middle East today is the Shia-Sunni breach, and hopefully these 7 ...
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for ...
Ashura is a day of commemoration in Islam and holds great significance for Muslims across the world. It falls on the 10th of Muharram, the first month in the Islamic calendar, carrying spiritual and ...
The religious differences that contribute to Iraq's sectarian violence have deep historical roots. We asked University of Michigan professor of Middle East history, Juan Cole, when the split took ...
Sectarianism has assumed its own dynamic and will continue to define Iraq, says Joost Hilterman of the International Crisis Group. The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, while important, will not end ...
BEIRUT — The Gaza war has pushed together powerful Iran-backed Shia Muslim paramilitaries with militant Sunni factions in what appears to be closer cooperation between groups that differ in religious ...
No one — not Washington, nor the establishment press — seems ready to confront the Sunni-Shia conflagration that threatens to rock whatever narrow foreign policy hold the U.S. has in the region, ...
A conversation Muslims typically have privately in the U.S. is bursting into the public view because of the killings of Muslim men in New Mexico. There are concerns within Muslim communities that ...
It was crude stuff. President Trump called on 55 Muslim leaders assembled in Riyadh to drive out terrorism from their countries. He identified Iran as a despotic state and came near to calling for ...
In west Baghdad's Omar al-Khattab mosque, a Sunni preacher assails his Shia compatriots for failing to come to the aid of the besieged city of Falluja. "Those of the black turbans" - Iraq's Shia ...
The twelve Imams according to Shia Islam are the twelve descendants of Muhammad beginning with Ali bin Abu Talib and ending with Muhammad ibn al-Hassan or the Mahdi. According to them, these were the ...
The conflicts between Shia and Sunni Muslims go back to the seventh century and the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Yet a spotlight has been shone recently on the differences between the two branches ...