Lesson video

Hi, my name is Ms. Speakman.

In today's lesson, we're going to be looking at the Sunni, Shi'a split within Islam and why there's the emergence of two main denominations after Mohammed's death.

This is lesson three of 14, and I really hope you're looking forward to sharing this lesson with me today.

So in this lesson, we're going to look at the emergence of Islam after the death of Mohammed, so what happened within Islam, consider some key similarities and differences between the two main denominations within Islam, look at the different types of leaders that emerged from this split, but then also look at the key beliefs of Sunni and Shi'a Muslims, which we call the six articles and the five roots.

There's quite a lot to cover today, but I think it's really important for us then looking forward into more about Islamic beliefs and teachings and then also Islamic practises, which will be different depending on whether we're looking at it from a Sunni or Shia perspective.

So what you're going to need in today's lesson please is a pen or a pencil, a piece of paper, and a different coloured pen for corrections.

You're also going to need to make sure that you've got a really nice, clear working space, so TV, music off so you're not distracted, phone to one side if you're not using it for the lesson, notifications off as well if you're not using it, so you won't be distracted by that, but you've also got a nice, clear, quiet working space.

If you need to grab any of those things, can you please pause the video now, get those things, and then come back and then un-pause when you're ready to begin.

Okay, if you done un-pause, I'm assuming that you are ready to start, and we're going to start off with looking at what happens after Mohammed's death.

Two key definitions though before we get started, and what actually happens in terms of the story, and that is the word denomination and the word caliph.

So there we have denomination, a separate branch or group of a common faith.

Essentially what we mean there is we have a common faith, in this case Islam, and then a separate branch or group within Islam.

So within Islam, there is both the Sunni and the Shi'a groups.

There are other denominations too, but these are the two largest.

And for GCSE specifications, you only need to know about Sunni and Shi'a.

And then we have the title caliph, which is given to the leader of an Islamic state.

Now really key here is putting an Islamic state is a country founded on the teachings of Islam.

It's a very key difference between an Islamic state and what the group that call themselves the Islamic State.

An Islamic state is a country that is just founded in the teachings of Islam, very similar to how you might have a Christian state, which is found on the teachings of Christianity, like we might say the UK is.

An Islamic state is a country that is founded on the teachings of Islam.

So for example, Saudi Arabia is an example of an Islamic state.

The Islamic State is that name of that group who may associate themselves with Islam, but many Muslims might say, "Actually, they don't seem to be following the teachings of Islam." But of course, that is another thing to discuss when we look at the thematic units such as religion, peace, and conflict.

So that's something we'll pick up another time, or perhaps your own teacher will pick up with you at another time.

So what I'd like you to do for me please is to pause the video now and to write down these two really key definitions for me.

So pause the video, write them down, un-pause when you're ready to move on.

Okay, you've un-paused, and I assume you've written those two things down.

That's absolutely brilliant.

Let's get started.

So what we're going to do first of all is I don't want to just start off by telling you the story about what happens.

I want you to start thinking about why you think we have the emergence of two groups after Mohammed's death, because we have, and if you've looked at the story of Mohammad, there is a clear distinction in this idea that Mohammad gives a sermon before he dies, where he says, "This is what I expect you to do.

This is how you follow the teachings of Islam.

Pray five times a day," et cetera, et cetera.

Then after his death, as we'll look at in a moment, a big split forms. I want you to consider this question, why do you think two groups form after Mohammed's death? It doesn't have to be right.

I just want to get your initial thoughts down.

Why do you think this happens, we see a split? You don't need to know anything about what actually happens yet on your initial thoughts.

We're going to first spend about three minutes on this, pause the video, write your thoughts down, and then what we'll do is we'll go through and talk about exactly why it is.

Okay, un-paused, you've written your ideas down.

Absolutely fine if you weren't quite sure if it's correct, because we're going to go through it now.

So when we look at why there is a disagreement, perhaps maybe what happens after Mohammad's death is to do with who he seems to appoint as his next leader, his successor.

I have two quotations there from the Sunnah, which are the words and sayings of Mohammad.

In one, he says, "If you should not find me, go to Abu Bakr." Abu Bakr is a close companion and friend of Mohammed.

And then the second quotation is one that, is one where Mohammed's talking about his cousin and his son-in-law, Ali.

