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I feel uneasy by this article as it elaborates on Sunni oriented “propaganda” in ways the Iranian government is sending fighters into Syria. For certain, Iraqi and Iranian Shiites are involved in guarding the holy shrines of the Shia Islam. Earlier there were signs of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards involved in operational leadership to battle the Sunni jihadists. No doubt, the Lebanese Hezbollah has send thousands of its military across the border to join the Assad forces in the attack on the strategic city of Qusayr. There is no evidence however that Ayatollah Khamenei has issued at fatwa for holy war in Syria.
In Iraq there is clearly a division of a different order in the Shia community of Najaf. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf has refused to give a fatwa or formal legal ruling authorizing his followers to join the fight in Syria. On the other hand, this article seems to imply that Al Sadr is sending fighters into Syria to fight on the side of the FSA or opposition forces to overthrow the Assad regime. This is highly unlikely and is possible an attempt by outsiders to divide the Shiites in Iraq.
There was a very interesting interview I found where Iraq’s Prime Minister Al-Maliki discusses his neutrality in the Syrian conflict. He has been spot-on to predict how the “uprising” and influx of Sunni foreign fighters would not be able to gain a military victory. President Obama, VP Biden and Hillary Clinton believed to the contrary that Assad would be unseated in a matter of months. Asharq Al-Awsat Interview: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.
Syria: Attack on Sayyida Zainab Provokes Sunni-Shiite Tensions in Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan
(Informed Comment) July 22, 2013 – The rocket attack on the Shrine of Sayyida Zaynab in the suburbs of Damascus has intensified the sectarian overtones of the Syrian civil war and exacerbated Sunni-Shiite tension in Iraq and elsewhere. Shrapnel killed the venerated caretaker of the shrine. (Sayyida Zaynab [d. 682 AD] was the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad). The attack appears to have been launched by radical Sunnis influenced by the austere Wahhabi school of Islam predominant in Saudi Arabia, which despises shrines as idolatrous in a somewhat Protestant fashion. The shrine is guarded by several hundred Shiites from Lebanon and Iraq, including Hizbullah fighters.
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The London-based pan-Arab daily, al-Quds al-‘Arabi (Arab Jerusalem), published an excellent article today on the differences between the Iraqi Shiite authorities of Najaf, who are neutral on Syria, and the Iranian ayatollahs of Qom, who openly call for volunteers to go fight on the side of the Syrian government [unbiased citation needed]. Those who recruit volunteers for Syria in Iraq and Iran say that the Qom fatwas authorizing Shiites to go fight have provoked a big increase in volunteers.
Continue below the fold …
In contrast, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf has refused to give a fatwa or formal legal ruling authorizing his followers to join the fight in Syria.
Many Iraqi Shiites have gone off to fight in Syria, basing themselves on the fatwas of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose agents are making inroads in Najaf and in Iraq in general, targeting the younger generation and hoping to convert them to a belief in the Guardianship of the Jurisprudent, the Khomeinist doctrine that clerics should rule Shiite society. Most high Iraqi Shiite authorities reject the ‘Guardianship of the Jurisprudent,’ saying that clerical authorities should not rule. An agent of one of the Iraqi grand ayatollahs has referred to the anti-regime fighters as in `rebellion.”
The article’s sources day that about 50 Iraqi Shiites go off to fight in Syria every week, in part to protect the shrine of Sayyida Zainab.
Ruth Sherlock visited and reported on the shrine last May for the Telegraph:
Christopher Anzalone explains the Shiite militia that tries to guard Sayyida Zainab’s shrine.
[Links added are mine – Oui]
