Congressman, you don't know Shi'ite

Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein has been roaming around Washington, D.C. quizzing various federal officials on their basic knowledge of Islam. In Tuesday's New York Times, he wrote:

FOR the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”

Needless to say, lots of the people he interviewed couldn't answer the question, including Alabama's own Rep. Terry Everett (R-Rehobeth):

Take Representative Terry Everett, a seven-term Alabama Republican who is vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence.

“Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” I asked him a few weeks ago.

Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: “One’s in one location, another’s in another location. No, to be honest with you, I don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something.”

To his credit, he asked me to explain the differences. I told him briefly about the schism that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and how Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite nations while the rest of the Muslim world is mostly Sunni. “Now that you’ve explained it to me,” he replied, “what occurs to me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area.”

This isn't surprising, of course. On the "things every Congressperson should know" list, the origin of the schism in Islam doesn't rank very high. Still, I'd think they should be able to come up with a sentence or two, at least. Something like, "The split came about due to a controversy over who were the legitimate successors to the Prophet Muhammed" would be sufficient.

So, do you know the difference between Sunnis and Shi'ites? If not, this WikiPedia article is a pretty good place to start.

Update: Darn it, that link doesn't work, because of the weird characters. Try this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Shi%27a-Sunni_relations