CAIRO: The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the largest Islamist political movements in the Arab world, rejected on Thursday sectarian fatwas by Saudi clerics against supporting Hezbollah in its fight against Israel. Several Saudi clerics have issued religious opinions or fatwas banning support for the Lebanese guerrilla group. It is not allowed to support this Shiite party, to operate under its control or to pray for their victory, one Wahhabi authority, Sheikh Abdullah bin Jabreen, said. Our advice to Sunnis is to have nothing to do with them. Mohamed Habib, the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is also Sunni but not Wahhabi, told Reuters: This is not the time for [issuing such fatwas] and this is not the right circumstance. This fatwa gives the impression that there is a Shiite danger that threatens the region and introduces division at the level of the Arab and Muslim world. A statement by Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Mahdi Akef on Wednesday referred obliquely to the Saudi fatwas, saying that some people were trying to revive old sectarian divisions. Some governments are trying to disguise their failure to assist the resistance and even support for the Zionist aggression and American arrogance by bringing up matters such as the differences between the Shia and the Sunna and by saying that the Lebanese resistance is working for Iran, it said. Habib added: [Hezbollah] does not claim it is defending the Shia as much as it is a national resistance and that it defends Lebanon and Lebanon alone. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, has no clerics among the top leadership and does not claim to be an authority on religious matters. Wahhabism, the Islamic revival movement founded in the 18th century, has always been hostile to Shiite practices such as the veneration of the Prophet Mohammed s family and making pilgrimage to tombs. Reuters
