The Mideast’s S-U-N-N-I Problem

Sharmine Narwani

​

This needs to be spelled out: The biggest threat to Middle East stability today is a Sunni one - and it comes not from its largely downtrodden population, but from the epicenter of current Sunni political and religious leadership.

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” – Confucius

The Shiites have their leadership. So too do Arab Christians, the Druze, Kurds and countless other sects, ethnic groups and tribes in the broader Middle East.

But who looks after the Sunni masses? What major Sunni leader speaks representatively on behalf of these tens of millions of constituents? Who ensures Sunni access to social mobility gives them a voice at the table and champions their key economic and political grievances?

We don’t typically think of majorities this way, but the Sunni Arab may be the single-most disenfranchised segment of the population in the Mideast today - lacking even one major national or regional leader who voices their aspirations.

Lebanese Sidon-based Sunni Sheikh Maher Hammoud is dismayed that issues like the liberation of Palestine, Islamic unity, anti-imperialism, resistance and other populist themes are being viewed as ‘Shia interests’ today – instead of the pan-Arab and pan-Muslim ideals they have traditionally represented.

“These slogans,” he says, “have not sprouted from the Shia Figh (Islamic jurisprudence), but rather from general Islamic Fiqh… But in the last 50 years, there are only two people who deserve the title of ‘Sunni leader’ with a real following: (Egypt’s Arab nationalist President) Gamal Abdel Nasser and (Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman) Yasser Arafat. Everyone felt that these men represented them.”

“At this point now,” Sheikh Hammoud stresses, “there is nobody to carry the hopes of the Sunni… If one were able to combine the political positions of Iran with the Sunni body, this will form a true launching point for the Muslims.”

Hammoud blames foreign – particularly Israeli and American – interests for creating “artificial” divisions in the Arab/Muslim world to prevent these independent themes from developing into a populist force. And the Saudis, he says, have been their handmaidens in the region:

“Unfortunately, the existence of Saudi Arabia, and its connection with the United States specifically, has prevented any development in this direction,” says the outspoken Sunni cleric, known for his rejection of divisive Shia vs. Sunni, Iranian vs. Arab narratives.

It is a common enough refrain – Hammoud claims a third of Lebanon’s Sunni population share these sentiments – but their voices are muffled by the sectarian and ethnocentric discourse dominating the mainstream, much of it fuelled by Saudi propaganda.

False Gods: Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism

In 2009, Dr. Abdul Latif Arabiyat, a moderate Sunni and founding member of Jordan’s Islamic Action Front - the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood - told me: “In the first year after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, about 80 books were published on the Shia,” most of them, he says, spinning negative narratives about Iran/Shia; many underwritten by the Saudis.

“I promise you,” Arabiyat continued, “in the many decades before this revolution, there were maybe three or four books on the Shia.”

The Iranians, of course, set about their revolution resuscitating all the populist themes that used to be the mainstay of Arab nationalism: resistance to imperialism, Palestine, rejection of Israel, self-determination – and even Muslim unity, which was seen by the Saudi monarchy as a direct challenge to its perception of itself as keepers of the Islamic faith.

But the Saudis are mainly Wahhabists, a fundamentalist, minority sect of Islam that, at its core, deems other Muslims who do not subscribe to its tenets – including the Shia and other Sunni - as infidels. In their earliest incarnation, says Alastair Crooke, a 20-year veteran of the study of Islamist movements, “their (Wahhabi) strategy - like that of ISIS today - was to bring the peoples whom they conquered into submission. They aimed to instill fear.” And they massacred, pillaged and plundered their way across the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Wahhabism, which Orientalist scholar Bernard Lewis calls a “lunatic fringe,” was ‘tidied up’ by the first Saudi King Abd al-Aziz to appeal to the British colonial arbiters of the day. Explains Crooke: It “was forcefully changed from a movement of revolutionary jihad and theological takfiri purification, to a movement of conservative social, political, theological, and religious da'wa (Islamic call) and to justifying the institution that upholds loyalty to the royal Saudi family and the King's absolute power.”

