Some Sunnis And Shiites Show Unity Amid Iran War
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In March, Maulana Fazlur Rehman stepped into the Iranian Embassy in the Pakistani capital and signed the condolence register for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader and Shiite spiritual icon, who was killed by a series of targeted U.S.-Israeli airstrikes.
As the chief of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam political party and one of Pakistan’s most prominent and conservative Sunni clerics, Rehman’s public appearance carried heavy symbolic weight. He did not stop at condolences, but openly condemned the killing, a move that left many observers stunned.
In the wake of the Iran war, across the region, there have been other instances of unity among Sunnis and Shiites — two major Muslim groups that have historically been at odds.
READ: The Sunni-Shi’a Muslim Divide: Why It Matters In The Iran War
“You can unite the entire Pakistani nation against the US, Israel, and India,” Sabookh Syed told Religion Unplugged.
For Sayed, a seasoned political analyst who tracks religious affairs in Pakistan, Rehman’s visit is a rare break from the deep-rooted sectarian hostility that has defined the country’s religious landscape for decades.
Pakistan is home to one of the world’s largest Shiite populations, with estimates putting the number at around 21 million within a total population of roughly 240 million. But since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, relations between Sunni and Shiite communities have often been tense, surpassing theological differences.
That distance was orchestrated. According to a report by the Brookings Institution, when General Zia ul-Haq seized power in 1977 and launched his Islamization program, Saudi oil revenues funded a network of Islamic schools and sectarian organizations built to counter Shiite political mobilization in the wake of Iran’s 1979 revolution.
And as the International Crisis Group puts it, groups like Sipah-e-Sahaba emerged with the explicit purpose of declaring Shiite Muslims non-Muslim. Tit-for-tat assassinations of clerics and professionals, targeted specifically for their sect, became a feature of Pakistani urban life through the 1980s and 1990s, leaving thousands dead.
The violence never fully stopped. It simply became a managed frequency that periodically spiked into a massacre. However, the circumstances of Khamenei’s death appear to have cut through much of that historical friction. In Shiite theology and collective memory, there is a clear distinction between a leader who passes away from natural causes and one who is killed, especially when the killing happens during a period of religious mourning and involves family members.
The imagery of a revered religious figure struck down by a more powerful external force immediately evoked the ancient tragedy of Karbala, where Imam Hussein, the grandson of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, and his small group of companions were martyred in 680 AD. For many Pakistanis, both Shiite and Sunni, the parallel needed no explanation.
This emotional response has traveled beyond traditional Shiite circles.
“Iran’s resistance in this war, as a neighboring country of Pakistan, has also triggered a noticeable shift in narratives among Sunnis within Pakistan, creating rare moments of unity across divided sectarian lines,” Ghafoor Lashari, a Karachi-based scholar of Islamic studies, told Religion Unplugged.
He added that over the years, the Iranian-backed Quds Day rallies for Palestine had slowly built a shared anti-imperialist language that occasionally bridged local divisions. The current war has completely fast-tracked that shift.
Now, moderate Sunni religious parties, student activist groups, and even secular-leaning youth are putting aside generational rivalries to stand on the same side. The public grief on the streets is no longer confined to one community; it has taken on an unmistakably cross-sectarian character.
“Khamenei united Shiism and Sunnism on the cause of Palestine, on humanity, for the broader cause of Muslim resistance, for the sake of Islamic identity, and for the sake of representation,” said Syeda Fatima Asad Naqvi, 27, a Shi’a political activist and a resident of Islamabad.
Naqvi noted that Khamenei was the religious cleric who issued a religious decree in favor of Shiite-Sunni intermarriages, which itself shows the inter-sectarian unity promoted by Khamenei.
“He was a father figure to us in a religious sense,” said Faryal Gohar Batool, 22, a Sunni social science student from Sargodha, a city in the Punjab province northwest of Lahore.
