As-Sadr
This New York Times article about Al-Sadr is wrong about one thing: it is not just one of his henchmen who is suspected of murdering Al-Khoei. Al-Sadr himself has been charged with the murder. But there is other important information here.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 4 — For months, as American occupation authorities have focused on a moderate Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a radical young Shiite cleric named Moktada al-Sadr has been spewing invective and threatening a widespread insurrection. On Sunday, he unleashed it.At his word, thousands of disciples, wearing green headbands and carrying automatic rifles, stormed into the streets of several cities and set off the most widespread mayhem of the occupation. Witnesses and occupation officials said the disciples occupied police stations, fired rocket-propelled grenades at American troops and overran government security in Kufa, the town in south central Iraq where Mr. Sadr lives. "The occupation is over!" many yelled. "We are now controlled by Sadr!"
Mr. Sadr, 31, is the son of a revered Shiite cleric who was assassinated in 1999 by hit men under the rule of Saddam Hussein. He comes from a long line of clerics. A famous uncle was also silenced by Mr. Hussein in 1980.
Mr. Sadr had two older brothers, but they were killed with his father, leaving him the heir apparent.
In the prelude to the transfer of power from the American-led occupation authority to Iraqi civilians, planned for June 30, Mr. Sadr has been increasingly caustic, issuing statements denouncing Americans and any Iraqis who work with them. A newspaper that has been his official mouthpiece was shut down by the American occupation a week ago.
On Friday, he announced that he was opening Iraqi chapters of Hezbollah and Hamas, militant pro-Palestinian groups that Israel and the United States consider terrorist organizations. "I am the beating arm for Hezbollah and Hamas here in Iraq," he said.
Mr. Sadr is one of many powerful Shiite clerics calling for an Islamic government, though his following seems especially devoted. His men wear black shirts and black pants and carry larger-than-life portraits of him. He has a ruddy face and a thick black beard, and most photos feature him angrily shaking a finger.
On a recent day in Kufa, hundreds of boys marched around the town's main mosque, holding up posters of Mr. Sadr and chanting his name.
"It's true Moktada inherited a lot of support," said Hamid al-Bayati, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a prominent Shiite political party. "But there is also a lot of new passion for him."
On Sunday night, townspeople in Kufa said Mr. Sadr was holed up in its main mosque. Many said they would die before they would allow occupation forces to capture him.
In the past year of the occupation, Mr. Sadr has shown many faces. At times he is isolated by the Shiite leadership, at other times he is embraced. In the world of Shiite clerics, Mr. Sadr is an upstart. He is several ranks and many years away from attaining the title of ayatollah, which would mean his rulings would carry the weight of religious law.
Immediately after the invasion, Mr. Sadr deployed black-clad disciples to patrol the streets of Baghdad's Shiite slums. His men handed out bread, water and oranges. They also provided much-needed security. Mr. Sadr had seen a void and filled it. In return, leaders in the Shiite district of Baghdad that had been known as Saddam City decided to rename the area Sadr City, after Mr. Sadr's father, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr.
Whether justified or not, Mr. Sadr has a reputation for vengefulness. Last April, Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a rival Shiite cleric, was hacked to death by a mob, a crime one of Mr. Sadr's henchmen is now accused of committing.
In June, Mr. Sadr formed a militia called the Mahdi Army. Many groups in Iraq have private armies. But Mr. Sadr's men, estimated to number in the tens of thousands, also formed their own religious courts and prisons.
This fall and winter, Mr. Sadr was eclipsed by Ayatollah Sistani, the septuagenarian cleric who demanded direct elections sooner rather than later and emerged as the most influential Shiite leader. The two do not talk.
As Mr. Sadr's popularity faded, his talk grew more militant.
In February, he declared his militia "the enemy of the occupation."
Last week, the American authorities shut down Mr. Sadr's newspaper, Al Hawza, after they accused it of inciting violence. Although the paper did not print any calls for attacks, the American authorities said false reporting, including articles that ascribed suicide bombings to Americans, could touch off violence.
The closing, set to last 60 days, began a week of protests that grew bigger and more unruly at each turn.
"Death to America! Death to Jews!" Mr. Sadr's supporters shouted.
The newspaper was an important symbol for many Shiites. Al Hawza took its name from a loose-knit Shiite seminary that dates from a thousand years ago. Its clerics have played pivotal roles in Middle Eastern history — and often militant ones. In 1920, Hawza clerics in Najaf encouraged the revolt against British rule in Iraq. In 1979, they played a similar role in the Islamic revolution in Iran, which like Iraq is mainly Shiite.
