Magnifying differences and creating barriers with other Islamic schools of thought are against shari‘ah law. The enemy would exploit this as negative propaganda to exacerbate these differences.

The enemy exploits differences between schools of thought and communities; they exacerbate them to influence the community. They are always trying to split the Muslim world through differences in theology and jurisprudence. We should be careful of people who draw sectarian lines and amplify our differences, while at the same time we should respect each other’s jurisprudential opinions. If we want to draw sectarian lines, we should have hundreds of lines in our own Shi‘i community because every mujtahid in the Shi‘i madhhab has a particular opinion. Every form of insult towards the followers of a madhhab is haram. Any type of belittling a belief is wrong, and ‘ulama should also make it haram so that it would be recognised in our penal code as a crime and be tackled as such.

Insulting the revered figures of the Ahl al-Sunnah is contrary to the way of the Ahl al-Bayt (A). The Imams (A) never insulted the revered figures of Ahl al-Sunnah, not to mention the wife of the Prophet (S). We should avail ourselves of what the Prophet and Imams said and how they lived. The Imams never cursed or insulted revered figures, and therefore we should not do this1.

• 1. Speech by Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Mahmud Hashimi Shaherudi on 21/04/1393 to a gathering of judicial councils based in Mazandaran.