Wednesday, July 12 2006 11:10 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Muslim leaders here are blaming the US for Iraq's escalating Shia-Sunni bloodletting and say that tensions between the two Islamic sects in India are virtually over.

"The people who are behind this fratricide in Iraq are those who ultimately want to destroy Islam and Muslims, those who want to defame the community," asserted Naib Imam Moulvi Mouzzam Ahmed of the Fatehpuri mosque in Old Delhi.

"These things never happened in Iraq until the Americans came," he said, referring to the rapidly deepening sectarian outbreaks in that country that have injected hatred and suspicions in Baghdad's Shia and Sunni quarters.

"So long as the Americans don't leave Iraq, these things will continue," the Imam told sources from his 17th-century Mughal-built shrine facing the imposing Red Fort monument.

"Unfortunately, just as the British left behind the cancer of Hindu-Muslim tensions in India, America's legacy in Iraq will be Shia-Sunni tensions," he said.

In one of the bloodiest outbursts of sectarian violence, masked Shia gunmen Sunday went on a rampage in western Baghdad, pulling Sunni Arabs out of cars and off the streets and killing at least 41 people.

The massacre was in apparent retaliation for the car bombing the previous night of a Shia mosque that killed two people.

The developments have naturally sparked concern in India, home to the world's second largest Muslim population after Indonesia. Most of India's estimated 140 million Muslims are Sunnis, the Shias more prominent in Lucknow, Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir.

None of the Muslim leaders here blamed community leaders in or out of the government in Shia-majority Iraq for the sectarian clashes. Instead they pointed accusing fingers at the US-led military coalition.

"America is fully involved in this violence," charged Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the Shahi Imam at the imposing Jama Masjid, the city's biggest mosque and built also by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan.

"They will use this violence to keep their forces in Iraq for ever. They don't want normalcy to return to Iraq," he said.

He went on, "How do suicide bombers go to Shia and Sunni areas? When there is so much security in Baghdad, how do these things happen? Who benefits from these clashes? Isn't the answer obvious?"

Intezar Naeed, editor of Radiance weekly, also a Sunni like the Imams, echoed the same charges.

"This problem has been given birth to in Iraq so that America can justify its invasion and continued presence in the country," Naeem said.

"It can then claim that it is staying on in Iraq in the interests of Iraq, for the sake of Muslims and even for the sake of Islam!" he said.

"True, there were Shia and Sunni identities in Iraq but it was never this bad or violent. Like anywhere, the two groups had their own customs and traditions," he said.

"Maybe some extremists are there among (Iraqi) Shias and Sunnis, but the question is: who is backing them? Who is propping them up?" he said.

India used to witness Shia-Sunni clashes until some two decades ago in Lucknow. Muslim leaders say the animosity between the two virtually disappeared thanks to Ayatollah Khomeini, who spearheaded an Islamic takeover in Iran in 1979.

"The Iranian leader used to say that there are no Sunnis and no Shias and that all are Muslims," Naeem explained.

The Fatehpuri Imam explained that all sectarian clashes could be credited to vested interests, of one kind or the other.

"In our country, those who benefit by keeping people disunited foment Hindu-Muslim fights, so who has time for Shia-Sunni clashes?" he said.

Imam Bukhari agreed, "I would say 99 percent of Shia-Sunni differences in India are over. Just one percent probably remains, but that is perhaps inevitable. It is a problem in Pakistan because the Pakistani leadership wants it that way."