The Shi’ites commemorate the Ashura – a memorial day for the murder of Hussein bin Ali – with very impressive events of “ta’aziah” (consolation). In some places they march in the streets and beat their backs with knives and chains even to the point of drawing blood, and in other places they meet to recite laments, weeping and wailing. All of these events carry a harsh anti-Sunni message, which perpetuates the hostility between the two groups of Islam.
Shi’ites are persecuted in every Islamic country where they do not rule: Saddam Hussein forbade the Shi’ites to commemorate Ashura, and on that day, Shi’ites were forbidden to gather in the streets. Any group of more than three Shi’ites that was caught in public on this day was sent to prison. In Lebanon, the Shi’ites were a marginal, oppressed and degraded group. This provided the social background for the development of Hizb’Allah, which eventually took control of Lebanon in revenge for hundreds of years of oppression and marginalization.
In one of the Arab villages in northern Israel, a number of families changed over to the Shi’ite side of Islam after Hizb’Allah’s “divine victory” in 2006, and as a result, these families have been banned: their youth were expelled from the schools and the stores in the village were closed to them. A few months ago in Egypt, a leader of the small Shi’ite sect was slaughtered together with several of his aides, and in Europe there are mosques that have been built with Saudi money on condition that Shi’ites will not be permitted to enter their gates.
Iran’s behavior totally fits with the history of the battle between Shi’a and Sunna: the Iranian, Shi’ite Ayatollahs’ sweetest dream is to control Mecca and Medina, so that they can throw the Sunni Wahhabis out of these Islamic holy places, and restore the Shi’ites, the descendants of Ali, the fourth caliph, to power. This is the basis for the great hostility between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the sense of a great and real threat that Saudi Arabia feels these days because of the Iranian military nuclear project.
Israel is a punching bag for both streams of Islam: the Sunnis see Jerusalem as the third holiest place in Islam as a result of the political problems of the seventh century, when the House of Umayyah, which ruled in Damascus, adopted Jerusalem as the religious and political center to compete with Mecca. The Shi’ites – traditionally – did not see Jerusalem as a holy place, because it had been “sanctified” by the House of Umayyah, the despised murderers of Hussein bin Ali.
But in modern politics, both sides compete against each other in the struggle for religious legitimacy, because each side wants to present itself as the better jihad fighter against the Jews. Thus, Jerusalem is “holy” to the Shi’ites too: Iran established the “Quds” force (“Quds” is “holy” in Arabic, and part of the Arabic name for Jerusalem: al-Quds) to spread terror throughout the world, and every year Hizb’Allah organizes “Jerusalem Day” in conjunction with the Iranians.
But the ongoing political wars between Sunna and Shi’a still cause many thousands of deaths: the eight year war (1980-1988) between Iraq, which was then ruled by the Sunni Saddam Hussein, and Iran of the Shi’ite Ayatollahs, resulted in well over a million deaths on both sides, all of whom were Muslims who were killed by other Muslims. Since 2003, Iraq has returned to sectarian war as Sunni jihadists blow up car bombs and truck bombs in Shi’ite neighborhoods, and in revenge, Shi’ites blow up vehicles loaded with explosives in Sunnis areas. This front has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children until now.
Shi’ite commemorative events such as the Ashura (which occurs this week) and the fortieth day afterward, are “special favorites” of Sunni terror operatives, because the mass processions and large gatherings of Shi’ites in ta’aziah rituals make an attractive and effective target for anyone who is interested in harming Shi’ites. In a number of past events it was enough for a rumor to be spread that a terrorist had entered the Shi’ite crowd to cause a stampede causing hundreds of people to fall from bridges and be trampled to death.