Expendable Cargo
"He was the most important Sunni clerical supporter of the Assad regime. It is a great blow to the regime and the remaining Sunni supporters of the president."
Joshua Landis, director, Center for Middle East Studies, University of Oklahoma: Syria Comment blog
Muslims have a fundamental problem of believing all Muslims to be equally respectful of the religion they all worship. This, despite that they experience the deep-seated rage within minority sects of those holding their view of Islam as representing the one true religion. The two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia, are so afflicted with antipathy toward one another that each is capable of unleashing swift and deadly assaults against one another.
Someone was responsible for attacking worshippers at the Eman mosque, setting off a blast that wounded 84 Muslims and killing Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Bouti. This man was one of the most senior figures in Sunni Islam. The imam wrote 40 books, and ranked 23rd on a list of the most influential 500 Muslims world-wide. His personal clerical decision as a Sunni Muslim to defend the regime of Bashar al-Assad earned him the enmity of Syrian revolutionaries.
The explosion within the Damascus-centered mosque destroyed the lives of no fewer than 42 people. Syrian state media characterized the explosion as a suicide bombing carried out by "mercenary terrorists against the Syrians". One of the most atrocious such events yet to be evidenced during the two years of brutal strife. The Free Syrian Army has disowned responsibility for the event; they would never target a mosque, they claim.
Of course mosques are regularly targeted across the Islamic world through sectarian strife, each warring sect considering the mosque dedicated to the opposing sect a legitimate target since it does not, after all, represent a mosque dedicated to true Islam. "This massacre adds to the crimes perpetrated by the mercenary terrorists against Syrians", the official regime mouthpiece SANA stated, quoting the Baath Socialist Party leadership.
"They target everything including the mosques and houses of worship." Syria's Ministry of Religious Endowments announced that the imam with the prodigious memory and monumental respect in the Islamic world had been "martyred while giving a religious lesson. The malicious hands of traitors killed the great scholar because he was the voice of Syria, the right of Syria and the image of Syria."
As for conflicting opinions from among the Sunni Syrian revolutionaries themselves, there is ample. "I expect the regime to be involved in this assassination. He is just a religious figure and not a state figure He used to have influence, but today he's an extra burden on the regime", scoffed Abu Tamam, a member of a group called the Jundilla Battalion.
"The regime will never get rid of such an important figure. He's like the spiritual father to Bashar", objected an anti-government activist located in Turkey. As usual, the truth lies somewhere between the middle of each of these hypotheses, each one of which appears reasonable to the mind of those who know the Middle East and its dysfunctionalities because they are the Middle East dysfunctionals.
And, for the time being, this atrocity like so many others with deliberately muddied responsibility, will remain a mystery within the larger tangle of heritage-entrenched tribal, sectarian and political Islam in the Middle East.
Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Islamism, Revolution, Societal Failures, Syria
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, March 23, 2013
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