The Abysmal Iniquities of Religious Sectarianism
So many of the world's religions are split into segments which disagree profoundly with one another. Seldom have we seen the kind of murderous vitriol that describes the bloody enmity one tribal religious allegiance holds against another, other than the current situation in Iraq. Sunni and Shia Muslims have fought one another for hundreds of years, each claiming to represent the true face of Islam, but they have also lived together in the harmony of neighbours recognizing the split of faith, but embracing the spirit of the god whom they both worship.Ah, but when civil order breaks down, human inhibitions are replaced with raw tribal jealousies, suspicions and destructive impulses at their most deadly. The world has seen time and again how divisive religious differences can be, how bloody the outcome of settling those differences can be. Yet, witnessing the utter mindless chaos now ongoing in Iraq it's doubtful that any news media has ever reported on the scope of mutilations, murders, humanitarian outrages such as are now happening in Iraq.
Abd al-Sattar Obeid's sons Ali, 28 and Thaer, 27 shot dead during the memorial service for their younger brother Mohammed who was gunned down alongside his uncle and two cousins. Unmasked gunmen interrupted the procession of mourning carrying Kalashnikovs and pistols. Abd al-Sattar Obeid declared "I begged them, I told them, please don't kill anyone. We have done nothing. What have we done to deserve this? But they didn't listen to me. They killed my two other sons and ran."
One of his sons had five children, the other two, and the third three. These children are now without their fathers, their uncle, their cousins. Sectarian violence, all-out war of Sunni against Shia has deprived them of their immediate and their extended family. Their bereaved and anguished grandfather is yet left to them. But even that is uncertain, just as their own survival in this maelstrom of unforgiving violence remains unassured.
Iran - that threat to world stability on its very own in its self-fulfilling determination to hurl nuclear death at its enemies, its march to world supremacy, the long-awaited advent of world-wide subjugation to and the wider embrace of Islam - has been busy supplying and funding the Shiite death squads responsible for thousands of deaths in Baghdad and southern Iraq. Their vision of the Prophet Muhammad moves their agenda forward to world domination.
Syria is responsible for the surge of Sunni jihadists and insurgents, thought to be in the order of a hundred daily, streaming into Iraq across its contiguous borders. Syria, one of the few Arab states bereft of natural resources, feeling itself needful of reaching out yet again to the resources of its neighbours, intent on restoring its hegemony over Lebanon, is yet another piece of this intractable puzzle.
Over seven hundred Iraqi civilians have been killed during the past week as a never-ending, but increasing cycle of violence represented by Sunni attacks and Shiite militia reprisals, gives way to Shia attacks and Sunni militia reprisals. Somewhere in all of this is the fragmented, undedicated Iraqi government forces, themselves implicated in attacks on civilians, kidnappings, murders.
Murderous barbarism has been unleashed. The odious genie of tribal fanaticism will not readily slip back into the jar of civilization.
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, November 21, 2006
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