Harmony and Loving Kindness in Kindred Religion
What is happening in Baghdad? What is happening in Iraq? Surely this isn't business as usual in the world of Islam? Definitely, most definitely not. Regardless of the manner in which this maelstrom began, it was initiated by clerics who sought to claim sectarian one-upsmanship and sacred territory by manipulating their followers.As a result, entire neighbourhoods of Iraqis sharing a common heritage but an uncommon aversion to one another's version of the legitimacy of Muhammad's inheritance in Islam have succumbed to the most base instincts, reverted to primitive bloodlust in the best tradition of rival, war-mongering tribalism. Where harmony once ruled there are now killing grounds.
Each day sees additions to the piles of corpses left at curbsides, abandoned lots, waterways, roadways. Life hinges upon whom you happen to cross: are you Sunni, or are you Shia? Quick thinking is required, and often no matter how swift the response it is the wrong one and life turns to ugly death. Ugly, I say, because it appears that to deliver the quick to death's door doesn't seem to appease the burning hatred of the killers. Their act is not complete without the desecration of the corpse.
To abuse a corpse is bad. To visit cruel and inhuman torture on the still-living body of a co-religionist, with a common background in history and culture, but a death-dealing divide in the sect you adhere to, is the fate of many, from either side. No one is guiltless here. Not the least of the guiltless is Muqtada al-Sadr, who early on established his Mahdi army in rejection of the U.S.-British presence in Iraq.
What is now menacing, what is foiling the vain hope for reconciliation is that hostility has now erupted between Shia and Shia, and they too appear intent on murdering one another. There are no bounds to this all-consuming hatred which has been unleashed and there appear now to be no boundaries beyond which murderers fear to tread. The Shias, once the underdog majority under Saddam Hussein's minority Sunnis, seek revenge and demand blood.
Now it has come to revenge killings among the Shia themselves. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani whose word was once sufficient to ensure his flock would listen and obey, speaks to the wind and his words demanding restraint and reason are lost on the unknowing ether. Deadly hatred, once unleashed is difficult to recall.
There is nowhere to hide. Frightened residents use any means at hand to try to barricade their streets at night, but their death-dealing oppressors find their way regardless. Talk of a deep trench, a high wall, come to nothing since it is not the enemy without that murders relentlessly but the enemy within.
Where is the peace, the charity, the kindness the Koran enjoins Muslims to display toward one another?
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, October 24, 2006
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