While Shiites have remained a minority throughout most of the Islamic world, they are still the majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. These areas — primarily ...

Sunni-led allies of Saudi Arabia have cut diplomatic ties with Shiite Iran, further polarizing the Middle East along the two major branches of Islam. But while almost all of the governments are ...

The Middle East divide between Sunni and Shia explained in one map. ... The majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, between 85 and 90 per cent according to most counts, ...

Map: More Than a Third of the World’s Shia Muslims Live in Iran. Roll over a country bubble to see the percentage of its Muslim population that is Shia and the percentage of the world Shia population ...

If you pay attention to the debate over western involvement in the Middle East, you’ll eventually hear someone explain the United States and its allies have blundered into an age-old sectarian ...

With Arab world conflicts so often making headlines, the terms Shia and Sunni ... and make up what’s called the ’Shia crescent’ because of the shape of these territories on a map.

The Sunni-Shi’ite divide playing out in violence in parts of the Middle East is an ancient dispute that traces back to the dawn of Islam. It started some 1,400 years ago with a dispute over ...

The execution of a Shia cleric in Saudi Arabia has split the Middle East along sectarian lines Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent Notifications can be managed in browser ...