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AMP Report - January 12, 2006
American Muslims stunned at vandalism on
Shia mosques and businesses in Detroit
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
American Muslim community is stunned at the attacks on the Shia mosques and businesses in Detroit, Michigan and sees it a spill over of the Iraq war. American Muslim organizations have condemned the unprecedented attacks carried out against at least a dozen Shia-owned businesses and two mosques in Detroit, last week.
The attacks came a week after Shias in Detroit celebrated the execution of the former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The celebrations were broadcast repeatedly on TV.
The Iraqi Shia owner of one restaurant said that he had received a threatening phone call from a man who cussed at him in Arabic and English before his establishment was vandalized, according to Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
There are about 500,000 Muslims in southeast Michigan of which about 80,000 are Shias. The Detroit area has roughly 55 mosques including seven Shia mosques. The local Shia community has grown because of an influx of immigration during the 1990s from the southern part of Iraq, which is dominated by Shias.
American Muslim organizations denounced the attacks and called for maintaining traditional Shia-Sunni unity. The Islamic Shura Council of Michigan condemned the attacks and said that Islam does not condone vandalism or desecration of any house of worship.
American Muslim Voice while denounceing the attacks said that surely it was a consequence of increased sectarian tensions resulting from the execution of Saddam Hussein and the continuing escalation of sectarian violence in Iraq. The AMV Executive Director Samina Faheem Sundas said that the attacks were surprising since there had never been any conflict or differences between Shias and Sunnis in the United States.
While the division between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims sometimes leads to conflict in other places in the world, the seven-million strong American Muslim community is generally unified.
"Violence against any house of worship is totally unacceptable and should be condemned by people of all faiths," Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Dawud Walid stated. "We call on the federal government to probe these incidents as possible hate crimes.”
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) called on American Muslim leaders of all backgrounds to condemn the attacks. MPAC encourages Muslim leaders to reinforce intrafaith relations and to prevent domestic tensions between Sunnis and Shias.
On January 10, dozens of Shia and Sunni leaders met in Dearborn and called for unity in the wake of vandalism. About two-thirds of the clergy and leaders in attendance were Sunni and the rest Shia. Imams agreed to preach about unity during Friday sermons.
Since the first signs of sectarian conflict in Iraq became public in early 2004, American Muslim groups have worked to promote intra-faith dialogue and understanding among American Shias and Sunnis in order to prevent a domestic incarnation of rising discord in the Middle East.
In Summer 2005, a number of American Muslim organizations held a series of forums with nationally-recognized American Sunni and Shia leaders which resulted in a joint resolution condemning the sectarian violence in Iraq. The leaders included Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, the President of the Fiqh Council of North America and former President of the Islamic Society of North America, and Sayed Baquir Kashmiri, director of the Imam Mahdi Association of Marjaeya (the liason office of Ayatullah Sayyid Ali Sistani in North America).
The leaders called on internationally recognized Muslim scholars from Cairo (Egypt), Qum (Iran), and Najaf (Iraq) to make public statements deploring the bloodshed caused by the exploitation of sectarian differences.
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