Top Saudi Sunni cleric Sheik Safar al-Hawali, whose radical views once made bin Laden one of his followers issued a religious edict Saturday disavowing the Shi'ite guerrilla group Hezbollah.
"Don't pray for Hizbullah," he said in the fatwa posted on his Web site.
The edict, which reflects the historical stand of strict Wahhabi doctrine viewing Shi'ite Muslims as heretics, follows a similar fatwa from another popular Saudi cleric Sheik Abdullah bin Jibreen two weeks into the conflict with Israel.
"It is not acceptable to support this rejectionist party (Hezbollah), and one should not fall under its command, or pray for its victory," bin Jibreen said at the time. That fatwa set off a maelstrom across the Arab world, with other leaders and people at the grass roots level imploring Muslims to put aside differences to support the fight against Israel.
This highly unusual rebuke of Hezbollah from two Muslim clerics comes at a time when other Muslims are attempting to use this Hezbollah-Israeli conflict to unify Muslims world-wide against Israel and the Western World.
For 59 years since the United Nations partitioned the land between Palestine and Israel Muslims have been agitating for war in the region. Many Muslims are hoping that this is the time that Israel will be destroyed and Islam will defeat the Western world. Link
