Reliance makes allowance for the various fiqhs, or schools of shariah jurisprudence under Sunni and Shia Islam and provides an amalgamation of them for reference.
As the regime bases its legitimacy on Shia Islam and is composed of clerics and laymen schooled in the beliefs of the religion, it is important to know just what those beliefs are as they will influence decision-making.
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They have made the most noise in central Punjab, where terrorist groups presenting themselves as defenders of the Sunni and Shia variants of Islam have committed ghastly atrocities against members of the rival community.
But awkwardly, the main traditions of scholarship and jurisprudence in Islam both the Shia school and the four main Sunni ones draw on Hadiths (words and deeds ascribed with varying credibility to Muhammad) to argue in support of death for apostates.
Saudi's Wahhabist version of Sunni Islam regards the Shia creed as an aberration, and it does not help that the kingdom's Shias happen to be concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern Province.
Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon's most popular ayatollah, demanded that Mr Qaradawi produce figures to back up his claim of a Shia missionary drive and that he explain what danger it would be to Islam if one Sunni decided to adopt Shiism.
Shia revere Ali, the prophet Muhammad's son-in-law and Islam's fourth caliph.
Around the same time, Pakistan was sucked into a shadowy proxy war for influence between two rival strains of radical Islam: the messianic Shia variety propagated by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, and Wahhabism, an austere back-to-basics form of Sunni Islam championed by Saudi Arabia.
In Shia Islam, this leader was known as the Imam, whose authority, both worldly and religious, was passed down in a style of dynastic succession.
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Iran and Hezbollah are predominantly Shia, while Mr Assad's Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam.
Peculiar to Shia Islam, the sigeh is a contract between a man (who can be married) and a woman (who cannot she is usually divorced) for a union with a defined time limit, perhaps 99 years, perhaps 30 minutes.
The Saudi and Yemeni governments both accuse Shia Iran of helping the Houthis, who belong to the Zaydi branch of Shia Islam.
The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future, by Vali Nasr, W.W. Norton and Company, 2006.
This is because Alawites, a heterodox offshoot of Shia Islam, are disproportionately represented in the civil service, the armed forces (especially the senior ranks) and thuggish militias sponsored by the regime.
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