More than 25,000 Indian Shia Muslims are on standby to fly to Iraq and defend its holy shrines, one of the country’s largest Shia organisations claimed on Wednesday.
There are more than 50 million Shia Muslims in India whose leaders have close ties to Iran and Iraq, home of their faith’s holiest shrines.
Their recruitment campaign to defend the Shia-led Iraqi government of prime minister Nouri Maliki mirrors the recruitment of his militant Sunni insurgents in Britain and Europe. Three Sunni volunteers who appeared in a recruitment video last week included two young men from Cardiff and one who grew up in Aberdeen.
The drive to lure protagonists from each side of the rift in Islam, including Iraq’s Shia Mahdi Army fighters returning from Syria, highlights the potential for the conflict to become the biggest Sunni-Shia sectarian battle since Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Ayatollah Khomeini’s Shia revolution in Iran in 1980.
Isis leaders have vowed to take their insurgency to Karbala and Najaf, home of two of Shia Islam’s holiest shrines, where they claim they have “scores to settle”.
India’s Shias said they would not stand by while Karbala is attacked again. Their recruits include bankers, students, doctors and engineers and their leaders have written to the Indian government to stress Isis’ support for terrorist attacks in India too.“We have 25,000 volunteers who have filled in the forms and given their passports and are ready to go any moment. Another hundred thousand have got in touch with us and have pledged their support. We are looking at a million volunteers to form a human chain around the holy shrines of Karbala and Najaf, in case the Isis attacks. We will do everything to stop the advance of the enemies,” said Syed Bilal, spokesman of Anjuman-e-Haideri which protects Delhi’s own ‘Karbala’ shrine.
“The volunteers are educated young men from different backgrounds. We do not plan to train them in arms. We will go there to fight them bare handed,” he added.