Shiite Sunni the Cultural Conflict

Shiite Sunni

The Cultural Conflict Between Sunnis and Shiites: A Phenomenon of Social Cognition

Conformity:

The conflict which persists between Sunnies and Shiites is a phenomenon directly connected to the notion of religious conformity. As noted, the outside perception of such conflict is that these are ethnically distinct tribal groups which have mutually proliferated across the Muslim world. This is inaccurate and tends to overlook the religious and political prerogatives that coincided to cause this splintering. A clearer understanding of these events suggests that conformity has played an important role in the way that Shiites and Sunnis have identified themselves, with social circumstances, political opportunity and region forcing alignment one way or the other.

Grose (2008) reports that "the Sunni-Shiite divide is nearly as old as Islam itself. Put simply, Shiites believe that the caliphs, or temporal successors to Muhammad, should come from his family line. The Sunnis, by contrast, believe that a caliph need only be a believer. The Sunnis prevailed and became the vast majority of the world's Muslims." (Grose, 1) For many years, the empowerment of Sunni Muslims helped to produce a social conformity with a thrust toward moderation of military, political and even religious ideology. The distinction here would also produce a Shiite culture in which individuals tended to experience strict pressures to conform to theocratic demands. As the History News Network (2002) would report relative to Sunnis, "Shiites, in contrast, believe that only the heirs of the fourth caliph, Ali, are the legitimate successors of Mohammed. In 931 the Twelfth Imam disappeared. This was a seminal event in the history of Shiite Muslims. According to R. Scott Appleby, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, 'Shiite Muslims, who are concentrated in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, [believe they] had suffered the loss of divinely guided political leadership'" (HNN Staff, 1) Thus, though we can say that the divisions between these two tribal groups do have deeply historically roots, the characterization of this as an ethnic divide reflects something of a misunderstanding. More accurately, the gap and tension between the Sunnis and the Shiites owes to sectarian difference with respect to Islam and its attendant power structure.

In addition to the religious basis for this declared difference, there are distinct political divergences which are perhaps most responsible for bringing the two sides to blows throughout their history. The Sunni determination to accept a form of Islamic leadership outside of the caliphate structure would alienate it from the Shiite loyalists, who instead perceived that the west had deprived it of a connection to its divinely appointed leadership. To the point, "Sunni fundamentalist leaders thereafter emerged in nations such as Egypt and India, where contact with Western political structures provided them with a model awkwardly to imitate ... As they struggled after 1924 to provide a viable alternative to the caliphate." (HNN Staff, 1) With great certainty, this would not be a true reflection of western political values but would begin to stride a middle ground between two worlds. For the Shiite population, this would constitute nothing short of fraternizing with the enemy of Islam and the entity which had snapped apart its chain of religious command.

And yet today, as the discussion will further illustrate, many Sunni 'radicals' have ascended the ranks of notoriety, with Osama bin Laden serving as a prime example of the critical failure of understanding that suggests either Sunnis or Shiites to be more characteristically radical. Instead, it is increasingly evident that stark political conditions have weighed heavily on the nature of either side's identity, indicating that that conformity is a powerful force in the Islamic world.

Social Perception and Social Cognition:

Social perception and social cognition are rampantly distorted in many parts of the Middle East. For many Shiite and Sunni combatants, a lack of access to education, history or the ability to critically assess global events can elevate the ability of clerics, political leaders and tribal warlords to manipulate followers into perceiving this as a centuries-old conflict. This produces a pattern of social cognition for those on both sides which only understands the conflict as that which may be characterized as having roots with the will of Mohammed himself.

In reality, "if you read the newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s, you don't see anything about Sunni-Shiite riots. There were peasant/landlord struggles or communists vs. Baathists. The kind of sectarian fighting we're seeing now in Iraq is new in its scale and ferocity, and it was the Americans who unleashed it." (HNN, 1) This constitutes the most important feature of tribal-infighting in contexts such as Iraq, Iran and, to a larger extent, throughout much of the developing world where resource and political exploitation have persisted. The unwanted presence of the United States, the insertion of political instability and the undermining of one side in favor of the other at its convenience has helped to project the impression of a state of civil war. Moreover, it has succeeded at projecting this as a war with roots dating back many thousands of years. In addition to the fact that the split is based on changes taking place more directly within the last century than at any other time in history, this is a deliberate mischaracterization with designs to shift the blame away from American foreign policy. The outcome is a social perception within and without the Muslim world that falsely interprets this conflict as intractable.