The Saudi monarchy and Wahhabi clergy struck a deal of sorts – each would uphold the position of the other, and together they would thrive. This union, and what came after, was almost entirely predicated on 'legitimacy' bestowed by the British colonial enterprise – and so a third leg makes up this unholy trinity: the unfailing support of Western power.

The Saudi ‘project’ therefore has never been an ‘Arab’ or ‘Muslim’ one. Its very existence depends so completely on a foreign, imperialist benefactor, and all the trappings of that external worldview.

This troika of interests – Wahhabi, Saudi and Western - has always sought a hegemony that cannot possibly flourish in an environment of local populism and self-determination.

Iran’s Islamic Revolution was another in a string of threats that organically undermined Saudi/Wahhabi/Western interests – as did Arab nationalism, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian resistance, communism and other unifying causes.

From 1979 onward, with an abundance of oil wealth, a convenient Iranian/Shia adversary and the slow encirclement of the Soviet Union, the Saudis took on the task of becoming the Mideast hegemon, Sunni leader and key Western proxy.

Funding Extremism

For decades, Saudi Arabia has liberally plowed its petrodollars into funding projects that support its regional standing. From the early days of building a quite useless, but dazzling, modern infrastructure – to the active establishment of itself as the pre-eminent voice of Sunni Islam (at times, usurping and co-opting the traditional Egyptian center al-Azhar) – the Saudis have ferociously worked to spread their ‘gospel’ and maintain the primacy of their allies.

Nowhere did this turn become as dangerous as in the funding of ‘deviance’ from the traditional Sunni/Sufist path of the majority of Muslims.

The funding and arming of the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980s to stave off Soviet influence in the region was a Saudi-CIA plan, hatched to great efficacy when Moscow retreated from Afghanistan.

But the plan left disastrous consequences. The Afghan militants were now well-trained and equipped with the kind of destabilizing know-how that has spread into neighboring states and beyond. It is well known that 15 of the 19 alleged perpetrators of 9/11 were Saudi citizens, as well as its alleged mastermind, Osama bin Laden. But less understood is how much the Saudi money-machine continues to fund Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups to this day.

Two years after the September 11 attacks, the US Senate’s Judiciary Committee held an extraordinary hearing on terrorism and its connection to Wahhabism, where Saudi Arabia was called the “epicenter” of terror funding for “principally Al-Qaeda but many other recipients as well.”

According to the testimony of national security expert Alex Alexiev, the Saudis, by their own count, had contributed $70 billion over 25 years to the funding of “what they call Islamist activities.” He continued:

“You are talking about an absolutely astounding amount of money being spent for the specific purpose of promoting, preaching Wahhabi hatred… They have used this amount of money to take over mosques around the world, to establish Wahhabi control of Islamic institutions, subsidize extremist madrassas in South Asia and elsewhere, control Islamic publishing houses. They currently control probably four-fifths of all Islamic publishing houses. And spend money, a lot of it, on aggressive proselytizing, apart from direct support of terrorism.”

Break down these “Islamist” activities to a country like Pakistan, and you have 10,000 Saudi-funded extremist madrassas (schools), one million children being indoctrinated into Wahhabi ideology, 15 percent of whom are foreign youth, 16,000 of whom are Arabs now “perfectly prepared for a career in jihad and extremist activities,” according to Alexiev.

Importantly, he added, the network of 250 Saudi ‘charities’ that funnels money globally, are entirely “government-controlled, government-sponsored, government-funded organizations.” We know this because of a 1993 Saudi law that prohibits “any collection of donations, zakat donations except under state supervision.”

In the years since that unprecedented hearing, we have been told ad nauseam that Washington has taken steps to crack down on its stalwart Saudi ally and that the late King Abdullah was instrumental in reforming the system to prevent the flow of funds to extremists. But evidence continues to suggest that the only hard reforms on this issue were taken internally to thwart terror activities against the Saudi state itself.

Four years after the Senate hearing, Under Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Levey – the lead US official on tracking terror financing - told ABC News that the Saudis had not prosecuted a single person identified as a terror financier by the US and the UN:

“If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country,” said Levey, “it would be Saudi Arabia.”

In 2009, a secret WikiLeaks cable signed off by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reads, in part: "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide…Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT (Laskhar-e Taiba), and other terrorist groups…It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority.”

Fast-forward to today, and clearly nothing has changed - except the Saudis are now backing terror groups like ISIS. Retired US Senator Bob Graham, a co-chair of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, connected those dots in an interview last year with Canada’s CBC Radio:

“The connection is a direct one. Not only has Saudi Arabia been promoting this extreme form of religion, but it also has been the principal financier, first of Al-Qaeda then of the various Al-Qaeda franchises around the world specifically the ones in Somalia and Yemen and now the support of ISIS.”

A few months later, US Vice President Joe Biden painted an updated picture of Saudi complicity in terror:

“Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The Turks…the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war…they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”

American complicity

Biden and others, however, fail to mention the United States’ complicity in the Saudi terror-backing project.

Writing about the WikiLeaks missive that revealed Saudi Arabia’s ongoing role in terror financing, the Guardian questioned American meekness in confronting this problem: “Any criticisms are generally offered in private. The cables show that when it comes to powerful oil-rich allies US diplomats save their concerns for closed-door talks.”

In all the current military theaters in the Middle East where extremist Sunni militants are waging wars against Arab populations, the United States is engaged militarily on the same side as the Saudis – to fight the very militancies created by the Saudis.

To compound the craziness, the United States continues to sell eye-popping amounts of heavy weapons to the Saudi government. In the first year of the Arab uprisings, the US Congress approved $67 billion of arms sales to Riyadh – the largest in history - while the British and French keep vying with each other to sell billions more.

Washington has been utterly complicit in backing Saudi Arabia’s ascendance, furnishing it with unprecedented protection and the most sophisticated weapons arsenal money can buy. The US has even trained many of the Wahhabis on the frontlines of global terror – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere. How is the US any less of a terrorist-supporter than the Saudis?

Maybe Washington’s problem is not really with ‘terrorism,’ provided it takes place far from US borders, thousands of miles away. Maybe Washington’s main interest is to enable its Saudi proxy to keep a lid on Arab populations, via destabilization if necessary, so that popular Arab sentiments remain unrealized.

Because, under any circumstances other than the Arab realization of self-determination, the Saudi-Wahhabi-western alliance can chug on, unimpeded.

Hijacking the Sunni masses

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the counter-revolutionary forces that actively sought to derail popular Arab uprisings and re-direct them against Saudi-US regional foes, are struggling.

The uprisings were unseating mostly US and Saudi backed autocrats, who spent decades burying popular Arab issues - resuscitating 'honor and dignity' slogans about Palestine, representative governance, Muslim unity.

Briefly, the Arab world regained hope as it watched the much-bullied Muslim Brotherhood (MB) rise to leadership positions in several states. That optimism turned quickly to despair as the MB instead supported external attacks on Syria, fanned the flames of sectarianism and kept a chilling silence over Israel's 2012 military devastation of the Gaza Strip.

Sunni masses in Egypt and Tunisia rejected this new Sunni leadership - and the popularity of Turkish MB President Recep Tayyip Erdogan plummeted alongside.

The Saudis helped to oust the MB, and have essentially bought or bullied their way back into the top-dog position in the Arab world today. But in doing so - and by leading the counter-revolution - they solicited the help of the extremists that have set the region aflame.

Arabs realize this. The Saudi project is faltering as it turns Yemen to dust, escalates in Syria and Iraq, tries to prop up Bahrain and confronts Muslim Iran. And Saudi popularity is taking unprecedented hits among the Arab Sunni masses.

A 2013 Pew poll revealed that "Saudi Arabia’s standing has slipped substantially among key Middle Eastern publics,"dropping (since 2007) by 13 percent in Egypt and the Palestinian territories, 14 percent in Turkey, and a whopping 31 percent in Lebanon. Since Riyadh's unpopular bombing of Yemen began in late March, majority-Sunni Pakistanis have loudly rejected participating as paid foot soldiers in another of the Kingdom's wars. And Egyptians, who have benefitted to the tune of billions of dollars in Saudi largesse, have turned on their benefactors too in countless editorials and personal swipes at Saudi royals. And a majority of suicide bombers in Iraq today are Saudi nationals - further decimating support from that war-torn neighbor.