“Spiritually, he will always remain a prominent figure to me,” she added. “Although I am not a practicing Muslim, respect transcends personal religiosity in its own way.”
Batool was careful to criticize Iran’s handling of internal protests, calling it oppression, but she still described Khamenei’s death as a heroic stand against external aggression.
In Karachi, Sunni social activist Barkat Sharani, 32, expressed similar sentiments.
“It was a heartbreaking loss for the Iranian people, and for me as well,” he noted, describing the targeted strikes on Iran’s top leadership as a tragic moment that united people in unexpected ways.
This wave of solidarity, however, has not been purely peaceful. In the aftermath of the strikes, protests erupted across Pakistan and quickly turned deadly. Nationwide, around 35 people lost their lives during the demonstrations. In Karachi, the country’s economic heart, crowds attempted to breach the perimeter of the U.S. Consulate, prompting security forces to open fire.
The situation became particularly volatile in Gilgit-Baltistan, a remote, high-altitude region with a long history of intense sectarian friction. In Skardu, angry crowds torched a United Nations office and several government buildings. Residents announced an immediate ban on American tourists entering the area.
The state responded forcefully, deploying the military, banning public gatherings, and imposing a three-day curfew across Gilgit and Skardu. Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, General Asim Munir, issued a strong public warning, making it clear that violence inside Pakistan triggered by external regional conflicts would not be tolerated.
Even in Quetta, a city long scarred by sectarian violence, the atmosphere has shifted noticeably. The same neighborhoods where walls once carried hardline graffiti declaring Shiites as infidels and where portraits of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the Sunni President who was overthrown and executed in 2006 for killing 148 Shiite men and boys in 1982, were paraded as sectarian statements, now show a different mood.
“The situation has changed, and many Sunni youth have shown sympathy regarding Khamenei’s death,” Shakoor Baloch (27), a Quetta resident and political activist who had witnessed the worst periods of communal tension, told Religion Unplugged.
Engineer Muhammad Ejaz Sarwat Qadri, head of Pakistan Sunni Tehreek, a major Barelvi religio-political party, captured the broader sentiment among many religious leaders.
“Targeting the leaders, religious clerics, or political figures of any Muslim state is a matter of concern for Muslim brotherhood,” he said. “The Muslim Ummah must move forward based on unity, brotherhood, and shared Islamic values rather than sectarianism. Such an incident pushes brotherhood rather than sectarianism, and we are united against such oppression.”
The question now is whether this moment of cross-sectarian unity will survive beyond the immediate emotional shock. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace puts it, Pakistan has seen similar surges of solidarity in the past, often triggered by external events such as regional military escalations, only for them to fade once the immediate grief subsides and old domestic problems resurface.
At the same time, there are signs that this episode carries a different weight, especially among the younger generation. A tech-savvy cohort of Pakistanis, both Shiite and Sunni, grew up consuming politics through social media. Their worldview has been shaped more by real-time images from regional conflicts than by the bitter memories of the 1980s and 1990s proxy wars inside Pakistan.
In Gilgit-Baltistan, where local communities still carry scars from past clashes, resident Ejaz Muhammad, 41, has seen a genuine shift. “Many people now believe that it is between Islam and non-Muslims,” he observed. “Shiite and Sunni communities were not this close before the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.”
As Pakistan navigates the delicate balance between genuine grief, political opportunism and the risk of renewed violence, the story of this moment continues to unfold. For now, an ancient tragedy from Karbala has found new echoes in the streets of Islamabad, Karachi, Quetta, and Skardu, creating a rare bridge across one of the country’s deepest divides.
“This is not just about one leader’s death,” Syed said. “It has awakened something deeper in the Pakistani consciousness, a shared sense of resistance that overrides our oldest divisions. The real test will be whether we can turn this emotion into lasting understanding.”
This article is published in collaboration with Egab.
Imtiaz Baloch is an Islamabad-based journalist and researcher covering a diverse range of topics particularly security and conflict in Iran.