And he says, "Will you not be pleased that you will be to me like Aaron to Moses?" In the Bible and the Qur'an, Aaron and Moses are brothers.

"But there will be no prophet after me." So historically speaking, if historians are looking at this from an outsider's point of view, they would say that Mohammad isn't very clear at all about who he wants the next leader to be.

These two quotations suggest that he's saying that both Abu Bakr and Ali have really important roles, and therefore many might say, well, you know, he's not very clear.

However, when you talk to a Sunni or a Shi'a, they will have a very different view.

For example, Sunni Muslims didn't or wouldn't believe necessarily that Mohammad clearly made Abu Bakr the successor, but they voted him in through consensus of the community.

Whereas a Shi'a Muslim would say, "Actually, Mohammed was really clear that it should have been Ali who led after Mohammed's death." Now of course, this led to people disagreeing.

Some people believe that it should have been decided and voted for by the community.

Others said, "No, it's clear.

It should be Ali." So we start to see a disagreement between the two groups, those who think that Abu Bakr should be the caliph, the leader after Mohammad, or those who believe it should be Ali, who becomes the caliph after Mohammad's death.

Let's look at this a little bit more then.

Let's look at the lineage, let's see what happens, some of the history.

We're going to look at it by looking at the first five caliphs within the emergence of Islam after Mohammed's death.

So we start off with, as I said, Mohammed's death.

There's those two quotations that historically speaking look like Mohammed wasn't entirely clear about who should lead.

Those who believed that Abu Bakr should have been the caliph voted him in through consensus with the community.

They voted for him to come in.

So Abu Bakr becomes the first caliph.

However, the Shi'a Muslims are upset, because they believe that Ali should have been appointed the caliph.

Abu Bakr dies and appoints Umar.

Umar dies and appoints Uthman.

All three of those are Sunni Muslim caliphs.

Then Uthman is murdered, and Ali becomes caliph.

While Ali is caliph, someone who's close to Mohammad, , she says, "You've not done enough to catch those people who murdered Uthman." And they fall out, they disagree with each other.

And even challenges Ali to a battle to say, you know, "Look, Uthman was murdered, our caliph was murdered, and you're not doing anything about it.

So I'm going to challenge you." She loses, and she decides actually to give in and say, "Look, we'll acknowledge that Ali is the caliph," 'cause she didn't want to continue fighting with him.

However, the clear split is starting to form now between those who are loyal to Ali, and those who are loyal to Abu Bakr and the lineage in Sunni Islam.

When Ali dies, he appoints his son Hasan to become caliph.

So we see a clear sort of Sunni, Shi'a split, so three Sunni caliphs and then two who are Shi'a caliphs.

And the way that we categorise it now is that Sunni Muslims believe that it should be Abu Bakr and then who's appointed afterwards, and Ali, those who follow Ali, the Shi'a Muslims, believe that they caliph should stay within Mohammad's family, so those who were related to Mohammad.

And so anyone that follows should be in some way directly descended from Mohammad.

So in the case of Ali, he was Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law and therefore his sons, et cetera, also related to Mohammad.

Later on in the story, we start to see a split between different types of leaders.

For example, in Sunni Islam, they become more political leaders rather than spiritual leaders.

And then in Shi'a Islam, we start to see the emergence of leaders that are leading more religiously and spiritually.

And this then leads to the Islamic belief in Shi'a Islam of the Imams. Imams, with a capital I, the imamate, which is essentially the belief of Imams, those who are religiously leading the community.

And what there will be, if you get a chance to check it out is later on in this unit, there'll be a whole specific lesson on the imamate, what it is, how it emerged, a little bit more detail than what we're doing right now.

So just to see how we're getting on with that, we're going to do some quickfire questions.

Now by a quick fire question, I mean I'm going to put some questions up on the slides.

There's going to be two options.

I'm going to read out that option.

I'm going to give you three seconds.

Then I'm going to do a countdown to those three seconds.

You're going to point to the answer or say it out loud so that you are like really, really quickly testing your knowledge.

It's a really good way just to see what have we learned so far, how are we finding it.

So should we give it a go? Brilliant.

Historically speaking, Mohammad was clear on who should lead after his death.

Is it true or false? 3, 2, 1, good it's false.

