Sunni

One of his daughters is married to a Sunni, and so are at least seven more first cousins that I know of.

These bombings were widely believed to have been the work of Sunni extremists trying to kill and provoke Shias.

General Petraeus said the threat from Sunni militants of al-Qaida in Iraq has been significantly reduced, but the group is still lethal.

The family moved out of Adhamiya, a neighborhood that was becoming overrun with Sunni insurgents, and his mother remarried.

You said that there was no history of violence between Shia and Sunni and you were wrong.

The army, led by Alawite officers but made up of a largely Sunni corps, has never been trusted by the regime.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, suspicion quickly fell on al-Qaida in Iraq as well as Sunni militants.

Just as they tried to stoke a Shiite-Sunni civil war in Iraq, and failed, they are now trying to stoke a Hindu-Muslim civil war in India.

The scion of a prominent Sunni Arab family, he took the job two years ago after his predecessor, his cousin, was assassinated.

There was a time when most violence in Iraq was the result of a Sunni insurgency against the foreign occupiers.

A Sunni Muslim group, Jundollah (God's soldiers), claimed responsibility for that blast and Iran said the group operated from Pakistan.

Officials said the Sunni Imam may have been targeted because he had previously spoken out against al-Qaeda.

The Sunni areas upriver seem to have enough water, Mr. Joda observed, a comment heavy with implication.

One of the detainees was the alleged head of a bombing cell of the Sunni extremist group.

But Sunni conscripts, who form the bulk of the regular army, are increasingly likely to desert, and quite a few have clearly done so.

In the northern province of Nineveh, Sunni Arabs seem to have taken seats from Kurdish parties.

A tacit pact between the Alawite and Sunni elites is cemented by the skilful doling-out of the fruits of economic liberalisation.

On the other side of the Middle East divide stand the Sunni Arab countries, the US and its democracy interests, and, of course, Israel.

His mostly-sunni critics complain that Iraqi forces are not ready to assume the task.

In 2007 the Americans persuaded Anbar's Sunni tribes to set up a self-defence movement known as the Awakening and turn against al-Qaeda.

Authorities in Iraq say unidentified gunmen have killed a Sunni Arab tribal chief, three of his sons and a close relative.

Sunnis are a minority in Iraq, and many Sunni leaders say the country is not secure enough to hold the vote.

Iraq's Shia-led government, which used to fear the prospect of a Sunni regime displacing Mr Assad and his Alawites, has become chillier.

Hussein and his unreconciled supporters among Iraq's Sunni minority, there was an explosion of anger.

U. S. and Iraqi officials said the Mosul and Baghdad bombings bore the hallmarks of Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

Secretary of State Colin Powell says the situation is difficult in several Iraqi cities in an area known as the Sunni triangle.

Turning out a dismal economic performance at home, Tehran props itself up by challenging enemies abroad: Sunni Arabs, Israel, and the West.

In captivity and then during a messy, ill-conducted trial, the reviled dictator began to regain stature among his core Sunni constituents.

By recruiting key commanders from his minority Alawite sect and Sunni loyalists, Mr Assad controls the army and intelligence services.

The US military is handing over security control of Anbar province, once the heart of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

More recently, he has appealed to the Sunni minority, which voted for him in large numbers.

Though details were murky, both were widely surmised to be the work of Sunni Arab jihadists opposed to the governments in both countries.

Seizing the initiative from hardliners in his government, he fired back at critics within the Sunni community and even in his own family.

Every neighbor would be threatened: Russia in its partly Muslim south, China in Xinjiang, Shiite Iran by fundamentalist Sunni trends.

The Iraqi justices said the Sunni lawmaker, Mithal al-Alusi, had committed no crime and told the Parliament to back off.

Another scenario would be a violent Alawite struggle for survival against the Sunni community.

Much of the Iraqi insurgency is based in the center and west of the country known as the Sunni triangle.

Still, in a speech to his deputies, Erdogan on Tuesday denied his government is following a sectarian agenda to support Sunni aims.

