Although most of the members of the community signed a document issued by Hasan Ali Shah summarizing the practices of the Ismailis, a group of dissenting Khojas surprisingly asserted that the community had always been Sunni.

In 1866, these dissenters filed a suit in the Bombay High Court against Hasan Ali Shah, claiming that the Khojas had been Sunni Muslims from the very beginning.

The Shiite and Sunni religious conflicts since the 7th century created an opening for radical ideologists, such as Ali Shariati ( 1933 – 77 ), to merge social revolution with Islamic fundamentalism, as exemplified by Iran in the 1970s.

The death of Uthman was followed by a civil war known as the First Fitna, and the succession to Ali ibn Abi Talib was disputed, leading to the split between the Sunni and Shia sects, and later to competing caliphates when the descendants of Muhammad through his daughter Fatimah and Ali set up separate Fatimid societies.

Additionally to the bombardment campaign conducted by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, tension between the Shia Hazara Hezb-i Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari and the Sunni Pashtun Ittihad-i Islami of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf soon escalated into a second violent conflict.

Shia Muslims believe this to be Muhammad's appointment of Ali as his successor, while Sunni Muslims believe it a simple defense of Ali in the face of unjust criticism.

* 1492: The death of Sunni Ali Ber left a leadership void in the Songhai Empire, and his son was soon dethroned by Mamadou Toure who ascended the throne in 1492 under the name Askia ( meaning " general ") Muhammad.

* Ali ibn Abi Talib, Shī ‘ ah Imām and the fourth caliph of Sunni Islam

* Ali ibn al-Madini, Sunni Islamic scholar

* January 27 – Ali, the first Shia Imam and the forth Rashidun Caliph of Sunni Muslims

* Ali ibn Abi Talib, cousin of Muhammad, first Shī ‘ ah Imām, and fourth Sunni Caliph ( approximate date )

* Ali, the first Shia Imam and the forth Rashidun Caliph of Sunni Muslims ( approximate date )

During General Rashid Ali al-Gaylani's short-lived anti-British military coup in 1941, Iraq-based Arab nationalists ( Sunni Muslims as well as Chaldean Christians ) asked the Nazi German government to support them against British colonial rule.

Sunni and Shia Islam Muslims see each other as heterodox, differing in practice mainly on matters of jurisprudence or fiqh, splitting historically on the matter of the succession of Ali to the caliphate by Muawiyah.

In later years, the followers of Ali ( Shi ' a Ali ) as the ruler of Muslims became one school of thought and the sunni's followes of ( Abue Baker ) became the Sunni school of thought.

However, mainstream Sunni Muslims while refusing to adopt the negative Shi ' a sentiment towards Muawiyah nevertheless quietly withhold according him religious status owing to his rebellions against Ali and al-Hasan, who are regarded as pious rulers.

* Online Sunni book: The Tragedy of Karbala and the Martyrdom of Hazrat Imam Hussain ( RA )-By Hazrat Sheykh Abu Anees Muhammad Barkat Ali QSA

The Chishti, though Sunni, trace their lineage through Ali.

Shi ' as corroborate the revelation of the Quranic verse 5: 55 with the incident widely narrated in both Sunni and Shia narrations ( ahadith ) where Ali gave his ring in charity to a beggar while bowing in prayer, and cite the verses use of the word إ ِ ن َّ م َ ا to indicate that the subjects are specific, not general.

As narrated in many Hadith ( both Sunni and Shia traditions ), they believed that in end times another great leader or mahdi would appear in the family to which Prophet Muhammad and Ali belonged, who would liberate Islam.

Sunni Muslims regard Ali with great respect as one of the Ahl al-Bayt and the last of the Rashidun caliphs, as well as one of the most influential and respected leaders in Islam.

However, many Sunni Muslim historians, such as Suyuti, Ibn al-Arabi, and Ibn Kathir accept Hasan ibn Ali as the last such caliph.

Sunni Muslims believe and confirm that Muhammad's father-in-law Abu Bakr was chosen by the community and that this was the proper procedure.

The north was ruled by the Khanate of Bukhara, the west was under the rule of the Shi ' a Safavids, and the east belonged to the Sunni Mughals of India.

Fighting was primarily between the majority Shia and the minority Sunni.

Violence was conducted by Sunni groups, nationalists and others who sought an Iraq freed from foreign rule that include the Iraq Insurgency, which has been fighting since the initial U. S. invasion of 2003.

It was formed to resist efforts by the U. S. and Iraqi authorities to win over Sunni supporters of the insurgency.

Low Arab Sunni turnout threatened the legitimacy of the election, which was as low as 2 % in Anbar province.

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.

Jahangir, like his father, was not a strict Sunni Muslim ; he allowed, for example, the continuation of his father's tradition of public debate between different religions.

