The way to stand against sectarian war

The image that what is happening in Syria is a sectarian war is one that those who run the war insistently try to project. True, the language and the motivation the fighters on the battlefield use to kill one another are also sectarian language and motivation. Yet those who belong to these sects have lived together for centuries and never on their own thought of entering such a war. On the contrary, Western intervention, especially the occupation of Iraq, fed processes that would make different sects and ethnic groups enemies of one another. In all these processes, external actors, above all the US, were the real determinants.

Turkey's stance, which is expected to be on the Sunni side, has from the beginning attached importance to being above sect.

President Erdoğan, beginning with his visit to Najaf, set the measure clearly by saying:

"We do not have a religion called Sunnism or Shiism, but we have our religion, Islam."

Moreover, the chief enemy of the DEAŞ terror, which is being presented as the representative of Sunnism and which has convinced those who belong to the Shiite sect today that the matter is a sectarian war, is not Iran but Turkey. Moreover, it is Turkey that is waging the toughest fight against that same DEAŞ. It is giving martyrs in this fight.

We insist that what Assad does has nothing to do with Shiism; on the contrary, everything he does massacres Shiism too. That Iran or Hezbollah, which try to protect him, are also Shiite does not make what they do related to Shiism. If you like, let us listen once more to a Shiite who expresses this best.

What the first former Secretary-General of Hezbollah,

Sheikh Subhi al-Tufayli,

said in an interview is a speech that gives Iran and Hezbollah a solid lesson in Shiism. In fact, Tufayli speaks in this vein in his sermon every Friday, explaining what a slaughter against Shiism they are engaged in through the contribution Iran and Hezbollah have made to what has happened in Syria. Of course, this will not end and exhaust the historical and theological debates over the true meaning of Shiism and Sunnism. Let us look at that separately, but to see that what we are living through today is not a sectarian war but an imperialist sectarian colonialism that squanders the sects too, let us listen to this voice.

TUFAYLI: WHO TARGETS THE TOMB OF HAZRAT ZAYNAB?

"Today Hezbollah is fighting in Syria. Did it go there to protect Lebanese?

Or to help the Shiites living in Syria by defending them? The Syrian Shiites never needed protection. They were never in danger. We pushed them into the swamp.

Today the Shiites are in danger because of our mistakes. We caused it! We are responsible for the slightest harm that may befall the Shiites in Syria. We are the ones who put them in trouble. We caused their suffering. The Syrian Shiites need neither our help nor our support.

The same goes for the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab. The gravestones need protection from no one!

Do you think we love Sayyida Zaynab and the Sunnis hate her? Sayyida Zaynab is revered by all Muslims!

The lie, protecting the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab or protecting the Lebanese Shiites in Syria, is only a pretext for propaganda, to hide what they want to do. They are a tactic to deceive people.

The real issue is protecting the Syrian regime!

They are fighting to protect the criminal, tyrannical regime that kills its own people! How

can it be that the regime bombs its own people with every kind of weapon and missile! Yet it has never fired so much as a single missile at occupying Israel! Here I ask one thing:

Who benefits? Israel, of course. So today we are serving Israel's interests.

Our involvement in the war in Syria benefits Israel.

Worse still, let us be clear, they will not allow either of the two sides to win the war! They want both sides to lose and the ummah to be destroyed and wiped out. That is their aim.

Like Israel, for the West and the US too, all their interests are the same. Let us break and tear one another apart, let the sectarian conflicts from Lebanon to Syria never end. This is the greatest favor we can do them, and we will always be insignificant in the eyes of the world. Can you imagine what a great service we are doing them?

See, O Iranian rulers! How we are serving the interests of the Zionists, the enemies of the ummah, who occupy the holy Jerusalem!

Hezbollah has no right to do this. It has thrown the Syrian Shiites into a real catastrophe. Hezbollah is responsible for every Shiite killed in Syria. In every house destroyed, in every tree cut down, Hezbollah and Iran bear responsibility. We could have kept the Syrian Shiites away from the disgusting sectarian war in Lebanon and its region.

There is a people there and a tyrannical ruler. The people want to be rid of this tyrannical ruler. We have no right to prevent them.

We say we are followers of Imam Hussein and we weep over the injustice done to him. When we speak of Hazrat Hussein we repeat that he rose up against the tyrant! So what is happening now? It is an uprising against the tyrant.

We rant against Israel, we talk and talk. Then we sacrifice the young fighters of the resistance and the weapons elsewhere; these young men are very precious to us. Instead of training the youth to fight the Zionist enemy, we train them to serve!

I know that Israel is very happy with what Hezbollah is doing today!

Sometimes people ask me, "Could Israel launch an attack against Lebanon, against the resistance?" and I answer laughing. Why? On the contrary, if Hezbollah continues to fight in Syria, Israel will protect Hezbollah all the more. No one, whoever he may be, can serve Israel's interests the way we serve them today.

We heard in the news that Nasrallah raised his voice against Israel and threatened to strike Israel's important institutions at the slightest attack. Yet Israel never thinks of attacking Lebanon. On the contrary, Israel will begin to protect Hezbollah, which is fighting in Syria, even more, because for them Hezbollah is a practical tool for destroying the ummah.

Who has prevented the regime from being toppled by the Syrian resistance until now? The Americans. They do not want the regime to fall, that is very clear! They know that the Syrian people have been killed for years, we know very well what has been happening in Syrian prisons for many long years, yet no one says anything. There is a general conspiracy. The world is complicit in this crime.