Sunni islam = followers of Abu Bakr, Aishas father. Aishaas was mohamads child bride @ the age of 6.
Shia islam = followers of Ali, husband of Fatima who was mohamads daughter.
Sunni islam is great in numbers
Shia islam is low in numbers
Then you have the Ahmadi, who have their own prophet as of about 200+ years ago.
And there are tons of other islam muslims who the Sunni consider as non-muslim,/kafir/kafur.
This is a horribly inaccurate post. I began to call it simplified, but it has been reduced to such an extent that it inaccurate.
After the death of Muhammad, Abu Bakr who was Muhammad’s dearest friend became the leader of the Muslims. Some of the Muslims preferred that Ali be elected but by majority vote Abu Bakr was made leader, and Ali even pledged allegiance to him.
Some time later Ali was also made the leader of the Muslims (after the deaths of Abu Bakr, Umar, And Uthman)–and the distinction of “Sunni” and “Shia” did not exist at the time. It’s something that only began to truly develop later on, even though the movement of Shi’a attempts to trace its inception to the preference of the Muslims to follow Abu Bakr.
But in fact “sunnis,” a shortened version of a name meaning the majority group of people who follow the way of Muhammad, followed both Abu Bakr and Ali, and respect them both.
Sunnis account for at least 85% of Muslims–many of whom won’t claim to be of any sect, but merely Muslim. And that is what a “Sunni” Muslim is. The next largest group is Shi’a, although there are many factions within Shi’a. And there are some even further divergent groups, whose adherence to the fold of Islam is questionable at best.
But allow me to stress again that at least 85% of Muslims are a part of the same “sect,” the “Sunnis.” An overwhelming majority, by anyone’s definition.
To answer another of the OP’s questions, why do Sunnis and Shi’as fight, in such places as Iran: in many places in the world, a majority will oppress the minority–be it a racial, cultural, or religious minority. And so it’s often the case that a religious minority in a country might be oppressed simply because they are the minority and are easily discriminated against. It has much less to do with what sect a person claims. In many countries, the Shi’a and Sunni will live side-by-side, and often not even know of their differences.
So rather than trying to examine Islam for some imagined problem (as some people might lead us to believe) the problem is just discrimination in general. It’s as wrong for a Christian to be persecuted as it is wrong for a Shia to be persecuted, and both you might find happening in a majority-Sunni country like Pakistan. And in Iran the situation is somewhat reversed, that the Sunnis are the minority. But in some countries Muslims are persecuted for being the minority, whether Sunni or Shi’a. It’s wrong everywhere, in Islam and as a simple matter of human decency.
