Understanding Islam Part I: One Religion, No Consensus
Americans admittedly don’t understand Islam. Not all, but 2/3′s of us, according to the recent Gallup World Religion Poll. That’s roughly 200 million folks. And it’s understandable.
Even some of the people I know who claim to understand Islam, don’t seem to understand that it is as nuanced as Christianity is around the world. During a discussion with my fiance last week, he said that Islam is not like Christianity because Christianity has so many different branches, such as Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists, and Roman Catholics with different (and often conflicting) ideologies, while Islam only has two different sects Shi’a and Sunni. His understanding couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Islam is not merely broken up into the Shi’ites and the Sunnis, but these should be understood more as umbrella sects with further differential branches underneath. For instance, Osama bin Ladin follows Wahhabism (aka Salafism), which is an extremely conservative Sunni branch popular in Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism takes a fundamentalist view of the Koran, and arose partly in opposition to Sufism.
In contrast Sufism is not usually associated with Shi’a Islam, though it did originally arise within that sect. Sufism is often described as the mystical form of Islam, with its allegorical texts and Mawlawi order, a branch often called the Whirling Dervishes. However as with the Sunni and Shi’a sects, Sufis are also broken up further into different branches and orders or brotherhoods.
Meanwhile, the al Houthi rebels of Yemen, are accused by the Yemeni government of being in league with Wahhabist Al Qaeda. In reality they follow a moderate branch of Shi’ite Islam, called Zaydi, or the West Fivers (in reference to their accordance with Five Pillars of Islam as opposed to most other Shi’ite branches which follow Seven or Twelve Pillars [more on this to come in Part II]). This is not to say that the al Houthi rebels embrace the United States (they don’t), however they also dislike what they feel is an “excessive Wahhabi influence on state policy and schools” in Yemen. What is worse is that it seems that the conflict could become a proxy war between two of the regional powers, with the Salafi-inspired Saudi Arabian regime backing the Yemeni government and the Shi’ite Iranian regime backing the al Houthi rebels.
Now, these are only meant to be a few brief examples to illustrate the complexities within Islam, complexities which manifest themselves in the politics of the Middle East. These variations of Islam are not to blame in the conflicts that arise, however they do play a part in how tensions play out. It is important to understand that there is no monolithic Islamic Culture dictating how all Muslims are supposed to believe and act. There is no more consensus within Islam than there is within Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or Buddhism.
Now, I’m sure plenty of folks read the title of this blog, thought to themselves “who cares?” and moved on. I’m guessing those of you still reading think that it matters, so I ask, why do you think that those of us of other belief systems (or no belief system) should have an understanding of Islam?
Resources:
http://www.criticalthreats.org/yemen/profile-al-houthi-movement
http://www.gallup.com/press/104209/Who-Speaks-Islam-What-Billion-Muslims-Really-Think.aspx
http://www.irantracker.org/foreign-relations/yemen-iran-foreign-relations
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2008/07/mil-080724-irin02.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawlawi_Order
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/islam-salafi.htm
