Reprisal Killings now in Iraq as Religious Was heats up

AP is reporting that Nearly four dozen Sunnis were murdered at a jail north of Baghdad, a car bomb struck a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad and four young Sunnis were found dead, as ominous signs emerged Tuesday that open warfare between the Sunni and Shia Muslim sects has returned to Iraq.  The religious schism is ancient and had led to many wars and more deaths. 

The conflict actually began in the year 632 with the death of the Prophet Mohamed. The same is true of the violence, tension or oppression currently gripping the Muslim world from Iraq and Iran, though Egypt, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The division between Sunni and Shia Muslims is the oldest in the Middle East - and yet it is one which seems increasingly to be shaping the destiny of this troubled region as thousands of devotees from both sides pour into Syria. Jihadist al-Qa'ida volunteers on the Sunni side and Hezbollah militants on the Shia, are joining what is fast becoming a transnational civil war between the two factions. 1

AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed

1.  The vicious schism between Sunni and Shia has been poisoning Islam for 1,400 years - and it's getting worse, The Independent, PAUL VALLELY 19 FEBRUARY 2014,  HTTP://WWW.INDEPENDENT.CO.UK/NEWS/WORLD/MIDDLE-EAST/THE-VICIOUS-SCHISM-BETWEEN-SUNNI-AND-SHIA-HAS-BEEN-POISONING-ISLAM-FOR-1400-YEARS--AND-ITS-GETTING-WORSE-

9139525.HTML, LAST ACCESSED, JUNE 16, 2014)