The Arab uprising has at least touched the kingdom, with some demands for reform being voiced by Saudi Sunni elites.

Tribal groups known as awakening councils claim there was fraud by a rival Sunni party.

And in Lebanon, Sunni Muslims and a large section of the Christian community voted to keep the Shia out of power.

Local police said it was a sectarian attack should be, could be Sunni Muslim extremists.

If this sectarian behavior is not stopped, sooner or later it may result in a resumption of calamitous Sunni-Shi'ite violence.

The writ of Iraq's new central government is weak, running barely at all in some of the provinces inhabited largely by the Sunni Arabs.

The Shias would be foolish not to give Mr Allawi and his Sunni supporters a clutch of decent jobs.

One unconfirmed account says fighting began when a group of Sunnis confronted Shi'ites and accused them of tearing up a sacred Sunni flag.

Sunni lawmaker in Iraq is being sought in connection with a bombing inside a parliament cafeteria two years ago.

One of the most influential Sunni clerics, the Sheikh of al-Azhar in Cairo, has condemned attacks on protesters taking refuge in mosques.

In Iraq at least 3 people were killed in a 2-day gun battle between coalition troops and Sunni Muslim security volunteers in Bagdad.

The Sunni would be faced with a difficult decision: whether to accommodate or resist.

Uighur groups point out that they practise a moderate, traditional form of Sunni Islam and religious extremism is rare.

Iran could step up its involvement and produce a counter-push from Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states.

But as a Sunni Muslim close to the Muslim Brotherhood, he has condemned Bahrain's democracy activists as Shia bigots and tools of Iran.

Iran was failing to stop the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad's Sunnis, he was told. It persecuted its own Sunni minority.

Shia-led Iraq, an important neighbour to the east, which has feared the onset of a Sunni regime to replace Mr Assad's Alawites, abstained.

Thousands of volunteers all Sunni Arabs have been stepping forward and often to protect their own neighborhoods.

But Iraq's Sunni minority would be outraged if Mr Allawi, a secular Shia with strong Sunni support, were excluded from a government.

The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region -- also called East Turkistan -- where Kashgar is located, is home to a Sunni Muslim ethnic minority.

Above all, Iraq needs a leader who can appeal to its Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, divided by a chasm of ethno-sectarian hatred.

Iraq's constitution is decentralising enough to please Shia and Kurdish voters, but anathema to the once-dominant Sunni Muslims.

This switch of allegiance by Sunni Arab forces was a decisive element in bringing down the violence in Iraq.

Sunni Muslim insurgents are being blamed for the blasts that killed at least 88 people.

But with a diffuse network of Sunni guerrillas pitted against equally disorganised Shia militias, nobody has the authority to deliver.

Peace is shakiest along the "trigger line" that runs between the Kurdish and Sunni Arab areas in the north-east.

Anbar is home to much of Iraq's minority Sunni population, which dominated Iraq's political ruling class during the Saddam Hussein regime.

Where Hamas and Hezbollah were once allies, the fact that they are now at times at loggerheads illustrates the shift to the new Sunni axis.

Protesters from Bahrain's majority Shi'ite population have been demanding political reforms from the minority Sunni government.

Militant Sunni Muslims, who consider Shi'ites to be heretics, were believed to be behind the attack.

Sunni Muslim Iraqi political leaders, including Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, expressed anger over the arrests.

Violence in Anbar fell significantly after 2006, when local Sunni tribes began siding with the U. S. military to drive out militants.

The danger now is that the gloating of his Shia executioners will make him into a martyr for the Sunni cause.

But this is no peasant revolt. It has the support of large parts of the Sunni Muslim clergy.

The blast ripped through a crowd outside a bakery in the mainly Sunni Dora neighborhood in southern Baghdad Tuesday.

Meanwhile, an insurgency initially made up mainly of Sunni fighters grew in strength, taking a heavy toll on U.

Bahrain's Shia Muslim majority has long complained of discrimination and dominance by the Sunni minority, including the ruling royal family.

The revolution kinship Iran helped stir the belief among Sunni extremists elsewhere that Islamist rule could be recreated in modern times.

