Sayyed Fadlullah:Although the US haunts the Arabs and Muslims, we ask all Muslims in America to abide by the law and respect the American general order and security.

Asked in his weekly seminar the following question: How do you view the role of the American intelligence, and spying in general?

The Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah, said:

Spying is searching for what is hidden and it is usually associated with evil.

The Messenger (p.) said: “O’ you have become Muslims with your tongues but not in your hearts, do not try to pursue the faults of Muslims, for Allah will follow your own faults, and expose them”.

In the field of human relations, Islam calls for the respect of the privacy of people's personal life. It did not authorize probing into other people’s secrets, whether personal, economic or otherwise.

Probing into private life is religiously prohibited and a human being has the right to prevent others from spying on it.

This sin acquires greater implications when spying serves the parties that plot against the nation’s independence, economy, security…etc, and which might incite civil, ethic or sectarian strife, leading to devastating results both on the nation and the individuals.

But this general political social principle does not include the cases that harm the interests of the nation and which might require the learning about certain secrets of individuals or countries, which could prevent a greater harm. In these cases, the competition between the important and the more important is in favor of learning these secrets since the interests of the nation supercede the interest of the individuals.

The Prophet (p) used to send people to spy on the enemy's camp to avoid falling into their traps or to perform certain acts of espionage ... and the like.

Thus, we warn against any involvement with the CIA, being a major crime committed by those who disclose the nation's secrets to the benefit of the arrogant powers that plot to strengthen their hegemony on our region and on the entire world in general.

In this respect, our experiences, as an Arab and Islamic nation, with the CIA are quite tough and harsh, whether with those it recruited before they became senior officials in their country to act as the stick they hit with or with the great services it provided to Israel as it made the American project in the region a means of support to the Israeli one in its expansions occupation and hegemony.

What the CIA has done, and still, is manipulating the facts and inflating certain persons and countries while downsizing others and toppling certain regimes, while reviving others so as to facilitate the success of its own projects.

Thus, the American embassies in the world, along with others embassies of course, has turned into spy stations instead of being centers of political and cultural communication, with the American embassy in Iraq acting as the largest strategic center to monitor the region and plot against its states especially Iran and Syria.

Faced by this overt increase in the number of CIA agents in the world in general and in our region in particular we wonder:

Was not it more feasible to try to appease the nations and establish friendly relations with them by means of giving them their rights, instead of spying on them and changing the laws inside America and turning the US into one of the Third World countries in its haunting of its own citizen, especially Arabs and Muslims.

Nevertheless, we ask all Arab and Muslim communities in the West to respect the security and the laws of the countries they live in, and try to befriend the nations they live among. They should present an image of communication and dialogue to counter the image of spying that is presented by their hosts. Yet, this does not mean that we ought to forgo our causes and stop defending them by means of all lawful means.