Why Hezbollah leader chose Shi‘ites’ Ashura to reach out to Lebanese Sunnis
(The Christian Science Monitor) With sectarian tensions soaring across the Middle East, Hezbollah's leader has used the Shi‘ite commemoration of Ashura to deliver a message of conciliation to the nation’s Sunnis—and a word of caution to his fellow Shi‘ites.
On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Shi‘ites marked the religious occasion amid unprecedented security. Ashura, the most significant date in the Shi‘ite religious calendar, often serves as a powerful and overt motif of communal identity, replete with flags, banners, and rhythmic chanting to commemorate the death of a revered Shi‘ite figure.
Yet with Hezbollah battling Sunni extremists in Syria, and an uptick in Sunni militant attacks on Shi‘ite areas of Lebanon, the militant Shi‘ite movement this year asked followers to tone down some of their commemorative activities in religiously mixed neighborhoods in order to prevent provoking Sunnis.
