Jordan Times
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Iraq's religious leaders seek to combat extremist threat
AMMAN — Over 200 Iraqi Sunni and Shiite religious leaders will convene in the capital this month in an attempt to counter the views of extremists who sanction bloodshed between the two Islamic sects.
The Iraqi Islamic Reconciliation Conference, to be hosted on April 22, will seek to clarify Sunni-Shiite religious differences in order to counter extremist forces bent on fomenting sectarian conflict in the war-ravaged country.
The event, which was suggested by His Majesty King Abdullah, will seek “to defuse sectarian violence and religious tension,” the conference's spokesperson, Abdul Salam Abbadi, told reporters yesterday.
He said the gathering is based on the conviction that “political solutions will not succeed in Iraq unless there is a religious solution.”
Sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims has increased dramatically since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February.
The bombing triggered a wave of reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques and clerics — many of them believed to be carried out by Shiite militias or death squads operating inside the Shiite-dominated interior ministry.
In the past week alone more than 100 Shiites have been killed in a series of bombings, some at shrines, in a bid to stir up sectarian hatred.
Abbadi said Iraqi religious leaders are expected to come up with a document during the conference, countering those who sanction killing on religious grounds.
“We aim to completely refute their arguments,” he said, noting that the participants “are influential figures in Iraq.”
“The aim is to bring these people together, give them the chance to discuss their issues and suggest solutions they can all agree on,” said Abbadi, who is president of Al al Bayt University.
“They are more aware of their own problems and the most capable of finding answers to them,” he added.
The meeting will build on the outcome of the International Islamic Conference, which took place in Amman last summer.
More than 170 scholars and clerics from the different schools of Islamic jurisprudence took part in the conference.
At the conclusion of the three-day meeting, clerics issued a joint statement forbidding a Muslim from labelling as an apostate any adherent of the eight Islamic schools of Islamic jurisprudence: The Sunni Shafite, Malikite, Hanbalite and Hanafite schools as well the Shiite Jaafari, Ibadi, Zaydi and Thahiri.
The statement, the first of its kind in Islamic history, also limited the issuance of religious edicts, or fatwas, to qualified Muslim clerics in the eight schools.
Clerics from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and other Gulf countries, in addition to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Turkey and Iran will take part in the conference, organised by the Al al Bayt Foundation for Islamic Thought in coordination with the Arab League.
The Sunni-Shiite split originated in a dispute over the succession in the leadership of Muslims following the death of the Prophet Mohammad in the 7th century. While both sects hold to the basic tenets of Islam, they have separate schools of Islamic law and there are some differences in their rituals.