" Ever since the time of my ancestor Ali, the first Imam, that is to say over a period of thirteen hundred years, it has always been the tradition of our family that each Imam chooses his successor at his absolute and unfettered discretion from amongst any of his descendants, whether they be sons or remote male issue and in these circumstances and in view of the fundamentally altered conditions in the world in very recent years due to the great changes which have taken place including the discoveries of atomic science, I am convinced that it is in the best interest of the Shia Muslim Ismailia Community that I should be succeeded by a young man who has been brought up and developed during recent years and in the midst of the new age and who brings a new outlook on life to his office as Imam.

* 2003 – Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.

Emperors of Rome often met their end in this way, as did many of the Muslim Shia Imams hundreds of years later.

Religious affiliation is itself multi-layered and includes religious considerations other than being Muslim, such as sectarian identity ( e. g. Shia or Sunni, etc.

However, relations have diminished due to ongoing sectarian clashes between Iraq's Sunni and Shia Muslim branches, and the Lebanese Government's support of Hezbollah.

Iraq and Sudan are connected by remote cultural similarities such as language ( both countries speak Arabic, though the two are different in dialect ) and religion, both are Muslim ( however Sudan is predominantly Sunni, while the majority of Iraq is Shia ).

Olivier Roy argues that " Sunni pan-Islamism underwent a remarkable shift in the second half of the 20th century " when the Muslim Brotherhood movement and focus on Islamistation of pan-Arabism was eclipsed by the Salafi movement with its emphasis on " sharia rather than the building of Islamic institutions ," and rejection of Shia Islam.

His concept of velayat-e-faqih (" guardianship of the jurist "), held that the leading Shia Muslim cleric in society – which Khomeini and his followers believed to be himself – should serve as head of state in order to protect or " guard " Islam and Sharia law from " innovation " and " anti-Islamic laws " passed " by sham parliaments.

The Islamic Republic has also maintained its hold on power in Iran in spite of the US economic sanctions, and has created or assisted like-minded Shia Islamist groups in Iraq ( SCIRI ) and Lebanon ( Hezbollah ), ( two Muslim countries that also have large Shiite populations ).

Also academics note that since much of what is known about Manichaeism comes from later 10th and 11th Century CE Islamic historians like Al-Biruni and especially the Shia Muslim Persian historian Ibn al-Nadim ( and his work Fihrist ); " Islamic authors ascribed to Mani the claim to be the Seal of the Prophets " This topic is discussed by an Israeli academic Guy G. Stroumsa

In 2009, RAWA and other women's rights groups strongly condemned a " Shia Family Code " which is claimed to legalise spousal rape within Northern Afghan Shia Muslim communities, as well as endorsing child marriage, purdah ( seclusion ) for married women, which was passed by President Hamid Karzai to garner support for his coalition government from hardline elements within the aforesaid communities, as well as the neighbouring Shia-dominated Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iraq and Sudan are connected by remote cultural similarities such as language ( both countries speak Arabic, though the two are different in dialect ) and religion, both are Muslim ( however Sudan is predominantly Sunni, while the majority of Iraq is Shia ).

A Sunni Muslim divorce is effective when the man tells his wife that he is divorcing her, however a Shia divorce also requires four witnesses.

The show followed five Lebanese-American Shia Muslim families living in Dearborn, Michigan, the largest community of Muslim-Americans in the United States.

However Muslim Shia historians point out that Umayya was an adopted son of Abd Shams so he was not a blood relative of Abd Manaf ibn Qusai.

Afghan refugees are mostly Persian-speaking Hazara or Tajiks, speaking a dialect of Persian, and Iraqi refugees, who are mainly Shia Muslim Mesopotamian Arabic-speakers of Iranian origin.

Iran is led by a Muslim Shia theocracy.

Stanmore has overwhelmingly affluent Christian, Shia Muslim, Hindu, Jain, Jewish and Catholic communities, including its local Synagogue, Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue on London Road ( which has the largest membership of any single synagogue in Europe ), on Wood Lane.

* Ismaili Khojas, a Shia Muslim group from Gujarat and Sindh and followers of Aga khan, believe in the 10 incarnations of Vishnu.

The PSP military wing, the People ’ s Liberation Army – PLA ( Arabic: Jayish al-Tahrir al-Sha ’ aby ) or Armée de Libération Populaire ( ALP ) in French was raised early in 1976 with the help of Fatah and initially comprised 3, 000 lightly armed fighters drawn from the Druze and Shia Muslim communities of the Shouf.

The population there are primarily members of the Shia Muslim Hazara ethnic group.

Shia Muslims and both several pro-Ali Sunni imams like Imam Nasa ' i and more anti-Shia Sunni imams like Bukhari and Muslim, were of the opinion that Mu ' awiya was lazy, gluttonous, and obese to the point of not even being able to ride a horse.

However, Shia Muslims charge that if anything, he was the instigator of the civil war, and weakened the Muslim nation and divided the Ummah, fabricating self-aggrandizing heresies and slander against the Prophet's family and even selling his Muslim critics into slavery in the Byzantine empire.

