While referring to the war against non-believers, Mahfuzur Rahman tends to forget that despite 9/11, London and Madrid bombings, the greatest victims of the Muslim extremists are fellow Muslims, especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In fact, there is a bigger war going on between the Sunnis and the Shiites.

Sunni extremists in Iraq are systematically slaughtering fellow Shia Muslims. They have bombed Shiite mosques filled with worshippers during Friday prayers. They have attacked schools, hospitals and markets, killing mostly Shiite Muslims. Recently, the Sunni extremists destroyed the Golden Mosque at Samarra, one the holiest Shiite shrines. Only yesterday (July 19), they bombed the Shia suburb of Mahmoudia, killing 60 and injuring more than 100. And the slaughter of the Shiite majority by the Sunni minority in Iraq had been going on long before the US-led military invasion. It may be recalled that when after the First Gulf War in 1991, the Shiite majority rose against Saddam's minority Sunni rule, his largely Sunni Republican Guards massacred thousands of Shiite rebels. Although the Sunni minority lost their grip on power after the American invasion of 2003, the Sunni insurgents are systematically killing the Shiites in the name of fighting the coalition forces.

Does the sharia allow killing of the Shiites? Only a few days ago (July 14), a Sunni suicide bomber blew himself up outside the home of a prominent Pakistani Shiite cleric Allama Hassan Turabi, killing the cleric and bodyguard and triggering a riot in the port city of Karachi. After Turabi's killing, hundreds of Shiite youths attacked Sunni shops and a government bank. Pakistan has always been blighted by attacks blamed on extremist elements among the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam, targeting each other's mosques and religious leaders. In Iraq, the Shiites are now retaliating by bombing Sunni mosques and killing Sunni clerics.

How can the Sunni and Shiite religious fanatics justify killing of fellow Muslims in the name of Islam? Muslims are slaughtering fellow Muslims and then blaming it on America and Israel. It is interesting to note that after the killing of Allama Turabi by a Sunni extremist, hundreds of Shiite youths gathered in front of his house, weeping and chanting slogans against America and Israel, unusual targets of anger in the wake of such acts of violence by Sunni Muslims in Pakistan.

Now the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq are killing each other with a viciousness not seen even in the brutal history of Iraq. Can Mahfuzur Rahman explain under what sharia principle Sunnis in Iraq and Pakistan are butchering their fellow Shiite Muslims and vice versa?