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Jessica Bailey
Professor Jenkins
POL3062:001
12/3/14
ISIS and the Sunni-Shiite Divide in Islam
Within a religion that is overall very peaceful, the Sunni-Shiite divide has ravaged on
throughout the history of Islam as a source of disagreement and hostility. The divide hasnt
completely faltered during the almost 2000 years of Islams existence. With the recent rise in
conflict within the Middle Eastern world, it is easy to use this divide between sects as a jumping
off point in understanding why the conflicts are occurring. Whether it be ravaging civil war as
seen in Syria or the rise in jihadi terror such as we see with ISIS, it can all be linked back to this
ancient separation within the religion of Islam. While the divide certainly isnt the only factor in
explaining the rise in conflict, it is still an important piece of history to understand to help piece
everything together. In recent years, terror groups within Islam have been able to take
precedence within our discourse of the religion. The terror group that I am most interested in
researching is ISIS. I am curious to see how the group has been able to gain so much traction.
How much of an influence does the ancient Sunni-Shiite divide have on the formation and
continuation of this group?
To understand the rise in Middle Eastern conflict today, it is important to understand the
history of the Sunni-Shiite divide. It all goes back to the year 632 AD with the death of
Muhammad. Muhammad was the founder of Islam and the leader until his death. After he died,
there was a question of succession among his followers. Most of the followers believed in the
choosing of a new leader from the many followers of Muhammad while another small majority

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believed that the next caliph and all of the caliphs after that should be a part of Muhammads
bloodline. The groups then became known as the Sunnis, who believed in choosing the caliph,
and Shiites, who believed only a member of Muhammads bloodline should be caliph. A man
named Abu Bakr, who was Muhammads closest advisor, became the first caliph of the Islamic
caliphate after Muhammads death. The Shiite were unhappy with the choice and didnt believe
he was a valid caliph due to the fact that he wasnt within Muhammads bloodline. The Shiite
choice for caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib, would go on to become the fourth Islamic caliph. After Ali
was assassinated in 661 AD, war broke out between the two sects. The violence came to a head
in 680 when the Sunni caliph killed Alis son, Husayn, in Karbala in present day Iraq. The
descendants of Husayn forever became known as the Imams. The Imams were seen as the
legitimate rulers of the religion by the Shiites while viewed threats to the religion by the Sunnis.
After the violence subsided, the two sects lived in relative peace for hundreds of years.

While

different empires ignited the divide between sects throughout history, the two remained
relatively peaceful. So what does this history have to do with modern day Middle Eastern
conflict? As it turns out, a lot. In the year 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini led the Islamic Revolution
in Iran that instilled a Shiite rule in the country. The Sunnis in the area refused to recognize the
validity of the rule. This inspired Sunni extremists who adhered to a school of thought known as
Wahhabism to push their sectarian agenda in countries such as Saudi Arabia which has an
extreme Sunni majority. All of the violence that we see today associated with Islam can be
traced back to this time period. Based on this history of the divide, I am especially interested in
realizing how the divide plays a part in the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, especially
in helping the group build their membership.

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ISIS roots can be traced back to the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2004. The founder of
ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was originally a member of Al Qaeda. However, the ideal that Abu
Bakr held differed pretty greatly from the ideals held by Al Qaeda, especially regarding the
establishment of an Islamic Caliphate. The differences are very complicated but the main
concern that Al Qaeda had was how ISIS, or as it was known at the time Al Qaeda in Iraq,
inflicted violence against all Muslims, regardless of sect. The leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman alZawahiri, believed that the actions of Abu Bakr alienated many Iraqis (Mamoud). This in turn
caused a huge rift between the two terror groups and Abu Bakr split off to form its own jihadi
group. Abu Bakr formed an alliance with a Syrian jihadi group known as Jabhat al-Nusra. The
two fought together for some time as Al Qaeda in Iraq continued to gain more ground within
Syria. As the civil war was being fought within Syria at this time, the main goal of Al Qaeda in
Iraq wasnt to fight Bashar al-Assads regime. Their main goal was to reinforce and expand its
operations within Syria (Rabil). In 2013, when the two groups officially merged together, they
started calling themselves Al Qaeda of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS. The union of the two groups
didnt last very long at all but the principle still remained. ISIS was to stop at nothing to gain
control of Iraq and Syria. It wasnt until June 2014 that ISIS officially announced its plan to
recreate the Islamic caliphate. It was intended by them to ensure that the entirety of the Muslim
population would be rejoined under this new caliphate; a caliphate that hadnt been in existence
for about a hundred years.
To understand ISIS desire to create a new caliphate it is important to understand the
history of the caliphate. The Islamic caliphate is an Islamic state ruled by a supreme leader, or
caliph. The caliphate was instilled after the death of Muhammad in order to keep the Islamic
world connected under one state. Under the caliphate, all Muslims were to pledge obedience to

