In Shia Islam Fatimah is venerated with an intensity second to none among women, and among the very greatest of all figures after the Prophet himself. She is one of the Ahl al-Bayt, the People of the House, gathered with Muhammad, Ali, Hasan and Husayn under the cloak in the tradition of the hadith al-kisa and understood as purified in the verse of purification. Her suffering, her closeness to her father, and her early death give her, in Shia devotion, a place of sorrow and honour that anticipates the martyrdom of her son Husayn at Karbala.
Parts of the Shia tradition transmit accounts of a violent assault on her home in the days after the Prophet's death, in the course of pressing Ali to acknowledge Abu Bakr, and connect her early death to injuries then received. These accounts are cherished in Shia memory and rejected in Sunni tradition, which does not accept them; they are among the most sensitive and contested points between the communities, and are best understood as a matter of confessional belief rather than of agreed history.
Across that divide, the reverence itself is shared. Sunni and Shia alike honour her as al-Zahra, and her name is among the most beloved given to Muslim daughters, carrying the memory of the Prophet's own child.