Sunnis << SOON eez or SUN neez >> are followers of the Sunni division of the Islamic religion. They make up the larger of the two major groupings of Muslims (followers of Islam). The other major division is called Shī`ah, and its followers are called Shī`ites. The Sunni division of Islam formed in the A.D. 800’s, some 200 years after the Shī`ah. Sunnis account for more than 80 percent of the world’s Muslims, and they live everywhere Islam has spread.
Sunnis call themselves ahl al-sunna wa`l-jamā`a (the people of the established way and the community) because they follow the Qur’ān and the sunna (authoritative example) of the Prophet Muhammad. The Qur’ān is the sacred book of Islam, and Muslims consider Muhammad to be God’s last messenger. The Sunnis have discouraged rebellion and encouraged jamā`a (unity) in the Muslim community. As a result, Sunnis have tolerated a relatively wide range of legal and theological positions as legitimate, and they are more numerous than Shī`ites. Theology is the study of God and religion.
Sunnis and Shī`ites differ little in their basic beliefs about God, prophecy, revelation (messages from God), and the Day of Judgment, when God is expected to judge human beings’ deeds. However, unlike the Shī`ah, Sunnis do not grant any special religious or political authority to the family of the Prophet Muhammad. Sunnis accept the first four Muslim leaders, including Muhammad’s son-in-law Alī ibn Abī Tālib, as especially guided caliphs (leaders or successors). But they hold that Muhammad did not name anybody to succeed him, nor did he establish any method for choosing a new leader. Shī`ites believe that Muhammad designated Alī as his successor, and that leadership should have remained in Muhammad’s family.
Throughout Muslim history, there have been times when Sunnis and Shī`ites have lived together peacefully. But there also have been times when hostility between the groups has led to persecution and repression (keeping down) of one group by the other. Besides religious differences, economic and political factors have contributed to periods of hostility between the groups.
