Sayyed Fadlullah: There is a dire need to present a comprehensive and unified Islamic view towards current challenges.

Asked in his weekly seminar the following question: How do you view the persistence of the differences among Muslims, or the media classifications that divided Muslim, between a faction that has become a part of the Arrogant project and one that is out? 

The Religious Authority Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah said:

No observer or researcher can deny that the differences between the Sunnis and the Shiites on the issues of the caliphate or on certain theological issues have been over consumed in that everybody has, over and over again, presented his view point and his arguments.

Moreover, these differences had had a negative effect causing confusion and additional fragmentation to the extent that political sensitivities had added, through the history of this dispute, to each party certain beliefs and opinions it does not adhere to.

Yet, in this critical stage, the nation has to focus on the political challenges it faces. It has to address issues such as foreign occupation, demands of international arrogance, violence as a means of solving problems recognizing or canceling the other… and the image of Islam as concerning issues of human rights and other vital political and economic issues that we present to the world.

Both Sunnis and Shiites face critical and imminent challenges they have to reach unified positions on how to deal with them. In addition to occupation, issues raised like reform, war on terrorism, the arrogant project of the greater Middle East, should be addressed and a common Islamic stand should be reached, since these plots target both Sunnis and Shiites.

Therefore, we believe, that regardless of what happened in the past and regardless of what Muslims debated in the previous centuries, they have to study these issues to reach a unified and comprehensive Islamic view that condemns the massacres that are sometimes committed in the name of Islam, rejects violence as the only means of change, and opposes anti-human terrorism… They have to renounce any equating between lawful struggle for liberation and cold-blooded terrorist acts…

Efforts should then focus on supporting liberation movements with the Palestinian Intifada in their vanguard, as well as presenting the counter Islamic project and not any sectarian one.

The political and military battle in Iraq presents a daily challenge to Sunni and Shiite clerics, especially that the plot to disperse Muslims and divide them into sects and even geographical locations is being vigorously carried out. They are suggesting, for example, that the divide necessities that political alternatives should be sought from outside the context of Iraqi national unity which we know it to be deep rooted, despite whatever the occupier might claim.

We, Sunnis and Shiites, in Iraq should meet on the basis of national and Islamic unity and confronting the occupation, to present the nation with a model that shows it how to face the arrogant campaign on the one hand and the fanatic sectarians who wish to devastate the Islamic unity on the other.

All our contemporary experiments have proven that those who support foreign occupation might be from both sects, while those who confront it, as in Lebanon and Palestine are also from both sects. In Iraq too, those who confronted occupation in the past and those who are confronting it now are both Shiites and Sunnis.

Any attempt to fragment and disperse the Islamic efforts will yield the most negative consequences.

Therefore, we deem unlawful any attempt to incite strife among Muslims, as it only serves the occupier whether they are aware of it or not.