Riyadh's sectarian projects are also faltering. After brokering an unholy union between Iraq's secular Baathists and ISIS, last week 80 Sunni tribal leaders reached out to Shia militias to help them retake the Anbar Province from the Takfiri militants. In Syria, it is a Saudi/Turkish/US/Qatari-led alliance that has brought together Al-Qaeda and co-extremists to wrest control in the north from the Syrian army, most of whose rank and file are Sunni.

The destabilization has seeped throughout the region, making the life of the disenfranchised Sunni majority - most of whom are under the age of 30 and poor - worse than ever before.

Would there be ISIS-Al-Qaeda-Al-Nusra-Taliban-Ansar-Al-Sharia-Al-Shabab-Boko-Haram if Saudi Arabia and its extremist Wahhabi ideology did not exist? Certainly not. Would there be a Saudi Arabia this empowered if it were not coddled, protected and weaponized by the United States? Certainly not.

There is a Sunni problem in the Middle East today. And it is going to get bigger, exponentially - unless, in common Saudi-parlance, you “cut off the head of the snake.” The Sunni may not have much in terms of leadership, but this Wahhabi beheading may be the only thing that allows them the freedom to mobilize behind genuine aspirations.

Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Middle East geopolitics. She is a former senior associate at St. Antony's College, Oxford University and has a master’s degree in International Relations from Columbia University. Sharmine has written commentary for a wide array of publications, including Al Akhbar English, the New York Times, the Guardian, Asia Times Online, Salon.com, USA Today, the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera English, BRICS Post and others.

ISIS: The mystery behind the monster

“… when you see them pray, you will look to them and think they are better than you; when they fast, you will think that they are better than you; they will recite Qur’an very well but it will never reach their throats, and they will leave the deen (the religion) like the arrow from the bow…”

This was a warning from Prophet Muhammad about a group who were to come at a later time.

In early Islamic history, there was a group called Khwarij who fitted this description. They were zealots, but apparently failed to comprehend the spirit of Islam. Yet, hordes of youths lured by the Khwarij’s fanaticism left their homes to join the group. Ali, Islam’s fourth Caliph, declared war against them fearing their harmful ideology would destroy Islam.

Today this phenomenon is happening once again; thousands, of youths, including girls as young as 16, are leaving their homes to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), whose brutality knows no bounds.  These youths erroneously believe that ISIS is fighting the cause of Islam and the cause it champions – the establishment of an Islamic caliphate – is worth dying for.  Among those who left their homes to join ISIS were three British teenagers – Shamima Begum, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana. They made international headlines with the British media describing them as Jihadi brides. This week three British youths were arrested in Turkey while on their way to Syria.

The canker is spreading and stopping this is, first and foremost, the responsibility of the Muslim world. Addressing the European parliament in Strasbourg some ten days ago, Jordan’s King Abdullah said ISIS was a problem within Islam and therefore it was the responsibility of the Muslims to e
radicate it.

 “We will not allow them to hijack our faith,” the monarch said, pointing out that the terrorists’ acts ran counter to basic Islamic values such as mercy, peace and tolerance.

As the ISIS terror continues, a big question mark looms large over efficacy of the US-led military campaign against the group.  Air strikes on ISIS targets in Syria by the United States and its Western and Middle Eastern allies began in September last year. Six months later, ISIS is still a force to be reckoned with. In Iraq, government troops and the Kurdish Peshmerga militia are struggling to flush out the ISIS from key cities and regions, even though they are getting help from the US and neighbouring Iran.



Why is ISIS so formidable? Only a year ago it was an army of less than 25,000 rebels. Today it has a fighting force of some 200,000 and its influence is spreading in the Middle East. On Wednesday, gunmen suspected to be having links with ISIS killed 19 foreign tourists at a museum in Tunisia’s capital Tunis. In Libya this week, the rebel government in Tripoli launched a military campaign against groups that have pledged allegiance to ISIS.

The monster needs to be stopped. But who created the monster? It is the West and its Gulf allies. Their main aim was to oust Syria’s Hafez al-Assad because Syria under Assad was a key link in the Iran-led Shiite alliance in the region and had rejected Saudi-Qatari proposals to build energy pipelines to the Mediterranean across Syria. Assad in a recent interview hinted that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was programmed by the US when he was a prisoner in Iraq.

