Shia Rights Watch would like to thank The Telegraph news agency for their article on June 2nd, 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.