The protests have been centered in Sunni neighborhoods, and those are the areas under assault.

The anti-coalition insurgents have been joined by sectarian death squads whose aim is the ethnic cleansing of mixed Sunni and Shia areas.

He sees nothing sinister about the mosques, madrassas and schools built, restored or run by Sunni Turks across the continent.

Mainly Sunni Turkey is not, in its dealings with, say, Lebanon or Iraq, or its outlook.

Latakia is home to a diverse mix of religious groups, with mostly Sunni Muslims in the urban core and Alawites in the countryside.

Sunni Arab tribal sheikhs have been organizing their young men into neighborhood police units to drive out al Qaeda, a practice which U.

In Iraq, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists blew up one of the most sacred places in Shia Islam -- the Golden Mosque of Samarra.

The broader Sunni -Shia war has subsided, but it has not disappeared.

He has begun tentatively tackling the lethal ShiaH militias, now as much a scourge as the Sunni insurgents.

But these Sunni tribesmen are at best fair-weather friends who do not trust and are not trusted by the government in Baghdad.

But it also was not the usual warfare between Iraq's rival Islamic camps of Sunni and Shiite.

Alawite villagers near Sunni settlements are said to have been given arms.

He has begun tentatively tackling the lethal Shia militias, now as much a scourge as the Sunni insurgents.

In December, Sudan's authorities closed Iran's stall at a Khartoum book fair after Sunni activists accused it of spreading Shia propaganda.

Members of one group sometimes see members of another group as less than human: Nazi and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi, Sunni and Shiite.

Some are radicalized followers of the Sunni tradition, who swear allegiance to terrorist organizations like al Qaeda.

Any drift of Muhammad VI's subjects away from the dominant stream of moderate Sunni Islam might, his advisers fear, diminish his authority.

The movement grew out of Sunni tribes in Anbar province who had fought US forces and rebelled against al-Qaida militants.

The rulers of archly Sunni and conservative Saudi Arabia, in particular, have long viewed Iran as a dangerous rival.

It empowers Iran, the revolutionary Shia state that the conservative Sunni Saudis view as their main rival for regional influence.

The kingdom is ruled by a Sunni minority, which has long discriminated against the Shiite majority.

The Americans continue to try to court tribal leaders in Sunni provincial towns, hoping to isolate al-Qaeda and other radical groups.

The morgue is deemed by Sunni to be under the control of Shia militiaman who may kill or arrest Sunni looking for murdered relatives.

Once a top tourist and honeymoon destination, the Habbaniyah area filled with Sunni refugees fleeing militia violence after the invasion.

The Shi'ite Hezbollah has traditionally had bad relations with Sunni Arab Saudi Arabia, as well as with Egypt and Jordan.

In the great Shiite-Sunni Muslim clash that cleaves the Middle East, score one for Iran's radical Shiite theocracy.

So in this sense, the Muslim Brotherhood will not have a foreign policy that would not be different from the Sunni Gulf States.

He still has to try to appease the regional Sunni community (Turkey included) by working towards rapprochement with Iraq's Sunnis.

The new commander, General David Petraeus, was certainly lucky: Sunni militants turned against al-Qaeda, and Shia ones declared a ceasefire.

He cursed Iraqi Shi'ites with an insult and accused them of seeking revenge against Sunni Muslims.

When an Iranian parliamentarian mentions nostalgically that Bahrain was once a Persian province, a wave of Sunni suspicion erupts.

Since the 2003 Iraq war, Sunni militants in Ramadi, Fallujah and other cities with the US-led foreign forces have repeatedly clashed.

Sunni rulers have struggled for years with a restive Shiite population.

But a grim and retributive mood settled over predominantly Sunni areas.

Bahrain's Sunni Muslim rulers have long faced a restive Shiite population that alleges economic and political discrimination.

Many Lebanese Sunni Muslims sympathize with the fifteen-month-old uprising in Syria. Syria's majority Sunnis have led the uprising.