Historically speaking, he wasn't clear.

There are many things in the Qur'an and the Sunnah sort of suggest that he didn't appoint a successor really clearly.

Of course, Sunni and Shi'a views might be different on this.

Next question.

Shi'a Muslims believe the caliph should have been either Ali or Abu Bakr? So 3, 2, 1, good.

Shi'a Muslims believe it should be Ali.

Sunni Muslims believe the caliph should have been Ali or Abu Bakr? 3, 2, 1, good, Abu Bakr.

Ali never became caliph.

Is it true or false? 3, 2, 1, that's false.

Ali did become caliph, the fourth caliph.

Last one, the caliphs were not always Sunni.

True or false? 3, 2, 1, true, yes, we do have some of the caliphs who belong to Shi'a Islam.

Well done if you've got all of those correct.

It's a really good way of just recapping what we've done so far.

And what we're going to do next is pause the video on the next slide to complete our tasks, just to bring all of that together.

So we've got a really nice, clear outline of the lineage of caliphs within Sunni and Shi'a Islam after Mohammed's death.

So what I'm going to do on the next slide is pause after I've given instructions please.

So the task is to complete the table.

I've got the caliphs from one to five, and I want you to fill in the name and whether they would be considered the rightful caliph by Sunni or Shi'a.

So let's see if you can remember their names and also remember whether they're Sunni or Shi'a.

If you feel like you need to go back and watch the part of the video again, feel free, 'cause that might be really, really helpful.

If perhaps maybe you think it's going to be too tricky to draw a table up, then you can write this as notes instead, but essentially how I'm going to show you the answers will be in table form.

What I'd like you to do is to pause the video please, work on your task, work really hard, give it your best shot, and we will come back in a moment, un-pause, and go through the answers.

Okay if you can see this slide, then I'm going to assume that you are ready for corrections.

Please have your different coloured pen out ready to correct your work.

And then the next slide I'm going to show you will be the answers.

Okay, so we should have that the first caliph's Abu Bakr, Sunni, second is Umar, again Sunni, the third is Uthman, again Sunni, then we have Ali as the fourth, who belongs to Shi'a Islam, and the fifth, Hasan, Shi'a Islam.

If you got all of those, really, really well done.

I'm so impressed if that's the case.

I would also not be surprised if you've got a couple of those incorrect or around the wrong way, whether it's Sunni or Shi'a.

That's understandable.

We're dealing with quite a lot of new names today.

So that's absolutely fine if perhaps you haven't got it down right away perfectly.

If you need to make any corrections, please pause now, and make those corrections with your different coloured pen.

And again, well done for having a go.

Okay, so we've got sort of a clear idea hopefully of the first five caliphs, who they were, whether they were Sunni or Shi'a.

As I mentioned earlier, there is then a difference between what types of leaders we start to see for both Sunni and Shi'a.

So predominantly after these five caliphs, and around that time, we see Sunni caliphs starting to rule more politically but not spiritually.

The spiritual side of leadership starts to come to what we call schools of law within the denomination.

And so the caliphs are known really as political leaders for quite a few different dynasties.

Then in the Shi'a Islam branch, we start to see more spiritual leaders, the Imam, so the capital I, who are said to have perfect knowledge, divine guidance from Allah.

And so yes, they would have ruled politically too, but the emphasis was more on the spiritual dimension.

And so one group of Shi'a Muslims we call the Twelvers are those who believe in the 12 Imams. This is something we will look at in later lessons.

And if you don't watch these later lessons, it's something definitely to look at in terms of Shi'a Islam.

What I would quite like to know though, just really just have a little think about it, because obviously, there starts to become more of a distinction within Sunni and Shia about the importance of what these leaders are meant to do.

Is it political or spiritual? Now I want you to think really, in your opinion, which do you think is more important, ruling politically or spiritually? Perhaps maybe you want to say both as well.

We're going to spend about three minutes on this.

It's your opinion, so there's no right or wrong answer, but the best sorts of answers are always justified, so you give your reasons for why you think that.

So I want you to pause the video, spend about three minutes on this for me please.

Okay, well done if you put down an answer.

Like I said, it's just getting to think about it.

I want us to get our heads into, you know, why we start to see differences between spiritual and political leaders, and which do we think is more important qualities when we're thinking about leadership.

