Sunni, Shia Muslims in Huntsville work together
Both sects
agree violence in Iraq not about true Islam
Friday, November 18, 2005 By KAY CAMPBELL
Times Faith & Values Editor, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
News broadcasts from Iraq
report Sunni and Shia, or Shiite, Muslims attacking each other as each group
struggles for supremacy in the nascent government.
The conflict, local Muslim leaders say, is not representative of usual
Sunni-Shia relations.
In Huntsville,
Sunnis and Shias work together to hire Quran scholar Mohamed Nasr, who is also
an officer in the U.S. Army, to teach their children their sacred text and Arabic,
the language of the book.
News from Muslim countries around the world tells of places where the local
interpretation of Islam sanctifies oppression of women and violence toward both
infidels and Muslims.
In Huntsville,
devout Muslims work to explain that the Prophet Muhammad delivered a message
and example of mercy to enemies and respect for women, and that both Sunni and
Shia Muslims who follow the teachings of the Quran do the same.
"What happened the other day in Jordan is against all humanity,
against the soul of Islam," said Aladin Beshir on Friday. Beshir is a NASA
engineer who is an active member of the Huntsville Islamic Center on Sparkman Drive.
And just as Protestants and Catholics the world over watched the old troubles
in Ireland and England with sorrow, Muslims of all sects watch the internecine
violence in the Middle East, saddened by murder that violates the teachings of
the Quran.
"I want to emphasize that, just like the Protestant and Catholic warfare
in England, the warfare in Iraq is in
reality not about religion, but about power and politics," Beshir said.
Beshir, who considers himself a Sunni Muslim, Islam's majority denomination,
met Friday at the Alabama Islamic Education Center of Fatimah Zahra, or
Alzahra, a Shiite mosque on Memorial
Parkway, to explain Sunni and Shia practices with
Nasr and with Imam Mohammad Razavi.
Razavi, a Shiite religious leader who lives in London
and is a direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad, spent Ramadan in Huntsville with the
members of Alzahra mosque.
Razavi helped lead the Eid services that marked the end of Ramadan, the month
of fasting and prayer. Members of Huntsville's
three mosques, the Sunni at Islamic Center, the Shia at Alzahra and the Muslim
Americans at Masjid Tauhid on Winchester
Road, came together the first week of November to
celebrate one of Islam's most important annual occasions.
That unity, not the sectarian fighting in Iraq, is the true practice of
Islam, the men say.
"We celebrate Eid together," Beshir said.
"I teach the same Quran in both places with no differences," Nasr
said.
"Whoever believes in one god and that Muhammad, peace be upon him, is the
last messenger from God, is a Muslim," Razavi said. "The rest of the
differences are not major."
Sunni, Shiite prayers
The differences in the different denominations of Islam are similar and often
less marked than are the differences among Protestant Christian denominations,
the men agreed. It's a difference of emphasis and tradition. For most of
Islam's 1,500-year history, Islam's two main branches lived with the religious
scholars arguing about the differences, but the people themselves living and
praying together peacefully.
"If I were to walk into a mosque, unless the imam was wearing this,"
Beshir said, motioning to the robes and distinctive turban Razavi wears,
"I would not know it was Shiite by the prayers. The prayers are the
same."
Beshir might also notice if those praying carried with them a small clay disc,
a "mohr," on which to rest their foreheads as they pray in the
traditional kneeling position with their foreheads pressed to the ground.
Shiites believe they should pray with their forehead touching something of the
earth.
Other differences involve who was the legitimate religious heir of Muhammad.
Shiites believe Muhammad designated his nephew and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi
Talib, as the next caliph. Sunnis believe the succession was left unclear, with
the community charged with deciding.
Shiites also celebrate some holidays not observed by Sunnis. In the last 20
years, this has led to conflicts in the eastern portion of Saudi Arabia, where
extremist Wahhabi Sunni Muslims try to prevent Shiites from celebrating
holidays Wahhabi declare un-Islamic, and where Shiites, relegated to menial
jobs, are agitating for better opportunities.
Scars of the heart
About 85 percent of Muslims in the world consider themselves Sunni, about 15
percent Shiite. In Iran,
those ratios are reversed, with most Muslims considering themselves Shiite. In Iraq, 65 percent
of the population is Shiite, but with intermarriage frequent, those numbers get
hard to verify, and irrelevant to true Islam, Razavi says.
Both Beshir and Razavi, who was born and educated in Iran before moving to
London 20 years ago, are convinced the attacks in Iraq are perpetuated by
agitators from outside Iraq. Both believe that, should the United States withdraw its troops, the people of
Iraq
would take care of each other without regard to Sunni and Shiite differences.
"It doesn't really matter to the Sunnis and Shiites of Iraq who will be in
power because they will look after each other," Razavi said.
What matters, the men said, is that each act of violence leaves more people
dead and more children scarred.
"The child who loses his parents in a bombing, he is our tomorrow's
nightmare," Beshir said.
"The Prophet Muhammad said the scars of the body can be healed, but the
scars in the mind of a child cannot be easily healed," Razavi said.
© 2005 The Huntsville
Times
© 2005 al.com All Rights Reserved.
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{Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.}
(Holy Quran-16:125)
{And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah's (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: "I am one of the Muslims."} (Holy Quran-41:33)
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "By Allah, if Allah guides one person by you, it is better for you than the best types of camels." [al-Bukhaaree, Muslim]
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) also said, "Whoever calls to guidance will have a reward similar to the reward of the one who follows him, without the reward of either of them being lessened at all."
[Muslim, Ahmad, Aboo Daawood, an-Nasaa'ee, at-Tirmidhee, Ibn Maajah]
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