LOS ANGELES, United States: National Shia and Sunni Muslim leaders have expressed their commitment to call on internationally recognized Muslim scholars from Holy Najaf, Holy Qum, and Cairo to make public statements deploring escalating bloodshed and violence in Iraq.

Leaders from the Fiqh Council of America, the As-Saadiq Foundation, Masjid Ahlul-Beit, the Imam Mahdi Association of Marjaeya (the liaison office of Ayatullah Sayyid Ali As-Sistani in North America) signed a resolution in the second week of June stating their unequivocal condemnation of the rising violence.

Those who inked the resolution included Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, past-President of the Islamic Society of North America and the President of the Fiqh Council of North America; Dr. Riddha Al-Hajjar, Director of Ahlul-Beit Mosque; Sayyid Baqir Kashmiri, director of the Imam Mahdi Association of Marjaeya (the liaison office of Ayatullah Sayyid Ali As-Sistani in North America); Sayyid Jafar Al-Qazwini, University of California, Los Angeles; and Dr. Maher Hathout, Senior Advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council and spokesperson for the Islamic Center of Southern California.

The resolution was signed during a forum hosted by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).

The leaders resolved: “We, as nationally recognized leaders of the American Muslim community, demand that internationally recognized religious leadership from Al-Azhar University (Cairo), Qum (Iran), the Najaf Marjia (Iraq), and the Organization of Islamic Countries unanimously condemn the disregard for the sanctity of human life in Iraq.”

“We request that these internationally recognized leaders form a high-level delegation to travel to Iraq in order to isolate leaders instigating the violence, and to work to disengage the warring parties.”

“We will convene townhall forums on Sunni-Shia relations in major cities across the country,” it said.

Senior Advisor to MPAC Dr. Maher Hathout said that sectarian differences are used to deepen division and to justify criminal behavior. This is exacerbated by misguided fatwas that ignore the realities on the ground.

“There is a responsibility of the leadership to speak up against violence otherwise this cancerous tumor will grow in the body of the ummah and kill us all,” said Sayyid Jafar Al-Qazwini, a professor at UCLA.