While Sunni Islam was the state religion, there was not widespread pressure to convert ; indeed, Jahangir specifically warned his nobles that they " should not force Islam on anyone .” In the first century of Islamic expansion this attitude was taken partially because of concerns that an absence of non-Muslims would deprive the state of a valuable source of revenue.

Drafted by a treaty and a bill of sale, and constituted between 1820 and 1858, the Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu ( as it was first called ) combined disparate regions, religions, and ethnicities: to the east, Ladakh was ethnically and culturally Tibetan and its inhabitants practised Buddhism ; to the south, Jammu had a mixed population of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs ; in the heavily populated central Kashmir valley, the population was overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, however, there was also a small but influential Hindu minority, the Kashmiri brahmins or pandits ; to the northeast, sparsely populated Baltistan had a population ethnically related to Ladakh, but which practised Shi ' a Islam ; to the north, also sparsely populated, Gilgit Agency, was an area of diverse, mostly Shi ' a groups ; and, to the west, Punch was Muslim, but of different ethnicity than the Kashmir valley.

The president was required to be a Christian ( in practice, a Maronite ), the prime minister a Sunni Muslim.

By 1975, Lebanon was a religiously and ethnically diverse country with most dominant groups of Maronite Christians and Lebanese Sunni and Shia Arabs ; with significant minorities of Druze, Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians and Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants.

The person responsible for this conversion was a Sunni Muslim visitor named Abu al Barakat.

In Hamburg, Atta was drawn to al-Quds Mosque, which adhered to a " harsh, uncompromisingly fundamentalist, and resoundingly militant " version of Sunni Islam.

Sunni and Shi ' a Muslims differ on the legitimacy of the reigns of the Khulfa-e-Rashideen, the first four Caliphs.

King Abdullah of Jordan has become the first Arab leader to visit Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, a landmark step towards reducing Baghdad's isolation among its Sunni Arab neighbours.

According to Edward G. Browne, the three most prominent mystical Persian poets Rumi, Sana ' i and Attar were all Sunni Muslims and their poetry abounds with praise for the first two caliphs Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattāb.

Syria's refusal to exit Lebanon following Israel's 2000 withdrawal from south Lebanon first raised criticism among the Lebanese Maronite Christians and Druze, who were later joined by many of Lebanon's Sunni Muslims.

Both Sunni and Shia Muslims agree al-Mahdi will arrive first, and after him, Jesus.

The caliph Abū Bakr, believed by Sunni Muslims to be Muhammad's successor, was the first to institute a statutory zakat system.

* August 23 – Abu Bakr, first Sunni Caliph

INC represented the first major attempt by opponents of Saddam to join forces, bringing together Kurds, Sunni and Shi ' ite Arabs ( both Islamic fundamentalist and secular ), as well as democrats, monarchists, nationalists and ex-military officers.

The attack marked the first time Sunni Islamists had made use of suicide in terrorism, a technique made famous by Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Mutazilites, compelled to defend their principles against the Sunni Islam of their day, looked for support in philosophy, and are one of the first to pursue a rational theology called Ilm-al-Kalam ( Scholastic theology ); those professing it were called Mutakallamin.

( The Naqshbandi Silsila goes back to Abu Bakr the first Caliph of Sunni Islam and then Prophet Muhammad.

Muslims will then perform the funeral prayer for him and then bury him in the city of Medina in a grave left vacant beside Muhammad, Abu Bakr, and Umar ( companions of Muhammad and the first and second Sunni caliphs ( Rashidun ) respectively ).

However, the idea was first suggested by the early Sunni Muslim jurist Imam Abu Hanifa, founder of the Hanafi school of Fiqh.

According to Edward G. Browne, Attar as well as Rumi and Sana ' i were all Sunni Muslims and their poetry abound with praise for the first two caliphs Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattāb.

Some Sufi orders trace their lineage to Abu Bakr, the first Sunni caliph, others to ' Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, Muhammad's nephew, whom the Shi ' a regard as the first imam.

The first four Caliphs were elected in this fashion as Sunni Muslims believed Muhammad had originally intended before Muawiyah, the fifth caliph, turned the Caliphate into what is known as the Umayyad Dynasty, a hereditary monarchy.

In Sunni Islam, the first four elected caliphs were remembered as the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs.

They first emerged in the late 7th century AD, concentrated in today's southern Iraq, and are distinct from Sunni Muslims and Shiʿa Muslims.

The Abbé traveled to Beyrouth ( Beirut, Lebanon ) in 1959, to assist in the creation of the first multiconfessional Emmaus group there ; it was founded by a Sunni ( Muslim ), a Melkite ( Catholic ) archbishop and a Maronite ( Christian ) writer.