Which countries are shia and sunni

Dr Carool Kersten. The imams were considered to be infallible, whilst for the Sunnis the caliph was just a man, there to maintain law and order. However, the split between the groups was not definitive straight away. He survived five years before dying in mysterious circumstances. His death at the hands of the Sunni Umayyad family at the Battle of Karbala made him a martyr for the Shia cause.

According to Dr Kersten, this was the decisive moment in splitting the Sunnis from the Shias. Sunnis are the more dominant form of Islam — at least 80 per cent of Muslims worldwide.

However, Shia Muslims are the majority in some other countries such as Iran, Iraq, and more recently, Lebanon. It would be overly easy to say Shias are more moderate than Sunnis. You can find extreme elements on both sides of the equation.

Ali eventually became the fourth caliph or Imam, as Shiites call their leaders , but only after the two that preceded him had both been assassinated. Ali, himself, was killed in , as the bitter power struggle between Sunni and Shia continued.

This combination of money and power would only grow. A massive Sunni army waited for them, and by the end of a day standoff with various smaller struggles, Hussein was killed and decapitated, and his head brought to Damascus as a tribute to the Sunni caliph. In addition to Karbala, the NPR podcast Throughline identified three key milestones that would sharpen Sunni-Shia divisions by the end of the 20th century.

First came the rise of the Safavid dynasty in the 16th century, which transformed Iran through force from a Sunni center into the Shia stronghold of the Middle East. In the early 20th century, the victorious Allies divided the territory held by the former Ottoman Empire after World War I , cutting through centuries-old religious and ethnic communities in the process.

Finally, in , the Islamic Revolution in Iran produced a radical brand of Shia Islam that would clash violently with Sunni conservatives in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the decades to follow.

Amid the increasing politicization of Islam and the rise of fundamentalists on both sides of the divide, sectarian tensions intensified in the early 21st century, especially amid the upheavals caused by two Persian Gulf Wars, the chaos that followed the U.

Sunni extremists frequently denounce Shia as heretics who should be killed. The Iranian revolution of launched a radical Shia Islamist agenda that was perceived as a challenge to conservative Sunni regimes, particularly in the Gulf.

Tehran's policy of supporting Shia militias and parties beyond its borders was matched by Sunni-ruled Gulf states, which strengthened their links to Sunni governments and movements elsewhere. Today, many conflicts in the region have strong sectarian overtones. In Syria, Iranian troops, Hezbollah fighters and Iranian-backed Shia militiamen have been helping the Shia-led government battle the Sunni-dominated opposition. Sunni jihadist groups, including Islamic State IS , have meanwhile been targeting Shia and their places of worship in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

In January , the execution by Saudi Arabia of a prominent Shia cleric who supported mass anti-government protests triggered a diplomatic crisis with Iran and angry demonstrations across the Middle East.

Quick guide: Islam. Sunnis and Shia in the Middle East. Image source, AP. Pilgrimage to Mecca is one of many rituals that are shared by both sects. Who are the Sunnis? Image source, Getty Images.

Egypt is home to some of Sunni Islam's oldest centres of learning.