Khamenei and Sistani differ over political role

NAJAF: The civil war in Syria is widening a rift between top Shi’ite Muslim clergy in Iraq and Iran who have taken opposing stands on whether or not to send followers into combat on President Bashar Al Assad’s side.

Competition for leadership of the Shi’ite community has intensified since the US-led invasion of 2003 toppled Saddam Hussein, empowering majority Shi’ites through the ballot box and restoring the Iraqi holy city of Najaf to prominence.

In Iran’s holy city of Qom, senior Shi’ite clerics, or Marjiiya, have issued fatwas (edicts) enjoining their followers to fight in Syria, where mainly Sunni rebels are fighting to overthrow Assad, whose Alawite sect derives from Shi’ite Islam.

Shi’ite militant leaders fighting in Syria and those in charge of recruitment in Iraq say the number of volunteers has increased significantly since the fatwas were pronounced. Tehran, Assad’s staunchest defender in the region, has drawn on other Shi’ite allies, including Hizbollah.

Hizbollah’s open intervention earlier this year hardened the sectarian tone of a conflict that grew out of a peaceful street uprising against four decades of Assad family rule, and shifted the battlefield tide in the Syrian government’s favour.

The Syrian war has polarised Sunnis and Shi’ites across the Middle East — but has also spotlighted divisions within each of Islam’s two main denominations, putting Qom and Najaf at odds and complicating intra-Shi’ite relations in Iraq.

In Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, who commands unswerving loyalty from most Iraqi Shi’ites and many more worldwide, has refused to sanction fighting in a war he views as political rather than religious.

Despite Sistani’s stance, some of Iraq’s most influential Shi’ite political parties and militia, who swear allegiance to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have answered his call to arms and sent their disciples into battle in Syria.

“Those who went to fight in Syria are disobedient,” said a senior Shi’ite cleric who runs the office of one of the top four Marjiya in Najaf.

The split is rooted in a fundamental difference of opinion over the nature and scope of clerical authority.

Najaf Marjiiya see the role of the cleric in public affairs as limited, whereas in Iran, the cleric is the Supreme Leader and holds ultimate spiritual and political authority in the “Velayet e-Faqih” system (“guardianship of the jurist”).

- Reuters