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QUETTA, Pakistan- A bomb ripped through a bus full of Shi'ite pilgrims in western Pakistan and killed at least 22 people on Tuesday, police said, extending a spate of sectarian attacks that have shaken the South Asian nation. The bomb exploded near a bus carrying pilgrims returning from neighboring Iran to their home city of Quetta in Pakistan, officials said. At least 20 people were wounded, said the assistant police commissioner for Mastung district, Shafqat Anwar Shawani, and many of the victims were women and children. .....

In a fascinating article for FrontPage Magazine titled “Now the Twelfth Imam Can Come,” scholar of Islam Robert Spencer provides a crash course on the nature of Twelver Shi’ite theology, with particular reference to a nuclearizing Iran. Shi’ites believe in the return of the so-called Twelfth Imam who is descended from Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali ibn Abni Talib, the fourth caliph assassinated in 661 in a succession war, after which the split between Sunnis and Shi’ites eventually became permanent. As Spencer explains, the Shi’ites continued a line of imams, “members of Muhammad’s household and his prophetic heirs. Each one in...

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Monday called for a battle against Wahhabism, the political and religious ideology embraced by the Saudi government, a key backer of the uprising against his regime. The comments came amid ongoing tensions between the two countries, which are fiercely opposed to each other.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Shiite Muslims staging a religious procession near Pakistan’s capital Friday killed seven Sunnis from an Islamic seminary for insulting them as they passed, officials said. ... The Shiites were observing Ashoura, which commemorates the 7th century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. The schism between Sunnis and Shiites dates back to that time.

Revealed: Iran's Supreme Leader is a Billionaire Iran's supreme leader controls a business empire worth around $95 billion, exposes Reuters. While Iran has been buckling under the sanctions that have been crippling its economy, the country’s supreme leader is apparently enjoying the billions he has in the bank. The Reuters news agency exposed on Monday that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls a business empire worth around $95 billion, a sum exceeding the value of his nation’s current annual petroleum exports. The little-known organization, called Setad, is one of the keys to the Iranian leader’s enduring power and now holds...

A group of Americans visiting Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj were threatened and attacked earlier this week on Oct. 16 by a radicalized group of extremists. On one of the nights where Hajj pilgrims are required to stay overnight in the city of Mina, a group of young men began asking different sets of pilgrims if they were from the United States. When they encountered a group that identified themselves as not only Americans, but also as Shiite Muslims, they were threatened and attacked by the group of men, who were apparently armed with knives and other blades. During the...

Until a few weeks ago, Saudi Arabia was riding high. Its regional policies, based on countering revolutionary fervour and containing Iran, appeared to be bearing fruit. Egypt’s army ousted the Islamist president, to plaudits and generous funding from Riyadh; the Syrian opposition elected a new pro-Saudi leadership; and the US seemed poised to launch military strikes on the regime in Damascus that Saudi Arabia has tried to dislodge. ... As the challenges in Syria grow, there are fears in Riyadh that the war could drag on for more than a decade, draining Saudi coffers and destabilising the region. There are...

Four men including former PNCR Member of Parliament Abdul Kadir were yesterday charged by United States law enforcement officials with allegedly conspiring to blow up the John F Kennedy International airport as well as tanks storing aviation fuel and underground fuel pipelines. Those charged with Kadir are former JFK worker Russell Defreitas, a Guyanese-born US citizen; Kareem Ibrahim, an imam from Trinidad; and Guyanese Abdel Nur. Kadir and Ibrahim were arrested in Trinidad, while Defreitas was held in New York. Up to press time, however, Nur had not been apprehended and was thought to be still at large in Trinidad....

Egyptian clerics expressed joy last week over the brutal murders of four Shiites in the Giza-district village of Zavia Abu Muslam. About 3,000 Sunnis murdered the four, beating them and burning their houses down. The incident was recorded on video. Among those killed was prominent cleric Sheik Hassan Shehata. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has translated and posted excerpts from an interview with Egyptian cleric Walid Ismail, which aired on Dream 2 TV on June 24, 2013, and a statement made by Egyptian cleric Mazen Sarsawi, which aired on Amjad TV on June 25. Both expressed their satisfaction...

The sectarian tensions underlying the conflict in Syria have erupted in Australia, with acts of violence, harassment and threats ... Jamal Daoud, a high-profile community leader in western Sydney, says the situation is becoming "very vicious". Although he is a Sunni Muslim, because of his opposition to removing the Syrian regime by force, Mr Daoud says extremists at home view him with the same hatred they have for Shiites and Alawites. ... the source of the violence in Sydney, the Jabhat al Nusra supporters," he said. "The last two years they have flourished in western Sydney, they have flourished. We...

