Sunni

“ It was thus that in the morning of the 20th March four Hadjis came to me with the request that I would present them to the Sultan's envoy, as they wished to prefer a complaint against the Persians who, on their return from Mecca, at Hamadan, had exacted from them the Sunni tribute--an exaction not only displeasing to the Shah of Persia, but long since forbidden by the Sultan. For here it must be remarked, that the good Tartars think that the whole world ought to obey the chief of their religion, the Sultan. ”

“ Only speak evil of all women, and so we shall come to Ali Higg’s nest in good repute.”
“All right. I’ll try not to flirt with the lady. What next?”
“The sahib will be accused of being a Persian, and will be insulted accordingly, for none loves a Persian in this land, Islam having two chief sects, of-which the Persians chose to adopt the Shia faith, which is not in favor with the Sunni, who are most numerous and most fanatic. The less the Sunni knows of his religion the more he despises a Shia; and when these people despise they steal, strike, abuse and act otherwise unseemly.” ”

“ The Sunni majority reject the premise that men can be divine, including Muhammad, Ali, or Jesus, and did not accept any of the Imams who followed Ali. Sunnis remain more committed to traditions and less inclined to accept Shia mysticism. Today, about 15% of the world's one billion Muslims are Shia and 85% are orthodox Sunni. ”

“ The Sunnís do not, except as spectators, take any part in the Muharram ceremonies. Indeed, where the ruling power is not strong, there is often much ill-feeling aroused by the enthusiasm excited for all that concerns 'Alí and his family. The three first Khalífs are often well abused, and that no Sunní can bear with patience. The breach between the Sunní and the Shía'h is very wide, and the annual recurrence of the Muharram feast tends to keep alive the distinction. ”

“ Sunní Islám has sustained, not through the action of a foreign and invading Power, but at the hands of a dictator, avowedly professing the Faith of Muḥammad, a blow more grievous than that which fell, almost simultaneously, upon its sister-sect in Persia. ”

“ The Sunnites, who accept the orthodox tradition (Sunna) as well as the Koran as a source of theologico-juristic doctrines, predominate in Arabia, the Turkish Empire, the north of Africa, Turkestan, Afghanistanand the Mahommedan parts of India and the east of Asia; the Shī‘ites have their main seat in Persia, where their confession is the state religion, but are also scattered over the whole sphere of Islam, especially in India and the regions bordering on Persia, except among the nomad Tatars, who are all nominally Sunnite. ”

“ Ill-feeling between Sunnis and Shi'ahs is not universal in India. 'Though the Sunnis consider the Shi'ah observances as impious, they look on with the contempt of indifference. The fact that the British Government punishes all who break the peace may have something to do with this. Still the Sunni and the Shi'ah in India live on much better terms, and have more respect for each other than the Turk has for the Persian, or the Persian for the Turk. Some Musalman poets, indeed, are both Sunnis and Shi'ahs.'—E. Sell, The Faith of Islam, 292 f. ”

“ Mohammed, Abu Bahkr, Omar, Usman, and Ali, as divinely-appointed Khalifahs or teachers; the Arabs, Turks, Afghans, and the Rohillas of India more or less belong to the Sunni sect. These undertake long pilgrimages to Mekka, and are very tenacious on points of doctrine, often putting to death the heterodox of their own religion. The Shiahs, another very powerful sect of Mohammedans, wholly reject the "Sunnahs," or traditions, and with them the four successors of the Prophet. They perform pilgrimages, not to Mecca or Medinah, but to the tomb of Husain at Kaibelah. The Koran is their only guide. ”

“ He is the most capable judge, devout and orthodox Sunni, harsh towards heretics, especially the Shi'ites and Ismailies, a liberal patron of the men of letters, a sincere friend to men of virtues and learning and unremitting in his efforts to secure public peace and justice and to promote religion and education. ”

“ Divided, as the Muslim world is, into numerous sects, it has been found impossible to take into consideration all the minor differences which exist amongst them. The Dictionary is, for the most part, an exposition of the opinions of the Sunni sect, with explanations of the chief points on which the Shiah and Wahhabi schools of thought differ from it. ”

