The distinction Shia versus Sunni (both Muslims) may look to Europeans like a similar distinction as Catholic versus Protestant (both Christians). So based upon that comparison it’s really hard for Europeans to care about this apparently religious triviality. In itself it is indeed a rather trivial distinction but there is much more at stake than meets the eye.
A 28 May 2013 article in The Economist gives a balanced overview of the main similarities from a religious perspective: “Today the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims all agree that Allah is the only God and Muhammad his messenger. They follow five ritualistic pillars of Islam, including Ramadan, the month of fasting, and share a holy book, the Koran”.
The main differences from a religious perspective are: “while Sunnis rely heavily on the practice of the Prophet and his teachings (the “sunna”), the Shia see their ayatollahs as reflections of God on earth. This has led Sunnis to accuse Shia of heresy, while Shia point out that Sunni dogmatism has led to extremist sects such as the puritanical Wahhabis”. (The Economist)
However, apart from current religion, there are many other relevant distinctions between Shia and Sunni such as original religion, language, ethnicity/race and culture. Essentially, Shia people are Persians (now Iranians) who do not consider themselves to be Arabs and who speak Farsi rather than Arabic and who stem from a cultural and military superpower. In a Western context, it would be like comparing the UK and the USA. They have lots of things in common but the small one (ie, Shia and UK) looks down on the big one (ie, Sunni and USA).
Wiki: “The Muslim conquest of Persia, also known as the Arab conquest of Iran led to the end of the Sasanian Empire in 651 and the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion in Iran”. Wiki: “For a thousand years, forms of Zoroastrianism [] were the world’s most powerful religion, serving as the state religion of the pre-Islamic Iranian empires from around 600 BC to 650”.
The Persian language, also known by as Farsi, is part of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, and some other regions which historically came under Persian influence. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages (Wiki). Wiki: Arabic is the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century and its modern descendants excluding Maltese. Arabic is spoken in a wide arc stretching across Western Asia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa. Arabic belongs to the Afroasiatic family.
Ethnicity is always a sensitive topic. Persians do not consider themselves being Arabs. Economist: “The Persians have enjoyed being nasty about their Arab neighbours at least since the seventh century, when their land was invaded by Arab armies. From satirical verses about “locust-eaters” out of the parched wastes of Araby to periodic efforts to “purify” the Persian language of Arabic accretions, assertions of cultural superiority have masked a deep historical resentment”.
Yet, the element culture may be the most important one. Wiki: “The term Persian translates to “from Persis” which is a region north of the Persian Gulf located in Pars, Iran. It was from this region that Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid empire, united all other Iranian empires (such as the Medes), and expanded the Persian cultural and social influences by incorporating the Babylonian empire, and the Lydian empire. Although not the first Iranian empire, the Achaemenid empire is the first Persian empire well recognised by Greek and Persian historians for its massive cultural, military and social influences going as far as Athens, Macedonia, Egypt, and Libya.” In contrast, “before the spread of Islam, Arab referred to any of the largely nomadic Semitic tribes inhabiting the Arabian Peninsula (Wiki). Essentially, Persian noblemen vs Arabs nomads. Note: all Italic marking is mine.
The Shia vs Sunni religious tension is just the tip of the iceberg.
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