Test Your I. (ra). Q.

This was sent my way from Trish Nelson at Rapid Response Iowa

IRAQ FOR DUMMIES – by Donald Kaul
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. The world of Islam is divided into two mainstream groups---Shiites and Sunnis. They disagree on who is the legitimate heir to Mohammed’s sovereignty over the Muslim world, a disagreement that has been going on for the past 1400 years, give or take a few weeks.
Most Muslims, and there are a lot of them in the world, are Sunnis, BUT the majority of Iraqi Muslims are Shiite.
DESPITE THAT, Iraq was ruled for many years---rather brutally---by a Sunni minority. (Saddam Hussein, while a nominal Sunni, lived a lifestyle, along with his sons, that was quite secular, in the sense that Las Vegas is secular.)
UNTIL we reinvaded Iraq, deposed Saddam, uprooted the Sunni ruling class and engineered an election that installed a Shiite majority government.
UNDERSTANDABLY, the Sunni minority was totally ticked off at being shunted aside and began attacking U.S. and Iraqi government troops, as well as Shiite civilians.
PREDICTABLY, the Shiites responded by attacking Sunnis wherever they found them and, backed by a private Shiite militia called the Mahdi army, began driving Sunnis from their homes in traditionally mixed neighborhoods. More