By Andrew L. Jaffee

Is the “schism between Sunnis and Shiites,” dating back to the 7th century, worth the blood, massacres, beheadings, executions, homicide bombings, etc. — worth attacking peoples’ religious rituals? Is the hatred worth it, Muslims killing 55,000 to 655,000 other Muslims? Does Islam have a problem with itself? When will Muslims heal their schism and end their war with civilization and modernity? Here’s today’s savagery from Iraq — part of a long litany of barbarous Muslim-on-Muslim acts:

Assailants struck Shiite worshippers in three Iraqi cities Tuesday, killing at least 39 people in bombings and ambushes during the climax of ceremonies marking Ashoura, the holiest day in the Shiite calendar. In apparent retaliation, mortar shells slammed into predominantly Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad hours later, killing at least five people and wounding 20, officials said.

Tens of thousands of Shiites Muslims converged on the holy city of Karbala — where the 7th-century battle took place that cemented the schism between Sunnis and Shiites — beating their chest and heads to mark the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. The entire city was sealed off, all vehicles were banned, and pilgrims were searched at numerous checkpoints, a day after the Iraqi army said it had foiled a plot by a messianic Shiite group to storm the nearby city of Najaf.

The bloodiest attack Tuesday occurred when a suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of worshippers entering a Shiite mosque, killing 19 people and wounding 54 in Mandali, a predominantly Shiite city northeast of Baghdad and near the Iranian border.

To the north, a bomb in a garbage can exploded as scores of Shiites — most them Kurds — were performing rituals in Khanaqin, a majority Kurdish city also near the Iranian border. At least 13 people were killed and 39 were wounded, police Maj. Idriss Mohammed said.