Q: If they are all DIFFERENT can you tell me what the differences are? I was accused of slandering the Sunni Muslims, but I thought that there was only ONE Islam and not sects. Can you help me out?
A: There are only two kinds of muslims: Quranite muslims who follow only the quran, which is the only perfect book; and hadith'ite muslims who *rely* on hadith to guide them rather than purely quran even though hadiths are corrupted, don't come from god and were written centuries after the words were said. Sunni, shia, wahabbi, ibadiyya, sufi etc. etc.... these are all hadith'ites, so of course they'll split into sects and argue with each other because *all* collections of hadiths of *all* sects contain some major fabrications, errors and contradictions. Bukhari and Muslims' hadith collection are termed 'sahih' (sahih means authentic) in sunni Islam, but cotain major problems even though they're the most respected hadiths of all. Shia don't seem to reveal their hadiths so openly so I don't know what shia hadiths are like, but they place the deeds and sayings of the Imams alongside the prophet so you can decide what that means. People follow hadiths but don't even read them. Sahih Bukhari wrote that prophet Muhammad tried to repeatedly commit suicide by throwing himself off cliffs and it's not even ranked as a weak hadith; this was when I was definately turned off hadiths for good. Few sunnis even know this was recorded by their most respected hadith collector- I discovered it on my own by actually reading through the hadith collection (they're not very long. Within a few months you can have read all of Bukhari. If you base your life on sunnah by following Bukhari, you should at least read what he wrote before you follow him).