I think this story should make us think about the Sunni-Shi’a divide in Iraq.

The event:

“Shiite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near an Iraqi army post. The soldiers did not intervene, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

“The savage revenge attack for Thursday’s slaughter of 215 people in the Shiite Sadr City slum occurred as members of the Mahdi Army militia burned four mosques, and several homes while killing an unknown number of Sunni residents in the once-mixed Hurriyah neighborhood.”

In the country, Shi’as are the majority, but Sunnis had more political power under Saddam Hussein. As pro-democracy folks, U.S. citizens have rushed to declare Shi’as the “good” Muslims, and indeed most of the insurgents have been Sunnis and other Saddam loyalists.

But according to the New York Times, Iraq and Iran are majority Shi’a; the rest of the Muslim world is mainly Sunni. This doesn’t jive well with the good/bad Muslim divide, if one exists.

The dirty little secret is that there are remarkably few differences between Sunnis and Shi’as. That’s one reason (though no excuse) many government officials can’t explain the difference. It’s much more akin to the Catholic-Protestant ideological divide than the U.S.-Soviet one.

From About.com:

“Both Sunni and Shia Muslims share the most fundamental Islamic beliefs and articles of faith. The differences between these two main sub-groups within Islam initially stemmed not from spiritual differences, but political ones. Over the centuries, however, these political differences have spawned a number of varying practices and positions which have come to carry a spiritual significance.”

The main difference:

“The division between Shia and Sunni dates back to the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and the question of who was to take over the leadership of the Muslim nation. Sunni Muslims agree with the position taken by many of the Prophet’s companions, that the new leader should be elected from among those capable of the job.

…

“The Shia Muslims believe that following the Prophet Muhammad’s death, leadership should have passed directly to his cousin/son-in-law, Ali. Throughout history, Shia Muslims have not recognized the authority of elected Muslim leaders, choosing instead to follow a line of Imams which they believe have been appointed by the Prophet Muhammad or God Himself.”

It’s not unreasonable to take a somewhat pro-Shi’a stance in the name of majority rule, but (A) this will enrage Sunnis and (B) as this story (and Iran) shows, Shi’as are not angels. Regardless of whether some kind of “revenge” was justified, targeting a bunch of innocents was not.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.