Conflicts between Muslims
The accounts given from within the vast body of writing in the Muslim tradition traces the conflict between Muslims from the death of the Prophet. To the question of the direction or guidance of the community and the criteria for choosing the most suitable candidate to succeed, was added family feuds and social rivalry. Three principal branches of Islam sprang from this fitna: Sunni, Shi'ite and Kharijite. Since then there has never been an agreement which would allow co-existence between them on terms of equality. This memory remains alive and re-emerges each time that other tensions, especially economic, puts them at odds.
Sunnism fairly quickly became majority religion amongst Muslims. Its faithful subscribed to four juridico-religious schools which fixed the main rules of society under Sunni authority. But, despite the institution of the Caliphate, split up from 750, lost under the Abbasid dynasty until 1258, then restored by the Ottoman dynasty from 1517 to 1924, politico-religious unity has never been established within Islam. Conflicts, brief or enduring, have set sultanates, emirates, and empires against each other from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the islands of the Indian Ocean.
