Sunni, Shia Muslims in Huntsville Work Together
Both sects agree violence in Iraq not about true Islam
Friday, November 18, 2005
By KAY CAMPBELL
Times Faith & Values Editor,
kayc@htimes.comNews broadcasts from Iraq report Sunni and Shia, or Shiite, Muslims attacking each other as each group struggles for supremacy in the nascent government. The conflict, local Muslim leaders say, is not representative of usual Sunni-Shia relations. In Huntsville, Sunnis and Shias work together to hire Quran scholar Mohamed Nasr, who is also an officer in the U.S. Army, to teach their children their sacred text and Arabic, the language of the book. News from Muslim countries around the world tells of places where the local interpretation of Islam sanctifies oppression of women and violence toward both infidels and Muslims.
In Huntsville, devout Muslims work to explain that the Prophet Muhammad delivered a message and example of mercy to enemies and respect for women, and that both Sunni and Shia Muslims who follow the teachings of the Quran do the same.
"What happened the other day in Jordan is against all humanity, against the soul of Islam," said Aladin Beshir on Friday. Beshir is a NASA engineer who is an active member of the Huntsville Islamic Center on Sparkman Drive.
And just as Protestants and Catholics the world over watched the old troubles in Ireland and England with sorrow, Muslims of all sects watch the internecine violence in the Middle East, saddened by murder that violates the teachings of the Quran.
"I want to emphasize that, just like the Protestant and Catholic warfare in England, the warfare in Iraq is in reality not about religion, but about power and politics," Beshir said. Beshir, who considers himself a Sunni Muslim, Islam's majority denomination, met Friday at the Alabama Islamic Education Center of Fatimah Zahra, or Alzahra, a Shiite mosque on Memorial Parkway, to explain Sunni and Shia practices with Nasr and with Imam Mohammad Razavi.
Razavi, a Shiite religious leader who lives in London and is a direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad, spent Ramadan in Huntsville with the members of Alzahra mosque. Razavi helped lead the Eid services that marked the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting and prayer. Members of Huntsville's three mosques, the Sunni at Islamic Center, the Shia at Alzahra and the Muslim Americans at Masjid Tauhid on Winchester Road, came together the first week of November to celebrate one of Islam's most important annual occasions. That unity, not the sectarian fighting in Iraq, is the true practice of Islam, the men say.
"We celebrate Eid together," Beshir said. "I teach the same Quran in both places with no differences," Nasr said. "Whoever believes in one god and that Muhammad, peace be upon him, is the last messenger from God, is a Muslim," Razavi said. "The rest of the differences are not major."
Sunni, Shiite prayers
The differences in the different denominations of Islam are similar and often less marked than are the differences among Protestant Christian denominations, the men agreed. It's a difference of emphasis and tradition. For most of Islam's 1,500-year history, Islam's two main branches lived with the religious scholars arguing about the differences, but the people themselves living and praying together peacefully.
"If I were to walk into a mosque, unless the imam was wearing this," Beshir said, motioning to the robes and distinctive turban Razavi wears, "I would not know it was Shiite by the prayers. The prayers are the same." Beshir might also notice if those praying carried with them a small clay disc, a "mohr," on which to rest their foreheads as they pray in the traditional kneeling position with their foreheads pressed to the ground. Shiites believe they should pray with their forehead touching something of the earth. Other differences involve who was the legitimate religious heir of Muhammad. Shiites believe Muhammad designated his nephew and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, as the next caliph. Sunnis believe the succession was left unclear, with the community charged with deciding. Shiites also celebrate some holidays not observed by Sunnis. In the last 20 years, this has led to conflicts in the eastern portion of Saudi Arabia, where extremist Wahhabi Sunni Muslims try to prevent Shiites from celebrating holidays Wahhabi declare un-Islamic, and where Shiites, relegated to menial jobs, are agitating for better opportunities.
Scars of the heart
About 85 percent of Muslims in the world consider themselves Sunni, about 15 percent Shiite. In Iran, those ratios are reversed, with most Muslims considering themselves Shiite. In Iraq, 65 percent of the population is Shiite, but with intermarriage frequent, those numbers get hard to verify, and irrelevant to true Islam, Razavi says. Both Beshir and Razavi, who was born and educated in Iran before moving to London 20 years ago, are convinced the attacks in Iraq are perpetuated by agitators from outside Iraq. Both believe that, should the United States withdraw its troops, the people of Iraq would take care of each other without regard to Sunni and Shiite differences.
"It doesn't really matter to the Sunnis and Shiites of Iraq who will be in power because they will look after each other," Razavi said. What matters, the men said, is that each act of violence leaves more people dead and more children scarred. "The child who loses his parents in a bombing, he is our tomorrow's nightmare," Beshir said. "The Prophet Muhammad said the scars of the body can be healed, but the scars in the mind of a child cannot be easily healed," Razavi said.
