On February 22, blasts ripped through the Shiite Askariya Shrine in Samarra, one of Iraq’s most sacred shrines. Since then, nearly 400 people have died in a wave of sectarian violence that has shaken both Shiite and Sunni communities. Though it remains to be seen who was responsible for the initial Samarra bombing, many think it unbelievable that a Muslim of any sect would commit such an act. Either way, there are many who believe Iraq is poised on the edge of civil war—though it wouldn’t be the first time.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Iraq is made up of roughly 65 percent Shiite and 35 percent Sunni. Since at least the time of Muhammad, there have been two broad sects of Islam: the Sunnis and the Shiites. The two groups have attacked each other on a seemingly daily basis in Iraq, but have become little more than characters on the evening news to Americans over time. Their beliefs, in terms of faith, are very similar, as are most Muslim beliefs. But the differences that have created such a rift in these sects have been inflated by time, irritated by power and war from outside—as well as inside—Iraq. The Shiite majority in Iraq and the Sunni minority share a long, historic conflict, the outcome of which remains to be seen.

The clearest reason for the division between the Shia and Sunni came after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. At his funeral, Shiites found it clear that Muhammad’s son-in-law would become the faith’s fourth Caliph—or leader.

From a historical perspective, these different groups seem far more connected than separate. Most didn’t identify themselves as Sunni or Shiite as regularly as they called themselves Muslim. Most of their printed beliefs were and are the same, pertaining to monotheistic beliefs, ritualistic prayer, Ramadan, charity, and Pilgrimage.

The two sects have, however, held separate schools for their beliefs. Shiites believe in the importance of Muhammad’s family over those chosen to be the Caliphs who led after him. These beliefs have set Shiites apart from Sunnis in several views on the interpretation of the Qur’an.

The different sects of Islam in Iraq are all connected on at least one border with a nation dominated by their own belief. They lived surprisingly close to one another within Iraq in a state of tentative peace, with a great Shiite population living in southern Iraq and the Sunnis settled generally in central Iraq.

This, of course, fails to mention the Kurds, residing in northern Iraq, who, according to Ken Sanders in his article “Pandora’s Box,” “long ago abandoned their Iraqi identity, refusing to even fly the Iraqi flag.”

Fast forward to spring 2004, and the conditions appeared much different. While a new Iraqi constitution was on the table, it was the Sunnis this time who were stubborn to join the political process, nervous of surrendering too much of the power that they held under Saddam.

“The Shia majority, excluded from power for centuries, is skittish about allowing Sunni to hold the constitutional process hostage,” wrote Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan, in a March 3, 2004 article in the Guardian. “Kurdish Sunni have spoken passionately of the need to prevent a ‘tyranny of the majority,’ referring to the likelihood that the Shia, with 65 percent of the population, will dominate parliament.”

Just days before Cole’s article was written, bombs were detonated in Kerbala and Baghdad, both aiming to kill Shia worshippers. These attacks, Cole says, were intended to set Sunnis and Shiites further against one another. Two hundred people were killed, and another 600 were injured.

This struggle, Cole reminds us, is not new. It has continued through wars and the attempted control of the British, through the control of Saddam Hussein, whose Ba’ath party had come near destroying the Shia. The Ba’athists were made up of Sunni Arabs. “Ba’athists used helicopter gun-ships against civilian crowds, massacring tens of thousands,” Cole wrote, citing, however, that “while some observers had expected the Shia to mount bloody reprisals against the Sunnis when Saddam fell, it did not happen.”

“Iraq’s future,” wrote Cole, “very much depends on whether the Sunni Arabs and Kurds will prove able to accommodate themselves to it.” He stresses the importance of compromise, not vengeance.

According to Pierre-Jean Luizard in an article in the Middle East Report, both groups are focused heavily on expansion. “The various Arab unity projects—whether Jordan, Syria, Egypt, or Kuwait—are responses to the desires of a community searching for an entity larger than that framed by Iraq’s borders,” he wrote. “The Shi’a, who demographically, geographically, and historically consider themselves to be at the heart of Iraq, see themselves as most capable of defending Iraqi specificity.” In other words, the goals of Shiites and Sunnis reflect their idealism; there is an importance placed on the need to expand and unify.

American forces have been in Iraq for three years and fighting seems to have only increased between the two sects. Daily explosions and gunfire shake the grounds on both sides of the conflict.

Any discussion of peace in Iraq will need to rest on relative terms. The Iran-Iraq War, which cost over a million lives, ended not 20 years ago and the country has seen two major conflicts in the interim. If anything, it casts a dark shadow, an opportunity for history to repeat itself, this time within Iraq’s borders.