“ In modern Islam, Sunnis and Shia continue to have different views of acceptable schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and who is a proper Islamic religious authority. Islam also has an active mystical branch, Sufism, with various Sunni and Shia subsets. Sunni Islam accounts for over 75% of the world's Muslim population. It recognizes the Abu Bakr as the first caliph after Muhammad. Sunni has four schools of Islamic doctrine and law - Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali - which uniquely interpret the Hadith, or recorded oral traditions of Muhammad. ”

“ With the Shīʻah, the Ismāʻīlian missionary was to put himself forward as the zealous partisan of all the Shīʻah doctrine, was to dwell upon the cruelty and injustice of the Sunnīs towards ʻAlī and his sons, and liberally abuse the Sunnī K͟halīfahs; having thus prepared the way, he was to insinuate, as the necessary completion of the Shīʻah system of faith, the more esoteric doctrines of the Ismāʻīlian sect. ”

“ HALIL THE PEDLAR.
CHAPTER I. THE PEDLAR.
Time out of mind, for hundreds and hundreds of years, the struggle between the Shiites and the Sunnites has divided the Moslem World.
Persia and India are the lands of the Shiites; Turkey, Arabia, Egypt, and the realm of Barbary follow the tenets of the Sunna.
Much blood, much money, many anathemas, and many apostasies have marked the progress of this quarrel, and still it has not even yet been made quite clear whether the Shiites or the Sunnites are the true believers. ”

“ The Shiahs have their own traditionists, for they reject the sunnat altogether. Between the traditions of the Shiahs and the Sunnis there is not much to choose: there is a certain amount of historical fact embodied in both, and there is also a great deal of absolute nonsense. ”

“ Now it is a place of some fifteen hundred houses, whose inhabitants, says a Persian traveller, “are a people friendly to darvishes,” and of the Hanafi branch of the Sunni Musulman.
Here we took as a passenger an old woman going to Bagdad, a relation of one of the kalak-men, who looked after her with great care. She, on her part, took the ancient man under her special protection and provided him from her plentiful store of bread. ”

“ Thirdly, the great body of the Sunnites has been separated by the schism of Persia practically, if not morally, into two distinct parts, and the separation is certain to continue. The pilgrimages to the holy cities of Arabia have by no means compensated for the undoubtedly greater intercourse, which, in the times of the caliphat, could be carried on without fear of disturbance from the Eastern to the Western frontier of Islam. Sectarian animosity has been purposely kept alive, and has rendered Persia a dangerous country to any Sunnitish traveller. ”

“ The Shiahs are certainly much laxer than the Sunnis with regard to some of the commandments of the Qurān. Painting, and the making of figures is considered by the Sunnis to be a violation of the law against idolatry. There is, however, a regular [78] school of Persian painting; and clay models of men, animals and demons, as well as rag dolls, are given to the children as toys. ”

“ Leckie in their new Oriental Plan of Reform.—See the second of these letters.—How Abdallah's epistle to Ispahan found its way into the Twopenny Post-Bag is more than I can pretend to account for.
[2] Sunnites and Shiites are the two leading sects into which the Mahometan world is divided; and they have gone on cursing and persecuting each other, without any intermission, for about eleven hundred years. The Sunni is the established sect in Turkey, and the Shia in Persia ”

“ Another distinction between the Sunnites and the Shī’ites is that the Sunnites regard the Imām as liable to err, and to be obeyed even though he personally sins, provided he maintains the ordinances of Islām. Effective leadership is the essential point. ”

“ And he says the Shia
17 and the Sunnis, they should come together for focusing in one
18 enemy.
19 Q. In the Sudan, are most of the Muslims there Sunni or Shia?
20 A. Most of the Muslims Sunni.
21 Q. Is there a particular country where most of the Shia
22 Muslims are?
23 A. In Iran, most of the Muslims Shia.
24 Q. You mentioned that Abu Fadhl al Iraqi also spoke about the
25 difference between Sunni and Shia. ”

“ Koran xiii. 14.
46. i.e. his chastity: this fashion of objecting to infamous proposals is very characteristic: ruder races would use their fists.
47. Arab. “Ráfizí” = the Shi’ah (tribe, sect) or Persian schismatics who curse the first three Caliphs: the name is taken from their own saying “Inná rafizná-hum” = verily we have rejected them. The feeling between Sunni (the so-called orthodox) and Shi’ah is much like the Christian love between a Catholic of Cork and a Protestant from the Black North. ”

