Fitna TV: The Shi'ite-Bashing Campaign On Salafi TV Channels And Social Media

It's a phenomenon often witnessed during civil wars/ethic conflicts when one side deliberately plays into the accusations of the other side to provoke it. This trend has been exploding in recent years thanks to the spread of social/alternative media. In the case of the old standing Sunni belief that the Shia practice includes cursing Aisha and the three caliphs revered by Sunnis, the allegation serves an invitation. Regardless of the validity of the original claim, as the sectarian polarization grows in the Middle East and beyond, one would expect more entrepreneurial among the Shia to take to social media and alternative TV and do exactly this: Curse the companions of the Prophet Muhammad.

/* December 1, 2015
By: Y. Feldner

At the core of the Sunni outrage lies the allegation that Shi'ites curse 'Aisha and the caliphs Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othman, who are revered by Sunnis, but rejected by Shi'ites. This allegation has been repeatedly denied by some Shi'ite scholars...

These denials notwithstanding, some Shi'ite scholars have been making outlandish remarks about the Prophet's companions, especially on networks operated by clerics who had fled their countries to the West. The Iranian-born Hassan Allah Yare, for example, runs a channel called Ahlulbayt TV from California. Ahlulbayt TV is a one-man show, dedicated to the disparagement of Prophet Muhammad's companions.

"My shoe and the shoe of my little son are better than thousands like Abu Bakr, Omar, and 'Aisha,"[51] Sheikh Yare once declared on his show. He adroitly dismisses all the Sunni activists who call his show and try to embarrass him by asking whether he approves of "pleasure marriage" – a temporary union for the purpose of sex. One Sunni activist even promised to convert to Shia Islam if Sheikh Yare would give him his daughter for pleasure marriage. Sheikh Yare has a ready-made sarcastic answer for all these Sunni callers: "Shi'ite men are allowed to have sex with Wahhabi women, especially the Saudi ones... There are many sisters of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi all over the world. This is the way to reach unity in the Muslim world."

Even more outrageous is the London-based Sheikh Yasser Al-Habib, who fled Kuwait in 2004 after having been arrested for anti-Sunni incitement. Sheikh Al-Habib received political asylum in Britain, from where he happily infuriates Sunnis with diatribes about the companions of the Prophet Muhammad. Every year, he organizes an "'Aisha in Hell" celebration on the date of the death of the Prophet Muhammad's wife. In one show on his London-based Fadak TV, Sheikh Al-Habib proclaimed that Omar Ibn Al-Khattab had an "anal disease." According to this "well-known medical condition," he added, "someone who has been penetrated in the anus – a worm grows within him, due to the semen discharged in him... It becomes like an addiction, and he cannot calm down unless he is penetrated again and again." Sheikh Habib then added that when a baby who is not a Shi'ite is born "the devil inserts his index finger into this anus, and when he grows up, he becomes a passive homosexual." */