Sunni and Shiite division has come to America

Chad Groening
OneNewsNow.com
February 26, 2007

An author and expert on Islam says the burgeoning Muslim population in places like Dearborn, Michigan, has led to the same kind of Sunni-Shiite divisions that have characterized the Middle East. But despite the division, he says both groups consider the U.S. as "The Great Satan" and want to see it dominated by Islam.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He says in the past Sunnis and Shiites in America had to be together, usually in a mosque controlled by the larger Sunni population. But now Spencer says the two groups are separating and having the same kind of tensions that we see in the Middle East. The division has come about, he says, because so many Muslims have moved into the area.

"Sometimes [Shiites] went and were welcomed [at the Sunni mosque]," Spencer explains, "[and] sometimes they went as long as they kept quiet about the differences. [Now] we're seeing for the first time in America Sunnis and Shiites separating, when before they had to be together."

Members of Dearborn's Shiite community have blamed Sunnis for the vandalism of three mosques and a dozen businesses in Shiite enclaves. "Now, with the advent of separate mosques and both sides growing in numbers and in power, we'll see more and more of this kind of friction that we are seeing in Dearborn," cautions the Jihad Watch director.

Though there has been vandalism and tension among the two groups in places like Dearborn, Spencer does not think the kind of violence that has occurred in Europe and the Middle East will occur in the U.S. The Jihadist leaders in America, he believes, are "smart enough" to realize they can "operate far more easily and get far more done" without that kind of violence.

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