Allawi said that he wanted Maliki to apologize for referring to Iraqiya as a representative of Iraq's Sunni voters.

A military interpreter before he switched to journalism, he was streetwise; a Shiite who lived in a Sunni neighbourhood; a survivor.

"Accusing a Shi'ite group of killing a Sunni leader leads to a catastrophe, " Ali Khreiss, a Shi'ite MP and ally of Hizballah said Tuesday.

Mr. Essawi and his entourage turned around and raced back to Ramadi, meeting up with Sunni tribesmen who vowed to protect him.

The Syrians, who have broken with the Sunni nations and attached themselves to Iran, are feeling stronger by the day.

The Assad regime is dominated by the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, but the country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.

The risk of a vengeful takeover by the Sunni majority is too great.

It was true that armed Sunni tribes had become American allies.

After the latest killings in Homs, several prominent Alawites circulated statements condemning the damage done to Sunni shops.

US military helicopter has gone down northwest of Baghdad with Sunni insurgents tied to Al-Qaeda claiming responsibility.

Suspected Sunni insurgents often target members of the civilian militias that allied with Iraqi and U. S. forces.

And both Kurdish and Sunni ministers have boycotted Cabinet meetings in support of the protesters.

"Obama wants a Sunni alliance in the Middle East, in Arab Spring countries, to besiege Iran, " said political sociologist Said Sadek.

The biggest Sunni block in the outgoing parliament, the Iraqi Accord Front, better known by its Arabic name, Tawafuq, is doing even worse.

Efforts at reconciliation between Iraq's rival Shi'ite and Sunni factions have continued since local elections last January.

He met with Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders this week, but no political reforms have been announced.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had invaded and occupied Afghanistan, energizing many young Sunni Muslims.

Now Islam is having to contend with a sharpening split between Sunni and Shia.

Mr Maliki is unloved, especially by Sunnis and by many Kurds. Sunni Arab leaders of neighbouring countries distrust him.

It would be not only Shi'ite versus Sunni . . . but [war] inside each community itself.

Posters have appeared in Sunni strongholds warning the king not to give in to Shia demands.

On the other side of Baghdad, in the Sunni area of Adhamiya, dozens of Sunnis had a different take on the situation.

Sunni insurgents probably linked to al-Qaeda have recently perpetrated a string of spectacular atrocities.

A possible explanation: in both Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Sunni Muslims are the majority.

As a result, sectarian tensions have already spilled over into Lebanon, further polarizing Sunni-Shi'a relations throughout the region.

The protests began in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province after the army arrested the bodyguards of Sunni Finance Minister Rafa al-Issawi.

Last month, the Jordanian-born Sunni extremist went even further, declaring an all-out war to kill Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslims.

Harith Obeidi the parliamentary leader of Iraq's largest Sunni bloc was killed by a teenage boy after delivering a sermon in west Baghdad.

Libya is tribally and ethnically diverse, but almost entirely Sunni and socially conservative.

Many surviving members of al-Qaeda's affiliates have drifted into smaller Sunni factions under no centralized command.

The team would have to include Shia as well as Sunni members.

Most Syrians are Sunni Muslim, but Assad and the ruling elite belong to the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric holds meeting with Sunni vice president to discuss political unification.

Al Dari accuses Iraq's new Shiite-dominated government of arresting, torturing and killing Sunni scholars.

Yet Saddam attracted real constituents, and not only from the favoured among his own clan, tribe and fellow Sunni Muslims.

It's suspected that the blast was due to tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

The woman eventually attacked members of government-backed Sunni groups in Diyala province, the suspect said.

Nine in ten Egyptians are Sunni Muslims and expect Islam to govern such things as marriage, divorce and inheritance.

The Triangle is a Sunni-dominated buffer between the Iraqi capital and the Shi'ite south.

In Bahrain, a Sunni minority, 30 percent of the population, rules over a Shiite majority.

But as a Sunni scholar he could not overlook doctrinal differences.

Sunni participation rose sharply compared with the previous round of elections.

Allies of Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran took sides against each other ferociously over the airwaves.

