Sadly, to differentiate from the Shiite branch, several Sunni religious authorities, imams and leaders have minimized or deliberately labeled the memory and mourning of Karbala as only as “Shia thing.” However, the story exists in my Sunni household in America. On this date, it remains an annual tradition to hear Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s ecstatic qawwali “Ya Hussein” and recite a poem in praise of Imam Ali written by 13th-century Sufi saint Moinuddin Chishti. (Both Khan and Chishti were Sunni, by the way.)
The self-appointed masters of Sunni and Shiite Islam, Saudi Arabia and Iran, ignore our shared histories to sustain a manufactured, bloody sectarianism for the sake of regional dominance. Apparently all’s fair in love and war when you seek to wear the crown and win the Muslim Game of Thrones. Their feud is erupting over dueling op-eds in influential American newspapers and violent brawls all over the Middle East and Central Asia, especially in Syria and Yemen, adding sectarian gasoline to a raging fire, killing thousands of innocents.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act ... a-muslims/