So well done for putting something down, because obviously, your opinion, can't get it wrong.

So let's look at similarities and differences then between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims, because I think it's really important and clear to make out from the beginning that just because there's a split in thought within Sunni and Shi'a does not mean that they are wildly different as well.

There are some differences.

There are also large amounts of similarities.

So for example, both believe that Allah is God, that the Qur'an is the direct unchanged word of Allah, that Mohammad's the final prophet.

The first pillar of Islam, so pillars being something that Muslims practise, so things that uphold their life, the five most important things that they should be doing during their life, the first pillar is Shahadah, which is the declaration of faith, believing in one God and Mohammed as the prophet.

So the Shahadah said there is no God but Allah, Mohammad is his messenger.

Now the first difference is that Shi'a Muslims will add onto the end of their Shahadah, "And Ali is the friend of God." That's one translation, which essentially is them highlighting that Ali is also a very important figure within Islam.

All Muslims will follow the five pillars of Islam.

Shahadah, Salah, Zakat, Sawm, Hajj, which are things that will be covered in the Islamic practises unit of the GCSE.

But Shi'a Muslims will have what are called the 10 obligatory acts, which is the five pillars minus the Shahadah, because the Shahadah is more of a belief than a practise, then followed by six additional acts, which they believe are important for sharing essentially submissions throughout their life, not just the five pillars.

All Muslims would be expected to pray as part of the second pillar, which is Salah, but this will be done in slightly different ways.

Muslims believe that they should be praying five times a day, and this is practised in very slight different ways.

So for example, Sunni Muslims will pray five separate times a day, so they pray five separate times a day, whereas Shi'a Muslims will pray three separate times a day, but still pray all five prayers.

So for example, there'll be two in the third time and two on the third time they pray, so that they then have five prayers in total, both Sunni and Shi'a, but just essentially their day's sort of structured slightly differently in terms of when those prayers are done.

All Muslims will celebrate festivals, but there will be slight differences in those festivals.

Most, if not all, Muslims will celebrate Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, which are two festivals, one to mark the end of fasting, one to remember when Abraham was willing to sacrifice Ishmael.

The third main festival in Islam, Ashura, is celebrated slightly differently.

So for example, Sunni Muslims will mostly see it as like a new year, new start, remembering when Moses freed the slaves from Egypt.

For Shi'a Muslims, it's a time where they mourn yearly, it's a yearly festival where they mourn the death of Hussein, which is one of the sons of Ali who was an Imam too.

So there are slight differences there in terms of festivals too.

But those main things let's go back to them, 'cause I don't want us to focus just on the differences.

Focus on the similarities.

All believe in Allah.

All believe it's Mohammad is the final prophet.

Both Sunni and Shi'a believe that the Qur'an is direct unchanged word of God.

They both accept that there are very key practises in the five pillars.

And then just how they do things are slightly differently, slightly different beliefs too, but there was obviously something, which the umbrella thing, that brings them together as similarities.

So I really, really hope that's been helpful.

What we're going to do now is just bring that together by doing some questions.

Are you ready? Sunni and Shi'a Muslims disagree on the five pillars of Islam.

Is it true or is it false? 3, 2, 1, false, they both agree what the five pillars of Islam are.

Sunni and Shi'a Muslims have slightly different wording for the Shahadah.

Is it true or false? 3, 2, 1, that is true.

Shi'a Muslims will add, "And Ali is the friend of God," to theirs.

Sunni and Shi'a Muslims will pray five prayers a day.

Is it true or false? 3, 2, 1, that's true.

Sunni and Shi'a Muslims will both pray five prayers a day, but they will do it at separate times and different timings to each other.

So you've done four quick fire questions.

Hopefully you got four out of four.

If not, that's okay.

We're going to keep going over these things in our lesson today.

What I'd like you to, oh, I've forgotten a question.

Silly me, okay.

Sunni and Shi'a Muslims celebrate festivals in exactly the same way.

Is it true or is it false? 3, 2, 1, false.

Yeah, good, so let's see.

Did you get five out of five? If you did, well done.

So let's move on now.

I'm going to get you to pause the video to complete the next task.

This essentially, if you find those quick fire questions a little bit tricky, this is another way of bringing it all together.

