* Iran denounces reported desecration of Damascus-area
shrine
* Says attack could trigger wider sectarian conflagration
* Radical Sunni rebels targeting “pagan” Shi’ite holy sites
* Hezbollah warns of big consequences if Shi’ite mausoleum
hit
May 8 (Reuters) – Iran has condemned what it called a Syrian
rebel attack on a shrine where remains of a 7th-century figure
revered by Shi’ite Muslims were dug up and taken away,
highlighting how Syria’s civil war is inflaming sectarian anger.
A report of the desecration of the Hojr Ibn Oday shrine near
Damascus, posted with photographs on Facebook in late April,
could not be verified but it prompted the Shi’ite leadership in
Tehran to urge respect for holy sites in a conflict where the
rebels include Sunni Islamists hostile to Iran.
Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted by Iranian
Press TV saying: “Such acts could ignite the fire of religious
rifts among followers of the divine religions”. He urged
international organisations to safeguard sacred Islamic and
Christian places in Syria, an ancient crossroads for religions.
Syria’s two-year-old conflict pits insurgents, most of whom
are drawn from the country’s Sunni majority, against
Iranian-allied President Bashar al-Assad and an elite dominated
by his Alawite minority, whose faith is an offshoot of Shi’ite
Islam.
The rebel movement includes Syrian and foreign fighters
imbued with ideas of Sunni Islam, prevalent in Saudi Arabia,
which deem Shi’ites apostates and their shrines as unIslamic
pagan symbols that should be smashed. Some Islamist militants
pledge allegiance to al Qaeda, whose interpretation of Sunni
teaching has fueled sectarian bloodletting in neighbouring Iraq.
There have been increasing reports of some of Syria’s many
Shi’ite shrines being desecrated as Sunni rebels have gained
ground since late last year, but are difficult to verify, given
restrictions on independent media access to the country.
The Facebook page purported to show the Hojr Ibn Oday
sanctuary, which was a popular pilgrimage site in the Damascus
suburb of Adra before Syria’s conflict killed off tourism, had
been pillaged and Oday’s bones exhumed. A photograph showed two
bearded gunmen in camouflage beside what looked like an opened
crypt in the floor of a room that had ornate decoration.
In Tehran, local media said “large numbers” of Iranian
students had rallied in protest at the attack and Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the “bitter incident” and urged
Muslims around the world to voice outrage.
IRAQI SHI’ITES
In another Damascus suburb is the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, a
gold mausoleum dedicated to the daughter of Imam Ali, the
7th-century son-in-law of Mohammad who is the second most
revered figure in Shi’ite Islam after the Prophet himself.
Zeinab’s shrine is intricately adorned with blue ceramics
and surrounded by a white marble courtyard which attracted
pilgrims in droves before the uprising against Assad erupted.
Iraqi Shi’ite militants say some of their volunteers have
entered Syria to protect the site as Sunni rebels have battled
their way to the gates of the Syrian capital.
They say they are motivated partly by the desire to prevent
a recurrence of the sectarian carnage that followed the 2006
destruction of the important al-Askari mosque in the Iraqi city
of Samarra, which provoked Shi’ite fury against Sunnis there.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Iranian-backed Lebanese
Shi’ite Hezbollah movement, also an ally of Assad, warned on
April 30 of “serious repercussions” if Sunni rebels attacked the
Sayyida Zeinab shrine.
In December, Human Rights Watch said, Sunni Islamists burned
and looted a husseiniya, or Shi’ite prayer hall, in the northern
province of Idlib. A video showing the event was posted online.
Other renowned monuments to antiquity in Syria have also
been battered in the war. The souk in Aleppo’s Old City, a
UNESCO World Heritage Site, has burned down. The 2,000-year-old
Roman temple and colonnade in Palmyra have been badly damaged.
And fighting has been inching towards the 7th-century
Umayyad mosque in central Damascus that features a shrine said
to contain the head of St. John the Baptist.
(Reporting by Marcus George and Yeganeh Torbati in Dubai and
Erika Solomon and Oliver Holmes in Beirut; Writing by Mark
Heinrich; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
