Agencies/Doha


Leading Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi called yesterday for holy war against the Syrian government after fighters from Shia Lebanese group Hezbollah intervened to help President Bashar al-Assad.
His website said Qaradawi had “called on all those able to undertake jihad and fighting to head to Syria to stand by the Syrian people who are being killed at the hands of the regime and are now being killed at the hands of what he called the party of Satan”.
Qaradawi also hit out at Iran for backing Assad’s regime.
“Every Muslim trained to fight and capable of doing that (must) make himself available” to support the Syrian rebels, the cleric said at a rally in Doha late Friday.
“Iran is pushing forward arms and men (to back the Syrian regime), so why do we stand idle?” he said, branding Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as the “party of Satan”.
Hezbollah, a close ally of Iran and the Syrian regime, is openly engaged in the fight against the rebels in Syria.
“The leader of the party of the Satan comes to fight the Sunnis... Now we know what the Iranians want... They want continued massacres to kill Sunnis,” Qaradawi said.
“How could 100mn Shias (worldwide) defeat 1.7bn (Sunnis)?” he exclaimed, “only because (Sunni) Muslims are weak”.  The cleric blamed himself for previously backing Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah.
“I defended the so-called Nasrallah and his party, the party of tyranny... in front of clerics in Saudi Arabia.”
“It seems that the clerics of Saudi Arabia were more mature than me,” Qaradawi said.
But the cleric insisted that his call to fight Hezbollah is “not against all Shias”.
Fighters of Hezbollah are engaged in fierce battles against the rebels to capture the Syrian town of Qusayr near the Lebanese borders.
Qaradawi hosts a popular show on Al Jazeera satellite television and has backed the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria.