Two of Lebanon’s strongest Shia and Sunni currents, Hezbollah and a branch of the Salafist movement, on Monday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in a formal, highly publicized attempt to end inter-Muslim strife and replace high tension, at times armed, with cooperation.

While one Salafist leader hailed the memorandum and announced that he had signed it with the approval of the Future Movement, the founder of Salafist movement in Lebanon slammed it as a Shia attempt to penetrate Sunni Islam and urged the pro-government Future Movement to issue a statement denying their involvement.

The Hezbollah-Salafist MOU condemned the assault of any Islamic group by another, Salafist and Hezbollah leaders announced in a joint press conference on Monday.

The memorandum, which calls for the need to abandon incitement and “confront the American agenda,” said Hezbollah and the Salafist movement would support one another against any “oppression by internal or external parties.”

The MOU denounced inter-Muslim accusations of blasphemy and set the grounds for cooperation between Sunni and Shia movements through the formation of a religious committee to discuss any Sunni-Shia disagreement. 

Sheikh Ibrahim Amin al-Sayyed, who heads Hezbollah’s political council, highlighted the memorandum’s importance as it paved the way to solving “controversial problems” and lauded the document as “a courageous step in Lebanon and the Arab and Islamic world.”

“The memorandum will relieve the people who call for unity, especially within the same confession, and it will bother our enemies who wanted to segregate us,” he explained. “The people need to be backed up in resisting the occupiers and the people who are working toward our sedition.”

Sayyed recalled the temporary agreement between the Future Movement and Hezbollah after ex-Premier Rafik Hariri was assassinated in 2005, but noted that he could not wait for a comprehensive Lebanese political agreement, “which might be impossible.”

An active Salafist leader who heads a Salafist-affiliated charity organization allegedly funded by Kuwait, Sheikh Hassan al-Chahhal, said that his movement had only signed the MOU with the Future Movement’s approval.

Yet Sheikh Dai al-Islam al-Chahhal, the founder of the Salafist movement in Lebanon and the head of a branch of Salafism that promotes jihad, slammed the memorandum as a Shia attempt to penetrate Sunni Islam and framed Salafist leaders who signed the document as non-influential and unrepresentative of the movement. He did, however, issue a call for dialogue with Hezbollah. 

“This [memorandum] is pro-Hezbollah, pro-Shia propaganda, and it will be detrimental to the Sunnis,” he stated.

Sheikh Dai al-Islam al-Chahhal called on the pro-government Sunni Future Movement to issue a statement denying coordination with the parties involved.

“We are not against dialogue, but we have some reservations concerning [Hezbollah’s] attack against Sunnis in May,” he added.

-NOW Staff