The Shi'a sect of Islam has its origins in the dispute over the succession to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. The Shi'a maintain that Ali b. Abu Talib, cousin and son-in-law to Muhammad, was the rightful heir to the office of the caliph and not Abu Bakr. The word Shi'a literally meaning 'party' refers to Shi'atu Ali or Party of Ali.
On the death of Uthman, Ali was chosen as the fourth caliph. Despite this, he had to counter several rebellions from Aisha, daughter of Abu Bakr, and from Muawiyya, a cousin of Uthman. The Shi'a came to be identified as those who fought alongside Ali during these rebellions.
However, the Shi'a schism from the orthodoxy accelerated on the assassination of Ali in 661 AD and even more so on the martyrdom of Husayn son of Ali, by the army of Yazid, son of Muawiyya, in Karbala in 680 AD. This event is marked by the Shi'a to this day as a struggle against oppression.
But the struggle didn't end there. The Shi'a suffered from almost continuous oppression, slaughter and abuse during Ummayad and Abbasid dynasties, and more recently with the rise of the Wahhabi movement since the 18th century.
Sunnis and Shi'a both agree on the fundamentals of Islam: the belief in one God, the belief that the Qur'an is from God, and that Muhammad was the last prophet from God.
The main difference is the importance the Shi'a place on the imamate (imamah), the office of the descendants of Muhammad through his daughter Fatima. The imams [1] are regarded as infallible leaders of the Muslim community and the fount of law and authority.
Most Shi'a recognise the following imams:
After the death of Ja'far as-Sadiq, the question of imamate fell into dispute with one section accepting Musa al-Kazim as the imam, whilst the other taking Musa's elder brother Isma'il as the imam. The followers of Musa came to be known as the Twelvers (Ithna-Ashariyya) because they accepted a total of twelve imams. Muhammad al-Mahdi (b. 869 AD), the last imam of the Twelvers is believed to be alive and his followers await his return from seclusion to restore justice on earth. Twelver Shi'ism form the vast majority of the Shi'a and are predominant in Iran but can be found in large numbers in Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon and several other Arab countries. The imams recognised by the Isma'ilis, the followers of Isma'il, later became the founders of the Fatimid dynasty in North Africa and Egypt.
Notes
[1] The general meaning of the word imam is simply a leader such as a prayer leader in a mosque or a leader of a section of the community.
Further reading:
Links:
