The Media's Biggest Lie About Islam

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]If this Sunni Shia divide is such a big deal, why did nobody in the United States really talk about it before like the 1980s?

[00:00:10]I mean like go back and read newspapers from the '60s and '70s about the Middle East. You'll see stuff about like Arab nationalism and socialism, oil politics, like Cold War proxy stuff, Israel of course, but sectarian violence barely got talked about. I mean the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s was like the first time that Western media really started to even examine this Sunni vs. Shia disparity. And now those words are thrown around all the time as if that's a like an explanation for all the problems.

[00:00:39]Here's what the media won't necessarily explain.

[00:00:42]Most Sunni and Shia Muslims get along fine in their daily lives. No one in the media was really emphasizing the divide because there really didn't seem to be a massive one. Take Lebanon for example. You know how the news is always talking about, you know, Lebanese sectarian tensions. Here's what they don't say. Sunni and Shia families live in the same street and kids go to the same schools and people work in the same offices and the Muslim community in Lebanon had to share space with Lebanese Christians and Druze and Maronites. And for a long time they all largely coexisted successfully. And it wasn't until the civil war started in Lebanon in the late 1970s that the factions started to matter and of course everything changed. Or I mean pre-2003 Iraq, right? This is Saddam Hussein territory. And he was a brutal dictator, but Iraqi society wasn't walking around in constant religious warfare. Sunni and Shias intermarried. Some of the most famous Iraqi families had both Sunni and Shia branches. Neighborhoods were mixed.

[00:01:41]I mean a country that is, you know, predominantly Shia had a Sunni guy leading the show.

[00:01:47]You know, the guy fixing your car might be Sunni. The woman running the grocery store might be Shia. No one really cared on a day-to-day basis. In In here's something that might surprise you. The rest of extreme sectarian identity as we know it in Iraq actually happened after the US invasion, not before. When the old government collapsed and the civil war broke out, people started identifying more strongly along these religious lines because it became like a way to find protection and organize politically in a moment of extreme national chaos.

[00:02:17]Now, to be clear, it's not that Sunni or Shia identities were not important to the people before. It's just that they weren't as big of a deal. And they weren't as divisive as they had become after the conflicts in their country kind of made them feel like they needed to band together. And obviously for the protection of their communities and, you know, their faith.

[00:02:36]It's like how America didn't really think of themselves as like northern or southern until the civil war broke out and then people had to pick sides. And even to this day, people identify as, "Oh, I'm a southerner." Or, "I'm a northerner."

[00:02:46]And that conflict obviously reinforces the identity of how, you know, the identity contributed to the conflict. And it creates kind of a flywheel.

[00:02:54]And this pattern seems to repeat everywhere. In Syria before the civil war, you had Sunni majority cities within Shia neighborhoods, mixed marriages, shared business partnerships. And the sectarian violence you see there now that is largely a product of war. But here's the thing about media coverage.

[00:03:11]Conflict sells and coexistence doesn't.

[00:03:14]Sunni and Shia neighbors share tea and complain about traffic. That's not going to make anyone click on your, you know, website or sell a newspaper, right? But you say like, "Oh, Sunni vs. Shia beef, gang war." Like that is going to sell tickets, right? It's like assuming that all Protestants and Catholics hate each other because of what happened in Northern Ireland. Yeah, of course there are serious religious conflicts there, but that doesn't mean that Protestant and Catholic Americans aren't friends or that German Protestants and Italian Catholics are automatically enemies. And also it fails to remind us of how much Protestants and Catholics actually share. Similar to how, you you Sunnis and Shias share so much in their tradition and in their faith. The Northern Ireland comparison, I think, is kind of perfect in a way because it shows how religious labels can mask political conflicts, right? Like, the Troubles weren't really about transubstantiation or papal authority or the divinity of, you know, the the Virgin Mary or like any of the things that would sort of that Luther would talk about in the Reformation, right?

[00:04:16]It's about political representation, economic opportunity, national identity, uh you know, alliances with Britain and like religion was the team jersey, but the game was actually about power.

[00:04:29]So, the same thing happens in the Middle East. Many of these sectarian wars are really about countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia competing for regional influence and they in certain ways utilize the religious identity to build coalitions and justify that involvement.

[00:04:44]But, the underlying competition is just classic geopolitics. I mean, look at Yemen, right? The media often frames it as Iranian-backed Shia rebels versus Saudi-backed Sunni government. But, the Houthis and the so-called Shia rebels that we're talking about are actually from a Shia sect that's pretty different from Iranian Shias.

[00:05:05]Their grievances are mostly about political representation and economic marginalization, not theological differences with Sunnis.

[00:05:12]So, Iran started supporting them not because of this deep religious solidarity, but because backing the Houthis gave Iran a way to pressure Saudi Arabia and tie down Saudi military resources. This is a strategic move, not a spiritual move that people, uh you know, imams are going through the Quran and saying like we need to, you know, teach the, you know, Islamic interpretation of the Quran or Hadith in this way. It's like, "Hey, we're going to put pressure on this government."

[00:05:40]Syria, same exact thing. Bashar al-Assad isn't even technically Shia. He's Alawite, which is a whole different branch of Islam that some Muslims don't even consider Islamic. That's a whole other thing we'll get into a different day. But Iran supports him not because of religious kinship, but because Syria is their pathway to influence Lebanon and their main ally in the region. So, let's just take a break for a sec, right? I know that was a lot of political and religious context that we just kind of dove into. I kind of feel like I need to get like a cork board with like pins or something just to make this make sense, but it's not a conspiracy, but it is complicated. What's sad about all of this though is that the average Muslim family that lives in, you know, your neighborhood is way more worried about their kids grades and paying bills than they are theological differences from, you know, 1,400 years ago. Just like the average American Christian family cares more about their mortgage than they care about like the 30 years war or whatever. So, here's a reality check from personal experience. I've been to a few Muslim countries in my time. You know what people actually argue about?

[00:06:43]Soccer, politics, shawarma, hummus, stuff like whether their kids should be be a be a doctor, to go to uh you know, be a lawyer, things like that, human stuff. Yes, religious identity obviously matters. I'm not downplaying that at all. It influences how people vote, uh how they, you know, form their culture and, you know, who they might want to marry, which holidays, but the separation between the Sunni and the Shia is not this all-encompassing, all-consuming tribal warfare that the news often tries to make it seem like.

[00:07:15]The thing is when conflicts do break out, whether it's Iraq, Syria, Yemen, religious differences become a convenient way to organize sides and motivate fighters and apply pressure on different governments, and different governments will use these things as ways to push other governments, but suddenly these century-old theological disputes become rallying cries and scapegoats for modern political battles.

[00:07:39]And the media loves the you know, ancient religious hatred because it's simple and it kind of explains everything in like a very clean way. Sunni-Shia, it sounds like this exotic, you know, fundamental, you know, rift rather than like regional powers competing for influence using religious identity as a mobilization tool. That's much more boring.

[00:07:58]But, this simple story isn't the true story. The true story is a bit messier and more human and honestly, in some ways more optimistic because if these conflicts were really about irreconcilable religious differences going back 1,400 years, then there would be no hope for establishing peace. But, if they're mostly about politics and power and resources and governments at the very top that are mostly concerned with power, well, then those are human problems that human beings have figured out how to solve before.

[00:08:27]The tragedy is that when political conflicts get wrapped up in religious identity, they become way harder to parse. Cuz now you're not just arguing politics, you're arguing about who represents the true faith, who is truly betraying their ancestors, and who does Allah really support.

[00:08:44]It's kind of like how, you know, family business, you get into it with like a colleague, you're not just disagreeing having like this professional disagreement. It's like you were arguing with your sister. And your sister that you grew up with and this is your sister that you've known and she always would do that thing that you knew that she It's like way more personal. And that's definitely part of what makes the 7th century succession dispute into a 21st century geopolitical mess.

[00:09:08]So, understanding the root of this split and why it happened is definitely key to understanding why the Middle East looks the way it does.

[00:09:14]At least in so far as it's, you know, Muslim population. We're not even getting into other faiths in the region or Wahhabism or anything like that. But, the initial split in Islam does help us better understand modern-day issues and also how they're intertwined with the religion. And it kind of contextualizes the geopolitics of today. So, let's just take a look at how some of these geopolitical games are playing out today. Take Syria. Civil war starts in 2011. It wasn't initially this sectarian conflict. People were protesting against Bashar al-Assad and his dictatorial regime demanding political reforms and economic opportunities for the people.

[00:09:52]The protesters included Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Kurds, basically everyone who is fed up with the government. But then the regional powers got involved. Iran looked at Syria and thought, "Assad is our ally. This is our pathway to influence Lebanon, our connection to Hezbollah. We can't let them fall." So, Iran started to pour money and weapons and eventually military advisers into Syria. Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states looked at this and they thought, "This is our chance to weaken Iran's influence and maybe get Sunni-friendly government in Damascus."

[00:10:23]So, they start to fund rebel groups.

[00:10:25]Suddenly, a protest movement about jobs and political freedom becomes this proxy war between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. The religious labels become ways to organize internal and international support, even though that's not necessarily the cause of the conflict. We see this pattern also appear in Yemen. The Houthis, who are from a Shia minority in Yemen, started the rebellion because they felt marginalized by the Sunni majority. They had legitimate grievances about political representation, economic development, things you see from minority groups in any nation. But when Iran saw the opportunity to pressure Saudi Arabia by supporting the Houthis, and Saudi Arabia saw an Iranian-backed group taking over their neighbor as this existential threat, now you have what looks like sectarian warfare. But again, it's really more about these two superpowers in the region using Yemen as a battlefield. Iraq is probably the clearest example, right? The US removed Saddam in 2003. Iraq's new Shia majority government develops closer ties with Iran. They share a border, they share a religion, and a history of oppression under Sunni rule. Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers looked at this and they obviously got a little freaked out. We can't have Iranian influence directly next door sharing this massive border.

[00:11:38]So, they started to support Sunni groups in Iraq, including some that became pretty extremist. And then there's Turkey. Turkey is overwhelmingly Sunni.

[00:11:48]So, you'd expect them to automatically side with Saudi Arabia, right? Two Sunni countries, bang. Nope. In Syria, Turkey has often been at odds with Saudi policy because Turkey has its own interests, controlling Kurdish groups on its border, maintaining influence in former Ottoman territories, and you know, managing refugees. Or look at Pakistan.

[00:12:07]Pakistan is mostly Sunni, but they maintain decent relations with Iran because they share a border and they need to manage their own Shia minority.

[00:12:15]Geography and economics almost always matter more than theology in these cases. And the results of all this is, you know, it makes the Middle East appear like this picture of ancient sectarian hatred and no one can agree about, you know, the the various succession of the prophet. But on the other hand, it's actually this messy tapestry of modern power and competition playing out through local proxies. So, when you read, you know, you have Sunni versus Shia violence, just ask yourself what are the strategic interests at play and who benefits from framing this as a religious conflict. And this framework explains why the 2003 Iraq invasion was such a game-changer. It didn't just remove one dictator, it flipped the regional balance of power. Suddenly Iran had more influence over Iraq, which changed everything about how the regional powers calculated their interests. It also explains why the Arab Spring was so destabilizing. When governments started falling in 2011, Iran and Saudi Arabia both saw opportunities to expand their influence and, you know, threats to their existing allies. So, what started as these, you know, democratic movements got sucked into these larger regional competitions.

[00:13:24]It even explains some of the weird dynamics in places like Lebanon where Hezbollah, a Shia militia backed by Iran, provides social services and fights Israeli forces, but also acts as Iran's proxy in regional conflicts. Now, I know that all of this is a lot, and we'll do a deep dive on, you know, the different independent religious militia groups throughout the Middle East sometime, but here's the thing that is both kind of depressing, but sort of optimistic about the entire thing.

[00:13:51]It's depressing because it means a lot of people are dying in conflicts that really aren't about, you know, their local grievances, right? Syrians, Lebanese, Yemenis, Iraqis, they're paying the price for these regional power struggles and proxy wars. But it's also hopeful because it means that these conflicts aren't fundamental. They're not necessarily only about irreconcilable religious differences, which means that hopefully one day they could be resolved through political solutions or governance or inclusive institutions, negotiating power sharing, things like that. But that is more or less the real story as I understand it. So, the next time you see these headlines, you'll look for these strategic interests behind all of these religious labels, and you'll understand why this 1,400 year-old, you know, family feud still shapes the world today. So, there you have it, the Sunni-Shia split explained without hopefully too much academic jargon. I've tried my best.

[00:14:46]What started as a family argument about leadership became different religious traditions, and now is used as, you know, political tools by competing powers and proxy wars. And the religious differences are real, sure. Shias do have different beliefs about leadership and authority than Sunnis, but notice how these differences develop in response to these political events. And this is why context matters, right? The next time you see these headlines, just again, know that there's probably more going on but not below the surface. And remember, at the end of the day, they're both Muslim, and they mostly get along in real life, and the conflicts you hear about are usually more about politics than they are about prayer. Some of the most effective peacemakers in the Middle East have actually been people who understand both sides of this divide and they can speak to religious concerns while addressing these underlying political issues. They know that you can't solve these problems by ignoring the religious dimensions, but you also can't solve them by treating religion as the only dimension.

[00:15:42]So now you're officially smarter than your uncle who tries to explain Middle Middle Eastern politics at, you know, Thanksgiving. And hopefully you can kind of help change how people see these things in your circle, specifically people that maybe are not Muslim or don't understand the differences of how these two groups actually interact. At the end of the day, both these groups both read the same Quran, they both believe in the Prophet Muhammad, and they believe that that is God's final prophet. Both follow the five pillars of Islam, faith, prayer, charity, fasting, uh pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj, and this 1,400-year-old feud doesn't necessarily have to define the next 1,400 years. And understanding it, hopefully, is a step towards moving beyond. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is basically, as I understand it, the divide between the Sunni and the Shia.

[00:16:34]Thank you guys so much for joining us for another episode of Religion Camp. I appreciate you guys so much. Like I said, I did not grow up Muslim. Uh I did not grow up with this faith tradition.

[00:16:42]This is just a compiled research from myself and a few friends to try to understand really what this is for the average person. So, if there's anything I missed, please drop a comment. If there's anything that was oversimplified or that I got wrong, please let me know.

[00:16:55]I read all the comments on YouTube and Spotify, and I look forward to seeing what you guys say. And if you didn't grow up Muslim or didn't know much about, you know, this religious divide and how it sort of developed into proxy conflicts, I'd love to know what you think.