“Israel has no future in our land” —If Israel were gone tomorrow, could you imagine the infighting over that land between Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, the influences of Iran and Syria, and the Sunni Shiite divide. We all just saw what happened in the Syrian civil war. There are still 12 displaced Syrians.
The Sunni and Shiite split dates back to the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 A.D., when differing opinions on who should succeed him sparked violent disputes.
In recent years, the Sunni–Shia divide has been increasingly marked by conflict. The aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which reconfigured Iran into a theocratic Islamic Republic governed by high-ranking clerics, had far-reaching consequences and conflicts in the Muslim world.