Iran is probing complaints that a prayer leader in the holy Saudi city of Mecca verbally attacked Shiite Muslims, amid efforts by Tehran and Riyadh to improve sometimes rocky relations.
TEHRAN: Iran is probing complaints that a prayer leader in the holy Saudi city of Mecca verbally attacked Shiite Muslims, amid efforts by Tehran and Riyadh to improve sometimes rocky relations.
The hardline Jomhouri Islami newspaper on Tuesday claimed that television broadcasts of last Friday's prayer sermon in Mecca were cut short after the prayer leader implied that Shiites had "nothing to do with Islam".
There was no comfirmation from Saudi Arabia about the text of the sermon.
"I did not actually listen to actual words, but our embassy in Riyadh is pursuing the matter," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.
"There were some speeches regarding the (Shiite) imams, our embassy has discussed it with the officials there. We hope that the sanctity of the different Islamic sects is preserved and we all follow a unified path."
The head of Iran's organisation for the hajj pilgrimage has also protested to the authorities in Riyadh that Saudi security forces were mistreating Iranian pilgrims visiting Mecca.
Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported from Riyadh on Sunday that the head of Iran's hajj organisation Mostafa Khaksar Qahroudi had met Saudi hajj minister Fuad al-Farsi to pass on the protest in person.
Qahroudi demanded that Saudi "confront vigilantes and stop the spread of extremist thoughts by people who aim to distribute books and affect the good and expanding relationship between the two countries".
Shiite majority Iran and Sunni majority Saudi Arabia have worked hard in recent years on improving relations. Saudi also has a substantial Shiite minority in its oil-rich Eastern province.
They have repeatedly publicly avowed they are working closely to end the political crisis in multi-confessional Lebanon, bring peace to war-torn Iraq and improve overall Islamic unity.
But relations between the two countries have not always been smooth, most notably when 402 people, the majority Iranians, were killed in July 1987 in clashes between Iranian pilgrims and Saudi security forces during the hajj.
Jomhouri Eslami reported that prayer leader Sheikh Saleh al-Taleb had said in Mecca on Friday that "one of the non-Arab nations is provoking a sectarian crisis," in a reference to Shiite Iran.
According to the allegations, also repeated on Iranian state television, he added: "The role played by this group has nothing to do with the prophet," this time a reference to Shiite Islam.
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