The attacks were presumed to have been carried out by Sunni extremists linked to al-Qaeda.

So, if the Sunni Arabs do vote and get lots of seats this time, will this see an end to their fear of marginalisation? Charles Tripp.

In Tripoli, a northern Lebanese city, Sunni Sheikh Walid Taboush says Russia has lost support throughout the Arab world.

Elsewhere in Syria, the country's Sunni clerics, who have generally co-operated with the regime, are showing signs of division.

Ill feeling between Sunni and Shia is growing across the Gulf.

Many saw no choice but to help the Sunni insurgents.

The surrounding province is a poor farming area inhabited by conservative Sunni tribes.

Muslim clerics at both Shi'ite and Sunni mosques in the town appealed to their congregations to remain calm and avoid violence.

Otherwise the simmering Sunni insurgency will regain the momentum it has lost in the past few years.

Police recovered a man's body as well as some literature about the banned Sunni extremist outfit, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

Most of them shun political Islam. Radical Sunni parties had to remain underground.

Western and Sunni Arab panic at Shia Iran's advance has created a diplomatic vacuum and flung Mr Blair's and George W.

Meanwhile, Sunni militias are targeting Shiite academics, and vice versa.

Tribal sheikhs there accused incumbent Sunni politicians of rigging the polls.

Like Saudi Arabia, Qatar follows Wahhabism, an arch-conservative branch of Sunni Islam.

Most of the violence in Iraq though is either sectarian between Sunni and ShiiteMuslims or ethnic between Arabs and Kurds.

Iraqi security forces are on high alert around Baghdad and in the Sunni heartland north of the capital.

They tried to make this about Sunni against Shia but it is about basic rights.

Bahrain's predominantly Sunni neighbours are clearly nervous about their own position.

Saladin was a strict practitioner of Sunni Islam.

Many Lebanese fear that an indictment of Hizballah personnel could lead to sectarian clashes between rival Sunni and Shi'ite factions.

As for the radical Shiites, they probably just made things worse for their community by killing or scaring off Sunni technocrats.

still donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.

Sunni Justin reports from Sudan says an airstrike has destroyed a car near the city of Port Sudan.

The number of minarets on a mosque indicates whether it is Shiite and Sunni.

Religion: Moslem- 95%; other- 5%. Native Qataris are mainly Sunni Moslems of the strictly orthodox Wahhabi sect.

Within days hundreds were killed in reprisals and scores of Sunni mosques were attacked.

Insurgents also bombed a Sunni mosque in the southwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Baya'a.

He says the Sunni community feels it is not fairly represented in the Shiite-led government.

The country's Sunni monarch King Hamad made the announcement in a national broadcast.

The term "insurgents" in Iraq generally refers to Sunni Islamist groups, like al Qaeda.

If America with more than 140, 000 soldiers cannot subdue the Sunni minority, why expect the largely Shia government forces to do better?

And what of Iran, which apparently continues to aid and abet both Shi'ite and Sunni insurgent groups with IEDS and other weapons?

If a more harshly sectarian Shia-led government emerges, a wider Sunni insurgency could yet be rekindled.

Like most Sunni extremists, some in al-Qaeda regard Shia Muslims as virtual apostates.

Rioting erupted in Sunni areas, along with sectarian skirmishes that claimed ten lives.

Many Sunni Arabs are angry because of the execution timing, on the first day of a major Muslim holiday.

If a Shia-led coalition took shape without Sunni co-operation, sectarian resentment will worsen, and violence could increase again.

The attack happened yesterday in Mahmoudiya, the Sunni insurgent stronghold about 20 miles south of Baghdad.

He says the Sunni community feels it is not fairly represented in theShiiteledShiite-led government.

Sunni Arab leaders of neighbouring countries distrust him.

He established numerous mosques and madrasah in order further the spread of Sunni beliefs.

The provincial council's chairman, another Sunni Arab, tells a similar tale.

Nine people were killed in the assassination attempt, which occurred while Mr Zubaie, a Sunni, attended prayers.

