Question
I am suuni Muslim but have lots of syed shia friends. I have noticed the shia scholars curse and taunt sunnis and their beliefs for one hour and in the end of ten minutes of mujlis they weep over hussain’s (rta) shahadat. I want to ask what is the problem with shia scholars why they provoke shia Muslims to hate sunnis as we all know they do this very systematically. It is on there agenda to build a wall between sunnis and shias. We sunnis do listen to shias but shias do not listen to us at all. They fight and get worst. Why no one stop these so called shia scholars? Why they do this? What is the purpose behind it?
Answer
We first need to appreciate a general principle that is normally true for any ideological community. When a group, ideologically separates itself from the majority, the survival of that group is conditioned on its continuous negation and opposition to the majority.
I give you some examples:
– Jehovah Witnesses are among the minority of Christians when compared to the mainstream Christians. You will find that one of their main campaigns is in rejecting the specific beliefs of the mainstream Christians.
– Qadyanies are a group who ideologically departed from Muslims. You will find that one of the main arguments they invest on is to negate the concept of the Prophet (pbuh) being the final prophet.
– Zaidi Shia are among the minority in Shia. You will find they have done a lot in rejecting the beliefs of the majority Shia who are the Imami Shia.
If the minority group does not provide regular arguments in rejecting the majority group then their validity and existence could be questioned, even by their followers.
In the same way it is only expected to see that Shia Muslims use every opportunity to condemn and reject those beliefs of the Main Stream Muslims with which they do not agree.
The above principle however some times find a very ugly and violent form which is not at all rational. There are always people who have extreme thoughts and reactions towards opposing views. Once the above principle applies to individuals who have this extreme attitude then the result will not be nice.
I however should also say that this extreme attitude can also be found among the majority groups. Here too the results are not at all nice. I can assure you that we can easily find Shia Muslims who have experienced extreme and some times violent attitude from some Sunni Muslims and Sunni scholars. Sadly some of these extreme attitudes result in death of innocent people.
Being aware of the unjustified extreme attitude of the opposing group is not enough, one should also be aware of the unjustified extreme attitude of the group with which one is associated.
One of the punishments of the Almighty for those Jews and Christians who (instead of being a role model) disobeyed Him was to bring enmity and hatred among them (look at 5:14 and 5:64 respectively).
In the same chapter of the Qur’an the Almighty has warned Muslims about Satan attempting to bring enmity and hatred among them by using alcohol and gambling (5:91). It seems like Satan was not quite successful in doing this via alcohol and gambling at the time, but was quite successful in doing this (i.e. bringing enmity and hatred) later, using sectarianism.
As for what to do, among many other verses of the Qur’an, I think the totality of three of the verses of can help us to come out of this situation:
1. Avoiding sectarian attitude (look at verse 30:32)
2. Investing on common beliefs (look at verse 3:64)
3. Adopting rational and appropriate approach when trying to correct a belief that we deem to be wrong (look at 16:125)
In my view, both Shia and Sunni Muslims need to adopt the above.
Answered by: Farhad Shafti
Date: 2015-01-01
