Mauritania’s mufti says Iran’s influence ‘worse than Zionism’

Mauritania’s top Muslim cleric called for the African nation to cut all ties with Iran because its Shiite ideology is “as bad and as evil” as Zionism.

“I turned to his excellency the president during the Eid el-Adha sermon last Monday and as you all heard I complained to him,” Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Ould Habib al-Rahman said during a sermon last week.

“Thus, the Safavid Persian Shiitization activities in our country were exposed through the so-called social media YouTube and Facebook.
The propagation of this ideology in our country has been exposed, Allah be praised,” said Rahman.

“These people were exposed both in video and audio as they were describing Abu Bakr, Omar and Aisha [three of the founding figures of Sunni Islam] as ‘hypocrites,’ and publicly cursing them,” he said.

“As I told you, you can see it yourself on YouTube and Facebook. See it for yourselves! Maybe some of you have seen it already,” he continued. Rahman’s comments, made on September 16, were translated on Friday by the Middle East Media Research Institute, an NGO monitoring news outlets in the region.

“I believe that his excellency, the president of the republic, has also seen it. I am certain that after he has seen it for himself, he knows that cursing Abu Bakr, Omar and Aisha is the epitome of terrorism and extremism.

“I am convinced that the president knows that the penetration of this ideology into our society will intensify the fire of sectarianism from which we’re already suffering and which we are trying to stifle,” Rahman said.

“We trust that the president also knows that cutting ties with the Safavid Persian Iranian expansionism is a duty imposed by the Sharia as well as a demand by the republic… I also know that the president knows that this ideology, with the sectarianism that it ignites, is no less dangerous than Zionism and what it wanted to do in our country,” he continued.

“Indeed, Shiites are part of Islam. We do not wish to accuse them of heresy. We Sunnis accuse no one of heresy, but the danger and evil posed by the Shiite ideology to any society it enters is no less than the danger and evil of the Zionist ideology,” Rahman added.

Mauritania, a desert country in Africa, has a population of slightly over 4 million people. The residents are overwhelmingly Sunni. Predominant minorities include several thousand Catholics and a small but influential Sufi minority. Mauritania’s religious laws are strict. Atheism is punishable by death.