An old fatwa by a Saudi scholar banning Muslims from helping Lebanon’s Hezbollah because it is Shia has sparked a debate on Islamist websites and in Arab media.

Issued several years ago by Sheikh Abdullah bin Jebreen, a former member of the Council of Senior Ulema, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, it describes Hezbollah as "rafidhi" - a derogatory term.

"It is not permissible to support this rafidhi party ... or pray for its victory, and we advise Sunnis to disavow it," the fatwa says.

The fatwa has been cited by some Sunni clerics and others writing on Islamist websites to argue that Sunnis should not back Hezbollah, which has been fighting Israel since the Jewish state launched a devastating offensive against the Shia party on July 12, after the group captured two Israeli soldiers.

Others have accused these clerics of seeking to provoke sectarian dissension.

But Sheikh Salman al-Odah, a moderate Saudi cleric who runs the Islam Today website, said bin Jebreen’s edict is "an old fatwa issued several years ago and does not apply to the current situation."

"All Muslims must stand by the entire Lebanese people and help them at the humanitarian, material and moral levels," Odah said.

Odah said some of those who have revived bin Jebreen’s fatwa may have done so because they are dismayed by events in Iraq, where they perceive the Shias as participating with US-led forces in killing Sunnis.

"They have not been careful to differentiate" between what is happening in Iraq and in Lebanon, he said.

Hezbollah is backed by Syria and Iran and there are "no channels (for ordinary Muslims) to provide tangible aid" to the group, according to Odah.

"But I, as a Muslim and Arab, feel happy when Hezbollah inflicts damage on the Zionists, and we should praise the resistance in the media," he said.

Saudi columnist and media adviser Jamal Khashoggi expressed regret that some scholars and preachers in his country were trying to "provoke a stupid sectarian dissension between Sunnis and Shias" and deplored the attempt to link bin Jebreen’s fatwa to the Saudi government’s criticism of Hezbollah.

Riyadh criticised Hezbollah without naming it at the beginning of the conflict for provoking the Israeli onslaught by capturing the Israeli soldiers.

Bin Jebreen’s old fatwa had been "invoked by an advocate of hatred in order to serve (the agenda) of Salafi extremists," Khashoggi wrote in the Emirati daily Al-Ittihad.

He said another cleric, Sheikh Nasser al-Omar, "who never made a secret of his antipathy for Shias," added his own "political reading to the fatwa" and went on Arab satellite channels to claim that "the current events prove the hatred that the Shias and Iran harbour toward Sunnis."

Such "nonsense" would not have been worthy of comment "had it not been wrongly interpreted by some as linked to the Saudi position, which initially criticised Hezbollah’s adventurism," Khashoggi said.

"The sectarian dimension was the last thing on the mind of the Saudi official who spelled out the Saudi position in the first statement issued after the outbreak of the crisis. The Saudi position would not have been any different if the (Sunni) Islamic Group or the Lebanese Communist Party had abducted the soldiers and triggered the crisis," Khashoggi wrote.

In a recent televised message, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned against reacting to purported anti-Hezbollah edicts in a manner that would benefit Israel.

"Positions or fatwas might be issued that undermine (Muslim) unity. We should not be influenced by them, and I warn against ... being dragged to inappropriate reactions, because reactions which are wrong, like these fatwas, will serve our enemies," Nasrallah said.

Prominent Qatar-based cleric Yusef al-Qaradawi called in an interview with Al Jazeera news channel for "supporting the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon" and criticised "calls which stoke up sectarianism."

PHOTO CAPTION

Sheikh Salman al-Odah. (Archive)

Gulf Times & AFP