The Shia-Sunni divide: How real and how deep? Can we move towards genuine unity?

Many Muslims throughout the world, both Sunni and Shia, are working towards dialogue and reconciliation between the two sects. They argue that it is just not possible to fully comprehend and much less to judge the historical figures of Islam and their motivations today, 13 or 14 centuries after the event, which led to the schism in Islam. Indeed, it is not possible to judge people even when events take place now in full view of the world media… India’s Shia and Sunni communities can serve as a beacon of hope in this process. Let us follow up on recent initiatives by Mohtarma Syeda Hamid and Maulana Kalb-e-Sadiq and keep moving in the direction of genuine, frank dialogue leading to real unity, says Sultan Shahin, editor, NewAgeIslam.com

URL: http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1857

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The Shia-Sunni divide: How real and how deep? Can we move towards genuine unity?

By Sultan Shahin

The revolutionary initiative of Maulana Kalb-e-Sadiq in bringing Indian Muslims of the two Shia and Sunni sects together on the occasion of Eid has gladdened the hearts of many Muslims in the country. So did Mohtarma Syeda Hamid’s first ever act recently as Qazi in a Sunni couple’s nikah ceremony. This may be the right time and it seems to have engendered the right atmosphere to discuss Shia-Sunni ideological differences and real prospects for unity in as objective a manner as possible.

It seems in order to explain at the outset that having come from a Sunni background I may have inherited and imbibed some Sunni misgivings and prejudices but on a conscious level I try to remind myself that Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) was neither Shia nor Sunni and we are essentially followers of the Prophet and Prophet alone. Every other revered figure in Islame only comes after him. Also, primarily Shia-Sunni differences were political in nature and ideological constructs came much later, probably just to invest these differences with a greater permanency, and perhaps again in pursuit of political goals.

I also feel that if it is so difficult in this day and age, with all sorts of media following us all around 24/7 to know exactly what is happening and who is doing what under what political motivation, it would be futile for us to participate in 6th century battles all over again. As we cannot go back in time and fight with Prophet Mohammad in the battle of Badr and Uhad, we can also not go back and save his family from the massacre at Karbala.

The choice before us today is whether we keep fighting this 14-centuries old battle or desist from it and make peace in order to be free to focus on other challenges and goals that may be more relevant for the times we live in. One of these being mapping an agenda for the 21st century Islam, rethinking each and every postulate of Islam in the light of present-day realities, despite all the opposition this would evoke from the obscurantist elements of our society.

Posted By Asadullah Syed

From Fatwa to Jihad by Kenan Malik

Malik claims this was a calculated move by Khomeini – then facing the ignominy of withdrawal from the war in Iraq – to subvert reformist voices within Iran and gain political ground across the Muslim world. “The fatwa sowed confusion and division among supporters of the Saudi regime,” writes Malik. “A number of militants who had taken part in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union and who had been within Riyadh’s orbit now pledged allegiance to Tehran… The reformers were forced to denounce Rushdie.” The fatwa also turned Islam into a domestic issue for the West. Malik, who was born in India but grew up marching along anti-racism rallies in 1980s Britain, explains how it was these progressive rallies that made the ground fertile for the seed of the fatwa to grow into the cactus of Islamism. — Saif Shahin THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE By Saif Shahin VALENTINE’S Day is usually an occasion to write mellifluous letters of love. But 20 years ago, a letter penned that day was so vile in its content and so bilious in temperament that, almost like some talisman out of magic realist literature, it tore apart relations between communities and changed the course of history in its wake. That letter was the fatwa issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini calling for the head of Salman Rushdie, a little less than five months after the publication of ‘The Satanic Verses’. And yes, it was that succinct four-paragraph letter – and not the literary tome itself – that stirred up the maelstrom which continues to (mis)shape life and death for many across the world.
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The Practice of Veil in Islam – Its Obligation and Utility

Maulana Nadeem Al-Wajidi explains in this article (Translated from Urdu by Syed Raihan Ahmad Nezami) why in his and other Islamic scholars’ view the veil is essential for Muslim women. Supporting his arguments from Quranic verses and Hadees, he explains why a woman should not only be veiled from head to toe but no more than one of her eyes should preferably be allowed to see the world, and that too, of course, from behind the netting in the veil. An essential read for both kinds of readers: those who want to confirm themselves in their view that women have to be kept under leash, practically imprisoned in their houses in order to save them from prying male eyes and their Satanic conduct; and also those who want to see what nuts our maulanas are and what kind of primitive world they live in and to what extent they can go to disparage the great, forward-looking religion of Islam which essentially freed women from slavery at a time when almost the entire world was mired in backwardness and ignorance and women were treated as chattel, if at all they were allowed to be born — Editor
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The Uighurs and China: lost and found nation by Yitzhak Shichor

The reports of violence and deaths in the city of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province in northwest China, draw renewed attention to this comparatively neglected region of China and of central Asia. The exact details of what happened there on the night of 5-6 July 2009 are unclear and (inevitably) disputed, though the background may include the assaults on Uighur migrant workers at a toy factory in Guangdong province on 26 June (in which two are reported dead and dozens injured).

Uighurs are a Turkic-Muslim ethnic group which has been living in East Turkestan for centuries. This region, reoccupied by the Qing dynasty in the mid-18th century, had become a Chinese province named Xinjiang in 1884; in 1955, after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949, was reorganised as the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region. The official statistics for 2007 suggest that Uighurs now number more than 10 million, and thus constitute Xinjiang’s largest minority at almost 50% of its population – though this is a sharp reduction from 95% at the time of the communist takeover in 1949, the result of significant Chinese settlement in the region. The numbers of Uighurs and Han Chinese are now roughly equal.

Uighurs, claiming Xinjiang as their historical homeland, have repeatedly tried to gain independence and set up their own state – but just as repeatedly failed. Beijing, considering them a separatist and "splittist" group, has used a variety of means – cultural, social, economic, political and military – to crush any sign of restiveness among Uighurs (see James A Millward, Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang [C Hurst, 2007]).