At his annual meeting with Muslim eulogists and the people responsible for commemoration ceremonies during the Lunar month of Muharram, Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah said that Wahhabism is worse than Israel and Zionism, Lebanon’s Al Akhbar newspaper reported on Tuesday.

He reportedly considers Wahhabism to be responsible for damaging Islam’s image worldwide.

“Wahhabism is more evil than Israel, especially [in] that it seeks to destroy others and eliminate whatever thing that has to do with Islam and its history,” he said.

Not a Shiite, Sunni matter

“This project was launched in 2011, and it not a Shiite and Sunni matter. The role played by spy services is completely evident here. We should use this opportunity to pin Wahhabism down and deal a blow to it,” he added.

The existent conflict, Nasrallah said, was not between Shiite and Sunnis, but with Wahhabism.

Nasrallah also said what posed a yet bigger threat than even Wahhabism and Zionism was “British Shiism,” which, he said, was being promoted by pseudo-religious figures, whom he called mercenaries of intelligence services.

Wahhabism is a religious movement or branch of Sunni Islam which is named after an eighteenth-century preacher and scholar, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. It has been variously described as “ultraconservative”, “austere”, “fundamentalist”, “puritanical” or “puritan” and as an Islamic “reform movement” to restore “pure monotheistic worship” (tawhid) by scholars and advocates. Today Al-Wahhab’s teachings are the official, state-sponsored form of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia. While in Iran the official state-sponsored form of Islam is “Shiism” or Shiite.

Commenting on Syrian conflict he said there was no prospect for a political solution and that only the battlefield will determine the outcome .

“Developments on the [battle] ground will ultimately determine [the outcome],” he said

About 500, 000 have been killed in the brutal Syrian civil war since March 2011. Hezbollah fighters have been supporting the forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar Al Assad in the fight against the mostly Sunni rebel groups.