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"I, as a Muslim and Arab, feel happy when Hizbullah inflicts damage on the Zionists, and we should praise the resistance in the media," said Odah.
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RIYADH — Saudi intellectuals have voiced their
support for Hizbullah and its chief Hassan Nasrallah, counting an old
fatwa by a Saudi scholar banning Muslims from helping Lebanon's
resistance movement because it is Shiite.
"I, as a Muslim and Arab, feel happy when
Hizbullah inflicts damage on the Zionists, and we should praise the
resistance in the media," Sheikh Salman Al-Odah told Agence
France-Presse (AFP) Friday, August 4.
Odah said Sheikh Abdullah bin Jebreen's edict is
"an old fatwa issued several years ago and does not apply to the
current situation."
"All Muslims must stand by the entire Lebanese
people and help them at the humanitarian, material and moral
levels," Odah stressed.
The scholar said some of those who have revived bin
Jebreen's fatwa may have done so because they are dismayed by events
in Iraq, where Shiite militias are accused of systematically killing
Sunnis and putting the country on the edge of a devastating civil war.
"They have not been careful to
differentiate" between what is happening in Iraq and in Lebanon,
he said.
Issued several years ago by Sheikh Abdullah bin
Jebreen, a former member of the Council of Senior Ulema, Saudi
Arabia's highest religious body, it describes Hizbullah as "rafidhi"
— a derogatory term for Shiites used by some Sunnis.
"It is not permissible to support this rafidhi
party ... or pray for its victory, and we advise Sunnis to disavow
it," the fatwa says.
The revival of the fatwa was harshly criticized by
prominent Muslim scholars, accusing its supporters of seeking to
provoke sectarian dissension.
Sectarian Dissension
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"If you bombard our capital we will bombard the capital of your aggressive entity," threatened
Nasrallah.
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Saudi columnist and media adviser Jamal Khashoggi
expressed regret that some scholars and preachers in his country were
trying to "provoke a stupid sectarian dissension between Sunnis
and Shiites."
Bin Jebreen's old fatwa had been "invoked by
an advocate of hatred in order to serve (the agenda) of Salafi
extremists," Khashoggi wrote in the Emirati daily Al-Ittihad.
He said another scholar, Sheikh Nasser al-Omar,
"who never made a secret of his antipathy for Shiites,"
added his own "political reading to the fatwa" and went on
Arab satellite channels to claim that "the current events prove
the hatred that the Shiites and Iran harbor toward Sunnis."
He also deplored that the Saudi criticism of
Hizbullah at the beginning of the war had been ideologically
motivated.
"The sectarian dimension was the last thing on
the mind of the Saudi official who spelled out the Saudi position in
the first statement issued after the outbreak of the crisis," he
said.
"The Saudi position would not have been any
different if the (Sunni) Islamic Group or the Lebanese Communist Party
had abducted the soldiers and triggered the crisis."
In a recent televised message, Nasrallah warned
against reacting to purported anti-Hezbollah edicts in a manner that
would benefit Israel.
"Positions or fatwas might be issued that
undermine (Muslim) unity. We should not be influenced by them, and I
warn against ... being dragged to inappropriate reactions, because
reactions which are wrong, like these fatwas, will serve our
enemies," Nasrallah said.
Prominent scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi called
in an interview with Al-Jazeera Arab news channel for "supporting
the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon" and criticized
"calls which stoke up sectarianism."
Hizbullah has inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli
army with its chief emerging as folk hero across the Muslim world.
Even after 23 days of non-stop Israeli bombardments
and grounds incursions, Hizbullah demonstrated on Friday an
unchallenged combat and rocket capabilities.
Five more Israeli soldiers were killed in ferocious
fighting in south Lebanon, taking to 17 the number of Israeli soldiers
killed in less than 48 hours.
According to official Israeli figures, forty
soldiers have been killed in clashes with Hizbullah since Israel
unleashed its onslaught on Lebanon on July 12.
Hizbullah reportedly has an estimated 2,000-3,000
well-armed and trained fighters who have shown themselves to be an
organized force capable of springing surprises and inflicting
casualties on Israel's forces.
Nasrallah threatened late Thursday to strike at
Israel's capital of Tel Aviv if Beirut were hit by air strikes.
"If you bombard our capital we will bombard
the capital of your aggressive entity," he said in a televised
speech.
