Infinityloop
Star
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2019
- Messages
- 2,622
This is correct. Plus from the very early period, despite certain animosity between both groups, they have and continue to coexist together as "Islam". They 'split' over succession of The Holy Prophet (saw), not over some reformation 1500 years after the founding of the religon (wink).Actually, there are no blanket statements in Islam either.
There are groups that are under the umbrella of Islam and those who are not in both strains of Islam, it depends on their adherence to our belief system and acts of worship.
The basic understanding is:
The one who worships Allaah alone and believes in His Messenger, and follows that which he brought, is a real Muslim. If a person claims to be a Muslim but he/she worships anything else or anyone else, then he/she is not a Muslim.
Every true Muslim knows the dangers of takfir (calling another Muslim, or even an entire group, "disbeliever") and would not claim it against another, lest it was claimed against themselves.
No genuine Sunni would claim a Shi'i to be kafir, nor would any genuine Shi'i claim a Sunni to be kafir.
What makes Islam-Islam, is not a distinction of "sect" but the fundamentals that remain universally shared between "sects" which is: Qur'an, Sunnah (of the Holy Prophet saw) and Sharia.
The issue of succession predates the Prophets death, the Sunni/Shi'i thing will never go away nor will there ever be any conclusive answers. It just is. The things that define a Sunni as Sunni and a Shi'i as Shi'i, are both not the things that make someone a "Muslim".
And as the opening of Surah Baqara states:
"And there are some people who say: We believe in Allah and the last day; and they are not at all believers.
They desire to deceive Allah and those who believe, and they deceive only themselves and they do not perceive."
An ignorant person would read this passage as an evidence of their own group, but a wise person (someone with hikmah) would know that it refers to both that calling oneself something doesn't guarantee them anything, and that deceiving other people (a person falsely calling themselves a Sunni or Shia but transgressing what God has provided) will not work with God, that God turns their own deception on themselves.
The truth is too, that Islam has no doctrine like the 'sola scriptura' of Protestant Christianity. Just claiming to believe something, whatever it is, means nothing by itself if there isn't the due substance and meaning in one's path to God (as-sirat al-mustaqeem).