Muqtada Al-Sadr, one of Iraq’s influential Shi'ite leaders, has invited Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the top religious academy in the Sunni Islamic World, to make Jews their common enemy and to set doctrinal differences aside.

“Let’s have a common enemy: jews and their extremist subordinates. Let’s put our hands together,” he said in a message published in Arabic by his official website Sunday.

Al-Sadr’s message hailed remarks by Al-Azhar’s leadership over the past months in which they rejected describing Shi'ite as infidels, though his two latest messages lambasted Egyptian authorities for preventing Egyptian Shi'ite from celebrating their holy feast of Ashoura in late October.

“Here, I do not want to engage in a doctrinal argument…I neither want a Shi'ite to be a Sunni nor a Sunni to become a Shi'ite,” he wrote.

Egypt’s religious leadership has long viewed Shi'ite Islam as a threat, backing the crackdown on Shi'ite rituals inside the country. But last July, the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar voiced opposition to the use of terms categorizing Shi'ite muslims as heretics.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm