Free Republic

the split began during a power struggle of who would lead Islam after the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632 AD. A conflict developed between those who wanted the growing religion headed by qualified leaders and those who believed authority belonged to the direct heirs of Mohammed. The Prophet’s son-in-law, Ali, ruled as caliph for five years before being assassinated. His sons, Hassan and Hussein, were excluded from the succession and both were later killed. Their adherents evolved into the Shia, whose name derives from the term shi’atu Ali, Arabic for “partisans of Ali,”... Shia devotees would see the...

Remember how Richard Nixon told us to watch what he does, not what he says? Good advice. Well, Barack Obama — our POTUS who makes Nixon and Clinton seem like Diogenes — thinks like a postmodern agnostic, professes to be a Christian, but acts like a Shiite. During Obama’s presidency the influence of Ayatollah Khamenei’s Iranian Shiite regime has spread across the world like the proverbial wildfire, reaching from North Africa into Iraq, Lebanon (via Hezbollah), Syria (via Assad whose red line on chemical weapons famously faded into invisibility), Gaza (via improved relations with Hamas) and now into Yemen (via...