The Shiite religious authority and its positions on the Palestinian issue (1936-2023)

Abstract

In this research, I discussed the position of the Shiite religious authority in Iraq on the Palestinian issue since its beginning in the 1930s, through its most important events and transformations in the second half of the twentieth century, all the way to the current events that Gaza witnessed in 2023. The religious authority had a firm position in supporting the independence of the Palestinian people and supporting their struggle to resist the occupiers, despite the various religious authorities who took turns confronting the authority and who declared jihad against the occupiers and providing all available aid to the Palestinians to ensure the achievement of their goal and their liberation. The research problem is: “Was the position of the Shiite religious authority on the Palestinian issue a fixed position stemming from religious and humanitarian motives, or was it subordinate to the political positions adopted by the ruling regimes...” In this research, we reached a set of conclusions, including that the position of the Shiite religious authority is a fixed religious ideological position on the Palestinian issue that is not affected by authority or events, and this is proven by the fixed positions of the authority on the events of Palestine over the course of a century.