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The Mohammedan world is roughly divided into Sunnis and Shia. The Shia are the idealists, the mystics of Islam; the Sunnis are the formalists, the schoolmen.
Kerbela and Nejef, in the quality of great Shiah shrines, had never been particularly friendly to the Turks, who were Sunnis but the desert tribes are almost invariably Sunnis, and this coupled with their natural instinct for raiding and plundering made them eager to take advantage of any interregnum of authority.
They had no desire to study a new religion, even at the command of their King, and, judging that any change would be irksome, they sided with the Moullas, and without display refused to be Sunnis.
Another high functionary, equally bigoted, received a similar mission, and the rule was inculcated upon all that in the eye of the law religious differences were to be disregarded, and that men, whether Sunnís, or Shiahs, Muhammadans or Hindus, were to be treated alike: in a word, that the religious element was not to enter into the question before the judge or magistrate.
Within the ranks of the orthodox Sunnís and of the bitter and fanatical Shí’ah, the chief sects of the Muslim Faith and constituting respectively the bulk of the ruling class and the population of ‘Iráq, a feeling of consternation must necessarily prevail.
This conference, called to draw up a definite scheme for effective Moslem co-operation the world over, was attended not merely by the high orthodox Moslem dignitaries and political leaders, but also by heterodox chiefs like the Shiah Emir of Kerbela, the Imam Yahya, and the Zaidite Emir of Yemen leaders of heretical sects between whom and the orthodox Sunnis co-operation had previously been impossible.
Thus it was that the Hazaras and Shiah inhabitants of the small principalities on the head-waters of the Oxus were sold into Sunni slavery, and the purchase of the Shiah Circassians in the Turkish markets was justified on the same grounds. The bitter experience of ages has taught all Shiahs that, once helplessly at the mercy of the Sunnis, there must be absolute submission on all points.
The Sunnis adhere to the elective historical caliphate descended from Mohammed's uncle, maintain the eternal uncreated sufficiency of the Koran, literally interpreted, and believe in no Messiah save Mohammed. The Shia, whatever their racial origin, form the Persian, the Aryan, adaptation of Islam, which is an essentially Semitic creed.
The Seventh of the Nine Bars says that a man may not marry one of the idolaters? Is that truth? Both Shiahs and Sunnis say that a Musalman may not marry one of the idolaters? Is the Sahib a priest, then, that he knows so much? I will tell him something that he does not know.
Since the schism of Shiah has prevailed," he added, "this country has been in continued distraction; let us all become Sunnis, and that will cease. But as every national religion should have a head, let the holy imam Jaffer, who is of the family of the Prophet, and whom we all venerate, be the head of ours."
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