On Sunday, Mr. Sadr called for his followers to "terrorize your enemy."
"There is no use for demonstrations, as your enemy loves to terrify and suppress opinions, and despises peoples," he said in a statement.
"I ask you not to resort to demonstrations because they have become a losing card and we should seek other ways," he said. "Terrorize your enemy, as we cannot remain silent over its violations."
In saying "terrorize your enemy," Al-Sadr may be recalling this verse of the Qur'an: "Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): 'I am with you: give firmness to the believers. I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them'" (Sura 8:12).
Mr Sadr looks like a soft, overweight, pudgy, self-important evil gnome. There's something about that dark turban and that beetled expression that makes you wonder how much, or rather how little he is meditating upon God, and how much he is focussed upon personal power in the name of God. He's wanted for murder so the best way for him to avoid trial is to place himself at the head of the Madhi's Army and drag everybody into it, just to save his own skin. It's hard to figure why people follow this scowling dumpling of a man. And what kind of religion advocates killing your enemies? He will be hard to capture and put out of business. The US should put up giant billboards all around Baghdad and Iraq making fun of him; cartoons, lampoons, etc. Self-important people rarely have a sense of humor. Get people to laugh at him. That will cut to the quick.
Mike H
The Sadr family of clerics was identified long ago, by Gertrude Bell in her letters in the 1920s, as a center for hostility. In Najaf, a few weeks ago, a green Islamic flag was unfurled; in Arabic the words read "the Mahdi is coming." That should put a chill down the spine of very educated Infidel.
The "Mahdi" is the Hidden Imam, who when he returns will bring about the complete dominance of Islam, and the destruction of all Infidels. If the Sunni Bin Laden emphasizes the restoration of the Caliphate, the Shi'a tend to emphasize the return of the Mahdi. Pace various American converts to Shi'a Islam, it is not one whit less dangerous for Infidels than the Sunni version. Whatever the sectarian differences, there is not the slightest discernible difference in the hostility toward Infidels. Indeed, the hysterical fear of the "unclean" (najis) in Shi'a Islam may be even more pronounced. Thus Jews in Iran, until the most recent Shah, were forbidden to go out in the rain, lest the rain, first touching their "unclean" bodies, would then touch a Muslim and contaminate him. There are family testimonies of Jews who were killed, precisely because they were out in the rain, and a passing mullah claimed he had been made "wet" by rainwater that had touched a Jew.
The Shi'a explosion was perfectly predictable. The key to statecraft is not to be surprised. Let me put it clearly: it was right to destroy the Iraqi weapons, to search out for other weaponry, to destroy the Iraqi regime. It might even be said that it is the massive good-hearted and unselfish American effort (and it is precisely its unselfishness, its naive lack of calculation, that makes it so unacceptable), in rebuilding or building 25,000 schools, supplying hundreds of hospitals, and rebuilding electricity grids and roads, that has put Iraq in a state not just ante-bellum, not just pre-Saddam Hussein, but in a condition better than any it has ever known.
But the Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project will fail. It is based on ignoring Islam, and the deep hostility it engenders toward Infidels. It does not matter how much good we do. We remain Infidels. Sunni and Shi'a alike will hate us. They differ only in the fact that some are willing to wait, to be the beneficiaries of as much Infidel largesse as possible (and please, for god's sake, someone lead the fight to cancel that $18.7 billion in Infidel funds which are to be transferred to Muslim Iraqis -- this is absolute madness).
