Sunni or Shia..Who's right?

[hasan]

Shah Ishmael, a descendant of John IV of Trebizond, espoused a militant twelver Shiism and was converting Sunni Muslims to Shia by sword until curbed by Sultan Selim. Nadir Shah a few centuries later, who was less hostile to sunni muslims and with the Fermin Shah diluted Shia militancy to a less offensive more behaved and newly espoused Jafari creed ...

[Hannahh]

Oh I see. Well he doesn't figure much into our thinking now. Not that he ever likely did. I think the problem is the same with any believer and belief...don't confuse the two. It also appears that he is more Sufi than Shi'i. I would have to do far more investigation that this to understand how the two can be combined. As far as Twelver Shi'i Islam is concerned, Sufism is a separate entity.

I also think that recapping several centuries of history in a few lines is ill advised.

I also think that whatever happened before or after this villain matters a great deal and you have left that to the imagination.

Peace in any case

[Wandering star]

What do you mean by unity Ahmed?

What do the respective parties in question need to do to "unite"?

Simple....

Appreciate that Islam has to be interpreted from fragments of historical information.

Depending on what rules you apply to deciphering that information will result in a different interpretation of Islam.

Accept that as long as you believe in the Quran then you are a Muslim.

The rest is just differences as a result of interpretation.


No-one knows what ACTUALLY happened... we only know what we have deciphered from the information available, based on the rules we think are most sensible.

(No set of rules is necessarily better than another)


You makes your choice I makes mine.....

We are all still brothers and sisters.

[Hannahh]

We know what happened. It isn't hidden. It is in fact the best documented "religious" history on the planet.

Your comments although well intentioned remind me of the obfuscation that allows Israel to commit atrocities against the Palestinians with full American support. Alas.

It is common for oppressors and suppressors to make you believe that information is not available.

Again, go read the Nahj and come back to me when you are done.

I will allow ten more years for the assignment to be completed.






I will tell you how I came to the Nahj. I was in a state of confusion about my Islam after having lived in Saudi Arabia for over a decade, the murder of my neighbor Paul Johnson by Al Qaeda operatives and my own personal problems centered mostly around the fundamental belief that I knew Islam better than anyone around me!

I had heard from people like you guys here most likely...that there was a "Shia Quran" i.e. a quran that differed from the one we all know and love.

I happened into an Islamic bookstore in Borj al Borajne (a suburb of W. Beirut) and asked the shopkeeper if he had one of these special 'Shia Qurans" and he looked at me kind of quizzically. He said he didn't know anything about that but he directed me to a shelf upon which my two volumes of the Nahj were. They were and are the gold standard editions of the text (which exists in some different formats and with some differences in what is included). In English and Arabic, unabridged.

I tried on oh so many occasions to read the thing. It is one of the hardest books any of you will ever read. It is a scholarly text with several layers of understanding required to comprehend what the text actually is.

I won't go into detail about the final success I achieved in reading this extremely difficult text but suffice it to say, I read it in about 2 weeks during Ramadan in 2005. I could't put it down...which is amazing after having made so many stabs at it before and giving up in frustration.

On Eid that year I had a dream and one could really call it more of a vision. I saw a tree with big green fruits and I knew that the fruits of that tree were for me. When I awoke I told my husband that my spiritual crises were resolved and he said he knew something miraculous had happened.

My life has never been the same since....harder in some ways and much more beautiful in others.





I have never veered from this advice on these boards.




Have I Ron?








And Ron, have you at least purchased a copy yet?