Of Shia and Syria (Part 1)

A friend of mine had requested that I wrote something on the issue of Syria. All the news on violence erupting in Syria. but before we could dive any deeper,it is better for us to understand why this thing happened. But trying to understand the situation in Syria is not as easy as you might think, with over 1000 rebel factions and a regime that is backed by western power brokers make for a very complicated and often confusing case.

Firstly, to clarify, Syria population is mostly Muslim by birth with 74% Sunni while Shia only make up 13% of the whole population(some,including myself however, believed that Shia is another religion not to be associated to Islam). Mr. President himself, Bashar Al-Assad is Shia follower, from the Alawites group. This group features heavily in the administration in Syria explaining the government hatred towards the Muslim brotherhood that is made out of Sunni group.

This part of my writing will deal with the animosity between the Sunni and Shia followers.

A lot of people has been asking me, what is my view on Shia, and I have been saying this everytime, in my opinion, they ARE NOT a sect of Islam. Sunni and Shia diverged at the very core,therefore it is safe to say that Shia is a different religion.

Where Sunni put Allah above everything else, the Shia, in their obsession to the point of extremism in expressing their love to Ali bin Abi Talib gave the title of 'Imam' to Ali and his descendants. These titles are not the same as the title that were attributed to Sunni scholars but are sort of a divine title (which in reality given by the followers,never assumed by the said person, i.e. Ali bin Abi Talib and others).

Shia, according to scholars was founded by Abdullah bin Saba, a jew, a fact denied by Shia followers. the said person was a jew who, converted to Islam but not a true believer or called a munafiq. He(according to western scholar could be more than one person) is also the first to utter ghulat(extremism) and to come up with the idea of the supremacy of Ali above others to the point of being divine. Ali himself tried to execute Abdullah bin Saba but was stopped by Ibnu Abbas and instead exiled him to Madain. From that point however, Shia took off until it become what we know today. Countries such as Iran and Syria are dominated by Shia leaders therefore influencing their stance on other Islamic countries and also Israel.

Iran are the centre of all this. Due to the revolution of Iran and their defiance towards USA, they were once hailed as championing the cause of Islam until recently when their true agenda was unmasked for the whole Islamic world to see.

Fforgive me for my very brief introduction on Shia, for more information on the subject,please do some readings and researches and kindly comment so that we can discuss the topic.

The second part will deal with Syria and what is currently happening there. Assalamualaikum.