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Sunday 29 May 2011 - 09:39

Shiaphobia – the Islamophobia no one talks about

Story Code : 75356
Shiaphobia – the Islamophobia no one talks about
The problem is that these same organizations, which claim to combat Islamophobia, at the same time, promote Shiaphobia.
Speakers at major Islamic conferences in Sweden routinely mock Shi’ites and call them by the derogatory term “Rafidah”.
In April this year an Islamic youth organization in the city of Gothenburg invited a preacher to speak about Islamophobia and how to deal with it. It would have been fine, but the speaker turned out to be an Islamophobe himself, namely a Shiaphobe!
The preachers name is Bilal Philips, a Canadian convert to the Wahhabi sect, which is steeped in animosity toward all other Muslim school of thought, especially Shi’ites. The person who was supposed to speak against Islamophobia was himself an Islamophobe!
The Wahhabi Sect was founded by Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab in the 18th C. in present day Saudi Arabia. Wahhabis consider the majority of the world Muslims to be heretics. They insult both Shia and Sunni scholars and hurl absurd accusations at them, such as claiming they “worship graves”.
In fact not only Shi’ites, but also traditional, Non-Wahhabi sunnis are persecuted in Saudi Arabia.
If these organizations were truly concerned about Islamophobia, then they wouldn’t tolerate Shiaphobia, that is spreading hatred against one fifth of the worlds Muslims.
The Wahhabis remained a tiny sect for more than a century until oil was discovered in the Wahhabi kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since then the US ally Saudi Arabia has been funding Wahhabi schools and mosques and other institutions all over the world, trying to convert traditional Sunnis into Wahhabis. Shiaphobia has followed in the footsteps of Wahhabism.
In Sweden youngsters are offered scholarships to study at the Wahhabi university of Medina in Saudi Arabia. When they return they immediately join the effort of preaching Shiaphobia, which seems to be the sixth pillar of Wahhabi Islam. Bilal Philips got his education in Medina.
Saudi Arabia is the main producer and exporter of Shiaphobia in the world. Wahhabism and Shiaphobia are the only intellectual products of Saudi Arabia which are (in)famous abroad.
The real purpose of Shiaphobia is to isolate and weaken the Islamic Republic of Iran by creating suspicion and doubts in the minds of simple Muslims.
Unlike the intellectually and culturally barren land of Saudi Arabia Iran is a land of poets, of great thinkers, artists and mystics. And it is this cultural and intellectual force which, in the long run, constitutes the greater threat to Western Secular culture, not the stupid and shallow Wahhabism.
The Wahhabi Sect will never be able to create a modern Islamic State and will inevitably decay into a marginalized subculture similar to the Amish in America.
Even though Shiaphobia is worst form of Islamophobia it is still an unknown phenomenon. Nobody talks about it.
These days we are witnessing the terrible effects of years of Shiaphobic propaganda: the massacre in Bahrain. Demonizing Shi’ites is not without consequences. Sooner or later, when the hatred reaches a climax, people will go from words to action.
The two main critics of Islamophobia in Sweden, Mattias Gardell, professor of Religion at Uppsala university, and the journalist Andreas Malm, have never ever raised their voices against the most sever and vulgar and ugly form of Islamophobia in the contemporary world: Shiaphobia.
Gardell has written an entire book on the subject of Islamophobia without mentioning Shiaphobia with a single word. Andreas Malm likewise has written a 700 page book on the “hatred towards Muslims” without mentioning the hatred towards Shias on even a single page.
This might sound strange, but the Islamophobic party Sweden Democrats (SD), our equivalent of Geert Wilders Freedom Party in Holland, is in fact less Islamophobic than the Wahhabi regime of Saudi Arabia.
The Sweden Democrats has started an “Anti-Islamization Fund” in order to combat what they perceive as the “Islamization” of Swedish society. My advice to them is: Give the money to the Wahhabis! They will do a better job than you in destroying Islam. Their aim is to strips Islam of everything which is not Wahhabi, which means all great thinkers, mystics and scholars in the history of Islam. We will have nothing left except grave bashing fanatics, which is exactly what the Islamophobes wants.
Shiaphobia is interlaced with Wahhabism. Wherever there is Wahhabism there is Shiaphobia. The problem with Shiaphobia cannot be solved without solving the problem of Wahhabism.
© Islam Times

Mohamed Omar is a Swedish poet and freelance writer.
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