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Shiite accuses egypt president of fueling sectarian tensions { April 12 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Mideast_Shiite_Anger.htmlhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Mideast_Shiite_Anger.html
Wednesday, April 12, 2006 · Last updated 3:38 p.m. PT
Top Shiite cleric raps Mubarak for remarks
By HAMZA HENDAWI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- One of Shiite Islam's top clerics accused Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday of fueling sectarian tensions in the Middle East by saying Arab Shiites in Iraq and elsewhere are more loyal to Iran than to their home countries.
Lebanon's Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, in an interview with The Associated Press, said "some in the Muslim world" fear Shiite empowerment in any country.
Fadlallah was one of the highest-level Shiite figures in the region to speak out so far against Mubarak. The president's comments over the weekend angered Shiites and raised fears of a Sunni-Shiite rift across the Middle East at a time of increased sectarian violence in Iraq.
Fadlallah is the highest-ranking Shiite cleric in Lebanon and was believed to be the spiritual leader of the Hezbollah guerrilla group in the 1980s. He has followers in Iraq, the Gulf region and among Shiite communities in Pakistan and India. He is closely linked to Iraq's top Shiite politicians and top clerics.
On Wednesday, Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iraq - possibly the world's most influential Shiite cleric - also sent a letter to Mubarak through the Egyptian embassy in Beirut regarding his statements about the Shiites, according to Hamed al-Khafaf, al-Sistani's representative in Lebanon.
Al-Khafaf declined to provide details about the letter's contents.
Mubarak's made his remarks in an interview aired Saturday on the Al-Arabiya news channel.
"Definitely Iran has influence for Shiites," Mubarak told the Dubai-based station. "Shiites are 65 percent of the Iraqis. ... Most of the Shiites are loyal to Iran, and not to the countries they are living in."
He also said Iraq was on the brink of civil war.
Fadlallah said such talk only fuels prejudice against Shiites.
"We believe that obscuring the stance of Shiites ... can create a rift between Shiites and Sunnis," Fadlallah, 70, told the AP at his office in the southern Beirut Haret Horeik neighborhood.
"The loyalty of Shiites to their countries is not less than that of others. Such talk has no basis in reality. What is meant by it is to create a climate of agitation that amounts to telling the Sunnis 'Beware of the Shiite threat!'
"I think there are some in the Muslim world who are uncomfortable with the empowerment of the Shiites in any nation, and that's because of sectarian extremism or political anxieties," said Fadlallah, whose moderate views have, over the years, earned him the animosity of militant clerics in Iran as well as Iraq.
The empowerment of Iraq's majority Shiites after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime was the catalyst for reviving the centuries-old, but latent, Sunni-Shiite divide. It has alarmed Arab nations with sizable Shiite communities across the Gulf from Iran.
Beside Iraq, the only other Arab nation with a Shiite majority is Bahrain, a Gulf island kingdom ruled by a Sunni family. Arab nations with significant Shiite minorities include Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Syria.
A Sunni-Shiite rift would be potentially ruinous in a region already saddled by the Iraq conflict, the enduring Arab-Israeli conflict and an array of other chronic problems.
King Abdullah of Jordan spoke in the same vein in a newspaper interview published 16 months ago when he accused Shiite, but non-Arab, Iran of seeking to create a "Shiite crescent" in the Middle East that would include Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
In response to Mubarak's interview, Baghdad's Shiite-dominated government boycotted a Wednesday meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo to discuss Iraq and called on Mubarak to "reconsider" his position.
Muqtada al-Sadr, an influential Iraqi Shiite leader, blasted Mubarak's remarks Wednesday, saying in a statement that they "serve only the enemy, and try to ignite civil and sectarian war."
Mubarak's comments could not have come at a worse time.
Iraq, wracked by a Sunni-dominated insurgency since shortly after Saddam's ouster three years ago, has seen a dramatic surge of sectarian violence since a key Shiite shrine was bombed in February by suspected Sunni militants. The violence, together with the failure to form a unity government four months after elections were held, threaten to plunge the country into a Sunni-Shiite civil war.
Mubarak's charges also are likely to feed suspicions in Lebanon that Shiite leaders are too close to Iran. Tensions among the country's various groups already are heightened since last year's assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a Sunni.
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