Al-Liwaa' Al-Islami, October 21, 1999

[Al Liwaa is a daily Arabic newspaper published in Beirut, Lebanon]

The United States made beyond doubt a strange effort to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries, especially countries of the third world and the Islamic world in particular when it issued last month its report on religious freedom in the world in the frame of the religious freedom law. This law was issued by the American Congress in 1988 after a campaign lead by the Jew Frank Wolf [note: Rep. Wolf is not Jewish] and the Zionist-Christian Arlen Specter.

The report spoke of the state of religion in 119 countries and focused on about thirty countries around the world accusing them openly of some sort of religious persecution against minorities. Most of these were Islamic countries. Besides China came Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The report did not only raise the issue of the Copts in Egypt and some other religions in the Islamic world, but we also found it pointing out in a disgusting way that the Shi'ites are a minority which suffers from persecution at the hand of Sunni Moslems who form the majority in the Islamic world. This is an American attempt to attack the unity of the Islamic nation. We appreciate the attitude of Imam Mohammed Mahdi Shams Al-Din, president of the Islamic Shi'ite Council in Lebanon. He issued a very objective and enlightening statement in response to the report. He refused to accept what was written in the report and asked Shi'ites not to give attention to this report. He said that Western forces (governmental, political and media), connected to intelligence circles, are trying to smash the Arab and Islamic nation and split them into different ...