RNA – Speaking at the fourteenth international “Spring of Martyrdom” cultural conference held on behalf of the holy shrines of Imam al-Husayn and Hadhrat Abbas in the Iraqi city of Karbala, Hujjat al-Islam Sayyid Ahmad al-Safi said, “Ayatollah al-Sistani’s obligatory jihad fatwa to confront the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group had a wide range of political, jurisprudential, economic, social and military dimensions and had a great impact.”
The representative of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani noted that Ayatollah Sistani’s fatwa of peaceful struggle against the Daesh terrorist movement was one of the most important issues at the conference, which the speakers discussed in a variety of ways.
Hujjat al-Islam al-Safi stressed that if we want to understand the importance and position of the jihad fatwa, we must discuss the events and events that occurred before the issuance of the fatwa.
The custodian of the Holy Shrine of Hadhrat Abbas referred to the fatwa of the sources of emulation in the past, stated, “If we consider the 1890 ‘Tobacco Protest’ fatwa as an economic fatwa and the fatwa of 1941 [during the abdication of Reza Shah Pahlavi] as a military fatwa, we must Ayatollah al-Sistani’s obligatory jihad fatwa as both a military and religious fatwa, which is unique.
“The significance of this jihad fatwa as compared to the 1941 fatwa and the ‘Tobacco Protest’ in Iran is that Daesh is a group, not a government and thus is out of all the international equation and treaties. Daesh was a very huge threat and therefore, it should have been dealt with rationally and with a great care,” he noted.
In June 2014, Ayatollah al-Sistani called on all Iraqi citizens to defend “the country, its people, the honour of its citizens, and its sacred sites against the threats posed by the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.”
This led to the formation of the Popular Mobilization Forces.
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