Remember these names: Ali, Fatima, Abu Bakr, Aisha, Khadija, Muawiya, Husayn, Kerbala, Omar, Uthman and, of course: Muhammad the Prophet of Islam.  You need a program and a list of characters to follow this story of why the Shia and the Sunni hate each other so fervently. Think of the tale as one of Hadleyville and Sheriff Will Kane, without the Quaker wife.
 
It’s a tortuous story, worthy of your time and effort. Islam and Energy are the prime numbers in the enumerated subjects for which there are many readings you must engorge into you brain, and they are connected. In this tale on the Islam half of that required-reading mandate, the split begins less than fifty years after the Prophet’s death, whose cousin and son-in-law tends to his burial as others plot to take power, as the First Caliph, elsewhere in Medina. The ‘near shrine’ of the Ka’aba in Mecca’s center is burned to the ground at that half-century mark, and the split continues as those who believe Ali should have been chosen instead of Abu Bakr are thus the Party of Ali, e.g., Shi’at Ali – thus, Shia members, or Shiites. [more]