Sayyed Hakim: Death the only option for Shi’ites under ISIL

“ISIL offers various options for Christians, but for Shi’ites, the only option is death,” the president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq reiterated.

Speaking at a Muharram mourning ceremony at the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad, Hujjat al-Islam Sayyid Ammar al-Hakim, the president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, expressed his regret over the killing of Shi’ites at the hands of the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group, saying that ISIL forces Christians to choose between death, paying the jizyah tax or conversion to Islam in regions under their control, but when a Shi’ite is taken prisoner, they are given only one choice – death – and is murdered in front of them.

Referring to the Camp Speicher massacre in June 2014, His Eminence stated that without any restrictions, ISIL killed about 1,700 of Shi’ite Iraqi Air Force cadets there. During this brutal massacre, ISIL forces and their Ba’thist allies singled out Shi’ite and non-Muslim cadets from Sunni ones and executed them.

Hujjat al-Islam al-Hakim stressed that ISIL and its followers are not Sunni. They are extremists and throughout history, there have been many examples of groups like them.

The Iraqi scholar criticized some hypocritical politicians, saying that some politicians support the Iraqi government by day but are working with ISIL by night. “They are two-faced people who over the last 12 years, have claimed to follow the Iraqi government and claim to be nationalists, but have supported and defended terrorism in various ways,” he added.

The president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq stressed that with the weakening of ISIL, these politicians’ true faces will be revealed soon.

Hujjat al-Islam al-Hakim explained that Shi’ite beliefs accept the concept of taqiyyah (dissimulation) in cases of danger, saying that during the reign of the tyrannous dictatorship of Saddam, Shi’ites were so fearful of his regime, that they held their mourning ceremonies over the martyrdom of Imam Husayn in secret but after the Ba’thist regime was toppled and now that there are no fear dangers facing them, Shi’ites hold their mourning ceremonies openly.