Tehran, Apr 14: Iran's top leader urged Iraqis today to end the chaos sweeping their country and follow Islam's teachings to overcome the instability that has followed the Iraqi regime's ouster, state-run Tehran radio reported. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a message to Iraqis that threatening the life of people and plundering their property was "a big sin, especially under the current circumstances," the radio reported.
"It is necessary that the Iraqi people, through intervention of pious and committed people and preaching from clerics and other (religious) elite, with the mosque as the axis, prevent any chaos, murder and plundering of public and private properties," Khamenei - the ultimate authority in this Shiite Muslim-dominated state - was quoted as saying. While expressing sympathy for the deaths and destruction caused by the US-led military strike, Khamenei invited Iraqis to listen to Muslim clerics and avoid lawlessness.
"Honor brotherhood, be kind to each other, enforce law and order and avoid lawlessness, which is religiously forbidden," said Khamenei, who succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 revolution, as Iran's supreme leader.
Shiites comprise 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people and were long repressed by Saddam's mainly Sunni Muslim regime. But there are numerous fault lines running through the Shiite community. Some are connected to tribe and family, but they also interlace with political issues, including over how to deal with the Americans. Bureau Report