Top Wahabbi cleric supports al-Qaradawi’s call for “Jihad” in Syria. It is important that the reader understands that the term jihad refers to a religious obligation to kill. Arabic Elaph.com news agency reports that Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Mohammed Al-Sheikh, the top cleric of Saudi Arabia and head of management of scientific research and advisory praised al-Qaradawi’s recent lecture that called for jihad in Syria. He said that al-Qaradawi’s heroic position reminds him of “the great clerics through the history”.

The question is: since when is demanding killing and violence considered a heroic action?

Al-Qaradawi and all who praise him for his inhumane actions are clearly human rights violators. It does not matter who they fight or what is their rationale is, killing civilians in the name of religious obligation is wrong. SRW believes there are no known religions that call for violence. Al-Qaradawi and Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Mohammed Al-Sheikh have no right to use their influence to command people to kill or even hate each other.

With the understanding that clerics in Islamic countries are employed by the government, the hateful message that these two clerics are spreading is supported by the Saudi and Qatari governments.

SRW urges the two mentioned governments to address this human rights violation immediately and demand that the two clerics publically withdraw from their sectarian positions .

Power and influence should not be used as tools to create or inflame conflicts. They should be used to resolve problems and spread peace among all humans of the world.

By: Hawraa, Human rights activist and specialist

As human rights violations and war crimes increase in Syria by governments’ forces, foreigner and rebels it is critical to take wise decisions in regard of arming any group. Any assistance that would potentially add to the violations must be studied first.

Not long ago The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria reported usage of chemical weapons, which is banned under international war law, most likely by opposition groups in Syria.

Now our policy makers are considering arming the rebels to speed up the “freedom process” in this country.

Here are some questions that politicians might want to answer:

• So… are we arming them so they do not use banned weapons?
• Can we even trust a group who has violated international law already?
• How can we make sure we are arming the “right” group, since there are number of opposition groups fighting in Syria? How do we know we are not arming the extremists who are targeting minority groups?

Yes, we all now we have very good intelligence agencies that tell us who is “right” and who is “wrong”, but how come our intelligent “intelligence agencies” did not inform McCain that the person he is taking picture with is responsible for kidnapping Shia pilgrims a year ago?

     Seems like knowing “right” from “wrong” is not that easy in case of Syria.

SRW believes no weapon that endangers lives of civilians should be sent to a trouble country such as Syria. Not only that, but also ALL foreigners should exit the country and foreigner’s’ financial aids to all groups in Syria must be stopped except humanitarian aids that can be used for ease the pain of the civilians.

Syria has become a very difficult situation for all parties and groups. Now that we are in such a mess sending more weapons might not be the best solution, after all weapons are used to kill not to bring peace!

By: Hawraa , Human rights activist and specialist.    June 11^th, 2013

Shia Rights Watch would like to thank The Telegraph news agency for their article on June 2^nd, 2013 covering the Shia rights violation by the Muslim Brotherhood’s cleric. As the article explains, Yusef al-Qaradawi, one of the well-known Egyptian clerics based in Qatar, called for “Jihad” in Syria in his Friday lecture. He also degraded Shia Muslims by calling them infidels and said “there is no common ground between the two sides,” referring to Shia and Sunni Muslims. He justified his accusation by saying: “the Iranians, especially conservatives, want to eat the Sunni people.”

There are number of problems with this act of al-Qaradawi. SRW believes:

• Clearly al-Qaradawi is adding to the unrest in the area by turning the unrest into a sectarian conflict,
• Beside Syria, al-Qaradawi is spreading hatred among all sects of Islam in many different countries,
• Al-Qaradawi is associating Shia Muslims with Iran. Shia Muslims hold a variety of nationalities and they have no political bonds with Iran.
• If al-Qaradawi has opposition to Iran and Hezbollah he should use their names, not their faith, when addressing them. Shia faith is shared between millions of Muslims who are not Iranians or members of Hezbollah.

No opposition group should promote the killing of Shia Muslims and any other minority in Syria because they THINK, or ASSUME all Shia are dependent on Iran’s government and its political policies.

Because of al-Qaradawi and others like him, many civilian Shia have been killed in Syria during past two years. Shia Muslims in Egypt are under attack, Bahrain’s Shia cannot enjoy their basic human rights, and more than 500 Shia were killed in Iraq in May alone, and in Pakistan Shia Muslims are murdered in targeted killings every day.

SRW believes al-Qaradawi and others who share his ideology must look for wise solutions instead of inflaming the conflict by calling for “jihad” and more attacks on civilians. No true leader would call for more killings as revenge and no good leader associates a faith to a political party.

SRW believes al-Qaradawi and his colleagues are responsible for many of the war crimes that are taking place in Syria and ask international human rights committees to take legal actions to stop him from increasing crimes in Middle East.

Note: SRW wrote a thank you letter to The Telegraph and thanked the news agency for its coverage of Shia rights violations.

This is a response to an article published on TheNational.ae called “The rise of Shia jihadism in Syria will fuel sectarian fires” by Hassan Hassan on June 4^th, 2013.

The article represents Hizbollah as a Shia militant group, however readers and writers of the agency should be aware that Hezbollah is not representative of the Shia Muslim faith. It is a political interest group and their entrance into Syria does not mean Shia jihad.

Shia Rights Watch, the Washington DC based human rights organization, believes Shia Muslims have to protect their historical and holy sites just as any other population would when under attack. Syria has many historical sites that represent Shia Muslim history and many of them have been under attack since the Syrian uprising. Most Shia protecting the sites are local and have no political affiliation. Associating Shia Muslims with Iran is one of the biggest mistakes that politicians and media outlets do. Almost 20% of all Muslims around the world are Shia Muslims and they have always been peaceful.

We urge the media outlets and journalist to distinguish Shia Muslim from the Iranian government and to protect their human rights, which are under targeted attack in many countries of the world.

SRW asks all sides not to violate Shia rights based on the faulty assumption that Shia Muslims are dependent on Iranian political interests.

By the way, this article was published on June 4, 2013 and on the web is it dated as JUN 5, 2013!!!

By: Hawraa, A Shia Rights Activist and Specialist