Hawzah News Agency (Qom, Iran) – Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi, a Shia source of emulation in Qom, received a group of Sunni scholars in Imam al-Kadhim (a.s) seminary school in Qom on Wednesday, December 21. During the meeting, Grand Ayatollah asserted that discord among Muslim community causes a lot of problems in the Islamic world adding, “In Quran, Allah almighty has mentioned the main problem and he has also provided the cure for it. “

He added, “Discord is not the only problem in the Islamic world; rather the conflicts, destructions and wars that are caused by such discords within the Muslim community. If one contemplates about the consequences of such discords, they realize it’s useless to breed such discord,”

“Israel and the U.S. are safe and secure while Muslims are fighting many battles; Now that we’re going to start a movement towards Islamic unity they are doing everything they can to act against such unity,”

 Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi further added, “It’s really fortunate that great scholars of al-Azhar University have issued a fatwa approving of different Islamic schools including, four Sunni sects, Imammya Shi’ism and Zaydieh sect; Iranian scholars’ libraries are filled with books written by Sunni scholars and we’re not biased on our sources of knowledge,”

“I myself wrote an interpretation on Quran called Tafsir Nemooneh and in the course of writing this book I came to review and use many Sunni interpretations of Quran. In addition, Sunni scholars have asked for this book in order to read this Quranic interpretation; there’s a cooperative atmosphere between Shia and Sunni scholars  and Iran is also  country in which followers of both Islamic sects are living in a peaceful coexistence,”

Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi concluded, “Prophet Muhammad (a.s) managed to unite the people who had used to be at discord for a long time; by the advent of Islam, Allah Almighty resolved all the discords within the Islamic world and we as religious scholars need to adhere to Muhammad’s (a.s) teachings and further spread the message of unity,”

End.