Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
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Beirut, SANA – Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Bad-Eddin Hassoun slammed the double standards of the western leaders on Islam.
Hassoun’s criticism came during the launching of the International Union of Resistance Clerics in the framework of a conference held in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Tuesday with a massive presence of Muslim scholars, intellectuals and political figures from Arab and Islamic countries including Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
“Why do the Western world’s leaders stand at the UN platform to praise Islam and then send weapons and stir up hatred for shedding the Muslims’ blood,” the Mufti wondered, referring particularly to the leaders of the US, Britain and France.
Hassoun criticized the conduct of thousands of TV channels which instigate Muslims against each other, expressing appreciation of the efforts exerted by the World Forum for Proximity of the Islamic Schools of Thought which has embraced the Resistance Scholars Union as it has worked for years “to get all Muslim scholars to agree on one idea,” that is the Islamic sects enrich Islam.
He said that the beginning was in Iran several years ago where “We cautioned that what was coming was to kill not just the resistance in Palestine, South Lebanon and Gaza, but to kill all the Muslims with the latter’s own hands.”
The Grand Mufti said that “We have supported the resistance in Palestine, and today we call for a resistance that helps protect the Palestinian resistance. We have been struggling to restore Jerusalem and today we are struggling to protect Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Tripoli, Tunisia and Yemen where they stirred wars in the name of…religion.”
Hassoun noted that the Syrian Arab army has always stood by the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine, adding that Syria’s only fault for which it has been targeted is that “it has embraced the resistance and refused to bow down.”
In his opening speech, Secretary General of the World Forum for Proximity of the Islamic Schools of Thought Ayatollah Mohsen Araki stressed the key role of resistance to confront the conspiracies targeting the unity and existence of Muslims “particularly under the current difficult circumstances facing our countries due to division, fragmentation and sectarian strife.”
He expressed hope that this Union would contribute to achieving the unity of the Islamic nation through “redirecting the compass” towards the real enemy, the Zionist entity, which has fragmented the nations, occupied territories and displaced their inhabitants for more than 60 years.
He called upon the Muslim scholars to join the Union in order to defend the Islamic values as well as the entire humanity and to face the powers of Zionism and arrogance which still dominate the whole world and work to undermine all values and religions.
In turn, Deputy Secretary General of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement Sheikh Naim Qassem said that the Union is based on three pillars, real Islam, Islamic unity and the resistance.
“‘Jihad’ in our time is fighting Israel to liberate Palestine and Jerusalem, and any ‘jihad’ which doesn’t start and end with resisting Israel has nothing to do with the real [Islamic] jihad,” Qassem stressed.
He went on saying that the conflict in the world today is a political one that is taking place between two axes: the first one is of the resistance, represented by Iran, Hezbollah, the resistance in Palestine and Syria among other resistance movements, and the other axes is that of the US, Israel and the takfiri groups.
The announcement to establish the Resistance Clerics Union has been first made during the International Conference of Islamic World Scholars in Defense of Palestinian Resistance held on Sept. 9th and 10th in Tehran.
Rasha Raslan/Haifa Said
