After the Prophet: the Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam

After close to a century of failed intervention,
Westerners ɹnally need to stand back, to acknowledge
the emotive depth of the Sunni-Shia split and to accord
it the respect it demands. The Karbala story has endured
and strengthened not least because it reaches deep into
questions of morality—of idealism versus pragmatism,
purity versus compromise. Its DNA is the very stuʃ that
tests both politics and faith and animates the vast and
often terrifying arena in which the two intersect. But
whether sacredness inheres in the Prophet’s blood
family, as the Shia believe, or in the community as a
whole, as Sunnis believe, nobody in the West should
forget that what unites the two main branches of Islam
is far greater that what divides them, and that the vast
majority of all Muslims still cherish the ideal of unity
preached by Muhammad himself—an ideal the more
deeply held for being so deeply broken.