Sunnis Rally Behind Shia

Even before this week’s Ashura festival, banners hung on the walls of Sunni mosques in Falluja, bearing an unusual message of sectarian solidarity.

"We stand with the Shia, and offer them our condolences in memory of the killing of al-Hussein and his family," the banners read, in reference to the massacre of the seventh century Imam Hussein, which the festival commemorates.

But the banners changed when near-simultaneous blasts struck two Shia holy sites on March 2, "We condemn this act of terrorism that happened in Karbala and al-Kadhemiya."

According to members of both communities, Sunnis have rallied to the support of their Shia compatriots by condemning the attacks, offering condolences and donating blood to the injured.

Even before the blasts, many Iraqis expected bloodshed on the Shia holy day, fearing that it might lead to sectarian violence.

The Eid al-Adha festival a month before had been marked by an attack on the headquarters of two Kurdish parties.

Since then, the Coalition Provisional Authority revealed a letter, purportedly written by the Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who called for attacks on Shia targets in order to set off a civil war.

Consequently, when the blasts occurred, Sunni and Shia religious leaders swung quickly into action to prevent simmering sectarian tensions from escalating into greater violence.

Tensions have been particularly high since the capture of Saddam Hussein in December, which most Shia celebrated and many Sunnis mourned. Fights broke out on university campuses and in mixed neighbourhoods.

Gangs of youth threw stones at each other on the Imam's Bridge spanning the Tigris between the north Baghdad Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya and the Shia district of al-Kadhemiya.

But things have changed, says Haydar Anwar, a Shia doctor at al-Kadhemiya hospital, as delegations are crossing the bridge to donate blood.

Other Sunni donors have made the hour-long journey from Fallujah. "They come to stand beside the Shia during our operations to save lives," Anwar said.

"Killing Muslims is haram, forbidden," said Sheikh Kassem al-Jinaby, the Sunni imam of the Samarrai mosque in Falluja. "We condemn this terrorist work which wants to make a sectarian war between Sunni and Shia. We ordered people in Fallujah to go to Baghdad to help the Shia. Hundreds have gone."

"We never forget these good deeds by the Sunnis from Adhamiya and Falluja, who came to help us after the explosion," said Hassan Sayf, a young Shia shoe vendor in al-Kadhemiya.

"The terrorists who carried out these explosions wanted blame to fall on the Sunnis, and to make the Shia angry to make civil war in Iraq."

Like Sayf, both Sunni and Shia clerics have called for Sunni-Shia unity and denounced the "terrorists”, but they have shied away from stating who these "terrorists" might be.

Senior Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, in a statement released after the bombing, declared the explosions to be "the work of the envious against Sunni and Shia". He warned all Muslims to avoid discord and commended the Sunnis on their aid.

Sistani blamed the blast on the Coalition forces for failing to protect Karbala and al-Kadhemiya.

His remarks were underlined in Karbala on March 4, when marchers in the funeral procession of several of the dead shouted, "Down with America, down with terrorism".

Meanwhile, Abdullah al-Musawi, an official in the predominantly Shia Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said Sunni scholars had come to his office in Kadhemiya, with condolences and offers of assistance.

"It was not Sunnis who carried out this act of terrorism. They stand beside us against terrorism and offer us help in everything we may need," Musawi said.

Sheikh Dhafar al-Qaisy, the Shia imam of Baghdad's Mustafa mosque, said, “These explosions are a way to stir up sectarian civil war between Sunnis and Shia, which would only benefit terrorists."

Aqil Jabbar is an IWPR trainee.