Roughly nine out of 10 Muslims worldwide are Sunni, and about one in 10 is Shiite, they estimated.

The outlawed militant Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi contacted local media to claim responsibility.

No mass demonstrations have been reported in big cities such as the capital, Damascus, and the Sunni business centre of Aleppo.

The new Iraqi regime, with our tacit approval, disempowered the Sunni elite.

Today 4 people were killed in two separate bombings at Sunni mosques in Baquba.

The tactics and the targets are both hallmarks of the Sunni insurgency.

It comprises five main schools of interpretation (four Sunni and one Shia).

the militias formed by the mainly Sunni tribal councils.

The apparent suicide bombing in the assembly's cafeteria killed a Sunni Arab deputy, and wounded about 20 other people.

Invite Saudi Arabia to come kill a Shiite cow and import another Sunni cow.

Overall, 21 incumbents lost their seats, among them several prominent Sunni Islamists.

Based in Manama, the capital, it is owned by a wealthy Sunni merchant family.

Islam is the national religion and all Maldivians are Sunni Muslims.

The Malays and Moors are Muslim, the majority of whom practice Sunni Islam.

The vast majority of Kyrgyz are Muslims of the Sunni branch.

If a Sunni man dies, a Sunni widow may inherit only half of his estate.

Afghan tribal groups lack the coherence of even Iraqi Sunni tribes.

The country's leading Sunni Arab religious body also condemned the attack.

Al Qaeda's brand of hard-line Sunni Islam considers Shiites heretics.

Sunni officers staged three coups in quick succession after independence in 1946.

The militants may be adopting this position in order to pose as defenders of the Sunni population.

Religious curricula in the new schools are supervised by Al-Azhar, the highest seat of learning in the Sunni Muslim world.

The Qataris are mainly Sunni "Wahhabi" Muslims.

In Turkey Sunni Islam and nationalism have long gone hand in hand.

In this deadly terrain, Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are poisonously sectarian.

Sunni and Shia Arabs were at each other's throats and both groups distrusted the Kurds.

Sunni jihadist group called Jundullah, which is based in Pakistan, was widely blamed.

Religion: Islam is the official religion, Sunni Moslems- 85%; Shiite Moslem-15%.

It's a Sunni stronghold, very sympathetic to the army.

They represent Sunni, Shi'ite and Sufi schools of Islam.

His father seized power in 1970 and struck a bargain with the richest merchants, who are mostly from the Sunni majority, who make up 75%.

It also has some 14m Kurds, who are Sunni Muslims but ethnically and linguistically distinct from Turks.

Sunni Muslims who demonise Christians loathe Shias.

Libya is predominantly Sunni.

First it will elect a speaker, by recent tradition a Sunni Arab.

The Kuchis, who are Sunni Muslim and ethnic Pushtun, probably number fewer than 200 fighting men together with their families and livestock.

But in the mathematics of Islam, about 80 percent of Muslims in the world are Sunni, including almost all of Russia's Muslims.

One Sunni participating in the political process is Adnan al-Dulaimi.

They know that regime propaganda is portraying them as Salafists (Hama is a conservative Sunni city) and armed.

On the country's periphery, revolts by minorities such as the (mostly Sunni) Kurds and Baluchis smoulder on.

Some 99% of the population are Muslim, most of them Sunni.

According to the report, more than 90 percent of Iraqis outside the Sunni Triangle say they feel "very safe" in their neighborhoods.

Jisr al-Shughour is a predominantly Sunni town with some Alawite and Christian villages nearby.

The Sunni Arab insurgency is also running in high gear .

He has teamed up with Saleh al-Mutlaq, a stalwart Sunni member of parliament, to form the Iraqi National Movement.

Most belong to the Sunni branch of Islam.

Civilian casualties mounted, from car bombs and other attacks carried out by Sunni and Shi'ite militias.

Al-Qaida's warning not to take part in elections prevented many Sunni Arabs from voting in the country's first democratic elections.

Saddam Hussein is a Sunni Muslim.

The government is led by a Sunni, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.

And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line.