The fundamental split between Sunni and Shia's and why its relevant for us today

So you can read the history of how the split happened and was fossilized elsewhere. Here, I just wanted to elaborate that the fundamental difference between Shia and Sunni Islam is on how we understand the edicts of God and His messenger.

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In a nutshell, the Sunnis believe that while trying to understand what God wants, its not important whether some ruling is actually true or not, since the truth is unknowable in many situations, but that one uses the best knowledge available and bases their lives on that. So for example, its not important whether music is actually impermissible since there were early divergent views on this by scholars of highest caliber, but that there is room for differences here so as long as one is sincere, its quite alright. There are evidences, both for and against to the extent that Ibn Hazm, the great Andalusian scholar wrote a whole treatise, going over every available evidence to conclude that you cannot say its impermissible and at best its a grey area. You will see this in almost any religious rulings in Sunni Islam.

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The Shia's believe that without divine guidance, we would only be guessing (which is true, although more like educated guess) and so would divide in to many sects (also true), each accepting some things, while rejecting others and so we need divine guidance. However, since the prophet passed away, who would give them the divine guidance? Well, it has to be someone connected to the prophet and hence they look at the Imams as the only ones who can 'correctly' interpret scripture and sources to give us guidance.

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This here is the fundamental difference between Sunni and Shi Islam - who has the authority for religious clarifications. Note that I only included mainstream Sunni and Shia ideology and not deviant sects like wahhabi/salafi who claim only they are on the correct 'manhaj' while ignoring centuries of Sunni scholarship from earliest times and whose genesis was in spilling the blood of muslims in Hijaz and going as far as robbing and pillaging the grave of our prophet.

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Also, i'm not talking about the fundamental principles in the Quran, which are mostly common between Shia and Sunni Islam.

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