Following are excerpts from a speech by Egyptian cleric Sheik Mazen Al-Sarsawi, which aired on Al-Nas TV on October 30, 2008.

Sheik Mazen Al-Sarsawi: After the establishment of the Safavid state in Iran, all the Shiites became [extremist] Rafidites.1 There is no longer a division into moderate and extreme – they have all become the most fanatic Shiites. Only the ignorant or the deluded would deny this. In interfaith conferences, the Shiites conceal their true thoughts. 90% of the Shiite religion is to conceal your true beliefs. They admit this in their books. 90% of their religion is to conceal their beliefs. This is hypocrisy. They say one thing, and in their hearts, there is something else. They say to you: "We are brothers," and whatnot, but they are laughing at you. In their writings, their websites, their official libraries, and their seminaries, they say: "Kill the Sunnis." We all see what is going on in Iraq.

The number of Iraqis killed by the Shiites exceeds by far the number of those killed by the American and British Crusaders. This is well known to anybody who follows the news, and to anybody who follows what is going on objectively and seriously. But those who bury their heads in the sand – we have nothing to say to them, because they are wrongly considered to be [Sunnis]. Some of those who speak about the religion of Allah are wrongly considered to be [Sunni]. They are asleep, they don't know a thing – or else they know, but they pretend they don't know, and deceive the nation, saying: "The Shiites are not like that, they are our brothers in Islam, and we share the same religion." We do not share the same religion.

Ni'matullah Al-Jazairi, one of the great recent Shiite scholars, said – and they all agree on this... None of them denied it... He said: "A god whose prophet's successor was Abu Bakr is not our god, and his prophet is not our prophet. Ours is the god whose prophet's successor is Ali." For us, the successor of the prophet of our God is Abu Bakr. They believe that our religion is different from theirs. However, some sheiks, under the pretext of interfaith dialogue, insist on misleading everybody, saying that there are all kinds of Shiites. What kinds? Where are they? Show us a single moderate Shiite. Those Shiites, who purport to be our brothers, have killed at least 200,000 Sunnis in Iraq. Ask the Iraqis. They are refugees, scattered all over the world. Ask them: Who killed you? Who drove you out of your homes? Their answer will be "the Shiites," not "the Crusaders."

1 The term "Safavid" refers to the Safavid dynasty, which ruled Iran between 1501 and 1722 and declared the Twelver Shi'a as the religion of the state. The term "Rafidite" is a perjorative term denoting the Twelver Shi'a, because of its rejection of the first three caliphs.