Shiite

Pope Francis said Tuesday that he looks forward to interreligious dialogue with representatives of Islam in his upcoming trip to Bahrain.

Shiite militias in Basra, Iraq, opened fire on each other early Thursday morning in what the Kurdish news outlet Rudaw described as “heavy confrontations,” just days after Shiite followers of anti-Iranian cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stormed the capital, Baghdad, prompting riots that left at least 30 people dead.

Powerful Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr announced his “final withdrawal” from politics on Monday, citing his frustration with the paralyzed Iraqi system.

Hundreds of protesters swarmed through the protected “Green Zone” in Baghdad on Wednesday and occupied the Iraqi Parliament building for much of the day.

Six rockets hit Baghdad International Airport on Friday in an assault that damaged runways and one civilian plane. The U.S. blamed hostile Iran-linked terrorist militias for the attack.

Iraq held its parliamentary elections on Sunday, several months ahead of schedule. Turnout was disappointingly low, and despite heavy billing as an opportunity for the disgruntled Iraqi public to make big changes, there were no seismic shifts in power.

Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, a former interior minister of Iran and a founder of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, died in Tehran on Monday from complications caused by the Chinese coronavirus, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told visiting Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad on Tuesday that Tehran will support its “strategic ally” in Damascus until “final victory” is achieved in the long-running Syrian civil war.

A conditional ceasefire suspending attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq has ended, the leader of an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia group declared on Thursday.

The Iranian regime arrested Paralympian athlete Reza Tabrizi on Tuesday because he dared to question the government’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus, specifically the decision to keep religious shrines open while shutting down fitness facilities.

Saad Hariri was designated as the next prime minister of Lebanon on Thursday, his fourth time at bat since 2009 — The previous prime minister-designate, Moustapha Adib, resigned on September 27, barely a month after receiving his appointment.

Saudi state media reported on Sunday that Bahrain foiled a terrorist attack this year allegedly plotted by a group calling itself the “Qasem Soleimani Brigade,” acting with the support of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), itself a designated terrorist organization.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian, the highest-ranking Sunni Muslim cleric in Lebanon, added his support Wednesday to calls for an independent international investigation of the massive Beirut explosion on August 4.

The National on Thursday discussed efforts of Lebanese Christians to cope with social, political, and sectarian fallout from the massive explosion in Beirut. To the surprise of few, but the dismay of many, the catastrophe has inflamed religious tensions that are never far from the surface in Lebanon.

A report produced on Tuesday by the city government of Rawalpindi, in the Pakistani province of Punjab, found that most of the city’s 250 most sensitive mosques were ignoring guidelines provided for safe worship during the coronavirus pandemic.

Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Allawi withdrew his candidacy on Sunday, roughly a month after he was nominated for the post.

A group of Iraqi women joined ongoing anti-government protests in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square on Thursday — a daring exercise given both cultural stigmas against women participating in politics and the proclivity of Iran-backed Shiite militia thugs and Iraqi government security forces for murdering demonstrators.

Iraqi President Barham Salih on Monday condemned violence against protesters and journalists during demonstrations across the country and called on the Iraqi military to protect them.

The death toll from four days of widespread protests in Iraq climbed to 60 as of Friday afternoon, with a growing number of allegations that security forces are unnecessarily targeting demonstrators with lethal ammunition.

Each September brings the Muslim holiday of Ashura, commemorated for different reasons and observed in very different ways by Sunnis and Shiites.

A stampede during commemorations for the Shiite holy day of Ashoura in the Iraqi city of Karbala killed at least 31 people and wounded 100 others, officials said.

Hundreds of terrorists from the Shiite Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) this week reportedly attacked the national assembly in the Sunni-dominated African country, triggering a violent confrontation with authorities that left at least two militants dead and some police officers injured, Western and local media reported.

A truce deal between the Saudi Arabia-led Sunni coalition and the Iran-allied Shiite Houthi rebels in the Yemeni port city of Hodeida – considered a lifeline for millions of people at risk of starvation in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis – remains elusive as the war reaches its fourth anniversary on Tuesday.

Baghdad-sanctioned Shiite militiamen allied with Iran, including fighters who want to push U.S. troops out, have gained control of many of the Sunni territories in Iraq they helped liberate from the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).

In a bizarre article published on Christmas Eve, the New York Times saluted the murderous Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah for its wonderful Christmas spirit, applauding the group for helping to “ring in the season” and implying the United States has unfairly designated it as a foreign terrorist organization.

U.S. military officials, human-rights activists, and sources within Syria’s fractious insurgency are painting a grim picture of growing Iranian influence, achieved in part by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah paying rebel commanders formerly supported by the United States to switch sides.

The Nigerian army reportedly killed up to 21 people when it fired live bullets into a crowd of protesters on the third day of demonstrations by the African country’s leading Shiite Muslim movement in the capital of Abuja on Monday.

Iraq’s security forces, mainly Baghdad-sanctioned militias allied with Iran, have “forcibly disappeared” 78 Sunni Arab males, including children as young as nine, over the course of Baghdad’s military campaign against the Sunni Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimated in a report released on Thursday.

The Trump White House warned Iran on Tuesday that attacks against American personnel and facilities in Iraq by Tehran’s allies and proxies will not be tolerated.

The Iraqi parliament met on Monday for the first time since the elections in May, but it remains unclear which bloc of allied political interests will form the new government.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) on Wednesday published some educational materials distributed by the Iran-supported Houthi insurgents in Yemen. The level of vicious anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism fed to children by the Houthis may come as a surprise to American news consumers who think of them as merely a political or tribal insurgency.

Yemen’s Iranian backed Shiite Houthi rebels supported a call by the United Nations for an investigation into the legality of recent Saudi airstrikes as the humanitarian toll in Yemen continues to rise.

A wave of demonstrations swept across central and southern Iraq, the heartland of the country’s Shiite majority, this week, the human rights group Amnesty International reported on Friday.

Forces loyal to the Russian- and Iranian-backed regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad launched nearly 1,270 airstrikes on rebel-held territory near Israel’s Golan Heights on Sunday alone, marking the latest move in an offensive to clear insurgents out of southern Syria, according to a monitor group.

Several Iraqi officials who suffered losses during last month’s legislative elections, including the prime minister, are claiming the fire that engulfed the country’s most massive ballot warehouse this weekend was a deliberate act intended to sabotage a vote recount prompted by allegations.

In an interview with the Kurdish Rudaw news service published on Thursday, Shiite militia member Ahmed Ali Hussein declared that his group was proud to be added to America’s list of terrorist organizations. He also worried that fresh U.S. sanctions on Iran would cut off Tehran’s financial support for his organization.