BEIRUT/CAIRO: Sunni Muslim preachers condemned Iran and its “Satanic” Shia allies in Friday sermons after a battle in Syria that has inflamed sectarian rhetoric which risks spreading violence around the Middle East.
In Tehran, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for restraint and unity, blaming Western powers and Israel for fomenting the sectarian strife.
But across the Gulf in Saudi Arabia, a senior cleric aligned with the US-allied government spoke of a Shia “plot against Islam” that was made newly apparent in the assault by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters on Sunni rebels in Qusayr.
The two-year-old uprising against Iranian-backed Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has taken an ever more poisonously sectarian tone as the number of dead and displaced has soared, increasing risks of inflaming the broader Sunni-Shia confrontation.
In Egypt, a leading cleric and Brotherhood member led televised prayers in which he described Hezbollah - ‘the party of God’ in Arabic - as “the party of Satan”. “God, break the backs of Bashar and his supporters,” Salah Sultan, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, said at a Cairo mosque. “God, break the back of Hezbollah, the party of Satan, God, break the back of Iran.”
In the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, a hardline cleric, Sheikh Bilal Baroudi, told worshippers: “Hezbollah is responsible for the consequences of this jihad invasion against Sunnis in Qusair. The response that is coming will be harsh.”
In Beirut, prominent Sunni preacher Da’i Al Islam Al Shahhal urged followers to resist Iranian attempts to control Iraq, Lebanon and Syria as a step to conquering the Gulf states: “I call on all those zealous and concerned to help us,” he said. “Stand with us financially and morally to foil the plan.”
Ayatollah Khamenei appealed for pan-Muslim unity against “hegemonic powers” - the “corrupt capitalist” West and Israel: “The enemy’s main scheme is to create rifts and conflict among Muslims,” he was quoted as saying. “So, unity, solidarity and cooperation are the most pressing needs of the Muslim world.”
Senior Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh Al Fawzan, in comments in Al Madina newspaper, underlined Sunni suspicion of such calls: Shias, he said, “pretend to be Muslims and try to get closer to the Sunnis ... in order for them to be able to plot against Islam ... These days their hostility has become more apparent in their war against the Sunnis in Syria.”
Appeals to a united front, notably against Israel, which once won Hezbollah widespread respect among Sunni Arabs, now fall on deaf ears following the Shia movement’s overt drive to save Assad and provide a bulwark for Iranian influence.
Hardliners on each side accuse the other of furthering the goals of common adversaries in the West or in Israel. In the Gaza Strip, whose Palestinian Hamas rulers were once allies of Assad and Hezbollah, hardline cleric Imad Al Daya told worshippers that Qusayr had exposed the “fraud” of Hezbollah’s rhetoric about leading “resistance” to Israel. “Wake up,” he told worshippers. “This is a war of religion.”
The level of sectarian rhetoric seen from leaders of various kinds in the two weeks since Hezbollah’s Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah pledged to fight for Assad until a final victory may pressure regional governments to be seen to take their own hard lines.
The rift among world powers along Cold War lines, between the West and Moscow, has thwarted efforts for a UN peace deal within Syria or any united front to hold back regional powers which are arming and training the warring parties.
Israel has already stepped in to the conflict, bombing Syria and now facing trouble on the Golan Heights. Some in the West also now want their governments to intervene to prop up a rebel cause that has suffered a serious setback at Qusayr.
Many Sunni clerics have spoken in support of a call to holy war in Syria issued last week by prominent preacher Sheikh Yousuf Al Qaradawi. He said Sunnis should go to fight in Syria. His comments were endorsed by the Saudi kingdom’s senior cleric. Many mainstream mosques in Egypt avoided outspoken comment on Syria. In the Red Sea city of Hurghada, radical preacher Mohamad Daraz, whose Salafist movement sees the Brotherhood as too liberal, said: “God, annihilate the Shias and those who cooperate with them.”
Reuters