Silly phrases about not wanting to "cut and run" or that nautical version, "let us stay the course," are unworthy of adults. We must calculate our costs and benefits. We are now squandering men, materiel, political capital, time, and our own best instruments for fighting the counter-Jihad -- which include winning back Occupied Europe (Eurabia) from the corrupt elites who, through the Euro-Arab Dialgoue and other means, have been quiet quislings in the slow demographic and intellectual takeover of Western Europe by Muslims and, in the media, by apologists for the Jihad; sending in troops to the southern Sudan -- after a carefully-orchestrated meeting with black American church leaders, and possibly black African diplomats -- to protect the black African survivors of more than two decades of Arab-funded Jihad, and to help an independent, black African state in the south, funded by its own oil wealth, to come into being (a terrific psychological blow to the promoters of the further expansion of dar al-Islam); an attempt to unitate all those who are vicitms of Jihad, whether Buddhists in Thailand, Confucian and Christian Chinese and Hindus in Indonesia, Hindus and Sikhs in Kashmir and Pakistan, Hindus and Christians in Bangladesh, Orthodox Christians in Kosovo, and son on; a declared end to all foreign -- especially military aid -- to all Muslim states -- beginning with Egypt, which pocketed the Sinai, proceeded to violate every one of its solemn commitments under the Camp David Accords, and is now a world center both of antisemitism and anti-Americanism. And the President must announce, and fund, a Manhattan Project for Energy that will help end, not the "oil weapon" (it does not, and never did, exist) but the "money weapon" that funds the Jihad; let it be combined with an announcement that the government will steadily raise taxes on gasoline, in order to approrpriate the profits that will otherwise necessarily go to the Saudis, the U.A.E., and other funders of Jihad. Jihad has a doctrine has always existed, and always will. What the U.S. has to do is to heighten and spread awareness of what Jihad is, and to deprive Jihadis of the wherewithal to conduct it -- by ending, or even reversing, Muslim migration to the Lands of the Infidels, by cutting all foreign aid to Muslim countries, by diminishing the revenues of OPEC by all means possible, and by working to exploit the sectarian, and ethnic fissures (above all, the resentment felt by non-Arab Muslims, such as Berbers, Kurds, Persians, and Turks, for Arab Muslims). It can be done. It requires, however, a lot less bustling about in official Washington with endless memos, and endless meetings, and the repetition of platitudes about not repeating the "example of Somalia" (Somalia, incidentally, has virtually collapsed -- which might be just the ticket, as far as Infidels are concerned, for Iraq, as long as airstrikes continue to ensure that Iraq poses no military threat to Infidels).
Indeed, the Somalization of all those parts of the Islamic world that do not engage in applying their own brand of Kemalism, in which Muslims are kept, as best they can be kept, at each others' throats, and the means for conducting the permanent Jihad, both in arms and in money and in propaganda, severely diminished, is much more sensible than this entirely baseless and uproven belief, promoted initially by the naive Bernard Lewis (that promoter of the Oslo Accords), whose acolytes need to distinguish between his work as a scholar and his understanding of the tenets of Islam as they are received, and felt, by Muslims themselves (neither Hilal Inalcik, nor Kanan Makiya, nor that sometime patron, the oily and dangerous "dialogue of civilisations" Prince Hassan bin Talal, are guides to mass Muslim man).
And when William Safire prates, as he did today, that "either we will withdraw prematurely and watch Iraq plunge into civil war and again become a haven for hatred of the West, or we will help build an Islamic democracy that will turn the tide against terror conducted by rogue states using a network of freelance killers" he simply shows how ignorant he is of Islam ("Islamic democracy"? Just how does that work? Tell that to Ibn Warraq or Reza Afshari) and its deep and central hostility to Infidels.
We must judge Iraqi Muslims not on the basis of the handful of smooth-talking, essentially rational creatures -- the current Ambassador, Kanan Makiya, Ahmad Chalabi -- whom we pay so much attention to. They have all lived for decades in the West, sometimes for their entire adult lives. They have "de-islamized" themselves even if they would not willingly admit it. But Iraq has not been "de-islamized." If we want a hundred Ataturks -- and we do -- for Islam's tenets cannot be changed, but the power of its message can be constantly monitored, and constrained, by "secularist" Muslims themselves -- though constant vigilance is necessary, as the backsliding in Turkey shows -- then we must create the kind of conditiions that made Ataturk's reforms possible. Had the British army tried to impose what Ataturk imposed, it would have failed completely. The changes must come from within, and they will come -- but only when the full political, economic, moral, and above all intellectual failures of Islam are seen, and a sufficient number of people within Islam, like Ataturk, work to constrain it themselves in order to save their countries.
But we must stop this nonsense about how leaving Iraq at this point is a failure: it is in fact the beginning of wisdom, if it is combined with, as the old Crest toothpaste logo said, a "conscientiously-applied program" of anti-Jihad measures.
