NEWS Vancouver will be taking a breather this July after playing host for two major international events: the World Peace Forum and the World Urban Forum 3. While events for the World Urban Forum took place from June 21-25, the World Peace Forum was held 23-28, dove-tailing on June 24 and 25 with major events like a tens-of-thousands strong “Walk for Peace” through down- town and a free series of political and socially conscious Hip-hop shows. Over the nine days, both forums had over 500 events to offer the Vancouver public and the thou- sands of delegates visiting from over 100 countries. Activities included conferences, forums, festivals, free music concerts, and art exhibitions—all centered around raising awareness about international issues, war, peace, poverty, social justice, the environment, and sustainable liv- ing. According to organizers of both forums—organized separately but in cooperation—there is no better time than now to address these issues. “For the first time in history,’ reads a World Peace Forum media release, “citizens representing every region of the world are coming together to develop tools for change in the peace process.” Along the same lines, the Website of the World Urban Forum asserts, “Global warming, air pollution, urban opnewseditor@gmail.com Vancouver Hosts the World in Series of international Events World Peace Forum and World Urban Forum coincide in Van-city Nicole Burton, News Editor sprawl, overflowing landfills, water shortages, disease, and global conflict will be the legacy of this century unless we move quickly towards sustainability.” So what was the difference between the two forums? The World Urban Forum is an international event established and sponsored by the United Nations through something called UN-HABITAT. The Forum happens every two years in a different city and focuses on the urbanization of people worldwide, including problems resulting from urbanization and rapid industrial growth. Today, 50 percent of the world’s 6-billion people live in urban areas. In the next 50 years, this percentage should reach nearly 65 percent. The World Peace Forum was organized in cooperation with the Association of Peace Messenger Cities, an interna- tional organization of mayors and civic leaders dedicated to promoting peace in their areas of local governance. The association of Peace Messenger Mayors for Peace had a conference the day after the opening of the World Peace Forum—on Saturday, June 24. The WPF is organized by the World Peace Forum Society, founded recently and specifically for this interna- tional event in Vancouver. The next World Peace Forum will be held in China. Investigative Report: JJ McCullough, OP Columnist This week Jorge Gonzalez writes, “What is the difference between Shiite and Sunni Muslims?” When you watch the latest reports from Iraq these days, you hear a lot about Sunnis and Shiites. They have different political parties and different holy shrines, but more importantly the two groups also appear to be engaged in something of a burgeoning civil war with each other. So who are they? The Islamic faith centers primarily around the teach- ings of Muhammad, whom the Muslims consider God’s greatest and last prophet on Earth. During his life in the seventh century, Muhammad was widely revered by his fol- lowers, but after his death, things started to get complicat- ed. To ensure the survival of the Islamic faith, it was decided that the Prophet needed a formal successor to serve as the new head of the Muslim community. The community itself soon became polarized over the issue. One group, who later became the Shiites (or “Shia’’), argued that the new leader should be a blood relative of Muhammad, and that all subsequent leaders should be as well. In other words, they favoured a sort of spiritual monarchy. The second group, who would later be the Sunnis, disagreed, and argued that it was more important to choose a leader who had a strong proven faith and could be trusted to obediently follow the Quran. The two groups had a series of bloody wars over the matter, and the Sunnis eventually won control over decid- ing who got to be the new leader. Alas, as the years pro- gressed this whole system of hierarchical leadership (known as the “Caliphate”’) gradually fell apart, and today there is no longer any central “head” of the Islamic com- munity. As an ongoing legacy of the past, however, Muslims continue to self-identify according to their Sunni or Shiite roots, and Sunnis still remain the majority group. In the modern era, what mainly differentiates Sunni and Shiites is a number of subtle, yet distinct, theological differences that have evolved between the two groups regarding their interpretation of the Quran’s scriptures and the terms of Islam’s Sharia (or moral) laws. Shiites tend to support a more activist role for church clerics, for exam- ple. As a result, the majority of politically active Ayatollahs and Imams you see today are usually of the Shiite variety. Much of the Sunni-Shiite violence in modern Iraq, howev- er, is the product of other factors. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, and his treatment of Shiites was not exactly a model of religious tolerance. The legacy of distrust con- tinues to this day. Got a question that needs investigating? Email wart_mamu@yahoo.com. Which Muslim is which?