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11/24/2004:

"Iraq's Sunni accuse Shia of selling out Islam"

In west Baghdad's Omar al-Khattab mosque, a Sunni preacher assails his Shia compatriots for failing to come to the aid of the besieged city of Falluja.

“Those of the black turbans” Iraq's Shia clergy “are but traitors and agents of America. It is they who have provoked the Amer-icans to attack the Sunni, whom they call extremists and terrorists,” Sheikh Ahmed al-Kubaisi told his congregation last Friday.

Mr Kubaisi's sermon is typical of many Sunni mosques across the country, where preachers are delivering fiery attacks on the Shia clergy who, they say, have “sold out” Islam. In the aftermath of the Falluja battle, the insurgency has never been more divided along sectarian lines: guerrilla groups are overwhelming made up of Sunni Arabs, thought to make up about 20 per cent of the population, while most of the majority Shia and the minority Kurds support the interim government.

Both Sunni and Shia militants had put aside differences and found common cause back in April, when radical Shia preacher Moqtada al-Sadr took up arms against the US during the first siege of Falluja, which ended with insurgents in control of the town. During that campaign Shia mosques launched relief drives to aid Falluja and delegations from each sect visited the other's mosques with messages of solidarity.

However, Mr Sadr's followers have since laid down their weapons, and while he and several other Shia clerics have harshly condemned the Falluja offensive, more establishment clerics such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have remained silent on the assault; some have even supported it. The Sunni clerical establishment is particularly incensed by an appearance by Shia cleric Iyad Jamal al-Din on al-Arabiya satellite television, in which he praised the assault on the “dens of terrorists and Saddam's supporters who know only violence in Falluja”.
Full Article: news.ft.com