Sayyed Fadlullah: We are beginning to see the workings of an international plot that aims at benefiting from all political, racial and confessional differences that might be present in our world and magnifying them to the extent that the sufferings of Palestinians and Iraqis from the American and Zionist occupations seem insignificant.

Asked in his weekly seminar about the civil strife that has begun to emerge in the Arab and Islamic World, especially in Iraq…

The Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah, said:

How does such a strife come to exist in our communities?

If we study the issue on the Islamic level, especially between the Sunnis and the Shiites, we will find that the parties that try to incite sectarian strife go back to the negative aspects of history.

Instead of trying to study our history to learn the lessons that strengthen the Islamic world in the face of this continuous attack on our countries and values, they use it to incite strife and hatred among us.

Thus, it is of the utmost importance to confront the repercussions that the latest incidents left as a result to how the media covered them and the way the international intelligence agencies manipulated them. We emphasize the need to go back to the Islamic religious rule to solve such differences: To refer the problem to Allah and His Messenger. This is the way we can confront such attempts made by fanatics on both sides to incite sectarian strife that serves the interests of international intelligence agencies and the arrogant powers behind them.

The attempts to create strife have reached a dangerous level with certain fatwas accusing others of unbelief and consequently deeming killing them as lawful. Such fatwas are not based on any religious principles. They are rather subjective and demagogic. And, as such, they lead to tragic consequences.

Then, there is also the attempt to stir strife between Muslims and Christians as a result of certain political situations that might be given a religious connotation, although they have nothing to do with both Islam and Christianity.

The clashes that happened in Egypt or even in Lebanon, as well as those in Iraq, were of a social and political background that Islam and Christianity did not have anything to do with. We have noticed that the explosions that targeted the churches in Iraq have been preceded by explosions that targeted Muslim shrines. This means that they have nothing to do with Islam but with inciting civil strife in Iraq leading to the talk about dislocating Christians.

Nevertheless, they all know that all Muslims, Shiites and Sunnis, are opposed to this logic and do not accept any persecution of the Christians. If there were any problems the Christians lived in the Islamic World, they are similar to those lived by the Muslims themselves. There is no intention whatever to dislocate the Christians of persecute them. But we are plagued both by backwardness and the plots by the international intelligence agencies that exploit this backwardness to promote their own interests.

In this respect, although we do not want to run away from our internal problems by blaming foreign plots, yet we believe that the arrogant forces benefit from any negative factor in our internal situation, and try to make use of it, especially with the vacuum created by the absence of an active movement that is able to conduct a rational and objective dialogue over these negative elements, especially those that consist timed bombs that can explode in critical situations and blow up the big causes, in the interest of smaller sensitivities.

We are beginning to see the workings of an international plot that aims at benefiting from all political, racial and confessional differences that might be present in our world and magnifying them to the extent that the sufferings of Palestinians and Iraqis from the American and Zionist occupations seem insignificant. That is why we call on all conscious religious scholars, as well as all thinkers and intellectuals, both Shiites and Sunnis, to confront this plot by exposing all those who hide behind such claims. We believe that all interested in providing a political or religious knowledge to the people should present a rational ideology and an objective practice, so as to prevent strife from exploiting any naivety or emotional reactions.