Most Azerbaijanis

Usage examples of shia.

Shias from the Iranian province of Daylam south of the Caspian Sea, the Buwayhids continued to permit Sunni Abbasid caliphs to ascend to the throne.

The Safavids, who were the first to declare Shia Islam the official religion of Iran, sought to control Iraq both because of the Shia holy places at An Najaf and Karbala and because Baghdad, the seat of the old Abbasid Empire, had great symbolic value.

Persecution of Shia Imams during the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates reinforced the need for taqiyah .

Beginning in the sixteenth century, when the Ottoman Sunnis favored their Iraqi coreligionists in the matter of educational and employment opportunities, the Shias consistently have been denied political power.

Shia doctrine of the Imamate was not fully elaborated until the tenth century.

Although the Shias had been underrepresented in government posts in the period of the monarchy, they made substantial progress in the educational, business, and legal fields.

The other Grand Ayatollahs sat facing him, and behind them were the many other Mujtahids and senior Mullahs and clerics of the Shia Muslim faith.

His acceptance of, and strict, pious adherence to, the pillars of the Shia faith at such an early age had been a marvel to the older clerics and Ayatollahs who had spent decades obtaining the same levels of single-mindedness and dedication.

Within the Shia faith, our Mullahs, senior clerics and Ayatollahs have had access to these writings for many centuries, and have used them as reference material to the Holy Koran.

Who says the Sunni and Shia can't get together to fight the jihad?

That such a young pupil could so quickly master shaheda (confession of the faith), nampz (the Shia ritual prayers), zakat (the giving of alms), saum (fasting and contemplation) and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina) was not only unprecedented.