SuShi - some food for thought

In my post about conversations with Anne about SuShi dialogue (btw, I'm lovin' that acronym-ish name), I mentioned that we were trying to talk about history. Aly graciously offered to send me some notes from a lecture that she attended (hint hint), and I found this article that I thought was quite interesting, and informative. It also has some really useful citations for further reading.

Some excerpts that I found notable:

"Current research seems to indicate that the movement began during the lifetime of the Prophet, and had strong religious overtones."

"The fact that a group known as the Shi'ah Ali existed during the lifetime of the Prophet indicates a legitimacy to this claim that most normative histories seem to deny....At this time, there is no indication that such a group as the Sunni community existed."

"Currently, we fall into the fallacy of reading the relatively organized community of the Sunnis of today into 1400 years of history. As a result, the Shi'ah are always treated as marginal and irrelevant to Islamic history. However, the animosity that we read so much about cannot be traced back 1400 years because the divisions we see now did not exist back then."

"The theological implications of leadership are quite important, and cannot be erased, however both communities are drawing on the same source texts, so God's presence and revelation are not at issue, helping to ease the sharp divide. The more pernicious issue is the contemporary usage of Muslims and Islam to mean Sunnis. By normatizing the current majority, much of the large debate over identity and interpretation that has happened in Islamic traditions is lost."

I think this article, particularly the last paragraph that I quoted, is on point ... but I think there's a great deal of chatting over chai that needs to be done to hash it out.

I propose we start soon.