A prominent Iraqi political activist who lived in exile for almost 30 years, the politically secular Shia Muslim became a member of the Iraq Interim Governing Council, which was established by U. S .- led coalition authorities following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

A Shia Muslim, Rahima hails from the city of Basra and is a member of the National Democratic Party.

A Shia Muslim and surgeon, member of the UK Royal College of Surgeons, he is a member of the Daawa Party.

A Shia Muslim, Khodayyir is a member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council

He was already a prominent member of the Iraqi Shia community by this point.

Allawi is often described as a moderate Shia ( a member of Iraq's majority faith ) chosen for his secular background and ties to the United States.

Harakat al-Mahrumin ( meaning The Movement of the Deprived or the The Movement of the Dispossessed or The Movement of the Disinherited ) was established by Imam Musa al-Sadr and member of parliament Hussein el-Husseini in 1974, as an attempt to reform the Lebanese system, although the beginnings can be traced to 1969 in declarations by the Imam al-Sadr calling upon peace and equality between all Lebanese confessions and religions, so that no one confession would remain " deprived " in any region in Lebanon, noting that the Shia community in Lebanon remained the poorest and most neglected by the Lebanese government.

" extremists ", the adjectival form of ghulū ), is a term used in the theology of Shia Islam to describe some minority Muslim groups who either ascribe divine characteristics to figure of Islamic history -- mostly, but not always a member of Muhammad's family ( ahl al-bayt ) -- or hold beliefs deemed deviant by mainstream Shi ' i theology.

Peter Lamborn Wilson, who writes under the pen-name Hakim Bey, is a self-identified Anarchist who has traveled extensively in the Muslim world and has practiced Islam as a Shia and as a member of the Moorish Orthodox Church of America.

), another leading member of the Shia community, he moved to Hani's house.

His deputy until 2011 was Nazar Al Baharna, formerly a leading member of Al Wefaq, Bahrain's main Shia opposition party.

In March 1991 revolts in the Shia-dominated southern Iraq started involving demoralized Iraqi Army troops and the anti-government Shia parties.

Iraqi nationalist and Ba ' athist elements ( part of the insurgency ) remained committed to expelling U. S. forces and also seemed to attack Shia populations, presumably, due to the Shia parties ' collaboration with Iran and the United States in making war against their own nation.

Shia terror organizations associated with the American occupation forces within Iraq gained increasing power and influence in the collaborationist Iraqi government.

The United Iraqi Alliance, tacitly backed by Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, led with some 48 % of the vote.

The war, which ended the rule of Saddam Hussein's Ba ' ath Party, also led to violence against the coalition forces and between many Sunni and Shia Iraqi groups, and to al-Qaeda operations in Iraq.

SCIRI was designed to be an umbrella organization that would unite under one banner the various Iraqi Shia groups, including al-Dawa and Munazamat.

Despite its pledge to support the stabilization of Iraq, Iranian authorities continued to provide lethal support, including weapons, training, funding, and guidance, to Iraqi Shia militant groups that target US and Iraqi forces.

In March 2012 reports by human rights activists suggested that, in a single month, Shia militias in Iraq had shot or beaten to death up to 58 young Iraqi emos.

A first cousin of former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein, he became notorious in the 1980s and 1990s for his role in the Iraqi government's campaigns against internal opposition forces, namely the ethnic Kurdish rebels of the north, and the Shia religious dissidents of the south.

Majid was first sentenced to hang in 2007 for his role in a 1988 military campaign against ethnic Kurds, codenamed Operation Anfal ; in 2008 he also twice received a death sentence for his crimes against the Iraqi Shia Muslims, in particular for his role in crushing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and his involvement in the 1999 killings in the Sadr City ( then Saddam City ) district of Baghdad.

On January 19, 2008, 2 million Iraqi Shia pilgrims marched through Karbala city, Iraq to commemorate Ashura.

20, 000 Iraqi troops and police guarded the event amid tensions due to clashes between Iraqi troops and Shia Muslims which left 263 people dead ( in Basra and Nasiriya ).

The Shia United Iraqi Alliance obtained a majority, followed by the Kurdish Alliance ; Sunnis largely boycotted.

Al-Dawa party, in contrast to the other Shia Islamic Iraqi opposition parties, took a stance against the war.

On July 13, 2003, New York Times published another article that in 1991 when Saddam Hussein used the MEK and its tanks as advance forces to crush the Iraqi Kurdish people in the north and the Iraqi Shia people in the south, Maryam Rajavi as then leader of MEK's army forces commanded:

However, after the First Gulf War ( 1991 ), the Iraqi government aggressively revived a program to divert the flow of the Tigris River and the Euphrates River away from the marshes in retribution for a failed Shia uprising.

There he emerged as one of the most influential Iraqi leaders, with his longtime opposition to Hussein gaining him immense credibility, especially among the majority Shia population.

Britain and the United States have also accused Iran of backing Shia militias in Iraq, which have at times attacked Coalition troops, Iraqi Sunni militias and civilians, and Anglo-American-supported Iraqi government forces.

Iraq's Shia population was persecuted during the presidency ( 1979 – 2003 ) of Saddam Hussein, and certain elements of the Iraqi insurgency have made a point of targeting Shias in sectarian attacks.