Iraqi top cleric’s fatwa turning tide against IS
Sameer Arshad | TNN | Feb 18, 2016, 03.38 AM IST
KARBALA/NAJAF (IRAQ): E: Eighteen-day confinement to a hospital bed with half his body below waist paralyzed has not dampened Iraqi antiDaesh (IS) al-Hashd al-Shaabi force volunteer Adil Fozi's spirits. He flashed a victory sign as a group of Indian journalists interviewed him at the hospital overlooking one of Islam's holiest shrines - the mausoleum of Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Husain, in Karbala. The 35-year-old balding man vowed to return to the battlefield.
"I would join my brother who is fighting Daesh and would be proud to send my son to fight too,'' Fozi, whose commander Haji Talib Rahma was killed in action recently, told the journalists. Fozi's spirit is symptomatic of the resolve sweeping Iraq to rid the country of IS. It is reflected in great show of volunteerism to take on Daesh since Shia leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's fatwa calling Iraqis to resist the group in June 2014.
Hashd volunteers have since played a key role in reclaiming territories like Ramadi even as concerns over arming civilians remain. They are now assisting the Iraqi army in its efforts to liberate Mosul, the most important city under IS occupation. Fozi was among tens of thousands of volunteers to sign up for the force after Sistan's fatwa was issued after Iraqi army abandoned Mosul. Sistani's call had great symbolic value as it was made from Najaf, one of Islam's holiest cities where the prophet's son-in-law and fourth Caliph Ali lies buried. Ali is central to Shia devotion and they consider him the Prophet's only rightful heir unlike Sunnis. Most Sufi orders trace their lineage to Ali as he is believed to have inherited saintly powers from the Prophet besides being regarded as supreme Islamic metaphysician.
Kharijites (defectors) killed Ali with a poisoned sword in AD 661while he was praying years after he crushed their rebellion against Islam. A majority of Muslim scholars, including puritanical Saudi Arabian grand mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al ash-Sheikh, have denounced IS as modern-age Kharijites for adopting brutal ways. Shia clergy's likening of IS to the killers of Ali's son, Husain, and 72 members of the prophet's family in the epic battle of Karbala in 680 AD to save the true Islam has had great resonance in southern Iraq. It has drawn over one lakh volunteers to Hashd's ranks.
Virtually every lamppost and wall along the highway from southern Iraq's Najaf to capital Baghdad, 177km away, have pictures and eulogies to fallen Hashd fighters. Dismissing IS fighters as cowards, Fozi said, "They are unable to fight us face to face and use snipers and suicide bombers.'' Fozi returned to Iraq in 2014 to join Hashd from Syria.
"I would join my brother who is fighting Daesh and would be proud to send my son to fight too,'' Fozi, whose commander Haji Talib Rahma was killed in action recently, told the journalists. Fozi's spirit is symptomatic of the resolve sweeping Iraq to rid the country of IS. It is reflected in great show of volunteerism to take on Daesh since Shia leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's fatwa calling Iraqis to resist the group in June 2014.
Hashd volunteers have since played a key role in reclaiming territories like Ramadi even as concerns over arming civilians remain. They are now assisting the Iraqi army in its efforts to liberate Mosul, the most important city under IS occupation. Fozi was among tens of thousands of volunteers to sign up for the force after Sistan's fatwa was issued after Iraqi army abandoned Mosul. Sistani's call had great symbolic value as it was made from Najaf, one of Islam's holiest cities where the prophet's son-in-law and fourth Caliph Ali lies buried. Ali is central to Shia devotion and they consider him the Prophet's only rightful heir unlike Sunnis. Most Sufi orders trace their lineage to Ali as he is believed to have inherited saintly powers from the Prophet besides being regarded as supreme Islamic metaphysician.
Kharijites (defectors) killed Ali with a poisoned sword in AD 661while he was praying years after he crushed their rebellion against Islam. A majority of Muslim scholars, including puritanical Saudi Arabian grand mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al ash-Sheikh, have denounced IS as modern-age Kharijites for adopting brutal ways. Shia clergy's likening of IS to the killers of Ali's son, Husain, and 72 members of the prophet's family in the epic battle of Karbala in 680 AD to save the true Islam has had great resonance in southern Iraq. It has drawn over one lakh volunteers to Hashd's ranks.
Virtually every lamppost and wall along the highway from southern Iraq's Najaf to capital Baghdad, 177km away, have pictures and eulogies to fallen Hashd fighters. Dismissing IS fighters as cowards, Fozi said, "They are unable to fight us face to face and use snipers and suicide bombers.'' Fozi returned to Iraq in 2014 to join Hashd from Syria.
"Our belief in real Islam, the faith Husain died protecting here (Karbala) pushes us to fight the evil,'' said Fozi. Fozi echoed the growing Iraqi irritation to western projection of Hashd as a Shia undisciplined militia. "We fight under the Iraqi Army and support them,'' he said. Jalandhar-born Sheikh Bashir Husain al-Najafi, a member of Sistani's council, insisted the resistance against IS was not that of Shias but of all Iraqis. He underlined Khaled al-Obeidi, a Sunni, was leading the war on IS as defence minister. "This disproves all western propaganda of ShiaSunni conflict in Iraq."
(The writer was in Iraq at the invitation of Karbala's Imam Husain shrine)
(The writer was in Iraq at the invitation of Karbala's Imam Husain shrine)
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