Shiites Quotes & Sayings

In Ghazalia, Mr. Hussein showed his contempt for the majority Shiites in ways large and small. He refused to allow them even one mosque, while the Sunnis had nearly a dozen. To worship, the Shiites had to cross an inconveniently located bridge over the sewage canal to Shula. — Alex Berenson

Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me. — Trent Lott

Some Iraqi troops aren't willing to fight for their government. But many Shiites appear willing to fight for their religious leaders. — Richard Engel

For instance, I was a little surprised that the Shiites didn't rise up against Saddam and the Baath party across most of the country when the Americans moved in March and April of 2003. — Juan Cole

What is postwar Iraq going to look like, with the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites? That's a huge question, to my mind. — Norman Schwarzkopf

The only thing necessary for evil to conquer is for us and those like us to do nothing. — Julie Kagawa

The goal is not to get into a relationship; the goal is to be in a relationship. — Ashton Kutcher

The Doctor put his finger to his lips and Martha nodded and followed him as quietly as she could. Wet leaves squelched under her feet. There was movement up ahead: two teenagers, a pale boy and a nervous girl, walked into a clearing. The sun broke through the clouds and the boy started to sparkle.
Martha felt the Doctor's eyes on her and she blushed. 'Do not judge me.'
'Judging is for later,' he said, and they continued on, giving the young lovers a wide berth. — Derek Landy

The likely economic effects [of the war in Iraq] would be relatively small ... Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits. — Lawrence B. Lindsey

the Afghans were well aware of what happened in Iraq during the Gulf War, when the Shiites and Kurds believed the leaflets the Americans dropped urging them to rise up against Saddam Hussein. They did, and the Americans did not come. Saddam's forces had retaliated by massacring the insurgents. "The Afghans in the south fear the same fate - they need to be assured — Eric Blehm

It's hard to imagine her ever having felt lost, but it's impossible to know the people your parents were before they were your parents. — Jonathan Tropper

For me, Anthony Powell is a religion. I read 'A Dance to the Music of Time' every few years. — Alan Furst

Every problem comes with a baggage of solutions. — Santosh Kalwar

In Iran, there is no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no independent judiciary, no free elections. There is no freedom of religion - not even for Shiites, who are forced by Iran's theocracy to adhere to one narrow set of official rules. — Elliott Abrams

We are blind and live our blind lives out in blindness. Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels. — William Carlos Williams

The Houthi have local religious grievances, being Shiites in a majority Sunni land. But they are also agents of Shiite Iran, which arms, trains, and advises them. Their slogan - 'God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel' - could have been written in Persian. — Charles Krauthammer

My time in the Middle East led me to realize that, with a few rare exceptions, the dominant political ideology there - whether you were talking about Sunnis or Shiites or Kurds, Israelis, Arabs, Persians, Turks, or Palestinians - was "I am weak, how can I compromise? I am strong, why should I compromise?" The notion of there being "a common good" and "a middle ground" that we all compromise for and upon - not to mention a higher community calling we work to sustain - was simply not in the lexicon. — Thomas L. Friedman

ISIS wouldn't have existed without the US invasion of Iraq. It was born out of the Sunnis' feeling of alienation, their belief that they'd been pushed aside - which, of course, they had been. Sunnis suffered a thirteen-century-old injustice with power stripped from them by Washington and given to Iraqi Shiites and their coreligionists in Iran. This grievance is at the core of ISIS ideology. Simply put, no Iraq war, no ISIS. Two — Richard Engel

I think the Shiites want a theocracy. — Adnan Pachachi

In Iraq #1 we stayed within U.N. mandates, limited our response, went home after Kuwait was freed - and were censured for allowing Shiites and Kurds to be butchered and not going to Baghdad when the road was open and the dictator tottering. In Iraq #2 we removed the tyrant at less cost than the liberation of Kuwait during the earlier war, stayed on to ensure freedom and fair representation for various groups - and are being castigated for either using too little force to ensure needed order or too much power that stifles indigenous aspirations and turns popular opinion against us. — Victor Davis Hanson

I'll be bossy and damn proud! Banning words, please. Try banning the system that produces polices that promote inequity. — Rosa Clemente

...in the assassination of three of its first four caliphs, the "successors" to Mohammed and rulers of the faithful. Those early assassinations led to the split between Sunnis and Shiites, battle lines drawn fourteen centuries ago that US troops would encounter, and help reignite, in Iraq. There is no distinction between modern and ancient history in the Middle East. No region is more obsessed with its own past. Islam began as a force to be reckoned with, and Muslims have longed to return to their former glory. — Richard Engel