Al Baghdadi’s military successes began in 2013 with a jail break in Iraq. Hundreds of hardcore militants who escaped from the prison were sent to Syria to fight Assad’s forces. Last year al-Baghdadi’s forces captured large areas of Iraqi territory. The lightning speed with which Iraq’s US-trained forces retreated in the face of the ISIS advance implied some kind of collaboration at a high level in the Iraqi military. The case of ISIS is not black and white. It is one of the cloak and dagger cases, for which the Middle East is notorious -- from the Arabian Nights folklore and the saga of Lawrence of Arabia to the creation of al-Qaeda and George W. Bush’s oil-centric tall stories about weapons of mass destruction.

ISIS was directly and indirectly armed and financed by powerful countries both in the West and the Middle East. Recently, Iran’s Fars News Agency carried a shocking story which many Western media outlets chose not to publish or broadcast. The news items claimed that Iraqi troops shot down two British planes carrying weapons to ISIS terrorists.

The news agency quoted Hakem al-Zameli, head of the Iraqi Parliament's National Security and Defence Committee, as saying that Iraqi parliament had sought explanation from London.  He disclosed that Baghdad was receiving daily reports from people and security forces in Anbar Province on numerous flights by US-led coalition planes that airdrop weapons and supplies for ISIS.

The same news story also claimed that Iraqi troops had found US and Israeli made weapons in areas purged of ISIS terrorists, suggesting some Israeli links with the terror group.

In his address to the US Congress on March 3, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu labelled Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorists while he projected ISIS as a lesser enemy than Iran. This together with the lack of support from ISIS for the Palestinian cause, even while Gaza was being pounded by Israel last year, and the ISIS’s ‘coexistence’ with Israeli troops at the ISIS-held territories adjoining the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights points to a possible collaboration with Israel.

In another development, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said this week that a man working for a foreign intelligence group helped the three British girls to travel to Syria via Turkey. The Turkish media later reported that the man worked for the spy agency of Canada, a country that works closely with Israel.

As various intelligence groups destabilise the Middle East by manipulating the ISIS, it appears that the Middle East is being pushed into a deeper abyss.  The US says the way-out is the resumption of the Geneva process aimed at a solution to the Syrian crisis. But after hinting last week that it would talk to the Syrian government, Washington now says it will not. The deadlock continues. So does the mayhem in the Middle East. 

