Shia and Sunni diverge on whether history went right or wrong after the Prophet

Evidence

In principle, the Shi ite philosophy is the exact opposite. After the death of the Prophet, and still more after the murder of Ali thirty years later, history in the Shi ite view took a wrong turn, and the Muslim community has, so to speak, been living in sin ever since. For the Sunni, obedience to authority is a divine commandment. For the Shi ite, obedience to the existing authority is a political necessity, to be given only as long as it cannot be avoided. The Shi ite doctrine of taqiya, dissimulation, even permits, under duress, some measure of conformity in doctrine and practice against Shi ite principles, but only if this is necessary in order to survive. For the Shi ite, therefore, obedience is owed as long as it can be exacted, and no longer. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1430

Categorization

• XREF: This Sunni consensus-versus-Shia permanent-opposition schema parallels Said’s account of how Western scholarship opposed Sunni-led Islamic orthodoxy to marginalized heterodoxies. — connects to: Sectarian theology differently shaped Sunni and Shi’a historical narratives; Shi’a historiography held that history went wrong after Ali’s murder
• DEFINE: Precisely defines taqiya within a larger Sunni-Shia contrast; the note I’d keep is the distinction between Sunni obedience as commandment and Shia obedience as revocable necessity.