Sayyed Fadlullah: We warn from all those who are trying to incite sectarian strife between Shiites and Sunnis, and call on the religious scholars to play their role in upholding Muslim unity and protecting Islam. It is Islam and not the Shiites or the Sunnis that they are after.

Asked in his weekly seminar the following question: The state of the Islamic world nowadays is quite shocking and disappointing: people are being killed, the occupation is taking hold, the resources are being blundered and fanaticism is growing to unprecedented levels. How do you view the state of the nation? And what can we do to confront it?

The Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah, said:

A quick review to what is happening in the Islamic World is enough to give us an idea about the big threats and dangers we are facing. The security of the Islamic World is being undermined, its wealth is being usurped and its political decisions are being dictated. Moreover, the entire Islamic World is sinking in a sea of blood which is being spilled for political or security and even Islamic pretenses. This means that there are two parties that are waging war on this world: a foreign one that wants to dominate over this world and that has the most advanced nuclear and traditional weapons and an internal one that might justify the first even while confronting it with unethical and unjustifiable means.

The American war in Afghanistan, the subsequent occupation of Iraq, the siege and sustained pressures against several Islamic countries, the pressures on certain regimes to enter in behalf of the US in internal wars under the name of fighting terrorism, all this has made the Islamic world an open front for the bloody terrorist alternatives America is leading in the name of fighting terrorism. It has also made it an open front for the violent practices of the radical and fanatic groups which have broadened the scope of their action and extended it to kill hundreds of innocent people; thus, helping the arrogant in providing an image of the Islamic world of being a place that lacks security and a place where abducting innocent people or employees of certain foreign companies are taken as hostages, foreign workers or citizens are killed just for sectarian differences, all such practices serve foreign occupation and distort the image of Islam and Muslims in the world.

On the other hand, we believe that Israel too is behind several of these practices whether directly or indirectly, since it stands to benefit from the state of chaos and hindering any development in the Arab and Muslim world, whether in the political or economic levels, or even the scientific one. Trying to prevent the Islamic countries from developing nuclear energy even for peaceful purposes is a case in point.

Despite all this, we believe that inciting sectarian strife in the context of confronting occupation is the most dangerous.

It might lead to catastrophic results, and it provides the international intelligence agencies with a chance to penetrate especially that we have been witnessing a kind of blind fanaticism that presents itself in a very backward way. In Iraq, for example, the mentality of accusing others of unbelief and the crimes of killing members of others sects is becoming a very dangerous phenomenon.

All Muslims should be aware that the various arrogant intelligence agencies benefit of such mentalities and practices to find a way out of the impasse they find themselves in, by inciting civil strife and blind fanaticism which is readily acceptable by the backward parties, and by certain religious personalities who have resorted to accusing others of disbelief and betrayal and whose sectarian and fanatic ideology has produced fanatic and backward individuals who justify the killing of the foreigners who live in the country as well as other Muslims under false pretenses.

Such an atmosphere demands that all Muslims should hold their responsibility in trying to find the political and religious means to secure our Muslim unity in the face of external and internal threats, especially that we have to promote and strengthen this unity to confront what the Zionists backed by America, are doing in Palestine as well as our other big causes.

We warn from all those who are trying to incite sectarian strife between Shiites and Sunnis, and call on the religious scholars to play their role in upholding Muslim unity and protecting Islam. It is Islam and not the Shiites or the Sunnis that they are after.