Foot in Mouth Episode I

Foot in Mouth Episode I, brought to you by Kampung Girl.

On Thursday I went for badminton and dinner with a bunch of friends at the court. One of them is an Iraqi whom I've known for a few weeks - a very vivacious, and seemingly sporting guy/boy/teenager. I happened to sit opposite this guy. The tv in the lil chinese restaurant was showing a clip about number of animal killed in the US per day and asking the public to help. Iraqi guy remarked on how ridiculous this is seeing that so many people die in his country everyday. This brought to my mind the Iraqi war and what little I know about Iraq - ie there're 2 warring fractions, the Sunni and the Shia, and a former ruler named Saddam Hussein, and the War-for-weird-reasons that is going on there. Seeing that SH and reasons-for-war might be rather sensitive issues, and in the spirit of getting to know my Iraqi friend more, I asked him, in the air of asking whether one prefers ranch or french dressing with the salad :" So, are you a Sunni?"...
and instantly got a hard kick in the shin under the table from J, my fellow malaysian and long time friend, who also happened to have worked with Arabs for 3+yrs and had decidedly more understanding about arabian culture than me. In a fraction of a second, I understood that I had asked a taboo question.
My Iraqi friend obviously didn't want to answer, so, after an awkward infinity of a second, he hedged and told me:"I'm a hindu."
By that time I was too flustered and embarrassed to think up a good way to gently let this question slide, and hastily covered up with a question of :"Really? do you speak tamil?" and followed up with an offer of :"hey i can teach you bad words in Tamil! you look like you'd appreciate it."

GROAN...my tact and reputation down the drain in 30 seconds. Not that this is the 1st time that happened.

J later told me that what I thought was the equivalent of asking malaysian chinese :"Are you hokkien or Hakka?", was actually perhaps more akin to asking ..say.. Roosevelt whether he was a Nazi during WWII, or asking a Quiznos philly-steak-sub whether it is actually from Subway. point is, these are not just fractions with different dialect or place of origin - these are people who have hated and killed each other for decades. You(If you dont know any better) and I (who definitely dont know any better) might think it's just different branches of Islam, but to them, it's as different as Taoism and Judaism. I am inferring that if the guy really is a Shia (which he probably is considering that he didn't want to answer), I probably unknowingly insulted him like mad by giving the impression that I thought he was Sunni.

How was I supposed to know? "Sunni" was just easier to pronounce!
"hm...gmm...hmp....aaakk...akk"
Excuse me while I dig my foot out of my mouth.

The moral of this story is, if you dont know the Iraqi well, do not ask him if he is a Shia/Sunni. Stick with "Is your beef and chicken fried rice nice?" or even "Brazillian football sucks."

Note: Just found out from wikipedia that Malaysia's Official school of Islam is Sunni. And as far as I know, Malays from Malaysia dont have anything against Shia. Which makes me wonder, what happened in Iraq in the early years to have caused this divide?