Lebanon's Sunni parties include Hizb ut-Tahrir, Future Movement, Independent Nasserist Organization ( INO ), the Al-Tawhid, and Ahbash.

Shia and Sunni Islamic parties have both criticised the government over the composition of the appointed Shura Council, after it was given a strongly liberal majority, with Al Meethaq being the biggest group in the chamber.

* Iraqi National Dialogue Council, a Sunni Arab political party initially established as an umbrella organization of approximately 10 smaller Sunni parties to take part in the 2005 Iraqi Constitution drafting process

For the Iraqi legislative election, December 2005, the party has joined the Iraqi National List of Iyad Allawi, along with other socialist, secular, moderate Sunni and moderate Shiite parties.

As a result, the Sistani-endorsed largely Shiite ticket and the Kurdish parties received the largest share of the votes, leaving the Sunni minority disenfranchised.

* Iraqi National Dialogue Council, a Sunni Arab political party initially established as an umbrella organization of approximately 10 smaller Sunni parties to take part in the 2005 Iraqi Constitution drafting process

On October 2, Maliki announced a four-point plan to stem sectarian violence through the unity of Sunni and Shiite parties in his government, as it extended Iraq's state of emergency for a month and the country suffered two massive kidnappings on consecutive days.

Major Arab Sunni parties such as the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Association of Muslim Scholars, boycotted the elections, as did some smaller groups such as the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq.

Sunni Islamist parties, the salafist Asalah and the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Al-Menbar Islamic Society are two of the largest parties in parliament, while the Shia Islamist Al Wefaq was expected to become the dominating party after 2006's general election having boycotted the 2002 poll.

After weeks of negotiations between the dominant political parties, on April 4, 2005, Sunni Arab Hajim al-Hassani was chosen as speaker ; Shiite Hussain Shahristani and Kurd Aref Taifour were elected as his top deputies.

Unlike many Sunni parties it decided not to boycott the January 2005 Iraqi election.

A moderate Sunni Arab and relative outsider, having spent much of his life in the United States, al-Hassani was tapped as a compromise candidate for the speaker's post after weeks of deadlock between Iraqi political parties.

After the election the post of speaker was reportedly reserved for a Sunni Arab, and al-Hassani, one of only two candidates deemed acceptable to the range of parties, was offered the post.

Although it is by far the single largest party, with 18 representatives, in the 40-member Bahraini parliament, it has often been outvoted by coalition blocs of opposition Sunni parties and independent MPs reflecting gerrymandering of electoral districts.

The main objective of this party, banned two times by President Pervez Musharraf's government, is to protect Shias rights and give them a voice in Parliament, they do not advocate a Shia state and have cordial relations with Sunni which is why they joined coalition of Religious political parties Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal that won 53 out of 272 elected members in legislative elections held on 20 October 2002.

The party then engaged in active opposition to the regime, and in 1979 participated in the creation of the National Democratic Grouping ( NDG ), with four other leftist and nationalist opposition parties ; it also, while itself renouncing violence, advocated dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunni Islamists, who were then engaged in an armed uprising against the government.

The two largest denominations of Islam, Shiʻa and Sunni, have different sets of hadith collections.

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.

As a young man he would have studied at a Sunni Maliki madh ' hab, ( Islamic jurisprudence school ), the dominant form of education in North Africa at that time.

The Sunni branch of Islam does not have imams in the same sense as the Shi ' a, an important distinction often overlooked by those outside of the Islamic faith.

The understanding of the divine spiritual endowment of the rooster within Islam, may be evidenced in the words of Muhammad of that Abrahamic religion in one of the six canonical hadith collections of Sunni Islam, stating that of " when you hear the crowing of cocks, ask for Allah's Blessings for they have seen an angel " as well as the mention where " the cock is also venerated in Islam: it was the giant bird seen by Muhammad in the First Heaven crowing.

Relations date back when both nations were part of the Persian Empire at one time, so much to an extent that both are Sunni and the countries have the same cultural traditions in common especially because of deep Turanian and Persian influences in the two countries.

Those who believe and those who are Jews and Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and do righteous good deeds shall have their reward with their Lord, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve ... let there be no compulsion in religion "-that all monotheistic religions or people of the book have a chance of salvation, to the most exclusive teaching common amongst Salafis and Wahhabis, and supported by several works of medieval Islamic theology and by traditions ( hadith ) which are considered correct ( sahih ) by Sunni Muslims, for the most part are summed up in Surah 9: 5, 29: " Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them, and besiege them, and lay in wait in every stratagem of war.

The traditional chronology places Surah 9 as the last or second-to-last surah revealed, thus, in traditional exegesis, it gains a large power of abrogation, and verses 9: 5, 29, 73 are held to have abrogated 2: 256 The ahadith also play a major role in this, and different schools of thought assign different weightings and rulings of authenticity to different hadith, with the four schools of Sunni thought accepting the Six Authentic Collections, generally along with the Muwatta Imam Malik.

