Sitting in front of Cafe Rosso during a break between classes, three girlfriends laugh and joke together as good friends often do.

These SF State students are young Muslim women living in America but they celebrate, marry, and practice their religion differently. Narges Gardizi, 22, and Mazouza Assaf, 20, are both Sunni Muslims, and Farnoor Foroutan, 21, is Shiite.

The Sunnis and the Shiites are the two major sects in Islam. Of the roughly one billion Muslims in the world, about 85 percent are Sunni, while Shiites comprise 10 percent to 15 percent.

Muslims agree that the differences between the two groups date back to the earliest days of the religion, after the death of the prophet Muhammad in the 7th century, said professor of Islamic political philosophy Mohammad Azadpur.

Shiites believed the relatives of Muhammad should have led the Muslim community after his death, while the Sunnis believed the prophet wanted the community to choose its next leader. After the deaths of Muhammad’s closest relatives, his son-in-law Ali and his grandson Hussein, the two groups split.

“Throughout the history of the Muslim world, there have been developments that assume this difference,” said Professor Azadpur. “Political, philosophical, and social.”

Shiites revere Muhammad’s relatives during holy celebrations and festivals while Sunnis do not and the groups have different customs of prayer and marriage.

Historically, this split has not been a source of much tension in the Muslim world, as Shiite and Sunni recognize each other as Muslims who believe essentially the same things, with recognizable differences in only some beliefs and practices.

“When two people introduce themselves, they don’t say, I’m Shiite and I’m Sunni,” said Foroutan, an astrophysics major. “They say, I’m Muslim.”

Although news accounts of tensions in the Middle East, especially the war in Iraq, often focus on problems between the Sunnis and Shiites, Foroutan and her friends view much of it as fiction.

“The media make half up and exaggerate the other half,” said Gardizi, a history and Islamic studies major.

Dr. Melissa Camacho, assistant professor of BECA, said the U.S. media does not compel Americans to understand Islamic culture.

It may be that the media does not give an in-depth analysis of the causes of conflict in the Middle East, said Camacho. Instead, mainstream media cast Middle East problems as Sunni against Shiite when many other factors, like ethnicity, politics and geography, have more to do with tension than religion.

Although Sunnis and Shiites coexist religiously, the ethnic and political conflicts in the Middle East remain indistinguishable from them in the news.

Saleh Tulba, a political science major, traveled to his native Sudan, a predominately Muslim country, during the summer. Tulba found inconsistencies between news accounts and fact. He did not find any of the religious tension or government interference with religion he saw in the news here in the U.S.

“There was no pushing or religious discrimination in Sudan,” said Tulba. “[That was] only in the news.”

Tulba, like many Muslims, recognizes the differences between the two groups, as well as the fact that they are so much alike.

“The way we practice the religion is different,” said Tulba. “[But] It’s all going to God.”

In the U.S., the Muslim population is about six million. Many issues in the Middle East, like the separation of marriage customs and religious ceremonies between Shiites and Sunnis, are more casual here.

“Half my family married Shiites,” said Gardizi, noting the differences in the U.S. “Your living style has nothing to do with religion here.”

Gardizi remembers growing up with American friends who were allowed to go out Friday nights, while she was not.

“Middle Easterners stick together because of cultural differences,” Gardizi said.

Whether Sunni or Shiite, 16-year-old girls whose families do not let them go out on Friday nights automatically have a lot in common, Gardizi and her friends agreed.

For many Muslims in the U.S. and the Middle East, the differences between Sunnis and Shiites does not affect the practice of Islam or the basic message of brotherhood among Muslims.