What we learn from such biblical stories is that God will produce goods from one’s suffering for the one suffering-goods which would otherwise have not been produced. He also wants to show his supporters in the US that he will do international deals that will benefit them in terms of jobs and export earnings – in Saudi Arabia as elsewhere. Saudi Arabia’s execution of the Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr could escalate tensions in the Muslim world even further. In the Shiite theocracy Iran, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by a Sunni monarchy, would face “divine vengeance” for the killing of the outspoken cleric, which was part of a mass execution of 47 men. To accuse Iran and Qatar of supporting terrorism while praising Saudi Arabia is absurd, and the absurdity is apparent to many, not just journalists and academics.

However paranoid the Saudis are, and whatever the degree to which they believe their own propaganda about Iran, they know the greatest threat to their retention of power in Saudi Arabia is from home-grown Wahhabi extremists. There is a peculiarity about Trump’s Saudi policy. There is nothing on the Iranian or Shia side to compare with the damage done by the extreme Wahhabi world-view that led to the attacks of 11 September 2001, the atrocities of IS in Iraq and Syria and its outrages in Paris, Nice, London and Manchester. These channels aren’t as useful for recruiting Shia militants, who benefit from state support in Syria, Iraq and Iran and can openly advertise their calls for sectarian jihad. The militias have committed atrocities against Sunnis in Iraq (the Iranian proxies in Syria have also perpetrated horrors) and may create future problems, but they are essentially an Iraqi phenomenon. There are divisions even over the precepts of Islam, but the main difference relates to authority, which sparked the political split in the seventh century and evolved into divergent interpretations of Shariah, or Islamic law, and distinct sectarian identities. Sunni religious scholars, who are constrained by legal precedents, exert far less authority over their followers than their Shia counterparts do.

A schism emerged after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, and disputes arose over who should shepherd the new and rapidly growing faith. Regarding the truth claim, for example, for a Muslim exclusivist, Allah is the one true God who literally spoke to the prophet Muhammad in space and time. Sunnism, a broad umbrella term for non-Shia Islam, is united on the importance of the Quran and the practice of Muhammad but allows for differences in legal opinion. Twitter, for example, now allows users to opt out of all interest-based advertising, and Facebook lets you opt out of all kinds of marketing and data collection efforts in your account settings tab under “Ads.” You can even download your full Facebook data profile. The Kunde Hospital, for example, offers free health care for Sherpas and is staffed by both permanent and volunteer doctors. In addition to these tangible items, the Vatican City Gift Shop also offers a selection of spiritual mementos associated with various popes. Zaydi Shias, found mostly in Yemen, broke off from the majority Shia community at the fifth Imam and sustained imamate rule in parts of Yemen up to the 1960s. Ismaili Shias, centered in South Asia but with important diaspora communities throughout the world, broke off at the seventh Imam.

Shias are a majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain, and a plurality in Lebanon, while Sunnis make up the majority of more than 40 countries from Morocco to Indonesia. In each, political power is held by a sectarian minority-Alawis in Syria, where Sunnis are the majority, and a Sunni ruling family in Bahrain, where Shias are the majority. There are nearly 41,000 denominations of Christianity. This Easter, Is Christianity Still Promulgating Antisemitism? And it’s no accident that there are still fierce arguments about the status of women (or, in golfing terms, “ladies”) at Augusta and elsewhere or that the urban legend about the name golf being an acronym for “Gentlemen Only: Ladies forbidden” endures in spite of all attempts to debunk it. Atheists know that they are created beings, but they deny the existence of their Creator. No, but I’d want my family to know. Do you know what a THAAD protects against?