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the caliph. There were many caliphates that came about over the next 1500 years or so but in
1924 the caliphate was abolished to make room for reform. Despite a few attempts to revive the
caliphate, nothing ever solidified. ISIS intends to revive the caliphate in order to connect all
Muslims again.
Although ISIS is a relatively new jihadi group, they have been able to gain much traction
within the Middle Eastern world. Most Muslims are able to see through their message, however.
ISIS uses the Quran to defend its actions and most Muslims are in agreement that the message
that they are spreading goes directly against the message of the Quran. However, in some areas
ISIS has been able to build a significant following of people who are willing to leave their homes
and join the group in their reign of terror. Why is it that ISIS has been so successful in building
up its membership when its message and actions seem to go directly against the teachings in the
Quran? One answer to this question lies in how the groups capitalizes on the Sunni-Shiite split.
Within the Muslim world, Sunnis are the vast majority. Out of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the
world, 85% are Sunnis while only 15% are Shiites (The Sunni-Shia Divide). However, as was
stated earlier in the paper, the split hadnt caused major problems within the Muslim world until
approximately 40 years ago. Iraq in particular is one place where the split in sects has been
reignited in recent years. Iraqi sectarian fighting in 2006-2007 was made up of extreme violence
between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites. The violence began actually as an attack by ISIS on a holy
Shiite site. From there came increased Shiite violence to counter this attack. The fighting
occurred for years until it eventually started to level out, although not subside completely. The
instability in Iraq, not only from the fighting between the sects but also from the invasion of the
country by countries including the US, created a perfect ground for ISIS to breed its terror. This
is especially due to the fact that the majority of Iraqis are Shiites while the minority are Sunnis.

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When Saddam Hussein, who was a Sunni, was leader in Iraq, he spread the false pretense that the
majority of Iraqis were Sunni (which actually wasnt the case). Due to this false information,
many Sunnis started to feel disgruntled as they believed that they deserved a bigger share of the
government after the death of Hussein. ISIS was able to capitalize on the unhappy Sunnis to
recruit them into the group.

This increase in Iraqi Sunnis joining the group inspired other

Sunnis, who still see the split between the two sects as irreparable, to leave their countries and
join ISIS.
Another country where ISIS has been able to capitalize on the Sunni-Shiite split is Syria.
This is another country where instability bred the perfect grounds for ISIS to spread and gain
members. The Syrian civil war saw its origins in the Arab Spring movement in 2011 with armed
conflict actually coming to a head a few months later. The conflict started as tensions rose
between the Sunni majority population and the Shiite led government under the rule of the
extremist Bashar Al-Assad. As the conflict gained more traction within the country, political
instability rose and as a result there is not a lot of stability in the country. ISIS exploited this
instability into gaining new members out of the opposition to Al-Assads regime. These
opposing rebels to the regime are using the power of ISIS to gain power over the regime.
According to Loveday Morris, Syrian rebel group Jabhat Al-Nusra and its more moderate
members are wary of joining forces with ISIS as they believe it will leave the Western world
wary of supporting their cause. He also cites the difference in objectives of both ISIS and the
Syrian rebels. As I pointed out earlier, the Syrian rebels are more concerned with overthrowing
Al-Assads regime while ISIS is concerned with creating a caliphate.
One major difference between Sunnis and Shiites is that while Shiites seem to be pretty
united in their objectives, Sunnis dont have that same unity. In fact, Sunni ideology varies from

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group to group. As an example, we can look at terror groups within the two sects. Shiite terror
groups, such as Hezbollah and Iran, are united in their aims. Sunnis terror groups, such as ISIS
and Al Qaeda, are not. Their aims and ideologies vary between groups and oftentimes one group
wont even recognize the other as a legitimate jihadi group. As an example, Al Qaeda doesnt
support the amount of violence that ISIS uses. Al Qaeda believes that this amount of violence
will only hurt the group and its objectives because more moderate Sunnis wont want to join
such a brutal group. Al Qaeda has been known for using more calculated terror rather than the
spontaneous brutality that has highlighted ISIS. This brutality that ISIS uses is another reason as
to why the membership of the group is rising. Some Muslims, especially young Muslims, are
enchanted by the brutality and want to join in order to bring about some of this extreme violence.
They might see the violence being committed all around the world by Islamic extremists and
want to join in.
The interesting thing about ISIS and its recruitment is how the group uses the Quran as a
defense of its actions. Just as many Christians warp the words of the Bible to justify their
actions, ISIS members are warping the Quran to justify some of their actions. For example, ISIS
cites a Quran verse that gives permissions for war and fighting. In reality, however, the verse
actually gives permission for fighting to those who have been oppressed and driven out of their
homelands by people destroying gods name. The Quran also states that on resurrection day, god
will be the judge of everyone although ISIS has a belief that they are killing people in the name
of god. Their backwards approach goes directly against the teachings of the Quran and yet many
young people are coming out in droves to join ISIS. Many of the people joining dont speak
Arabic and therefore might not have read the Quran and understood how different it is from
ISIS objectives. Among the ISIS members who do speak Arabic, they might have been