If you found it not so bad, then it's a way of just re-going over this and making sure that we've got it absolutely in our heads, 100%.

So you're going to pause the video then on the next slide, and I'm going to give you the instructions on what I'd like to do please.

Just got a table here with some statements.

What I'd like you to do is to copy out this table and then decide whether it would be Sunni Muslims, this applies to Shi'a Muslims, or both Sunni and Shi'a.

If you're finding that perhaps maybe drawing out a table is a bit tricky, then feel free to write them as notes instead.

So the statements are Muslims should pray at five separate times a day, believe in the one God Allah, believe Mohammad was the final prophet, must follow the five pillars, have additional acts alongside the pillars, believe the Qur'an is the perfect word of Allah, add "And Ali is a friend of Allah" to the Shahadah, and will mourn yearly on the day when Mohammed's grandson Hussein died.

It's like I said, you've got to decide whether it's Sunni, Shi'a, or both.

So pause the video now please, and un-pause it when you have finished and are ready for corrections.

Okay, if you can see the slide, I'm assuming that you are ready for corrections.

If you're not ready for corrections, then feel free just to go back a little bit just to finish off.

Make sure you've got your different coloured pen out ready for us to go through it.

Okay, so we should have the first five of them, that both Sunni and Shi'a are Muslims. Sunnis will pray five separate times a day.

Obviously, we know that Shi'a Muslims will still pray five prayers but three separate times a day.

Believe in the one God Allah is both.

Believe Mohammad was the final prophet, both.

I must follow the five pillars are both.

If you need to make any corrections, please pause now so you can make those corrections.

Okay, I'm going to move on to the next slide then.

Have additional acts alongside the pillars are Shi'a.

They have the 10 obligatory acts.

Believe the Qur'an is a perfect word of Allah, both Sunni and Shi'a.

Add, "Ali is the friend of Allah" to the Shahadah is Shi'a, and mourning yearly on the day when Mohammed's grandson died is Shi'a at the festival of Ashura.

Did you get all of those correct? If you did, absolutely well done, that's amazing.

If you didn't, that's absolutely fine.

It is something that we will get the hang of the more we practise it, so something perhaps to return to if you're finding this tricky in a couple of days or so just to refresh your memory.

Well done.

Okay, so we considered the main similarities and the main differences between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims in terms of beliefs mainly.

We're now going to have a look specifically at what Sunni and Shi'a Muslims put as their most important beliefs.

We call these the six articles within Sunni Islam and the five roots, Usul ad-Din, within Shi'a Islam.

Think of it this way really.

They are the most important beliefs, which the whole of their lives should be centred on.

So for Sunni Muslims, they've picked out the six most important beliefs, the six articles of faith, and for Shi'a Muslims, the five roots of faith.

I think it would be very similar to the idea of Islam in itself the branches of a tree would not be able to live and function properly if it weren't for the roots, taking all those nutrients.

So the idea though is these most important beliefs are what essentially is the most important part of being a Muslim.

Believing in these allows the whole of you to flourish and to submit to Allah.

So these are the central beliefs within each of the dominant denominations.

As we'll see in a moment, there are some key similarities.

There are also some things which are unique to both Sunni and Shi'a Islam.

So the six articles of faith within Sunni Islam are Tawhid, the oneness of Allah, the belief in one God, secondly, the angels of God, and the roles that they play within creation, three, the holy books, including the Qur'an, four, the prophets of God, those who give out the messages from the angels that's within the holy books, that's directly from Allah, five, the day of judgement and the belief in an afterlife, and six, predestination, Al-Qadr.

Now what, that is quite complex idea, the idea of predestination within Islam.

This is something that I will cover in another of my lessons later on in this unit, and it's also something I think is really important for you to definitely look at, because predestination is quite tricky concept to get our heads around.

But those are the six most important beliefs for a Sunni Muslim.

Usul ad-Din, so the five roots of faith for a Shi'a Muslin, are Tawhid, the oneness of God, the prophets of God, divine justice, adalat, the idea that Allah is always fair, never makes mistakes, his judgement is always the best judgement , He can never do anything that's unfair, four is the imamate, so that's the 12 successes, the 12 Imams that Shi'a Muslims believe in, our spiritual leaders as well as political leaders, which give perfect guidance about how to follow the Qur'an, how to submit to Allah, and five, which is the day of resurrection, so again, a belief in after, the idea that bodies will be raised again for judgement.

