[serious] I know many people as well as myself left the church after the rapes in Ireland; Why are these extremists not deterring people from Islam?

Well, here's a simplified overview, and I'll tailor it to address your initial question.

Within the first 100 years of Islam's inception, you had two points of division:

1) Khawarij (the Seceders). Long story. They initially backed the proto-Shia group, but they were affronted that the proto-Sunni and proto-Shia made political concessions to each other, which, in their mind, went against the divine mandate that God had given to the proto-Shia. They attempted to assassinate the political leaders of the proto-Shia and proto-Sunni. Not that big of a player these days (look into the history of that), but some Muslims argue that ISIS is "the new Khawarij".

2) Shia. Not going into history and formation, but the point is that Shia, by nature of their origin, naturally align to centralized, hierarchical organization. Also know that there have developed significant theological differences, to the point where even the "pillars of Islam" may differ with Shias. You could compare them to the Roman Church in that way. There are a few different denominations here, but I'll focus on the bigger two. All of them have centralized authority.

  • 12ers you could compare to the Latin Catholic Church, in that they have the largest amount of followers.

  • 7ers (comprised of quite a few denominations itself) is like the Eastern Orthodox Church, in that they have fewer members. You could also compare the way that Roman Catholics view Eastern Orthodox as the way 12ers view 7ers. Sort of that, foreign, exotic, different group of what you're doing.

3) Sunni. Again, not going into formation, but the takeaway is that they are more "democratic" and populist in terms of authority. Foremost is the decentralization. Unlike Shias, they don't subdivide into "Churches" or authority, but by various schools of jurisprudence, as in the way that the details of how to live your life are decided. They would be more akin to Protestants. Having said that, "Caliphates" have been 95% Sunni and that is where you see historical examples of central authority for Sunnis, but even those were broken up by these schools of thought.

Similar to protestants, you can trace roots of modern philosophy and dogma to various events (such as Martin Luther's reforms) for Sunnis. In modernity, what set of rules and what scholars you listen to are a much more personal thing.

Despite the ambiguity, there are still some ways to cluster people together. Typically, certain schools of thought have dominance by region. Congregants of a given mosque may be closer in ideology with each other than those going to another mosque. Still, both of these are also breaking down with the evolution of technology, communication, and transportation.

That was a very simple overview. Check out my other comment to see how that relates to your question.

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