re: #98 HappyWarrior

Ah, there’s a former blonde moment for you. Thanks. And help me out here for future reference but the House of Saud are a really fundamentalist sect within Sunni Islam and I believe I’ve seen the Al-Assad’s sect, Alawite likened to an Islamic version of LDS.

Sorry for the slow response, but I got interrupted.

It’s like this, more or less:

Sunnis = Protestants
Fiver/Sevener/Twelver* Shia = Catholics
Sufis = Mystics, they exist in every country where there are Muslims, and are pretty much loathed by the next two groups for being such kumbaya hippies…
Saudis/Wahhabis/Salafis = Fire & brimstone Southern Baptists & evangelicals
Islamists = Dominionists
Alawites = Branch of Twelver Shia. They’re kinda secretive about exactly what they believe, so I can’t tell you much else about them except to say that—unlike members of the other groups—I’ve never personally met one. I guess you could sort of compare them to Mormons, but I’d say Ahamadis are probably closer to being viewed by many mainstream Muslims in the same way that many mainstream Christians view Mormons (i.e. apostates, a cult, etc.)

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*Depends on how many spiritual successors to Ali (Imams) they accept as legitimate. It’s confusing, so I’m not even gonna go into it farther than to say that the Twelvers are the largest group (mostly in Iran & surrounding areas, with a significant population in Lebanon also).