Quiz: Sunni or Shia?

Can you pick which public figures are Sunni or Shia? This quiz should be extremely easy — if you follow the news.

Shiite or Sunni? Quiz

(Christian Science Monitor)

Guinea Bissau: Matriarchal Island Traditions Put Women in Charge

Traditionally, the people of Orango, an island off the coast of Guinea Bissau, believed that having women take the lead in proffering the marriage proposal was led to long lasting marriages. Now that more men are pursuing women, the divorce rate has risen. Presumably, the men don’t choose their partners as well as women.

Women Choose Spouses on African Island

Rukmini Callimachi (Associated Press via AOL)

He was 14 when the girl entered his grass-covered hut and placed a plate in front of him containing an ancient recipe.

…In this archipelago of 50 islands of pale blue water off the western rim of Africa [off the coast of Guinea Bissau], it’s women, not men, who choose [their marriage partners]. They make their proposals public by offering their grooms-to-be a dish of distinctively prepared fish, marinated in red palm oil. It’s the equivalent of a man bending on one knee and offering a woman a diamond ring, except that in one of the world’s matriarchal cultures, it’s women that do the asking, and once they have, men are powerless to say no…

…But the treacherous tides and narrow channels that have long kept outsiders out of these remote islands are no longer holding back the modern world. Young men are increasingly leaving Orango, located 38 miles (60 kilometers) off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, a country in West Africa. They find jobs carrying luggage for tourist hotels …[or] collecting oil from the island’s abundant palm trees and sell[ing] it on the African mainland.

They return bringing with them a new form of courtship, one which their elders find deeply unsettling…

“Now the world is upside down,” complained 90-year-old Cesar Okrane, his eyes obscured by a cloud of cataracts. “Men are running after women, instead of waiting for them to come to them…“