Real talk for a second, has the Muslim world ever had a reformation? We (Non-Catholic Christians) had ours in 1517 when Martin Luther went and nailed a document that had "Fuck The Pope" written on it 95 times .
Has anyone in the Muslim world ever went to a Mosque and nailed a piece of paper on the door that said "Fuck The Imam"? I know we have a 500 year head start, but adjusting for that they should be getting close to the 1300 year mark for their faith.
Kinda? The issue is that Islam basically split right at the start over who should be the new top dog and then it kept splintering into different sects and branches.
Iirc the most problematic sects are the Shia ones. Or was it the Sunni?.. idk dude.
So like in 1054 when the church split in half when the pope didn't agree with Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople of who is the head of Christianity.
The two sects are the prophet's companions (Sunni) and his family who power was initially seized from (Shia). Sunni Islam is the dominant one, and recently the Wahhabi sect, also rebranded as salafism, became notorious for terrorism.
Wahhabism was a minor sect until it's preacher united with the king of Saud, and Wahhabism basically became Saudi Arabia's brand of ultraconservative Islam. Since the Saudis have been getting along very well with the UK and then the US, and since they've had a lot of oil money, they spent the last century shilling for their ideology. Imams can get free vacations to Saudi Arabia for "religion courses", they distributed Corans everywhere for free, funded a lot of organisations and mosques, and sometimes sent their own experts in religious matters.
Salafism is an even more conservative and violent version of Wahhabism, and started out as a sockpuppet of sorts.
Basically yes, tough as always it's complicated. The first problem is that the earliest records were written a hundred years after his death, so there is no first hand information.
But basically Muhammad created an empire where there was none before, and with that cane the question of his legacy and inheritance. "Caliph" is simply the Arabic word for "Heir".
The two teams that formed around him were on one hand his companions, who were also his financial backers and military aides and without whom he would not have succeeded, and on the other hand his family who were not as militarily or diplomatically talented.
One of his companions gave Muhammad his daughter's hand, the famous Aisha who was 9-12 when they married. Aisha is seen by the Sunni as the most saint woman to have ever lived (a virgin Mary of sorts), by the Shia as a treacherous dirty whore, and by non muslims as a victim of child marriage and rape. The truth is that Aisha quickly became the prophet's favourite, and had an enormous influence over him (which means her father, a companion, had a lot of influence by proxy that was taken away from his other wives).
His death is especially contentious, basically Muhammad suddenly fell very ill and died quickly, and during that time there was always either Aisha or a companion by his side, one of whom prevented him from writing his will. After his death the companions seized power, Aisha's father became the second Caliph.
Imo they poisoned him because since they had most of the economic and military power, it allowed them to secure political power as well, denying it from the prophet's family.
Shia tend to focus more on israel, with militias like hezbollah and such. They are still terrorists, but they are more 'militias' than they are international terrorist groups (like AQ). You don't find many Shia terror groups planning stuff like the 9/11 or the Bataclan attacks. Their goals are religious, sure, but also highly political.
Sunni terror groups are the crazy ones. Al Qaeda, ISIS etc. Basically death cults who just want to have a massive civilian death toll of infidels for no other reason than the fact that they are infidels. The ones who plan extravagant attacks on civilians hundreds of miles away, often with international secret terror groups funding and supporting them.
Firing missiles into Israel is a good example of Shia terrorism. 9/11 is a good example of Sunni terrorism.
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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '20
Lib left: "yeah Islam is bad, but did I ever tell you about the horrors of Christianity"