Detroit-Based Shiite Imam Hassan Qazwini: ISIS Run by Israel, Zionists In Order to Kill Muslims, Defame Islam; Israel Benefits from ISIS More than Anyone (Archival)

Iraqi-born Shiite Imam Hassan Qazwini said in a November 22, 2015 video of an address at the Az-Zahraa Islamic Center in Detroit, Michigan that ISIS is motivated by an agenda and is being run by the enemies of Islam. He said that almost every country in the Middle East except for Israel has been targeted by ISIS and that this "speaks volumes" about a possible connection between ISIS and Israel. Qazwini said that ISIS is the arm of the Zionists in the Muslim world that serves to kill Muslims, defame Islam, and alienate people from Islam. He said that the Zionists and the Zionist regime benefit more than anybody else from the atrocities perpetrated by ISIS and from the fact that ISIS jeopardizes the fate and wellbeing of Muslims throughout the West. For more from Imam Hassan Qazwini, see MEMRI TV Clips No. 5710 and No. 5644. Imam Hassan Qazwini served as the imam of Az-Zahraa Islamic Center until 2015, and Imam Bassem Al-Sheraa (see MEMRI TV Clip No. 7002) is the Center's current imam.

Imam Hassan Qazwini: When ISIS attacks non-Muslims, they immediately blame Islam for it. I have no doubt that ISIS is motivated by an agenda run by the enemies of Islam, and I want to bring this to your attention. ISIS has targeted people in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Kuwait, in Saudi Arabia, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Yemen, in Algeria… The only place that has been completely safe and [that] has never been threatened by ISIS, nor has it been targeted, is Israel. What does this tell you? This speaks out, this speaks volumes – that ISIS somehow is connected to Israel. ISIS is playing the role of the arm of the Zionists in the Muslim world to kill more Muslims and non-Muslims so it can defame the name of Islam, so people can blame Islam for its atrocities, so people can be alienated from this religion – this peaceful religion, our religion. Otherwise, who is benefitting from these atrocities? Muslims are benefitting? When they are jeopardizing the fate of over six million Muslim in the United States, 20 million Muslims living in Europe… Their faith, their fates, their wellbeing, their livelihood is being jeopardized by ISIS. Islam is benefitting? No. The number one beneficiary of all these atrocities, I tell you, is the Zionist[s]. It is the Zionist regime.