Top Saudi cleric says Iran leaders not Muslims as haj row mounts
One of Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi religious leaders has said that members of the Shia sect of Islam - including many Iranians, Hezbollah, and the Assad family - are not Muslims following Iranian criticism of a 2015 hajj stampede which killed hundreds of Persians; Iran will not allow its citizens to go on hajj this year.
The war of words on the eve of the mass pilgrimage will deepen a long-running rift between the Sunni kingdom and the Shia revolutionary power. They back opposing sides in Syria's civil war and a list of other conflicts across the Middle East.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message published on Monday, criticized Saudi Arabia over how it runs the hajj after a crush last year killed hundreds of Iranian pilgrims. He said Saudi authorities had "murdered" some of them, describing Saudi rulers as godless and irreligious.
The Sept. 24, 2015, stampede and crush of pilgrims killed at least 2,426 people, according to an Associated Press count based on state media reports and officials' comments from 36 of the over 180 countries that sent citizens to the hajj.
The official Saudi toll of 769 people killed and 934 injured has not changed since Sept. 26. The kingdom has never addressed the discrepancy, nor has it released any results of an investigation they promised to conduct over the disaster.
Responding to a question by Saudi newspaper Makkah, Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh said he was not surprised at Khamenei's comments.
"We have to understand that they are not Muslims ... Their main enemies are the followers of Sunnah (Sunnis)," al-Sheikh was quoted as saying, remarks republished by the Arab News.
He described Iranian leaders as sons of "magus", a reference to Zoroastrianism, the dominant belief in Persia until the Muslim Arab invasion of the region that is now Iran 13 centuries ago.
"Bigotry"
Al al-Sheikh's remarks drew an acerbic retort from Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who said they were evidence of bigotry among Saudi leaders.
"Indeed; no resemblance between the Islam of Iranians & most Muslims & bigoted extremism that Wahhabi top cleric & Saudi terror masters preach," Zarif wrote on his Twitter account.
Saudi authorities normally seek to avoid public discussion of whether Shia are Muslims, but implicitly recognize them as such by welcoming them to the hajj, and by accepting Iranian visits to the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Tensions between the two countries have been rising since Riyadh cut ties with Tehran in January following the storming of its embassy in Tehran, itself a response to the Saudi execution of dissident Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
The custodian of Islam's most revered places in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia stakes its reputation on organizing hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam which every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to is obliged to undertake at least once.
Riyadh said 769 pilgrims were killed in the 2015 disaster, the highest hajj death toll since a crush in 1990. Counts of fatalities by countries who repatriated bodies showed that more than 2,000 people may have died, more than 400 of them Iranians.
Iran blamed the 2015 disaster on organizers' incompetence. Pilgrims from Iran will be unable to attend hajj, which officially starts on Sept. 11, this year after talks between the two countries on arrangements broke down in May.
The split between Islam's main sects dates to a dispute among Muslims over who would rule their community after the death of the Prophet Mohammad, and Shia still regard his descendents as a line of imams blessed with divine guidance.
Today such disagreements over history remain emotive points of tension between the sects, but they are also divided over day -to-day issues including differing interpretations of Islamic law and the role and organization of the clergy.
In the Wahhabi teaching of Sunni Islam followed by the Saudi clergy and government, Shia doctrine about imams is seen as incompatible with the concept of a monotheistic God.
Crime and Punishment
Meanwhile, Iran's president called on the Muslim world on Wednesday to "punish" Saudi Arabia following last year's hajj crush and stampede that killed hundreds, the latest criticism by Iran ahead of the annual pilgrimage.
Hassan Rouhani's comments, coupled with remarks by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, come as Iran announced that Iranian pilgrims will not be travelling to the kingdom this year for the hajj.
Iran's state-run IRNA news agency on Wednesday quoted Rouhani who lambasted Saudi Arabia's response to the stampede in Mina and said pilgrims lost their lives because Saudi authorities acted just as "bystanders rather than rescuing" those caught in the disaster. He said countries should "punish the government of Saudi Arabia in order to have a real hajj."
"The government of Saudi Arabia must be held accountable for this incident," Rouhani told a weekly Cabinet meeting. "Unfortunately, this government has even refrained from a verbal apology to Muslims and Muslim countries."
Khamenei, meanwhile, met with families of victims and survivors of the Mina stampede and reiterated his demand that Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family properly investigate the disaster, IRNA reported.
"If they are claiming that they are not guilty in the incident, they should let an Islamic-international fact-finding delegation review and probe the case closely," Khamenei said, adding that Saudi Arabia "should not shut people's mouth with money."
On social media, Khamenei's accounts used the hashtag #alSaudHijacksHajj to criticize the kingdom, while reiterating his demand that someone other than the Saudis be in charge of administering the hajj.
