MOST OF Ireland’s Muslims are Sunni, but there is one Shia mosque at the Ahlul-Bait Islamic Centre in Milltown, Dublin.
Unlike Sunnis, Shias believe that Ali ibn Abi Talib (Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law) was the divinely-ordained successor to Muhammad, and they have rejected the legitimacy of the three caliphs (leaders) who succeeded the Prophet.
The word Shia comes from the phrase “Shi’at Ali”, meaning the “Party of Ali”.
Imam Dr Ali Al-Saleh, at Milltown, estimates that there are probably 5,000 Shia Muslims in Ireland, with approximately 1,000 of those from Iraq. Imam Al-Saleh is a member of the Irish Council of Imams and has good relations with his Sunni co-religionists in Ireland.
He has spoken of incidents involving Sunni and Shia children at the Muslim school at Clonskeagh, notably children of parents from Iraq, where old bigotries have flared again since the US-led invasion of that country five years ago.
He has also spoken of a fear of a rise in Wahhabism among Iraqi Muslims in Ireland. This is a fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam.
Recently, Imam Al-Saleh and Imam Hussein Halawa, of the Islamic Cultural Centre at Clonskeagh, issued a joint statement “on behalf of the Muslim community in Ireland, Sunni and Shi’ites”, saying that they were “united by their beliefs in Islam”.
They faced one direction in their prayer and they believed in one and the same Prophet, they said.