Now obviously some key similarities there.

Tawhid, prophets, their idea of judgement day and afterlife.

There are also some key differences.

We're not saying here that Shi'a Muslims don't believe in angels and don't believe in holy books, but they haven't chosen those, their specific key beliefs in terms of things of the things which nourish the rest of you in terms of building up a good Islamic life.

What I think is really important though that is because you could be asked in an exam, but also just because it's important to know what is key through a Sunni and Shia, is that we practise this a little bit.

It's so easy to get them confused and to remember which are the six articles, which of the five roots, and which goes with which, which is Sunni, which is Shia, and what's contained in each of them.

So we're going to do a task, which I believe is so important and a really, really good way of learning things.

It's a task that sometimes when I say to my students we're going to do this, they're like, "Miss, can we not do this please? It's more." And I say, "It really does work." It is something which is helpful with what we call retrieval practise.

Our brains have a short-term and long-term memory, and we want to get things into a long-term memory, 'cause short-term memory stuff gets forgotten, and if we don't put it into a long-term memory, it just goes.

This idea and this task really helps to get things stuck into your long-term memory, and your long-term memory is said to be infinite, which would be amazing if we can get all this stuff up there in your brains.

So this task is really helpful for getting things stuck in your long-term memory.

I'm going to give you the instructions for it, because I think it's really important that you do this correctly, and then what we'll do is have a go at doing it.

So are you ready? Yes is the answer.

So this task is called look, cover, write, check, repeat.

It isn't a case of just copying, because copying does not actually help enforce your brain to memorise things, go into long-term memory.

This process has to be methodical.

You look at what's on your screen, you cover it over with your hand or something else like a piece of paper, you then try and write out what you have covered over.

You then check it against what is on the slide.

It's very likely, and it is absolutely almost always fine that you probably would have made mistakes.

You then check it to check that it is all correct.

You make those corrections, especially where you need to.

Then you repeat that process until you find that you can do that without any mistakes.

Lots of my students try and do this perfectly and think, "Oh, if I write it out five times looking really, really nice, that will help." Actually, this sort of stuff looks pretty messy, and that's absolutely fine, but if it looks messy, it's probably more likely that you're actually learning something where you've made corrections, added things, taking stuff away that you'd forgotten, et cetera, et cetera.

So what I'd like you to do is to use look, cover, write, check, repeat to write out the six articles in Sunni Islam five times each to help you remember them.

So we're going to use this process properly please.

Pause the video now, have a go at it, and then un-pause when you're ready to move on.

Okay, if you've done that, brilliant.

I think probably you maybe found it hard at first, but found it got easier the more you did it.

If so, that's how it's supposed to work.

Let's move on.

And now I'd like you to use this process, look, cover, write, check, repeat, to write the five roots five times please.

Like I said, making sure you do that properly.

Your page should look a little bit messy.

You shouldn't really have got them all correct the first time around, because for the majority of you, this is going to be brand new to you.

So but we want you to do this process to learn the five roots, so five times each using look, cover, write, check, repeat, and then un-pause when you're ready to move on.

So I think that look, cover, write, check activity is really, really important for helping to learn key terms, key definitions, but also for quotations.

And this is really important as well when we start to think about exam questions.

Exam questions test you on that key knowledge and key understanding, and you need to make sure you've got those key words, those definitions of quotations, committed to memory, because that makes those questions even easier then.

So what I've got there actually on the slide there is an example of an exam style question, but it's important that I set this up correctly for you, because it will be different depending on what exam board you are sitting.

So the question says, "Explain two of the six articles of faith." Of course, in that question, you've got to know what it means to explain, what it means when it says the two of the articles of faith too, so there's two things you sort of got to try and interpret there.

Now explain questions will be slightly different for each exam board, and you might see different command words instead of explain, which asks for similar things.

So for example, you might see the word describe on your exam paper.

It is so important that because I'm going to be doing this with you, you sort of walk through, that you ask your teacher which exam board you are sitting, because this question for example might not quite fit in the same way as it would do for your own exam board.

