Qabbani Lashes out at Lebanese Leaders Urging them to Stop Fire From Spreading

Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashi Qabbani on Monday held all leaderships responsible for an attack on two sheikhs and urged the Shiite sect to lift the cover off the perpetrators and avoid strife.

The attack that took place in Beirut's Khandaq al-Ghamiq “was the result of the political war and the tense rhetoric,” Qabbani said after visiting Sheikh Mazen Hariri and Sheikh Ahmed Fakhran at al-Makassed hospital.

Both the Shiite and Sunni leaderships “are responsible for what happened” to the two scholars at Dar al-Fatwa, the Mufti said.

“The Shiite sect along with its political and military leaderships should lift the cover off” the suspects involved in the assault, he said.

Turning his rage at some Sunni leaders without mentioning them, Qabbani said they were also to be blamed for the attack for “standing behind the verbal assaults on the Mufti to topple him.”

Prime Minister Najib Miqati and other former PMs, who are Sunnis, urged Qabbani last week to convene the 32-member Higher Islamic Council before March 16 to set a date for electing a new body.

But the Mufti transferred managerial duties at Dar al-Fatwa to religious scholars. He considers the HIC's extension of its term till the end of 2013 illegal and refuses to call for a meeting.

Neither the Hizbullah-led March 8 majority alliance nor the March 14 opposition coalition were exempted from Qabbani's anger, who said both sides would be held responsible “if the fire spreads.”

“Let no one think that the fire will not reach Lebanon,” he warned. “There is a plot and we should distance ourselves from this strife that is at its beginning.”

“I am not accusing anyone but the probe should be swift,” he said after the army announced that it arrested five people suspected of involvement in Sunday's incident in Khandaq al-Ghamiq along with an attack on another sheikh, Omar al-Imami, in the Beirut suburb of Shiyyah.

Qabbani called for the highest punishment against the suspects, who are allegedly drug users.

But he warned the authorities against sentencing them only on drug charges for the purpose of freeing them later.

He said only President Michel Suleiman and Speaker Nabih Berri called him to condemn the incident.

After a meeting with Muslim scholars later on Monday, Qabbani said the simultaneous attacks on the clerics were “not a coincidence,” noting that there is an “instigator” behind the incidents.

He urged “the Shiite leaders in Hizbullah and AMAL Movement to extinguish strife and lift the political cover off the perpetrators who assaulted the clerics.”

“The thug does not have a sect and his sect is not to blame for his deeds and if the country burns, no one will be safe, neither Muslims nor Christians,” the mufti noted.