Editor calls battle “a ball of sectarian and political fire”

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is no stranger to public scrutiny. The Sunni Muslim preacher is the star of his own highly popular show on al-Jazeera TV, which is watched by millions for his advice on sharia law. But he may have miscalculated when he warned recently that “heretical” Shi’a Muslims were “invading” Sunni countries.

The row raging in Arabic newspapers and on websites shows that Qaradawi touched a very raw nerve, triggering angry responses from senior Shi’a clergy in Iran and Lebanon — and warnings that this divisive controversy will only benefit the enemies of the Muslim “ummah” or nation.

Intriguingly, at the same time, anonymous computer hackers calling themselves “group XP” — apparently Sunnis based in the United Arab Emirates — have been defacing and blocking the website of Iraq’s grand ayatollah, Ali Sistani of Najaf, the Shi’a world’s leading religious authority, as well as many other Shi’a sites. One Iranian website even linked this action to Qaradawi’s “smears,” describing him as “an extremist of Egyptian origin.” Shi’a lawyers have filed a lawsuit against him and demanded his expulsion from Qatar, where he now lives.

Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah

Tensions between Sunnis — who make up 85% of all Muslims — and Shi’as date back to the early days of Islam. The two communities have long diverged over prayer, practice and some key aspects of belief. In recent years, and especially since Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran in 1979, their differences have taken on a highly political edge, pitting Persians against Arabs and the Western-backed, conservative Sunni regimes against anti-American and Shi’a Iran. Sectarian killings in post-Saddam, Shi’a-dominated Iraq and Iran’s backing for the Lebanese Shi’a movement Hizbullah have both been sources of bitter discord. Arab Gulf states worry about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, regional influence and “sleeper cells.”  The Shi’a minority in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province suffers discrimination, as does the Shi’a majority in Sunni-ruled Bahrain.

King Abdullah of Jordan caught the anxious mood and made waves in 2004 when he complained of the emergence of a “Shi’a crescent” stretching from Beirut to Tehran and cutting through the Sunni-dominated Middle East. The Palestinian Islamists of Hamas are supported by Iran and its only Arab ally, Syria. Their rivals in the Palestinian Authority are backed by the Sunnis, the West and Israel.

That is the background to what one commentator has called “a byzantine debate between the public and men of religion.”

The sharpest response to Qaradawi came from Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon’s leading religious scholar, who openly accused the Egyptian-born cleric of inciting “fitna” — sedition or internal strife — as bad as it gets in this kind of discourse. Iran’s Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Tashkiri pitched in with a similar counter-blast.

The row began earlier this month when Qaradawi gave an outspoken interview to an Egyptian newspaper. “Shi’a are Muslims but they are heretics and their danger comes from their attempt to invade Sunni society,” he told al-Masri al-Yom. “They are able to do that because of their billions [of dollars] and trained cadres of Shi’a proselytising in Sunni countries.”

There was some surprise since he had previously spoken of the need to bridge differences between the two communities. Still, observers suggested that Qaradawi did have a point about an increase in conversions to Shi’ism in his native land — though absolute numbers are small. And Qaradawi, who prizes his independence (and as such declined to lead Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood), is free to speak out in a way that is not possible for Cairo’s al-Azhar university, the fount of contemporary Sunni thinking, and the state religious establishment.

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi

Qaradawi himself has sounded baffled by the row, insisting that there is nothing new or unusual about his objection to Shi’a practices — such as the way they mark the anniversary of the martyrdom of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the infallibility of the imams. “All the Sunni scholars condemn such heresies,” he retorted. “I have always been against extremists everywhere. In all my sermons, books and studies I was always calling on Muslims to seek a moderate line and be united irrespective of the school of thought they embrace. As long as a Muslim bears witness that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah, then he is a Muslim.”

But there has been criticism from the Sunni heartlands too. Tariq al-Homayed, the editor of the Saudi-owned al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, warned that Qaradawi and the Iranians were playing with “a ball of sectarian and political fire.”  This, he also pointed out, was the cleric — controversially embraced by Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London — who had sanctioned the continuation of suicide bombings by (Sunni) Palestinians fighting Israel. “We told him back then, who can guarantee that we won’t see terrorist attacks of that kind on our soil, too? And indeed, that is what happened.”

Another commentator, Abdul Rahman al-Rashed of al-Arabiyya television, was even more blunt in defining what this furious spat is really all about. “Despite what is said and done, the conflict is basically political not religious,” he wrote. “In reality, there is no Shi’a-Sunni problem; there are only differences between governments.”

 

From the Guardian.