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Iran says appeals for 'jihad' in Syria fuel radicalism
[REUTERS] Calls by Sunni Mohammedan holy mans for a holy war against the Syrian government and its Shi'ite allies are fuelling radicalism in the region, a senior Iranian official said on Wednesday.Earlier this month, prominent holy man Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi ...crackpot Egyptian Islamist theologian. He is best known for his program Shariah and Lifeon Al Jazeera, with an estimated audience of 60 million kindred souls worldwide. He is also well-known for IslamOnline, which occasionally advocates things like slavery and thumping the old lady with a rod no thicker than an inch, and has published more than 120 books, including Islam: The Future Civilization.Joe has long had a prominent role within the intellectual leadership of the Moslem Brüderbund. Some of his views have been controversial in the West, though less so among the rubes of the Mysterious East, and he was refused entry to the United Kingdom in 2008. In 2004, 2,500 Muslim academics from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and from the Palestinian territories condemned Qaradawi, and accused him of giving Islam a bad name.... called for jihad in Syria after fighters from Shi'ite Lebanese group Hezbollah intervened to help  Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now... , in a move which stoked sectarian tensions. Shi'ite Iran, a close ally of Assad and backer of Hezbollah, has accused Arab and Western states of fomenting terrorism in Syria by arming rebels caught up in the two-year-old revolt. "There were steps and fatwas from holy mans like Mr Qaradawi, these fatwas escalate and encourage apostasy and radicalism in the region," Hossein Amir Abdollahian, Iranian Deputy Minister for Arab and Foreign Affairs, told news hounds in Kuwait. The Syrian conflict is widening a divide in the Middle East between the two main denominations of Islam. Kuwait, which lies across the Gulf from Iran, has voiced concern that the Syrian crisis is heightening sectarian tension and becoming a battlefield for regional powers. Abdollahian said bully boyz in Syria have been attacking all sects and creating rifts between communities. He called for a political solution to the crisis which has killed more than 90,000 people. Abdollahian, who was in the Gulf Arab state to meet with Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Khaled al-Sabah, denied that Iran was giving military aid to the Syrian army. "We give economic, political and media support to Syria," he said. Hezbollah was involved only to protect the Lebanese-Syrian border and to shield Lebanese living in Syria from violence, he said. Posted by: Fred 2013-06-20 |
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