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Compare And Contrast Christianity And Islamic Schism

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Somewhere around 632, the Muslim prophet Muhammad passed away. As the leader of the Islamic community, his followers were faced with a difficult predicament: who will be the next leader? About 422 years later, in the European community, tensions increased between the Orthodox Christians and the Catholic Christians, which led to the Great Schism. Both religious divisions that occurred were similar in the sense that both related to a type of control that a specific person may have; however, the Christian schism occurred for more than just a leadership issue, while the Islamic schism had the leadership discord at fault. Even though these two religious conflicts were miles away from each other, their similarity to the dispute over power is inevitably …show more content…

In the Muslim world, the split occurred due to the confusion that occurred after Muhamad’s death. Two people were capable of being the next caliph, Abu Bakr (Muhamad’s father in law) or Ali (Muhamad’s cousin and son in law). Conflict raged as some of the people supported Abu while some supported Ali. In the end, however, Abu ended up becoming the caliph, which only angered the people that supported Ali. Henceforth, the religion was split into two sections: the Shia (also known as Shiites), which consisted of the supporters of Ali, and the Sunni, which supported Abu. Similarly, in Europe, a conflict arose. After the fall of the Roman Empire, tensions between the Eastern Wing of the church (in the Byzantine Empire) and the Western Wing of the church (in Rome) only heightened. There was disagreement over the true authority of the pope. The tension climaxed in 1054, when the schism split the church into two different sections of the Christian religion: The Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe, and the Eastern Orthodox Church in Southeastern Europe and Russia. Both Christianity and Islam split into two branches due to a disagreement over the power of a specific

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