All praise be to Allah and peace and blessings be upon His messenger Muhammad, his family, companions, and followers;
The International Union of Muslim Scholars has been observing the political, social and economic conditions in Iraq – the country of great civilization, of Haroun Al-Rashid, of knowledge and scholars – and feeling pain for what Iraqi people have to endure of injustice, poverty, corruption, and exclusion. These conditions have driven our brothers in Sunni governorates in the centre and north of Iraq to rise calling for their just rights. Baghdad has later joined them, along with the Kurdish population, some leaders of Arab, Shiite clans, on top of them Sheikh Muqtada Al-Sadr, leader of the Shiite Islamist group.
Regrettably, the head of the government, Nouri Al-Maliki, met these legitimate demands with threats of extermination, despite his firm knowledge that tyrants witnessed before in Iraq who threatened to exterminate the Kurdish people were never able to. Stalin had also threatened the Muslim nations in Chechnya and Dagestan and others of annihilation but was never able to as nations remain while tyrants are the ones to end or be exterminated.
Before this disheveled situation in this dear country, we view that all Muslims, and rather, all civilized people who reaped the benefit of the Iraqi civilization must defend these legitimate rights. Hence, the IUMS asserts the following:
First: The IUMS values the stances of some Shiite brothers in joining the demands of the Sunni Muslims in the centre and north of Iraq.
Second: The IUMS demands the respected Shiite authorities, on top of them the honored Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani to issue a statement or fatwa edict stipulating the necessity of responding to these demands and hopes that such support will play a part in achieving unity, and averting the hideous ghost of sectarianism that separates people instead of uniting them, and harms them instead of bringing benefit.
{And say: "Work (righteousness): Soon will Allah observe your work, and His Messenger, and the Believers: Soon will you be brought back to the knower of what is hidden and what is open: then will He show you the truth of all that you have been doing."} [Quran 9:105]
Doha: 23 Safar 1434 H
Dated: 5 January 2013
Dr. Ali Al-Qaradaghi Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi
IUMS Secretary General IUMS President