AH Challenge: Shia not Sunni

[Arch-Angel]

Create a world where the Shi'ite sect of Islam is dominant and Sunnis are in the minority. Make sure to discuss the implications of the reversal.

[Max Sinister]

Either you start shortly after the split, or you remove the Mongols destroying the Muslims in Persia.

[ninebucks]

Well, seeing as the split basically came about over a dispute as to whether Ali or Abu Bakr should inherit the Caliphate. In OTL, Abu Bakr was elected, and his followers, the Sunni, achieved primacy. If, instead, the election went the other way, or if Ali denied the election and seized power, then we have Shi'a in a position of power, and Sunnah in the position of OTL Shi'a.

[Susano]

That doesnt follow. If Ali becomes Caliph, all sorts of things will change, after all. Butterfly effect.

Oh, and the Shi'a is no sect. Thats like calling Lutheranism a christian sect!

[The Ubbergeek]

It's more like a second branch of Islam, like he say.

[ninebucks]

That doesnt follow. If Ali becomes Caliph, all sorts of things will change, after all. Butterfly effect.

Oh, and the Shi'a is no sect. Thats like calling Lutheranism a christian sect!

Well, yes. In such an occurance, Shi'a will probably take on many of the institutional traits of Sunnah. But it will still be a sect called 'Shi'a' originating from the teachings of Mohammad and Ali.

And we seem to have some terminological disagreement here. To me, a sect is the next level down from religion, so yes, I would call both Shi'a and Lutheranism sects.

[Ran Exilis]

I agree with Susano that if Ali is elected as the first Caliph, the resulting butterfly effect
will drastically change every branch of Islam to the point that this ATL Islam will be very different from OTL Islam.

Keep in mind that Shi'a Islam was shaped and affected by the fact that,
most of the time, it was some sort of an opposition party.

If the followers of Ali and their views and teachings become the mainstream variety of Islam,
then this ATL Shi'a Islam will develop very differently from OTL Shi'a Islam.

[Leo Caesius]

Couldn't we imagine some sort of Fatimidwank scenario which would have much the same effect without Ali becoming the 1st Caliph?

[Ran Exilis]

Either you start shortly after the split, or you remove the Mongols destroying the Muslims in Persia.

Well, one thing about the Persian Muslims that has to be kept in mind,
is that it was not until the time Safavids that the Persians became almost
exclusively Twelver Shi'ites.

Before that period, many Persian Muslims were in fact Sunnites.
I don't know wether Sunnites have ever been the majority of the Persian population,
but nonetheless I am sure that there were significant numbers of them during the Medieval Ages.

Couldn't we imagine some sort of Fatimidwank scenario which would have much the same effect without Ali becoming the 1st Caliph?

This challenge reminds me to some scenarios I created several weeks ago.
I should be able to make a decent sketch of a Shi'a-wank out of that...

..
The initial POD of this scenario is that the Mongols of the Il-Khanate are a bit more successful, and able to hold out againest the Mamluks, Berke Khan and some local Muslim rebellions, mainly due to (more successful) cooperation with local Christian factions and populations and an alliance with the Crusaders (though this alliance still is a problematic one).

Then a joint attack of Mongols and Crusaders on Egypt eventually brings the Mamluks down,
yet the relations with the Crusaders remain tense, to the point that a civil war threatens to break out in lower Egypt.

The Mongol leaders of the Il-Khanate (who have remained as anti-Islamic as Hulegu Khan in this scenario) then urge the leaders of the Crusaders to join the Mongols on a campaign to destroy Mecca and Medina and "finish the Mohammedan enemy", although the actual reason behind that campaign was to get as many Crusaders out of Egypt as possible and to draw the attention of the Crusader leaders away from Egypt.

The Mongols and their Crusader vassals eventually defeat the coalition of Mamluks, Bedouins and Hashemites and destroy Medina and then Mecca. The Ka'aba is destroyed and so is the Black Stone, and the news of that shocks millions of Muslims throughout the world.

And then only a few years after that, a charismatic local Ismaeli Shi'ite leader
on Bahrain (the whole Persian Gulf area was traditionally a Shi'ite stronghold)
preaches that the destruction of the Ka'aba and what was thought to be the
Black Stone was in fact the wrath of God, because the "Black Stone" in the Ka'aba
at the time was not the real Black Stone.

The whole idea here is that when the Qarmatians raided Mecca in the 10th century and even took the Black Stone out of the Ka'aba and took it with them to their stronghold on Bahrain and then returned it about 30 years later, they didn't return the real Black Stone, and that the real thing remained hidden somewhere on Bahrain.

...and naturally, this preacher claims to have found the real Black Stone.

This rumour then spreads among other Shi'ites and catches on.

This then triggers developments that lead to a larger revolutionairy movement mainly among Shi'ites. Especially if it has some capable and charismatic leaders, this movement will quickly gain ground in southern Iraq, Persia, the Gulf, and eventually other areas as well.

...and if this movement then manages to defeat or convert the Mongols and destroy or seriously weaken the Il-Khanate, and retake and eventually rebuild the ruined cities of Mecca and Medina.

The Ka'aba is then rebuilt and what they then believe is the real Black Stone is placed in one of its corners.

And as a result of this, the Shi'a ideology gains great prestige in the Muslim world, and that on a point in time that the three great centres of Islamic civilisation and Sunni Islamic theology - Cordoba, Baghdad and Cairo - have all been conquered by agressive enemies of Islam.

And then just add a few anti-Sunni sentiments to the Shi'a propaganda, and the victories of the Shi'ites and the defeats of the Sunnites will be explained as a clear sign that God favours the Shi'a over the Sunnites.

Now then, if all these events and Shi'a propaganda make Shi'a Islam catch on in the peripheries of the Muslim world, like the Sultanate of Delhi and the Muslim nations in West Africa, then Shi'a Islam will become the dominant form of Islam in the Muslim world, and Sunni Islam is consequently reduced
to a remnant.

[Max Sinister]

@Leo, Abdul: Are there any statistics about the relative strengths of Sunni and Shia in history? Today, most Muslim states are Sunni - but in practice, AFAIK all of them have Shia minorities, although they don't appear in the statistics.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Either you start shortly after the split, or you remove the Mongols destroying the Muslims in Persia.

That wouldn't do it - Persia wasn't all into Shiititude back then. If some sort of disaster befell the Ottomans - maybe a worse Timur invasion aftermath leading to the end of the empire, the Safavids might have become the dominant power in the Mid East leading to major Shiititude.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

@Leo, Abdul: Are there any statistics about the relative strengths of Sunni and Shia in history? Today, most Muslim states are Sunni - but in practice, AFAIK all of them have Shia minorities, although they don't appear in the statistics.

There are more now than there used to be, as a percentage of the whole - largely because of the Safavid decision to go with Shiism. Also, the British in the 19th c heavily promoted Shiism in Iraq to undermine the Ottomans - they had the "Oudh Bequest", which was a fund set up by an Indian ruler for the upkeep of Shiite facilities in Mesopotamia - the British ended up directly distributing it, giving Shiism a huge leg up over the Sunni establishment, which was doubly impoverished by general Ottoman lack of funds and the empire's reform efforts, which weakened religious institutions in favor of secular ones.

It would be impossible to assemble statistics, but Shiism is a pretty small portion of the whole - maybe 10-15%? You'd first have to define what a Shiite is - do Alevis and Zeydis count? Druze? Lots of disagreement over that.