What Is the Difference Between Sunni and Shia?
The Sunni–Shia split is the major division in Islam: Sunnis follow the practice of the community, while Shia hold that leadership belongs to the Prophet's family.
The Sunni-Shia split is the major division in Islam, dating to the succession crisis that followed the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632. Sunnis, who today constitute about 85-90% of the world’s Muslims, hold that the first four caliphs were legitimate successors of the Prophet and that leadership of the Muslim community belongs to the consensus of the community. Shia (or Shiite) Muslims, who today constitute about 10-15% of the world’s Muslims, hold that leadership of the community belongs to the family of the Prophet, particularly the line of Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, and his descendants.
The split is sometimes described as a dispute about the succession to the Prophet, but it is, in fact, a more complicated matter. The two communities developed distinct legal, theological, and devotional traditions over the centuries that followed the original dispute, and the present-day differences between Sunni and Shia Islam are the result of a long process of differentiation. The two communities share the fundamental beliefs of Islam - the oneness of God, the prophethood of Muhammad, the revelation of the Qur’an, the day of judgment - and differ on questions of religious authority, ritual practice, and historical memory.
The Origin of the Split
The dispute began with the succession to the Prophet Muhammad after his death in 632. The Muslims of Medina selected Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s father-in-law, as his successor. Some of the Muslims, particularly those who had been close to the Prophet and to the Hashimite clan, held that the succession should have gone to Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, who was also the father of the Prophet’s only surviving grandchildren, Hasan and Husayn. The partisans of Ali became known as the Shiat Ali, the party of Ali, which is the origin of the term “Shia.”
The dispute was sharpened by the events of the next decades. Ali was passed over in the selection of the second caliph, Umar, in 634, and the third caliph, Uthman, in 644. Uthman was a member of the Umayyad clan of the Quraysh, and his assassination in 656 led to Ali’s accession as the fourth caliph. Ali’s caliphate was contested from the start by the Umayyad governor of Syria, Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan, and the First Fitna (656-661) pitted Ali against Muawiyah in a series of battles. Ali was assassinated in 661, and his elder son Hasan briefly succeeded him before abdicating in favor of Muawiyah. Ali’s younger son Husayn rose in revolt against the Umayyads in 680 and was killed with a small band of supporters at the Battle of Karbala in modern Iraq.
The death of Husayn at Karbala became the foundational event of the Shia sense of grievance against the Umayyads and a major site of Shia piety to the present day. The annual commemoration of the martyrdom of Husayn, known as Ashura, is the most important Shia religious festival, and the story of his death is told and retold in Shia piety, theology, and literature as the paradigm of unjust suffering and the promise of eventual redemption. The Umayyad caliphate was, in Shia memory, the dynasty of usurpers who had stolen the caliphate from the family of the Prophet.
The Development of the Two Traditions
The two traditions developed over the following centuries. The Sunni community, which became the majority, recognized the legitimacy of the first four caliphs (the Rashidun) and the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties, and developed a tradition of religious authority based on the consensus of the scholars and the validity of the practice of the community. The Shia community held that the caliphate belonged to the descendants of Ali through his sons Hasan and Husayn, and developed a tradition of religious authority based on the teachings of the imams, the spiritual leaders of the community.
The Shia community itself split into several branches. The largest, the Twelvers (or Ithna Ashariyya), hold that there were twelve legitimate imams, the last of whom, Muhammad al-Mahdi, went into a state of divine concealment (ghayba) in the late ninth century and will return at the end of time as the messianic restorer of justice. The Ismailis, or Seveners, hold that the seventh imam, Ismail, was the last legitimate imam, and developed a complex theological tradition that produced the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt and North Africa in the tenth century. The Zaydis, who are concentrated in modern Yemen, hold that the fifth imam, Zayd ibn Ali, was the last legitimate imam and accept a more political, less esoteric form of Shia Islam.
Religious Differences
The religious differences between Sunni and Shia Islam are considerable, although they are often less sharp in practice than in theory. The two communities have different legal traditions: Sunnis follow one of the four major schools of Sunni law (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali), while Shia follow the Ja’fari school, named after the sixth imam. The Shia legal tradition, in general, gives the imam a more central role in the determination of the law and recognizes the practice of taqiyya, the dissimilation of one’s religious belief in circumstances of danger. The two communities have different hadith collections, with the Shia accepting the reports of the imams as a source of religious authority alongside the Qur’an and the sunna of the Prophet.
The two communities have somewhat different devotional practices. The pilgrimage to the tombs of the imams, particularly the shrine of Husayn at Karbala, the shrine of Ali at Najaf, and the shrine of Fatima in Qom, is a major feature of Shia piety. The annual commemoration of Ashura, the martyrdom of Husayn, is observed in both Sunni and Shia communities, but with very different emphases. The Shia communities also place greater emphasis on the figure of the imam as a mediator between God and the community, and on the role of the clerical hierarchy in the interpretation of the law.
The Sunni-Shia Split in Later History
The Sunni-Shia split was, for most of Islamic history, a background fact rather than a cause of constant conflict. The two communities lived in the same cities, traded in the same markets, and shared the same intellectual culture. The political rivalry between the Sunni Abbasids and the Shia Fatimids of Egypt was a real one, but it did not prevent the development of a shared Islamic civilization. In the modern period, however, the Sunni-Shia split has become a more salient feature of the Islamic world. The Iranian revolution of 1979, the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran under Shia clerical leadership, and the long Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 made the Sunni-Shia split a major fault line of the contemporary Middle East. The Islamic State, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, and the political conflicts of modern Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have all been marked, in various degrees, by the Sunni-Shia divide.
The Shared Foundations
For all their differences, Sunni and Shia Muslims share the fundamental doctrines of Islam. Both communities affirm the oneness of God, the prophethood of Muhammad, the revelation of the Qur’an, the day of judgment, the importance of the prayer, the almsgiving, the fasting of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Both communities revere the Prophet Muhammad, his family, and the early companions. The two communities have, at various points in history, engaged in dialogue and exchange, and there have been periods in which the differences have been less sharply felt than at others. The Sunni-Shia split is, in this sense, both a real and enduring division and a shared inheritance of the Islamic tradition.