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Shia And Sunni: The Two Main Denominations In Islam

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Shia and Sunni

Shia and Sunni are the two main denominations in Islam. Around 87–89% of the world's Muslims are Sunni while the rest of 11–12% is Shia, most Shias belongs to the Twelver tradition and the rest divided between many groups.

Sunnis majority is in most of the Muslim communities such as Southeast Asia, China, South Asia, Africa, and most of the Arab continent. Majority of the Shia citizen’s population is in Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, and also a politically significant minority in Lebanon. Indonesia has the largest number of Sunnis, on the other hand Iran has the largest number of Shia Muslim in the world. Pakistan has the second largest Sunni and also Shia Muslim population in the world.

Sunni and Shia split lies in the schism which occurred when the Islamic prophet Muhammad passed on in the year 632, leading to a dispute over succession to Muhammad as a caliph of the Islamic community spread across the world, this led to the Battle of Siffin. The dispute intensified greatly after the Battle of Karbala, in which Hussein Ibn Ali and his household were killed by the ruling of Umayyad Caliph Yazid I, and the revenge has divided in the early of Islamic community. Today, there are several differences in religious practice, traditions, and customs, often related to jurisprudence. Furthermore all Muslim consider the Quran to be divine, but the Sunni and Shia have different opinions and interpretation on hadith. …show more content…
Sectarian violence persists to this day from Pakistan to Yemen and throughout the Middle East.
The tensions between Sunni and Shia have intensified during the power struggles, for example the Bahraini uprising, the Iraq War, and most recent which is the Syrian Civil

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