Islam
Try to be nice about each other
Sep 25th 2008 | CAIRO
From The Economist print edition
A Sunni preacher upsets the Shias
BECAUSE there is no recognised supreme religious authority in Sunni Islam—no one such as the pope among Catholics, for instance—Sunni clerics often suffer the indignity of being challenged, or even ridiculed, by their flocks. Outraged lawyers in Morocco, for example, recently filed a lawsuit against one sheikh after he declared it legal for girls as young as nine to marry. And Muslims the world over poured scorn on Sheikh Muhammad Munjad, a puritanical Palestinian preacher, when he suggested earlier this month, on a Saudi television show, that since mice are abhorrent to God, Mickey Mouse deserved to die.
Yet it comes as a surprise that Yusuf Qaradawi, the star preacher on the popular al-Jazeera satellite channel, who is a widely respected moderate on most issues, should find himself at the heart of a far bigger storm. The 81-year-old cleric, Egyptian by birth but long based in the Gulf state of Qatar, strayed onto tendentious ground by telling an interviewer he considered Shia Islam a heretical branch of the faith, and warning of a Shia attempt to “invade” Sunni societies by stealth and gain converts.
As might be expected, the response from Shias has been furious. Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon’s most popular ayatollah, demanded that Mr Qaradawi produce figures to back up his claim of a Shia missionary drive and that he explain what danger it would be to Islam if one Sunni decided to adopt Shiism. Shia activists in Saudi Arabia have threatened a lawsuit, charging Mr Qaradawi with fomenting sectarian schism and requesting that he be forcibly retired on grounds of senility. A news agency in Shia-majority Iran posted a story that blasted the sheikh as a front for “international Freemasonry and Jewish rabbis”.
Some leading Sunnis have also been discomfited. Fahmy Huwaidi, a widely syndicated columnist who champions Islamist causes, said that while he could not dispute Mr Qaradawi’s authority in jurisprudence, his timing was politically disastrous, since maintaining Muslim unity was paramount at this stage. “He should be the first to know that there are forces at present who seek to ready public opinion for a military strike against Iran, and for stripping Hizbullah of its arms,” Mr Huwaidi chided.
Mr Qaradawi has responded to his critics by stressing his support for Iran’s right to nuclear energy and his long history of backing Muslim unity and Muslim causes around the world. Unlike Sunni extremists who deny that Shias are Muslim at all, he accepts their membership in the faith, he said. But as a Sunni scholar he could not overlook doctrinal differences. Unfortunately for the state of Muslim unity, it appears that most Sunnis tend to agree.
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