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disillusioned to believe that ISIS interpretation of the Quran is in fact the correct interpretation
if they had never studied the Quran thoroughly.
Religious wars and skirmishes have been an intricate part of the world since the
beginning of mankind. Religion has continually been the basis of altercations across the world
regardless of what the religion is. One of the earliest known religious conflicts that also is one of
the most well-known is the Crusades. This was a war fought by Christians against Muslim
militants. While other causes of the war include a conflict over the frontiers of Europe, it is
widely accepted that one of the most important causes was the Roman Catholic Church
attempting to curb the influence of Islam (Crawford). The impacts of the war are profound and
while there hasnt been a religious war fought on this size of a scale since then, there have been
various battles and wars fought between groups of people over religious differences. There are
currently two prominent religious feuds happening in the world today: one of which is happening
between two different religious groups while the other is happening between two groups within
the same religion. The feud within the same religion is clearly the Sunni-Shiite divide which has
been highlighted throughout this paper while the feud between two different religions is the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict which is being fought between Palestinian Muslims and Israeli Jews.
One thing that should be clarified is that neither of these conflicts is purely religious. Both
conflicts include significant sectarian, ethnic, and regional causes. However, there are
significant religious ties as well. I will give a brief history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict here.
The conflict began when Zionist Jews declared Palestine as the new settlement for all Jews in the
late nineteenth century. Throughout the twentieth century, violence and fighting erupted over
claim to this land. Jews claim it is theirs because Jerusalem is the most important place in
Judaism while Palestinians claim it is theirs because the land was taken from them illegally.

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There have been four official wars that the Arab nations have waged against Israel and today
there is even more violence happening within the area. On any given day, both sides are
exchanging gunfire and perpetuating violence. On the other hand, we can also see violence
being exchanged between Sunnis and Shiites in the same region. This violence is amplified in
both Iraq and Syria due to the unrest caused by sectarianism. It is interesting to note that the
violence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the violence in the Sunni-Shiite conflict is
comparable. According to Woolf and Hulsizer, inter- and intra- religious conflicts are more
similar in nature than people would think. They say that it is often hard to determine whether a
religious conflict is inter- or intra- due to the fact that there are various religious denominations
who dont include themselves in the greater whole of the religion.
Just as ISIS was bred partially out of a religious conflict, so have various terrorist groups
been bred out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The most visible of these is Hamas, a
Palestinian terror group. To some extent, Zionists within Israel also have committed acts of
terror throughout the conflict. What can be agreed upon by almost everyone who is witness to
the war, however, is that terror seems to be a tactic used by both sides in order to achieve their
goals. Just as ISIS use of terror is used as motivation to gain support, so is Hamas use of terror
used to gain support from Palestinian citizens. No matter the religious conflict, there seems to be
a pattern of participants using terror in order to gain traction. In the article written by Katz, he
writes something interesting that immediately brought to mind ISIS. He says, Hamas is a Sunni
Islamist group. It does not seek a two-state solution, but calls for the destruction of Israel and the
creation of a single Palestinian state. In both cases, the extremists are not concerned with
finding solutions to benefit both sides but with destroying the other side in benefit of their own
interests.

