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african, al faqeeh, al kafi, ayatollah, black, khazar, khoei, khui, kurdish, kurds, misbah yazdi, musakkin fuaad, Qand, Qandahar, racism, sadeq rouhani, shaykh kulayni, shaykh saduq, shaykh tusi, shaykh yahya hilli, shi'ism, shi'ite, Zanj, zunj
Bismillaah
I was recently contacted by a Shi’ite person who, after reading some of my blog posts, claimed that the Ahlus-Sunnah are racist. Specifically, he was referring to the posts about the superiority of Arabs over non-Arabs, as well as the issue of non-Arab men being unworthy of marriage to Arab women.
So I wanted to clarify this issue here. Not only am I going to show how the Ahlus Sunnah are not racist, I’m also going to demonstrate how it’s the Shi’ites who are truly racist.
As for the Ahlus Sunnah being racist, I ask how is that even possible when the beliefs of the Ahlus Sunnah are from God Himself? If racism is unjust, and God is perfectly just, then how can the rules of God be racist? That makes no sense at all! So even though the principle of Arabs being superior to non-Arabs may appear to be unjust, we know that since it is commanded by God Himself, it cannot be unjust, and hence it isn’t racist.
So much for the idiotic argument about the Ahlus Sunnah being racist. Now moving on to the more interesting part of the racism in Shi’ism.
What a lot of Muslims are not aware of is how blatantly racist Shi’ism has been throughout its history. Not only in the past, but even now these Shi’ite “scholars” are propagating the same racist notions in their books of law. The following is a selection of some of the racist material I found present in the works of their most important modern scholars (from last century):
Ayatullah Abu al-Qasim al-Khui:

One of the most important Shi’i scholars of the last century. You can read more about him here, here, and here.
He states the following in his Kitab al-Nikah, volume 1, page 16:
يكره تزويج سئ الخلق، والمخنث، والزنج، والأكراد، والخزر، والأعرابي، والفاسق، وشارب الخمر
Translation: It is reprehensible to marry someone with bad character, and the transgendered person, and the Zunj (black person from Eastern Africa), and the Kurds, and the Khazars (a group of Turkic people), and the bedouin Arabs, and the immoral persons, and the drinker of alcohol.
Notice the racism in that law against Kurds and black Africans. This is something that we will see throughout the Shi’i books of law and hadith. But first, here are some more scholars who have made the exact same ruling in their works:
Ayatullah Sadeq Rohani:
You can read more about him here and here.
He states the following in his Urwat al-Wuthqa, vol 2, page 459:
يكره تزويج سئ الخلق، والمخنث، والزنج، والأكراد، والخزر، والأعرابي، والفاسق، وشارب الخمر
Translation: It is reprehensible to marry someone with bad character, and the transgendered person, and the Zunj (black person from Eastern Africa), and the Kurds, and the Khazars (a group of Turkic people), and the bedouin Arabs, and the immoral persons, and the drinker of alcohol.
Ayatullah Muhammad Kazim Tabtaba’i Yazdi:
He was the head of the Hawzah of Najaf till his death. You can read more about him here.
He states the following in his famous work, al-Urwat al-Wuthqa, volume 5, page 480:
يكره تزويج سئ الخلق، والمخنث، والزنج، والأكراد، والخزر، والأعرابي، والفاسق، وشارب الخمر
Translation: It is reprehensible to marry someone with bad character, and the transgendered person, and the Zunj (black person from Eastern Africa), and the Kurds, and the Khazars (a group of Turkic people), and the bedouin Arabs, and the immoral persons, and the drinker of alcohol.
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