Archive for month: August, 2014

Grand Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Hoseyn Nouri-Hamadani, has met with members, scholars and political figures and representatives from North Khorasan province in memory of the late Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad-Hasan Agha-Najafi-Qouchani in the holy city of Mashhad. He spoke about the important role scholars and clerics have in society, and stated that the late Ayatollah Agha-Najafi-Qouchani was an example worth imitating.

Grand Ayatollah Nouri-Hamadani explained the vital role of the scholars and seminaries in the moral and political education of the Islamic society. He stated that Imam Ali (A) had placed much importance on the role of the scholars in society. He also expressed concern that in the present era, society has not benefited from the presence of influential and effective scholars as it did in the past. He explained that previously every locality had at least one influential scholar, but in the present era there are relatively few influential scholars in all of Iran.

He also encouraged scholars and clerics to remember the importance of delivering sermons which effect society and encourage them in their spiritual lives. Sermons have an important role and effect on society and Ayatollah Nouri-Hamadani urged scholars to remember their important obligations to society when lecturing. He encouraged scholars to migrate to different cities to spread their knowledge and to service the spiritually underprivileged parts of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In regards to the Takfiri phenomenon and the Zionist regime’s brutal war on the Gaza Strip, Ayatollah Nouri-Hamadani condemned the world’s silence in the face of such brutality, and stated: “The scholars of the Islamic world must play their proper role by speaking out and striving to extinguish the fires of sedition and strife.”

His Eminence also urged the Muslim community to unite and to cooperate, and added: “The discord between the Sunni and Shi’ah sects of Islam as well as other sects of Islam are seditious plots which were created by the enemies. We must be vigilant against these conspiracies.”

Ayatollah Agha-Najafi-Qouchani (1878–1943) was an Iranian mujtahid and writer. He rose from humble beginnings, born into a peasant family in a village near Qouchan, to become a respected mujtahid with one of the most highly-praised works of Perso-Islamic autobiographical literature to his credit. Ayatollah Nouri-Hamadani praised the late Ayatollah’s scholarship and achievements and urged the people, especially the youth, to become familiar with the great scholars of the past.

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Muslim leaders gathered Monday on the steps of Dearborn City Hall to strongly condemn ISIS, saying the militant group in Iraq and Syria doesn’t represent Islam or Muslims.

ISIS members are “crazy criminals who are abusing our religion,” said Imam Mohammed Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights. “You’re a bunch of gangsters … you’re not Islamic.”

Organized by imams with the Michigan Muslim Community Council, the speakers included both Shia and Sunni leaders of different ethnicities and races, all united in saying ISIS doesn’t speak for them.

“The beheading of James Foley … is a clear violation of the holy Quran and the teachings of Prophet Mohammed,” said Imam Mustapha Elturk, who cochairs along with Elahi the Imams Council of the Michigan Muslim Community Council. “ISIS neither represents Islam nor Muslims.”

Monday’s event was the third anti-ISIS rally in Dearborn this summer that was organized by local Muslims. Two rallies organized by Shia leaders were held in Dearborn in June that condemned ISIS. Hundreds attended both rallies.

About 50 attended Monday’s rally, which included remarks by local imams, Osama Siblani, publisher of Arab American News in Dearborn, Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Steve Spreitzer, president and CEO of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion.

“They are the enemies of humanity,” Siblani said of ISIS.

Siblani and Elahi asked the U.S. to stop supporting Syrian opposition groups such as ISIS. The U.S. has said it supports moderates in Syria’s opposition, not extremist groups like ISIS. Elahi also criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“ISIS is a terrorist group,” said Imam Ali Ali, religious leader of the Muslim Community of Western Suburbs, a Canton mosque. “They don’t speak in the name of Islam, in the name of Muslims, in the name of humanity.”

One cleric in Dearborn, Ahmad Jebril, has become the most popular religious leader online for ISIS fighters from the West, according to a British think-tank. But leaders at Monday’s rally were squarely united against ISIS.

“They have an evil agenda not witnessed since Nazi Germany,” Ahmad Nasser of Livonia said of ISIS. “They are repulsive.”

Imam Aly Lela of Troy said of ISIS: “This is not the Islam we practice.”

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According to Palestinian sources, the Palestinians and the Israelis agreed to a permanent ceasefire on Tuesday.

“The contacts that have been going on have agreed a permanent ceasefire, a (deal to) end the blockade and a guarantee that Gaza’s demands and needs will be met,” media quoted a senior unnamed Palestinian official as saying.

Meanwhile, Mussa Abu Marzuk, a senior official from the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, said the truce marks a victory for the Palestinians. He added that the truce is expected to be officially announced in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

The developments come as previous temporary ceasefires have failed to produce a deal between the two sides.

The contentious subject at the Cairo talks has been the issue of the Israeli blockade of the impoverished territory.

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas wants the seven-year siege of Gaza, which has crippled the coastal enclave and tightly restricted the movement of goods and people, to be removed.

The Palestinians also demand that the coastal territory be allowed to open an airport and seaport.

Israel launched an aerial military campaign against Gaza in early July and later expanded its operation with a ground invasion.

More than 2,137 Palestinians, including around 570 children, have been killed so far in the Israeli onslaught on Gaza. Some 11,000 others have been wounded.

Most of the victims were civilians, including children, women and the elderly.

Tel Aviv says 68 Israelis have been killed in the conflict, but Hamas puts the number at more than 150.

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Sources were quoted by AFP that “The cooperation has already begun and the United States is giving Damascus information via Baghdad and Moscow”.

The comments came a day after Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said Syria was willing to work with the international community against the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) radical group, and US officials said they were poised to carry out surveillance flights over Syria.

The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said foreign drones had been seen over the eastern province of Deir al-Zor Monday.

“Non-Syrian spy planes carried out surveillance of ISIL positions in Deir al-Zor province Monday,” the Britain-based activist group’s director, Rami Abdel-Rahman, said.

Syrian warplanes bombed ISIL positions in several areas of Deir al-Zor Tuesday, an oil-rich province in the east of Syria, most of which is held by the radical militants.

A regional source told AFP that “a Western country has given the Syrian government lists of ISIL targets on Syrian territory since just before air raids on Raqqa, which started in mid-August.”

ISIL, which emerged from Al-Qaeda’s Iraq branch and has since broken with the worldwide network, controls large parts of Deir al-Zor and seized full control of Raqqa province, further up the Euphrates Valley, Sunday, with the capture of the army’s last position, the Tabqa air base.

It has declared a “caliphate” in areas under its control in Syria and neighboring Iraq, where US war planes have been targeting its positions since August 8.

US airstrikes however have not been able to stop ISIL improvements in Iraq and now Washington eyes moving toward Syria, where it has been threatening to attack and help a more than three-year-old deadly insurgency change the government.

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