Who do we call Shiite, Sunni?

So far as I can tell, the world is going crazy. Inspired by a blind, ignorant (or perhaps knowingly biased) media we are labelling, tagging, and assuming things. We are also judging, and doing so perhaps in a way that supercede's God's final judgement.

So if you can't guess, my societal religious question for today deals with what we label or tag people in the media. My point of reference is actually the relatively fair and well covered "International Herald Tribune" put out by its own staff and the NY times, distributed around the world.

A recent article compared death tolls in growingly sectarian Iraq. It has named many horrifying deaths Shiite revenge kills in response to the Sunni bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra.

It has named the politicians, leaders, and random citizens by their religious sect of Islam. For example, a seemingly harmless quote...

"Many Sunni politicians, including secular ones like Methal al-Alusi, accuse the Shiite-led government of backing a campaign to wipe out Sunnis. Many Shiite leaders, "including Jaafari, blame "foreign terrorists," without being more specific.?"

Now take a look at the entire article, it is stunning and detailed, more interesting than most I have read about sectarian violence in that it takes ambitious stabs at naming people based on their religious sect, and shows some very personal details about some of the victims.

So why am I complaining so much about the media and how it is contolling our life if I am putting the article on some sort of pedestal? Well, for one I am being honest about it, not positive. I sincerely do find the article stunning and detailed, and more interesting than most because it tries to name people by sect. That makes it more marketable, and readable/enjoyable. Now instead of playing the impartial game and not saying anything certain about religious sects and violence, we have a good idea who is doing the worse killings. We are now told which sect, Sunni or Shi'a is assumed to be the worse one.

The problem is, the newspaper is assuming too much. By naming one terrorist Shiite, or another Sunni, they are ignoring one fact. We can't as humans properly judge whether these people are in fact even Muslims or not. Their actions clearly are not Muslim, let alone from one sect or the other. Because one was brought up Shiite or Sunni, has a Sunni or Shiite accent or name, and is from a predominantly Sunni or Shiite city, does not mean their actions are in accordance with either. I know many people who are quick to say Wahabists are Sunni, or like this article implicitly says, Shiites are corps deforming revenge seekers. I am fairly certain if you ask a Sunni whether Wahabists are Muslim or not, they would most probably say many of their actions are not in alignment with Islam. If you ask a Shiite whether or not Al Sadrs men are Shiite, they will probably give a similar answer.

In the end, the media, and our responses about other people when perhaps we cannot judge, are assuming too much. This assumption is leading whole lands of people to think certain sects condone or preach terrorism. Would you agree that the IRA has been acting in good Christian faith over the past few decades? What about other terrorist groups claiming religion to be behind thier struggle?

In fact, the truth is, all religious violence is not religious at all, but usually based on ignorant people acting against the accordance of their religion's own beliefs.

If you would like to read the entire article, it can be found here.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/26/news/bodies.php