Quotable - Shia and Sunni ants

Resonates so well with the Sunna-Shia divide we see today in the Middle East:

Once under such a bush he saw the war of the ants. He instantly knew the cause of the war and the nature of the parties.

The red ants, whose bite (he had been told) was slightly poisonous, were Sunnis, the party among Muslims that rejected the claim of the descendants of Ali, and they were attacking the black ants, who were obviously Shiah, since black as well as green was the color warn by people like Ali Hashemi's father who claimed descendant from Ali. He remembers admiring the black ants for the justness of their cause and their individual heroism; but as the battle continued, he began to admire the orderliness and steadiness of the slower-moving red ants. As far as he could tell, neither side won.

The Mantle of the Prophet by Roy Mottahedeh, 1985