As someone who is interested in Islam I just wanted to say the following. I have always admired the unity of Muslims from the outside as when you see all the Muslims going to Mecca for pilgrimage together and how they all are side by side praying to God. It is really something Muslims should be proud of and it is one of the reasons which attracted me to Islam and wanted me to know more about it. It is a shame that this unity doesn't continue on the inside because not only does it do harm for the Islamic community itself but it also does harm for those seeking the truth in Islam when they see Muslims arguing amongst each other. People can sometimes be their own worse enemy.
It is sad indeed, but such issues arise because people deviate in their beliefs, when you go to the doctor and tell him you have an illness he diagnoses you with a disease, that disease has a name by which it is recognised, similarly we have a name for people who's belief has been infected with a disease and is no longer pure. It's important to diagnose the disease of these people so other people become aware of it and are able to avoid it and to recognise it's symptoms. If we didn't diagnose the disease and give it a name then people would not know to stay away from it instead they might become infected with it, until the disease spread through the entire population and we all became corrupted with the wrong belief. And the result would be that the true teachings of the prophet pbuh become lost.
We have many diseased people who's belief has become corrupted and they are no longer upon the belief of the early Muslims, not just Shia's but many other groups who's belief became corrupted, they've existed through out history, we've protected ourselves by terming their disease with a name and explaining why it's wrong.
But this shouldn't worry you, because the prophet of Islam predicted that people will invent new beliefs that are not from Islam and still call themselves Muslims even though their belief is not in accordance with the teachings of Islam, he said the Muslim ummah will split into 73 groups and the correct group is the one that is upon the same belief as him and his companions.
Pure uncorrupted belief is so important that it must be protected, if it isn't then the truth becomes lost in falsehood.
The reason why these devient beliefs spread through out the Muslim ummah is because when the Muslims spread Islam to other countries there were people who didn't like the fact that Islam had come to their land because it challenged the status quo, it gave people equal rights, it gave women the right to inherit, it gave wife's numerous rights so that their husbands could no longer treat them like crap, it gave slaves rights to the point that slavery became quite a good profession for people, when people think of slavery they automatically think negative but after Islam gave slaves rights then it was like a profession, it also encouraged the freeing of slaves as great reward-able acts, and there are many other instances where Islam challenged the status quo, as a result people sought to destroy the religion of Islam from within by claiming to be Muslim and then spreading deviant beliefs, one of the reasons Islam came was to free humans from worshipping the created things, whether it be a statue/elephant or a man claiming to be God or a man claiming the right to legislate laws for you on what you're allowed to do and what you aren't allowed to do.
Islam came to free people from this and bring them to the worship of the creator and take them away from the slavery and rule of men to the servitude of the creator it tells us that all men are equal before God and he looks at our hearts not our appearances.
So you had people who hated Islam for such reasons and want to destroy it, they figured the best way to destroy it was to infiltrate it and spread their disease from within, and that's how many deviant groups arose. You even had people from other faiths who wanted to destroy Islam so they would also try to spread deviance and sadly some of them succeeded in their task of corrupting the belief of the Muslims' for example Abdullah ibn sabah, a Jew, played a significant part in the establishment of the Shia creed. Which arose after the death of the prophet (saw). Of course modern Shia's will deny he ever existed and try to hide it, however it's "documented and confirmed in many of the earlier so called prominent and reliable shia books and their scholars, despite the fact that many of the contemporary shias completely deny he ever existed".
You may be wondering how these deviant beliefs are identified, well if they go against the Qur'an and authentic sunnah then they are not from Islam, for example there is a group who call themselves Muslims yet they believe there was another prophet after the prophet Muhammed (saw) this is a clear contravention of the Islamic texts which state that Muhammed was the final messenger to mankind, also this belief is not found amongst the early Muslims, that is another way we know it's know from Islam.
Yet this group walk around calling themselves Muslims, when they hold a belief that contradicts the testimony of faith. Hence the disease in their belief has been labelled with a name by the scholars of Islam.
I hope I've made things more clearer for you.
Islam is the such a beautiful peaceful religion... it should not be the way it is now.
