SalarHaqq
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Salam Salar
I have to highly disagree with all your post and thoughts, would have skipped it if you didn't mentioned it twice.
There is nothing valuable on Orthodox Christians, Protestants,... to be compared to any Muslim branch.
Their Trinity nonsense created by churches, make actual Christianity almost a non Abraham's religion.
Alaykom al-salam brother. I should have added that no matter what apparent similarities one might discern between these branches, it is important to keep in mind that Shia and Sunni Islam will always be closer, of course, than either of them will ever be to any branch of Christianity. This doesn't stand to debate.
Nor am I looking for inspiration in Christian teachings. I'm strongly opposed to ecumenism and advocate religious orthodoxy (in the sense of sticking to our own doctrine and not importing anything from elsewhere). And of course the concept of Trinity in Christianity is incompatible with Islamic views on the unicity of God.
This said, it is simply an intellectual exercise which, as I stated before is not of much scientific value, to try and find beyond the fundamental differences and incompatibilities, what incremental parallels there might be between branches of different religons. This is not something to read too much into, neither theologically nor politically, and it has no strategic implications onto itself.
Now it appears that the concept of Imamate which is specific to Shia Islam and absent from orthodox Sunni Islam (Sufi branches excluded), kind of echoes the presence of saints that the faithful may pray to in Orthodoxy and Catholicism as well as their absence from Protestantism.
Also the fact that the clergy in Protestantism is much less centralized and less hierarchically structured compared to its Catholic and Orthodox counterparts, is reminiscent of the differences between Shia and Sunni Muslim clergies, in the sense that the former has quite a tight hierarchicy and is a pretty centralized and formalized institution, while the latter tends to be less so.
And why is the Orthodox clergy, from the point of view of its structure, closest among Christian clerical institutions to the structure of the Shia Islamic clergy? Because unlike Catholicism and its one Pope, the Orthodox church has several scholars sharing the highest formalized rank within the Orthodox clerical hierarchy, not unlike the maraje'e taghlid of Shia Islam.
Please note these are secondary aspects, I'm not discussing core doctrines here. When it comes to that, all branches of Islam are and will always be infinitely more similar to each other than any Islamic denomination is to any Christian denomination. Let me stress this explicitly. I was mentioning either structure of the clergy, or specific aspects of theology, that do not affect the basic doctrines of the two religions. Nor am I drawing any sort of conclusions from these observations.
Hope this clears it up.
Mixing politics (Russian / Iran) with religion (Orthodox / Shia) is a dangerous game
Well on this, I would respectfully disagree. As I understand Islam inherently concerns itself with politics and I believe secularism is not compatible with Islamic precepts of governance. Of course this question is subject to debate among Muslims, but for me personally it is the separation of state and religion that is dangerous. We can see it in the west where this dissociation has gradually led to a vanishing of traditionally rooted religion.
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