Among Sunni Bahrainis the situation is often equally complicated: many of the most influential Sunni business and political families have their origins in Iran, having emigrated to the more liberal economic and social atmosphere of Bahrain over the last hundred and fifty years ; and in fact many still speak Persian in their homes.

According to the British television Channel 4, from 2005 through early 2006, SIIC's Badr Organization members working as commandos in the Ministry of the Interior ( which Badr controls ) " have been implicated in rounding up and killing thousands of ordinary Sunni civilians.

Since the tragedy of 9 / 11, Sunni Muslim terrorists have been attacking the Hazara community in southwestern Pakistani town of Quetta, home to some 500000 Hazara who fled persecution in neighbouring Afghanistan.

There have been rivalries between Pashtuns and Uzbeks as well, which is likely very similar to the Kyrgyzstan Crisis, which Pashtuns would likely take place as Kyrgyz ( for having a similar nomadic culture ), rivaling with Tajiks and Uzbeks ( of sedentary culture ), despite all being Sunni Muslims.

Many traditional Sunni Islamic lawyers agree that to be in keeping with Islam, a government should have some form of council of consultation or majlis al-shura, although it must recognize that God and not the people are sovereign and that it is subordinate to Sharia law.

Samarra is a key city in Salahaddin province, a major part of the so-called Sunni Triangle where insurgents have been active since shortly after 2003 invasion by the United States of America.

He stated that he believed no Sunni Arab could have been behind the attack.

However, the two pre-eminent Masters of Sunni Hadith, Imam Bukhari and Imam Muslim, have rejected absolutely the latter apology for Mu ' awiya, and Imam Muslim indeed places the Hadith-e-Muawiya in the Chapter of those Cursed by Mohammad.

Shi ' i Muslims see his being killed at the hands of Muawiyah's army as significant because of a well-known hadith, present in both the Shia and Sunni books of hadith, narrated by Abu Hurayrah and others, in which the Prophet is recorded to have said: " Rejoice Ammar!

The vast majority of the early traditional Sunni Muslim scholars have either criticized or prohibited it.

Most Sunni Muslims believe there are precisely five Pillars of Islam, since Sunni leaders have taught that there are only five major pillars of the faith.

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.

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.

In the late 1990s, the government took action against Sunni Muslim extremists in the north who had attacked its soldiers, and it continues to move against groups such as Asbat al-Ansar, which has been accused of being partnered with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

Massive protests such as these had been quite uncommon in the Arab world, and while in the 90s most anti-Syrian demonstrators were predominantly Christian, the new demonstrations were Christian and Sunni.

Long before Saddam, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, religious, and economic fault lines: Sunni versus Shi ' ite, Arab versus Kurd, tribal chief versus urban merchant, nomad versus peasant.

* Insurgency in the Maghreb ( 2002 – present ) – Algeria has been the subject of an Islamic insurgency since 2002 waged by the Sunni Islamic Jihadist militant group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat ( GSPC ).

The Paderi movement, which has been compared to the Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah ( Sunni ) school of Islam in Saudi Arabia, was an effort to return the Islam of the area to the purity of its roots by removing local distortions like gambling, cockfighting, the use of opium and strong drink, tobacco, and so forth.

Because of Austria's history as a multinational empire that included the largely Islamic Bosnia, Sunni Islam has been taught side by side with Roman Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox classes since the 19th century.

While there has been an aversion to potential idol worship through Islamic history, this is a distinctly modern Sunni view.

There have been numerous translation of the Qur ' an into Urdu, the most famous of which is Kanz al-Iman treasure of faith by the Indian Sunni scholar, Imam Ahmad Raza Khan.

Tripoli's population has been estimated to be 500, 000 and the majority of these are Sunni Muslims.

Being a Sunni stronghold, all major currents of Lebanese Sunni Islamism have been centered in the city.

The four mainstream schools of Sunni jurisprudence today, named after their founders ( sometimes called the A ’ immah Arba ‘ a or four Imaams of Fiqh ), are not generally seen as distinct sects, as there has been harmony for the most part among their various scholars throughout Islamic history.

Belief in the Awliya is an agreed upon article of faith in Sunni Islam having been mentioned in the earliest creeds to the most recent.

Despite the negative effect of this ban on Bektashi culture, most Bektashis in Turkey have been generally supportive of secularism to this day, since these reforms have relatively relaxed the religious intolerance that had historically been shown against them by the official Sunni establishment.

The PLO did this with the assistance of so-called volunteers from Libya and Algeria shipped in through the ports it controlled, as well as a number of Sunni Lebanese groups who had been trained and armed by PLO / Fatah and encouraged to declare themselves as separate militias.