This question above best fits with the AQA and the Edexcel exam board.

For example, where I teach, I teach the AQA spec, and this is a very, very sort of question, which would be very, very best fit for a form of AQA explain question.

So I'm going to be taking it from that sort of angle, but of course, if your teacher says, "No, actually you're sitting Eduqas, WJEC, OCR, then it's a good idea to ask them is there a different way that they expect you to answer this question.

So for example, in Eduqas, you might be asked to explain longer answers.

These wouldn't necessarily be worth four marks.

They might be worth something like eight marks.

And the question style might look quite different for OCR.

You might see the word describe instead, which is similar to the AQA explain.

But so it's so important that you ask your teacher which one you're sitting, so it doesn't, so it makes sense.

But apart from that, what we're going to be covering in terms of revising the stuff that we've done today is going to be important and helpful with whichever example you are sitting.

So how would we answer this sort of question? You would need to include a number of things for it to be a really good answer.

You of course need to first address the fact there's two of the articles of faith, and the two articles of faith or the articles of faith are within Sunni Islam, so I'm looking for two of those six articles of faith.

You would need to explain what they are and their importance.

And for this sort of question for AQA specifically, around full sentences would probably be enough for you to answer the question correctly and to answer the question well.

Anything less, than you probably would get less marks, and I think more, you're probably actually then losing time for these other exam questions later on.

So let's think about how we would structure it.

Start off with, and this some sentence starters, one article of faith is, and then another sentence, another article of faith is, then perhaps name it, and then go on to explaining what it is.

So the second bit would be explaining it, so like one article of faith is blank.

Then explain it, this is the belief that.

It'd be really important to include information from what we've discussed previously or the information you get from learning more about it as your lessons go on.

It is important that you name what the article of faith is.

Explain it.

What is the belief? Why is it important? Okay, so let's get started and have a look at it, looking at it.

So, oh, there you go, I want you to pause the video on the next slide to complete your task for me.

This is going to give you a nice structure for writing an answer yourself for this question.

So what you've got here is I've given you the full sort of explanation as to what you need to be including, the name of two of the articles of faith in Sunni Islam, an explanation of why they, what they are, why they're important, around four sentences is probably enough, and I've got some sentence starters there for you.

So starting off with one article of faith is, then another article of faith is for your second part, and then explain it, this is the belief that, including information from what we discussed previously.

I'd like you to pause the video now for me please, and have a real good go at this.

If this is your first time having a go at an exam question, it's absolutely fine.

It's really good to start practising as soon as we can.

So pause the video now please, and give it your best go.

Okay, if you're on this slide, I'm going to assume that you are ready to go through corrections.

Please have your other coloured pen ready for corrections.

If you're not quite ready, then pause the video, go back, and then continue your answer.

Then un-pause when you're ready to go through corrections.

Here's my model answer.

Now I've chosen Tawhid and holy books as two of the articles of faith I'm going to look at.

Of course, there are four others that you could have mentioned.

So don't worry if you didn't choose these two.

This is just an example of a good answer.

So I've written, "One article of faith is Tawhid.

This is the belief that there is only one God.

This is the most important belief in Islam," okay? "Another article of faith is holy books.

This is the belief that there are books that have been revealed to prophets to guide how to live.

The most important is the Qur'an." And you'll see that I haven't gone into a huge amount of detail.

I've named an article of faith, and I briefly explained why it's important, what it is.

That would be enough for full marks within the AQA exam board.

You'd have to double-check with your teacher to see how much this would get you in another exam board or what you would need to do to add to that to make it a perfect answer for your exam board.

Either way, you have practised today by doing this what the six articles of faith are and why they're important, which is important for any of the exam boards.

So well done if you've given that a really, really good go.

Oh, where's my thing? There I am.

Okay, so I want to say a huge thank you to you for working so hard today.

We've covered a lot today, haven't we? Sunni, Shi'a split, what happened, the similarities and differences, the six articles, the five roots, and done an exam question.

I think you deserve a huge pat on the back.

Well done.

I'm really impressed.

And I really, really hope that you are going to tune into some more of these lessons.

I hope you're enjoying them, and I hope you're learning loads, and I'm really hoping, of course, I get to teach you some more through these videos.

So I want to say a huge thank you again.

See you later hopefully.