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Intensity of religious wars, I believe, depends on a number of things. One thing that
makes both aforementioned conflicts so intense is serious historical background. Other than
history, however, both conflicts are made more prominent by factors such as social influence and
cognition, among others. These and other factors are good base points to determine the intensity
of a conflict. For this reason, I dont believe that intra-religious wars are necessarily more
intense than inter-religions ones. Given the two examples above, I think that both conflicts are
intense in similar and different ways. The determining factor lies in the passion behind each side
and it is very easy to find that passion within both conflicts.
There have been a number of Muslim intellectuals who have been extremely vocal in
countering ISIS portrayal of sects within Islam. ISIS has thrived on portraying the Sunni-Shiite
as being an extreme and prominent issue in the area. They have been successful in capitalizing
on the idea that the two sects are different and there is no way for the two to live harmoniously in
the region. Many intellectuals have stepped up to counter this view of Islamic sects. One of the
most prominent of these intellectuals is Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan has consistently been a critic
of the sectarian divide within Islam. When speaking on the dangers of sectarianism in An Appeal
to the Conscience of Muslims, Ramadan said Islams extraordinary diversity must be accepted
and celebrated. Islam is one, but its interpretations are many. The existence of literalist,
traditionalist, reformist, mystic, rationalist and other currents is a fact, a reality that must be
treated positively and qualitatively, for each of them has its own legitimacy and should (must!)
contribute a multifaceted debate among Muslims. Unfortunately, some of todays Muslim
religious scholars, and the leaders of various trends, are caught up in an ideological
confrontation, and often a clash of egos, that create divisions and transform them into dangerous
populists who claim for themselves the title of sole and authentic representatives of Islam.

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Within Sunnis, as within Shiites; between Sunnis and Shiites; scholars and schools of thought
lash out at one another, forgetting the fundamental teachings and the principles that unite them
and instead splitting along doctrinal or political lines that remain secondary at best. Another
Muslim intellectual who has been vocal in countering ISIS portrayal of sects is Reza Aslan.
Aslan has been noted warning about being able to recognize geopolitical conflicts from religious
ones. It is extremely important to be able to determine the difference between conflicts that are
strictly geopolitical versus one that is religious. In an interview with the Global Post, Aslan says
The Sunni-Shia divide is manufactured by those figures in the region, both governments and
non-state entities, whose interests are advanced by stirring up this kind of sectarian conflict.
This is precisely the opposite of what ISIS wants people to believe. The main lifeline of groups
such as ISIS is that the Sunni-Shiite divide is so intense that their group makes sense to exist.
Aslan and Ramadan would disagree with that, saying that the divide is definitely present in the
area but is shadowed by factors such as politics and ideology. In order to curb the violence that
has been present in the area for so long, Aslan writes that we need to deal with the political
interests and difference within each state and to understand the geopolitics of the region
(Madow). It seems unlikely, however, that the divide will cease to exist as a motivating terror
factor among a number of Muslims despite the reason being voiced by these and other
intellectuals.
Extremist Islam groups, particularly ISIS, rely on the Sunni-Shiite divide to justify their
actions and to recruit members. Given the history of the split and the reasoning behind it, it is
unlikely that Islamic terror groups will cease to exist nor to use the divide as a motivating factor.
While a number of sources are claiming that ISIS is ceasing to be as influential as they have been
in recent months, there will always be a new terror group ready to take its place. I believe that

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the only way terror will cease to be a pertinent aspect of Islam is when people start realizing that
there are other factors associated with the terror other than the secular split within the religion.
After realizing this, tangible actions must be taken in order to achieve goals associated with
ending not only ISIS but terror in general.

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Works Cited
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Terror. New York: Random House, 2009. Print.
Barger, T K. The Sunni-Shia Divide, Conflict Puts Islamic Sects Back in Spotlight. Proquest.
Tribune Content Agency LLC, 22 June 2014. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.
Crawford, Paul. "The Crusades." The Crusades. Catholic Education Resource Center. Web. 3
Dec. 2014.
"Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Thomson Reuters Foundation, 23 July
2014. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
Katz, Mark. "The Israeli - Palestinian Conflict and the War on Terror." Middle East Policy
Council. Middle East Policy Council. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
Lipka, Michael. The Sunni-Shia Divide: Where They Live, What They Believe and How They
View Each Other. Pew Research Center RSS. 18 June 2014. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.
Madow, Lauren. "Q & A: US Foreign Policy Lessons and Failures along the Sunni-Shia Divide
Page 2." In The Land of Cain and Abel. GlobalPost, 21 Mar. 2013. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
Mamoun, Abdelhak. "Al-Qaeda Rejects ISIS' Caliphate and Succession of Abu Bakr Al
Baghdadi - Iraqi News." Iraq News, the Latest Iraq News. 15 July 2014. Web. 13 Nov.
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Rabil, Robert. "The ISIS Chronicles: A History." The National Interest. 17 July 2014. Web. 13
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Ramadan, Tariq. "An Appeal to the Conscience of Muslims." The American Muslim (TAM). The
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"The Sunni-Shia Divide." Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations. Web. 13

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"The Sunni-Shia Divide." Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations. Web. 3
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Woolf, Linda, and Michael Hulsizer. "Intra- and Inter- Religious Hate and Violence: A
Psychosocial Model." Webster University. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
Zakaria, Fareed. Does Iraq Need a Second Sunni Awakening? Global Public Square RSS.
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