Creativity is really the structuring of magic. — Anne Rush

Nation building is our central task, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And states, nations can't just be built with military power. Despite all difficulties, it's very inspiring to see how the Kurds, the Arab Sunnis and the Shiites are coming together here, how they're jointly defining the basis on which their state is to be built, the political course this state will pursue and who is to receive which cabinet positions. — Zalmay Khalilzad

The UN should arrange, as US forces leave, for an international group of peacekeepers and negotiators from the Arab countries to bring together Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and work out a solution for self-governance that would give all three groups a share in political power. Simultaneously, the UN should arrange for shipments of food and medicine, from the United States and other countries, as well as engineers to help rebuild the country. — Howard Zinn

If they make the deadline because the Shiites and Kurds essentially rammed a draft through over Sunni Arab objections, there will be hell to pay. — Wayne White

When Israelis were indirectly involved in the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982, the story was front-page news for weeks. When Lebanese Shiites were directly involved in killing Palestinians in the very same camps from 1985 to 1988, it was almost always back-page news - if it was reported at all. This — Thomas L. Friedman

The Americans were never interested in what was best for the Shiites. — Muqtada Al Sadr

Not yet do you feel it. Wait for the future. — Euripides

Sports can unify the Iraqi people - no Sunnis, no Shiites, just sport for the country. — Dana Hussein

My own idea is that if the men hold any meetings or attempt to form any organization, we should be prepared to be fully informed of all that goes on and unhesitatingly discharge any men connected with this movement. In this way, our peace will be secure for a long time, and it will be easily done if taken at the start. — Charles M. Schwab

The distinction between radical Islam and moderate Muslims is important, as are the differences between Sunnis and Shiites, and between militant and mystical Islam. — Walter Kasper

Every once in a while, the market does something so stupid it takes your breath away — Jim Cramer

There is no more alluring airspace in the world than the slit up a China girl's dress. — Ernest K. Gann

Lebanon, of course, is a country with great problems. Traditionally, they have religious-national groups or ethnic-national groups. They have the Druses. Even the two Moslem sects, the Sunnis and the Shiites, are apart. Then they have the armed groups. Everybody's got a private army. — Menachem Begin

I think that we live in a remarkably networked world. The problem with that, of course, is that tensions can travel in nanoseconds across the Internet, and so the tensions between Shiites and Sunnis in Baghdad, or between Protestants and Catholics in Belfast - those show up in different parts of the world. — Eboo Patel

Iraqi national identity under Saddam Hussein never truly incorporated Shiites or Kurds. Sunnis, who identified most closely with the Iraqi nation, remain in some ways disenfranchised relative to the other groups, or at least they perceive themselves that way. — Noah Feldman

Saddam's forces had leveled about four thousand villages and killed some 180,000 Kurds in Anfal - a "counterinsurgency gone wild," I wrote.16 Thousands had been shot and buried in mass graves. Others had starved to death in desert prisons, or been gassed in Halabja, Iraqi Kurdistan, where between 3,500 and 5,000 civilian adults and children had died on a single day in March 1988. Saddam had used chemical weapons against the Shiites in the south, but his attack in Halabja remains the world's largest chemical attack against a civilian-populated area in history. — Judith Miller

My mother is a Shiite Muslim, as are most Iranians, while the rest of the
family was Sunni. But that was never a problem. Shiites and Sunnis had lived
side by side and intermarried for over a thousand years and our differences were
far fewer than our similarities. What was fundamental was that all Muslims,
regardless of their sects, surrender to the will of God, and believe that there is no
God but Allah and Mohammed is his last Prophet. That is the Quranic definition
of a Muslim and, in our family, what mattered most. — Benazir Bhutto

I am not in charge of this House, and never will be. I have no say about who is in and who is out. I do not get to make the rules. Like Job, I was nowhere when God laid the foundations of the earth. I cannot bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion. I do not even know when the mountain goats give birth, much less the ordinances of the heavens. I am a guest here, charged with serving other guests - even those who present themselves as my enemies. I am allowed to resist them, but as long as I trust in one God who made us all, I cannot act as if they are no kin to me. There is only one House. Human beings will either learn to live in it together or we will not survive to hear its sigh of relief when our numbered days are done. — Barbara Brown Taylor

The terrorists want civil war. Al-Qaida is attacking Shiites. The Shiite militias are taking revenge on the Sunnis. And the Sunnis are become more extremist, with some joining al-Qaida. — Zalmay Khalilzad