having just re"read" ishmael I took issue with the frank herbert quote here specifically "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." from Quinn's perspective that is a strictly human way of looking at things.

we want independence from "the gods" so we rebell from being leavers and become takers. we want to sustain our lifeline without following the rules this forces us to conquor. to conquor somthing is not to controll it it is simply a temporary fix whitch requires another fix and we end up with a leaky dam and not enough fingers. Quinn suggests that this story is ancient war propaganda. Cain, a member of the taker philosophy and an agriculturist felt man's fate was in his hands. He showed these beliefs through the harvesting and storing of food. Abel, a member of the leavers demonstrated his philosophy of leaving everything alone except for what was needed in his hunter gatherer lifestyle. Cain and Abel represented two cultures. When these two cultures clashed, the takers began "watering their fields with the blood of . . . herders". Cain took Abel's life because according to him, the world was made for human control.

On febuary 22nd the Askariya shrine(not mosque) in Samarra was directly targeted and bombed killing noone but deatroying the dome.The immediate area however is no stranger to war we(the u.s.a.) have bombed there before and killed people visiting the shrine. This is not to say that people arn't still pissed "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, says the US and Israel blew up the Shia shrine in Iraq." however a "hopeful sign" came in the form of a "call for peace and restraint" from the Shiites' Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani

contrary to many other rumors(often spread my missionaries god i hate missionaries) the shi'a are set apart from the Ibadi and sunni by Who the think should succeed Muhammad the (argument is between who the community chose(sunni) who they think mohammad wanted(shi'a) and who the greatest spiritual leader of the time is(ibadi)) short of that they use the same quran The story of Cain and Abel appears in Genesis 4:1-16 in the Bible and in verses 27-31 of Surah 5: Al Ma'idah in the Qur'an in whitch Habil(Abel)'s stated reason for refraining from violence is that he desires that Qabil(Cain) be laden with both their sins. Later narrations of mohammad say that on the day of judgement, for every person of 'the son of Adam' (i.e. human kind) murdered, an equal amount of punishment for that crime will be heaped by Allah on both the murderer (for committing the murder) and on Qabil (for setting the precedent of murder).

plus if all else fails the shi'a always have Taqiyya.