BAGHDAD,
March 2 (IslamOnline.net) - Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites called for
seizing the month of Muharram, when Muslims celebrate one of their
most revered occasions, Ashura, to stand up to bids trying to pit them
against one another.
The
call was voiced during a meeting Saturday, February 28, that brought
together Sunni and Shiite figures, who started the event with the
recitation of some verses from the Holy Qur'an, mourning those killed
from the two communities in the spat of bombings that enveloped the
occupied country since the ouster of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
The
representative of the Sunni Muslim Scholars Body, Mohannad Al-Ghariri,
said all Muslims should model themselves after Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
and pass the Islamic torch to the generations to come as did the
prophet's companions.
Ghariri
also said Muslims should also follow in the footsteps of the grandson
of the prophet, Imam Al-Hussein, when he rejected that the democratic
Islamic caliphate be slipped into a royal regime.
"Al-Hussein,
when he braved the army of Yazid Bin Mu'awiyah who wanted to assume
power after the death of his father, was fighting for the sake of the
entire nation to combat injustice and tyrants.
He
won martyrdom but remained close at heart, so let us be like him and
kick out the aggressors," he said, referring to the U.S.-led
occupation troops.
Alaa
Mekki, member of the Islamic Party's politburo, said the month of
Muharram conjures up images of Al-Hussein sacrifice and was a turning
point in history, when Allah Almighty saved Moses and the Children of
Israel from Pharaoh and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) starting laying the
groundwork of the Muslim nation.
Sectarian
Sedition
Shiite
scholar Mahmmoud Al-Sudani then took the podium, warning that the
occupation wanted to spark a sectarian sedition in Iraq.
"The
killing of Shiite and Sunni scholars in Iraq serves best the interests
of the occupation in sparking a sectarian sedition," he said.
"Those
who think that the occupation came to build up their country are
nothing but idiots…The occupation came to destroy our homeland and
Islam."
Though
different in religious schools, he added, both Shiites and Sunnis have
common denominators.
"We
testify that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His
Messenger," he said.
Sheikh
Ali Al-Gabouri, the representative of the Shiite Islamic Movement,
urged the Iraqis not to flatter the occupation authorities.
He
agreed that "Sunni and Shiite scholars who were stabbed in the
back by foreign hands to sow the seeds of a sectarian conflict".
"We
have learnt that America is the greatest devil, so how on earth that
some of us are doing their best to satisfy the American occupation and
portray it as the savior," he said.
"The
enemy adopts the infamous 'divide and rule' policy," he added.
