Toby Matthiesen

Historian and political scientist Dr Toby Matthiesen looks at the origins of the Sunni-Shia split in Islam and explains how it has shaped the Islamic world through history and up to the present day.

Matthiesen explains how the split originates in the dispute over whether the prophet Muhammad should have been succeeded by an elected Caliph or the bloodline Imam, a member of Muhammad’s family. Matthiesen looks at how colonial rule institutionalised the divisions between Sunnism and Shiism and at the fallout from the 1979 revolution in Iran and the US-led intervention in Iraq. He argues that most Muslims co-exist peacefully. It is when sectarian identity is linked to politics that tensions arise.

Matthiesen is a Marie Curie Global Fellow at Ca Foscari University in Venice and at Stanford University. He is the author of Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t and The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism.