Yussef al-Qaradawi is stirring things up again.

When last heard from, the Egyptian-born TV-preacher with a massive Al-Jazeera viewing audience was at the center of a maelstrom touched off by former London mayor Ken Livingstone's invitation to visit the British capital. People from across the political spectrum protested the reception accorded the homophobic, anti-semitic Muslim Brotherhood imam whose approval of suicide operations against Israeli civilians and Infidel troops in Muslim lands should have earned him treatment as a security threat rather than a VIP.

These days Qaradawi is waging a campaign in the Arabic media against his fellow Muslims - specifically the Shia minority whom extremist Sunnis like himself see as heretics. He told the London-based pan-Arab daily, Asharq al-Awsat, that thanks to Iran's orchestrated efforts to undermine the Sunnis, "countries that were purely Sunni are becoming Shia."

In response, Iran's Ayatollah Mohamed Ali Taskhiri, Secretary General of the "World Assembly for Proximity among the Islamic Schools of Thought", condemned Qaradawi's statements, which, he said, were "poisoned with hypocrisy and deceit."

Other religious and political figures from around the region jumped into the fray. A Lebanese MP from Hezbollah, the militant Shia political party, blamed the controversy on foreign powers (i.e. the US and Israel). Though some Sunni spokesmen criticized Qaradawi's sectarianism they also deplored how the Shia were treating fellow Sunnis.