Grand Ayatollah Sistani fatwa for defensive jihad against ISIS, Karbala Friday prayers, 13 Jun 2014 (English translation of Arabic original)

Speaker (by proxy): Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest Shia marja' (religious authority) in Najaf. Location: announced through his representative Sheikh Abdul Mehdi al-Karbalai during Friday prayer sermons in Karbala. Date: 13 June 2014, three days after ISIS captured Mosul. The single core sentence of the fatwa, which immediately mobilized tens of thousands of Iraqi volunteers into the Popular Mobilization Forces (Hashd al-Sha'abi):

"Citizens who are able to bear arms and fight terrorists, defending their country and their people and their holy places, should volunteer and join the security forces to achieve this holy purpose."

[Context preserved from Sistani's representative, also widely reported verbatim:] The fatwa was framed as "al-jihad al-kifa'i" — a sufficient/collective religious duty (as opposed to "al-jihad al-'ayni", an individual obligation). The key doctrinal innovation, reiterated in Sistani's subsequent 2015 elaboration, was that the call to arms was directed to "Iraqis of all faiths" and explicitly framed in defense of the Iraqi state and its territorial integrity, NOT in Shia-sectarian terms. The 2015 elaboration emphasized: protection of non-combatants ("the weak among the elderly, the children, and women"); prohibition of disrespect to corpses, deceit, and mistreatment of prisoners; that "the Muslim must honour and guard those who are not Muslim as he would with his own family" (on non-Muslims under Muslim protection); and warning against takfir (declaring fellow Muslims unbelievers) on the basis of doctrinal disagreement.