“ The proud Sunnites, the Turkoman and Uzbeg, walk about with an humble and apologetic air as if to beg pardon of those whom he oppressed in his own home; whilst the men of Bokhara, Hezare, India and Herat are treading proudly and lightly on a ground which seems to inspire them with a consciousness of their superiority—their forms erect, their carriage haughty and independent and their looks scornful and defiant. The Sunnite is by no means, however, exposed to any danger of retaliation on the part of those whose compatriots have often been the victims of his ferocity. ”

“ In Turkey the great majority are Sunni. In India the Shias number about one in twenty. The Shias, who reject this name, and call themselves Adliyah, or the 'Society of the Just,' are subdivided into a great variety of minor sects; but these ... are united in asserting that the first three Caliphs, Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othman were usurpers, who had possessed themselves of the rightful and inalienable inheritance of Ali." J. W. H. Stobart, Islam and its Founder, chapter 10. ”

“ This article of faith, which is rejected with horror by the Turks, occasioned the grand schism which divides the Musulmans; the partisans of Ali being called by the Sunnites, or orthodox believers, Shias, or Shiites, that is, heretics.
The hatred of the Sunnites and Shiites increased in the sequel. Under the caliphs of the dynasty of the Abbassides, it frequently degenerated into fury; and it was considered a meritorious action in a man, to kill another of a contrary opinion to his own. ”

“ By creed they are generally upholders of Shiite tradition in its westernmost confines. But their religious views vary from tribe to tribe and present as composite a character as their race. Many are Sunnis. Wandering into eastern Asia Minor since hoary antiquity they have culled from Paganism, Christianity and Islamism alike. The predominance of the ideals which inspire these faiths among the individual clans probably affords a clue to the period of their arrival in the localities which they now inhabit. ”

“ The Sunnis adhere to the elective historical caliphate descended from Mohammed's uncle, maintain the eternal uncreated sufficiency of the Koran, literally interpreted, and believe in no Messiah save Mohammed. ”

“ The question to be decided is this: which of the four successors of the Prophet, Ali, Abu Bekr, Osmar, and Osman, was the true Caliph. The Shiites maintain that Ali alone was the true Caliph. The Sunnites, on the other hand, affirm that all four were true Caliphs and equally holy. And certainly the [Pg 12] Shiites must be great blockheads to allow themselves to be cut into mince-meat by thousands, rather than admit that God would enrich the calendar with three saints distasteful to them personally. ”

“ I have myself seen in Khiva and Bokhara, even in houses of Mollahs of great renown for learning and piety, Sunnite slaves, and when I called them to account for conduct so inconsistent with their profession, they answered, "At the time I bought him he was a Shiite; that he is now a Sunnite is to be attributed to the influence of the sacred soil of Turkestan." Thus is religion employed to cheat religion. ”

“ The Sunnites hold that it is for men to appoint and that the basis is obedience to the general usage of the Moslem peoples from the earliest times. The necessity for leaders has always been recognized, and a leader has always been appointed. ”

“ Freedman of Abdallah, son of the Caliph Omar and noted as a traditionist.
[FN#331] i.e. at a profit: the exchange must be equal—an ordinance intended to protect the poor. Arabs have strange prejudices in these matters; for instance it disgraces a Badawi to take money for milk.
[FN#332] Arab. "Jamα'ah," which in theology means the Greek , our "Church," the congregation of the Faithful under a lawful head. Hence the Sunnis call themselves "People of the Sunnat and Jamα'at." In the text it is explained as "Ulfat" or intimacy.
[FN#333] Arab. "Al-Khalνl," i.e. of Allah=Abraham. ”

“ Unlike the Sunnites, the Shiites, especially those in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, lead a retired life and studiously avoid relations with all except their coreligionists. Those of the well-to-do class are, when at home, continually engaged in religious ceremonies and conferences. ”

“ Most Sunnites expect that at the end of the world there will come from the House of Mohammed a successor to him, guided by Allah, who will maintain the revealed law as faithfully as the first four khalîfs did according to the idealized history, and who will succeed with God's help in making Islâm victorious over the whole world. ”