The Unending Feud: Shi’ites vs. Sunnis

There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” That confession of faith, the shahada, is professed by all Muslims, be they the 700 million Sunnis who dominate the Islamic world from Morocco to Indonesia or the 90 million Shi’ites who rule Iran and form majorities in Lebanon, Bahrain and Iraq. To the shahada, however, the Shi’ites add, “And Ali is the Friend of God.” Those additional words in praise of Ali, whom the Shi’ites passionately claim is Muhammad’s true successor, epitomize the complex and often bloody feud between Islam’s two branches.

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Education: How the Public Feels

Adults do not think they are doing a very good job of teaching their children about the facts of life: 69% of 1,015 Americans polled for Time last week by Yankelovich, Clancy, Shulman* said parents are not doing as much as they should to educate their children about sex; 39% of the parents who were polled admit they have had “frank and open” discussions about sex with their teenagers only a few times or not at all. Those questioned overwhelmingly support sex-education courses in school, and 47% of them said they wished they had been better informed about sex when they were teenagers

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