Sunni Muslim villagers killed four Shiite men on Sunday, accusing them of trying to spread their version of Islam, according to Egyptian security officials. ... A Salafi preacher, Mohammed Hassan, called on Morsi "not to open the doors of Egypt" to Shiites, saying that "they never entered a place without corrupting it." Salafis consider Shiite as heretics.

Obama weapons plan seen as adding to all-out sectarian conflict in Mideast WASHINGTON – Not only has the United States decided to begin providing weapons to the Syrian opposition, now Sunni Muslim clerics from the Gulf Cooperating Council countries, which are backed by the U.S. in arming and providing fighters to the opposition, have issued a fatwa calling for a “holy war” against Syria and its Shiite allies, principally Hezbollah, according to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. The fatwa, which signals the beginning of an all-out Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict, comes as foreign fighters led by the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra killed 60...

<p>DAMASCUS, After the Syrian army of Bashar al-Assad's semi Shite, Alawites and some visiting Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah crunched Sunni resistance at al-Qussair... Sunni Muslim thugs pillaged Hatla Shiite villagers (killing men, women, children, dogs, cats, and whatever else Shittes) burning out their homes.. "All atrocities committed in the Shiite town were carried out on sectarian basis"</p>

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the prominent Sunni cleric, said Friday that Hezbollah and Iran are "more infidel than Jews and Christians." Coming from the guy who once lauded Hitler for exacting "divine punishment" on the Jews, that really is saying something. That the war in Syria is sectarian was obvious almost from the start, despite the credulous belief that Bashar Assad ran a nonsectarian regime. That a sectarian ruling minority fighting for its life would not fold easily was obvious within months, despite happy guarantees that the regime's downfall would come within weeks. That a sectarian war in Syria would stir similar...

A ‘terrorist cell’ believed to be linked to Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah and housing weapons intended to attack Israeli and Western targets has been discovered in a compound in northern Nigeria, the country’s security services said on Thursday. Nigeria's security services said Thursday they had discovered a home in the northern city of Kano where Lebanese nationals had stored weapons intended to attack Israeli and Western targets in Nigeria. The Kano state intelligence chief, Bassey Etang, and a separate military statement described the compound as hosting a "terrorist cell" tied to the powerful Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah. No evidence was...

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Al-Hamad, who is Wahhabi (extremist Sunni) and harbors a sectarian hatred for Alawite and Shiite Muslims, said he has another gruesome video of his killing a government soldier from the Alawite faith. “Hopefully we will slaughter all of them [Alawites]. ... Human Rights Watch (HRW), which validated the video, released a report on May 13 identifying al-Hamad as a well-known commander responsible for the recent cross-border shelling of a Shi‘ite Lebanese village that killed two. The organization called on the U.N. Security Council to refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for all war crimes...

The recent months have seen a considerable increase of tension between Sunnis and Shi'ites in Lebanon, to the extent that there is growing fear of a confrontation between the two sides – especially between the Shi'ite Hizbullah and Sunni Salafi elements. On February 27, 2013, Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki – both of them Shi'ites – expressed concern that a sectarian war might break out in the region, including in Lebanon.... ..... The sectarian tension in Lebanon has expressed itself in several violent incidents. The severest of them occurred on March 17, 2013, when four...

Thousands of Sunnis rallied Friday in western and central Iraq, denouncing the Shiite-led government’s policies they claim sideline their sect and saying that recent concessions by the authorities are not enough. The protests—the fourth Friday in a row of rallies in Sunni parts of the country—come as tensions are rising among Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian groups, threatening to plunge the country into more instability. … Sheik Hassan al-Samarie, one of the organizers of the Samarra rally, said the Sunnis there are disappointed by the slow response of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government in fulfilling their demands. “We are fed up...

Five girls were gang raped in the Pakistan province of Punjab after a relative of the girls asked a landlord to pay him his wages.... Boota agreed to harvest the crops of two local landlords, Mara Jat and Zaheer Jat. When Boota asked to be paid the previously agreed upon amount, the landlords became irate and warned Boota there would be "dire consequences". Both landlords, along with an unidentified number of aids, returned to Boota's home later in the evening and proceeded to tie up Boota and his wife... the group then kidnapped and gang raped Boota's 13-year-old daughter, along...