By: Sana Abdallah – Middle East Times

AMMAN — A leading Muslim Arab cleric has raised a political and religious storm across the region by speaking out audaciously on a subject that many Islamic scholars refuse to discuss because of political considerations – the “Shiite invasion” of Muslim societies.

Al-Jazeera’s star preacher, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi (shown here), described Shiites as “heretics” and charged them with spreading their beliefs in Sunni countries in a concealed way by “not reveal[ing] what they believe in.” His harsh words have ignited a firestorm of counter-attacks. (Newscom)

Prominent Egyptian-born scholar, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, told Egypt’s independent Al-Masry al-Youm daily on Sept. 10 there existed Shiite “attempts to invade the Sunni community with their money and cadres trained to do missionary work in the Sunni world.”

Qaradawi’s bold words unleashed days of counter-attacks among religious, political and sectarian leaders over the very foundations that have underlined the Sunni-Shiite politico-religious schism dating back centuries. The seeds of such strife, however, were revived in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein‘s secular regime, leading to sectarian strife.

Qaradawi charged the Shiites with spreading their belief in predominantly Sunni countries, from Indonesia to Algeria, and said “they practice the tradition of takia [concealing their intentions] and do not reveal what they believe in.” And he described them as “mubtadi’oun” (heretics).

The Iranian state media quickly labeled Qaradawi a “spokesman for international Freemasonry and Jewish rabbis.”

Shiite spiritual leader, Lebanon’s Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, responded to Qaradawi in an interview in Kuwait’s Al-Rai newspaper by accusing him of inciting sectarian strife and challenged him to criticize Christian missionary work in Muslim countries.

Shiite activists in Qatar filed a lawsuit to take away his Qatari nationality and deport him from the country, where he is based.

The 82-year-old Qaradawi, often described as moderate but staunchly anti-Israeli and against U.S. policies, is the Doha-based Al-Jazeera channel’s star preacher and appears regularly on a weekly religious talk show.

Though he is chairman of the International Union of Islamic Scholars, the organization says his statements represent only his personal views and the Shiite members of the union reportedly threatened to resign en masse.

On Sept. 26 – the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when Muslims are supposed unite in worship – the verbal confrontations continued between supporters of Qaradawi and his critics from both sects.

Al-Masry al-Youm reported that many religious organizations had condemned the “fierce Shiite attack” against the scholar, who continued to defend his remarks in follow-up interviews with other Arab newspapers.

In an interview with the anti-Iranian Ash-Sharq al-Awsat daily on Thursday, Qaradawi said the Shiites “have managed to infiltrate Egypt, which I know well that 20 years ago did not include a single Shiite.”

The Saudi-owned paper quoted him as saying that silence toward such a trend would ignite a potential clash.

“You will get a Shiite minority demanding minority rights and clashing with the Sunni majority. Here fires are lit and wars happen,” the cleric said.

He also implied an Iranian financial role in what he saw as the spread of Shiism, but was careful in choosing his words: “Money definitely plays a role, but I cannot say that every person who backs Iran has been paid by them and I cannot accuse everyone of this. There are people who were paid and continue to be paid, and there is shuttling between them and Iran. This is known.”

Independent Arab analysts criticized Qaradawi for raising the issue at a time of Muslim divisions, widely seen as having been ignited by the U.S. occupation of Iraq that brought Shiite rule and Iranian influence, which most American-allied Arab regimes dread.

They argue that bringing up such a sensitive issue undermines, in political terms, the role of Shiite groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, in confronting the so-called “American-Zionist colonialist expansion” in the region and the U.S.-led campaign against Iran.

Ironically, Qaradawi is known to be a firm supporter of Hezbollah and resistance against Israel, and has been barred entry into the United States and Britain for his views.

His warning against the “spread of Shiism” must be music to the ears of some Arab leaders who had previously voiced similar fears, but were quickly stifled following fierce reactions.

When Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned, in 2004, against the threat of a “Shiite crescent” spreading from Iran to the Mediterranean, Iraqi Shiites held widespread protests and stormed the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad.

When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, two years later, remarked that Arab Shiites were more loyal to Iran than to their own countries, the post-Saddam Iraqi government boycotted an Arab League meeting and its religious leaders demanded an apology. Lebanon’s Fadlallah also accused Mubarak of inflaming sectarian tension and fueling prejudice against the Shiites.

Some analysts say that coming from such a highly-respected Islamic scholar, Qaradawi’s words may put to rest fears by Western-backed regimes that their Islamic movements would seek to emulate the model of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.

However, ringing an alarm over the spread of Shiism comes as the followers of the sect in the Arab world are seeking to gain political and social rights in their predominantly Sunni countries.

While there are no official estimates on the number of Shiites in this part of the world, unofficial statistics say they represent between 15 and 20 percent of Muslims. The number constitutes a majority or large minorities in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Bahrain, with fewer in other Arab Gulf countries, such as Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

It was not until 1956 that the Shiite sect was formally accepted as a legitimate Islamic group, when Egypt’s al-Azhar – the main center of Islamic scholarship in the world – issued a fatwa (religious edict) that the “Shia is a school of thought that is religiously correct to follow in worship as other Sunni schools of thought.”

Qaradawi, nonetheless, raised a centuries-old ideological dispute by referring to the Shiites as “heretics,” because they believe the study of Islamic scriptures is a continual process necessary for identifying God’s laws and that the door to “ijtihad,” or interpretation of the Koran, and the “hadith” (Prophet’s sayings) was never closed. The Sunnis claim they cannot be interpreted with the same authority as their predecessors.

The Sunni-Shiite split dates back as far as Prophet Mohammed‘s death, following disagreement on who was qualified to lead as the Prophet’s successors. Those who later became Shiites believed only members of Mohammed’s clan, specifically the descendants of his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali, were the legitimate successors. For hundreds of years, wars and invasions spawned from the Sunni-Shiite conflict.

But that is history. The question now is how far historical events may be repeated by Muslims in this modern-day power struggle.