Pledge to end sectarian violence in Pakistan

By Ahmet Aslan

Pakistan has been gripped by sectarian violence for decades but in recent times, it has become more vicious. Committed Muslims, representing “Shi’is” and “Sunnis” from many parts of the world gathered in Turkey to work toward ending this unnecessary conflict in the Ummah. While Syria and Iraq have been engulfed in bloody sectarian violence, a promising development took place recently to end sectarian bloodshed in Pakistan. Last month, members of some of the most influential Shi‘i and Sunni groups in Pakistan met in Bodrum, a popular holiday destination in Turkey, to end the ongoing bloodshed that has claimed the lives of thousands of innocent people since 2000 and even earlier. The meeting was initiated and organized by the Universal Justice Network, an umbrella organization that represents more than 200 Muslim NGOs around the world. The highlight of the three-day meeting was Imam Muhammad al-‘Asi’s speech titled “On Search of the Prophet and Unity/Perils of Disunity.” Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) and mufassir of the noble Qur’an, The Ascendant Qur’an, seven volumes of which have been printed so far, Imam al-‘Asi has a very good grasp of the affairs of the Ummah. In addressing the issue of sectarianism, Imam al-‘Asi highlighted the Prophet’s (pbuh) strong connection to the society he lived in and his outstanding exemplary role in dealing with the affairs of society. In particular, Imam al-‘Asi emphasized that the Prophet (pbuh) always considered the people to whom he was delivering the message as his people (ahlī) even though they were mushriks. He stressed that according to the noble Qur’an this was also the practice of all the earlier prophets as they always played a unifying role in society rather than being divisive. He concluded that while there are contextual issues regarding the ongoing sectarianism in the Muslim world, he pointed to the lack of “social imān” in Muslim societies as the main reason. What this means is that Muslims are not involved in the affairs of society as they ought to be thereby allowing venomous concepts to seep in. Imam al-‘Asi’s thoughts, borne of deep contemplation of the Qur’an, the Sirah and Muslim societies were extremely well received by all participants at the conference. They all accepted his arguments and there was almost unanimous acclaim for his deep contemplation over the issue. Subsequent meetings between the participants, however, showed that Muslim leaders of the Ummah needed more contemplation and self-criticism to fully grasp the real causes of the problem. Almost all participants unanimously pointed to foreign influence on and interference in Muslim societies, namely British and the US imperialism, which created and fuelled the schism among the Shi‘is and Sunnis in Pakistan and elsewhere. They also named lack of education, poverty, cultural baggage and national characteristics (i.e., emotionalism) yet they failed to acknowledge their share of the problem, not fully imbibing the social instructions of the Qur’an and the Prophet (pbuh). Western powers together with their local regimes have indeed incited and exploited the rifts among Muslims, but it is the Muslims themselves that have allowed them to exploit these weaknesses. If Muslims do little or nothing but watch the heinous crimes committed against their brothers and sisters in Islam, such interference will continue. Nevertheless, the delegates discussed some of the core issues affecting Pakistani society and the ongoing sectarian violence and tried to find practical solutions to the problem. After three days of deliberations, they signed a declaration containing 11 points that all Muslim groups should adopt. According to the declaration “abusing the family of the Prophet (pbuh) — including his wives — companions and relatives as well as the religious opinions and beliefs of Muslim groups is haram and is against the Shari‘ah.” Further, the declaration stated that “differences within the Ummah should never lead to issuing takfir against fellow Muslims, and if it does lead to issuing takfir we declare such action to be haram and against the Shari‘ah.” The declaration also acknowledged the disruptive and diversionary effect of sectarian conflict by stating that “the conflicts in Palestine and Kashmir are fundamental issues facing this Ummah and on which there is unanimity.” The declaration strongly condemned “the instigation of sectarian division and internecine conflict within the Ummah to divert attention away from Palestine and Kashmir.” The meeting and declaration that emerged were promising developments since it was the first time that representatives of influential Pakistani groups from both Shi‘i and Sunni backgrounds came together to discuss very serious issues affecting Muslims, and they managed to come up with a declaration that denounced sectarian rhetoric and violence. Participants included Sahibzada Muhammad Hamid Raza, head of Markazi Dar ul Uloom Jamia Rizvia Trust, the biggest and oldest madrasah of the Sunni Barelvi sect in Pakistan; Allama Ibtisam Elahi Zaheer, who is a renowned scholar in Pakistan and has served as Secretary-General of Jami‘at Ahle Hadith Pakistan and Chairman of the Qur’an o Sunnah movement; Allama Syed Niaz Hussain Naqvi, who has been a senior judge in the high courts of the Islamic Republic of Iran for 27 years and is currently the principal of religious education institution Howza Ilmia Jamia al-Muntazar; Allama Muhammad Sadiq Qureshi, vice president of Minhaj-ul-Qur’an International; Liyaqat Baloch, General Secretary of Jamaat al-Islami Pakistan and Member of the Punjab provincial assembly; and Muhammad Sarwat Ejaz Qadri, President of Pakistan Sunni Tehreek. The attendance of Allama Muhammad Sadiq Qureshi was especially significant since his organization Minhaj-ul-Qur’an had adopted a sectarian discourse until last year. Then its leader, Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri changed the organization’s outlook by denouncing its sectarian stance and embraced a more unifying position. Given the seriousness of the issue, there were scholars and activists from a number of other Muslim countries and communities including South Africa, Turkey, Iran and Lebanon. Inspired by wide-ranging discussions and the conference declaration, the participants decided to work toward concrete solutions for ending sectarian violence and creating a cohesive and united Muslim community in Pakistan that perhaps could serve as a model for other parts of the Muslim world. As part of their commitment to keeping the momentum for unity alive, the participants decided to meet again in a year’s time, also in Turkey. The follow-up meeting would evaluate the work done and reflect on changes implemented in their practices. And perhaps they could come up with more tangible solutions to this artificially created problem that is tearing the fabric of the Ummah apart.