And if Iraq descends, as descend it will, into some kind of chaos and intra-sectarian violence, so what? Would that the Iran-Iraq War had gone on for decades. Have we forgotten the oldest principle of warfare: Divide et impera. Divide and conquer. It was good enough for the Romans, and it is certainly what the Muslims, in cleverly dividing Western Europe from America (appealing to such pre-existing mental conditions as antisemitism and anti-Americanism) have done. Yet we seem oblivious to our own possibilities of dividing the Muslim world. Come on, one wishes to urge Uncle Sam: use your considerable brains. Fais un petit effort!
Ever wounder why its always the clerics of islam that are the ones that preach killing and hate. Well so much for islam clerics being anything but killers, thugs, and unholly. These thugs sure can quate the koran, but again so could satan.
"unholy"
If you were in satans shoes; what would you tell your holymen to preach?
Hugh:
Well written thoughtful and rational analysis of the situation. Maybe it is the hubris of America to believe that we can import Democracy and Freedom into any and all corners of the world. Iraq is certainly the acid test of this conviction. I tend to agree with your take on the situation, especially after looking at the interminable media images of the frenzy that characterizes Muslim crowds. They're like an entire country of 'holy rollers', completely abandoned to a potent mixture of religion, emotionalism, irrationalism and a cultural dream world that reinforces the notions of their moral righteousness.
This Sadr guy is keen on inheriting the mantle of the Madhi. Things are going to get a lot hotter over there. I worry about our armed forces being under-manned. What happens if we take a really heavy hit?
Ultimately, it may be best to leave Iraq to its own devices. Just let it implode. But how do we leave without looking like losers? Bush won't go for that. And, unfortunately, he doesn't have the vision to commit this country to aa Apollo Project to create a alternative energy economy that disengages us from the Islamix world.
And, yes, we may well need to stop all further immigration from Islamic countries, and even roll them back. But our problems in this respect are nowhere near Europe's.
Mike
Stoping the immigration is a very good idea; however our left sided liberal friends would remind us that this country was first founded by the outcast of religion. To block the migration of the islam muslim as a group may work, but not based on religion. You are right mike, our problems with muslims is not as near that of europes.
How about we cut off immigration because of the true reason, that the ones that want us converted to Islam or dead, are Islamic.
Or, we can just tell them that the country is full, and they'll have to go back home and wait for a call from us when an opening occurs. Then we must remember to tell them not to hold their breath waiting for that call......
One more thing we need to do is to cut off these multi-million dollar donations sent deom the Saudis to our Universities for the building of Middle Eastern Study facilities and programs.
They're teaching their hate right in our own back yard, and we just keep letting it happen. Check out frontpagemag.com's article on today's post for more details on this.
This man is just one of many thugs that has created his own fiefdom in the name of religion, bolstered by his private jihad army.
We see thuggery in an embyonic stage beginning in the United States. At fool bloom, these thugs will make the Mafia look like a kindergarten. Make no mistake. This could happen here at any moment. Be ready.
I agree entirely with Hugh, keep them at each other's throats and let them stew in their own foetid islamic juice. I've always felt the danger from the 5th column is almost as great as the WMD threat, but no one has the courage to deal with it. In the UK suddenly it's okay now to discuss immigration policies because it concerns Eastern European immigration. Where are/were all the voices against massive muslim immigration - but, of course, I forgot, to criticise that is to be an islamophobe. But give me Eastern Europeans anytime.
I reckon it will be another 20 years before the political will emerges to cut off Saudi funding to European countries and the US to spread daway, before aid from us is stopped to islamic countries, and to limit or stop muslim immigration to Europe, and by then it will be too late. Al-Muhajiroun have even moved into Ireland.
I'm beginning to despair! What will it take for our betrayers, oops, I mean so-called leaders, to tell us the truth?
The 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide is all over the media here. The Sudan? Although on-going, nary a mention. Why am I not surprised?
There are so many among us--Hugh, Robert, Pipes, etc.--who are so well informed about the nature of the threat that faces us today and for the foreseeable future, but those who are in a position to defend us against the threat refuse to recognize its true nature or listen to those who could help.
Our leaders are blinded by PC and the desire to "make nice." They will do only the absolute minimum required to hold the enemy at bay, but nothing required to make substantive changes. Eventually they will get the picture, but it grieves me to say at what cost to us.
Would the fear of not re-elected or reappointed get their attention? Making nice for votes is the coin of all politicians and their appointees. Perhaps they know about the problem, but losing votes is more important to them than taking a brave stand until we approach the brink of disaster. Hopefully momentum won't take us over the edge before those that are in a position to protect us make and take the appropriate measures and steps.