Smith: Ivy Ziedrich challenged Jeb Bush and, by extension, all of us

A couple of thoughts bubbled up when former Windsor High debate all-star Ivy Ziedrich went viral with her declaration to presumed presidential candidate Jeb Bush that actions by his brother the ex-president created the Islamic State.

One was that the 19-year-old University of Nevada at Reno student is remarkably well-spoken and poised, and she seems to have delved deeply into the jihad that just since her exchange with Bush has seen the capture by ISIS of both Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria.

Then came a flush of guilt over how little effort I’ve exerted to comprehend the violence that oftentimes pits Sunni and Shiite Muslims against one another and that has swaths of the Islamic world and beyond awash in blood and misery and fear.

Look into the origins of the sectarian conflict and you find yourself in 632, the year of the death of Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam. Disagreement over who should succeed him as leader split Muslims into two factions.

THE CAMP that would become the Shiites held that the only legitimate successor was Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali Talib. The allegiance of the contingent that would be the Sunnis went to Abu Bakr, father-in-law and confidante of Muhammad.

Today about 1.6 billion people, nearly a quarter of the world’s population, are Muslim. Roughly 85 percent are Sunnis, and some minute fraction of those are the radical fundamentalists who comprise the Islamic State.

The Sunni and Shiite denominations of Islam are far from homogeneous monoliths, but contain all manner of sects and variations. In Iraq, there are Sunni tribesmen fighting the Sunnis of ISIS.

For context, it may be helpful to consider the myriad divisions within two more familiar world churches that diverted from a common origin: the Catholics and Protestants.

THOUGH IT’S 1,400 YEARS since followers of Muhammad split, it’s not as though the Shiites and Sunnis have been fighting all that time.

Many have coexisted in quite a neighborly way, while others have been kept from exchanging blows either by the absence of active struggles for dominance or the suppression of authoritarian governments.

A key event in the string of contemporary eruptions of Islamic sectarian violence was the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran by leaders of that country’s vast Shiite majority.

A tectonic consequence of the revolution was the enmity that arose between Iran and a second oil-producing powerhouse of the Middle East, predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia. Much of the battling for power in the region is subtext to the undeclared war between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the cast of international friends and foes that includes the United States.

As the Soviet Union gave up its invasion of Sunni-dominated Afghanistan, an emboldened Osama bin Laden founded the terrorist organization al-Qaida and plotted the attacks of 9/11.

Then came the toppling by the U.S. and its allies of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, a Sunni whose removal from power and subsequent execution allowed the country’s Shiite majority to assume power and ignited the current scourge of sectarian/political violence in that country.

ISIS WAS BORN of post-Saddam chaos in Iraq, and for a time it was allied with al-Qaida. But the two Sunni terrorist organizations have become rivals since the leadership of al-Qaida broke from the Islamic State over issues that include the brutality ISIS unleashes on fellow Muslims and its obsession with being an agent of apocalypse.

Just days ago, Islamic State jihadists took the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria, scene of profoundly disastrous and complex warring that torments a mostly Sunni population and that has President Bashar Assad, a member of Shiite Islam’s Alawite sect, in the fight of his life.

Should Ivy Ziedrich take exception to any of this thumbnail review, don’t expect me to debate her. Especially if there’s a video camera anywhere nearby.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.