THE IMAM of Ireland's only Shia Islamic Centre, at Milltown in Dublin, and the imam of the Sunni Islamic Cultural Centre at Clonskeagh have issued a joint statement denying reports of a major dispute between them.
Imam Al al-Saleh, of the Ahlul-bait Islamic Centre in Milltown, and Imam Hussein Halawa, of the Islamic Cultural Centre at Clonskeagh, said "on behalf of the Muslim community in Ireland, Sunni and Shi'ites", that Muslims in Ireland were "united by their beliefs in Islam". They faced one direction in their prayer and they believed in one and the same prophet.
They were responding to a report in Timemagazine online this week, headed "Ireland's Sunni-Shi'ite Divide". The article quoted Prof Tarag Sammaree, a 58-year-old Sunni, formerly of Baghdad University and a long-time Baath Party member in Iraq, as saying: "Sunnis worship God; Shi'ites worship people."
Pictured against the Islamic Cultural Centre at Clonskeagh, he claimed that he and his son were kidnapped by a Shia militia and tortured for over a year at the Jadiriya prison in Baghdad. He said that he does not know the fate of his son. "It's a tragedy," he said, accusing the Shias of turning his country into a tool of Iran.
The article quoted Imam al-Saleh as saying that "a Sunni believes that the Shi'ite is inferior". Speaking to The Irish Times lastnight, Imam al-Saleh said he had told the reporters who wrote the article: "In Iraq, a Sunni believes that the Shi'ite is inferior."
Ali Selim, secretary to Imam Halawa, said he had spoken to Prof Sammaree yesterday, and he had claimed he was misquoted. "He didn't say that. What he said was that 'Sunnis worship Allah and Shi'ites worship Allah, but Shi'ites have a different concept of Imam'," Mr Selim said.
Imam al-Saleh agreed that he was reported correctly on incidents involving Sunni and Shia children at the Muslim school in Clonskeagh, and of his fears of a rise in Ireland of Wahhabism, the fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam.
In their statement, the imams said: "Muslims live together in Ireland in harmony and they have nothing to do with the clashes outside Ireland . . . Our Islamic centres preach moderation and promote the language of dialogue." And, "while condemning violence and extremism", they appealed to Muslims in Ireland to "continue abiding by the law of the State in which they reside".
