I saw this coming as long ago as March 2003. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Baghdad -- If Sunni clerics are a window into the soul of the violent resistance to U.S. aims in Iraq, the picture they reveal could not be bleaker.For Sheikh Mohammad Ali Mohammad al-Ghereri, a Sunni Muslim cleric, the question is no longer whether his followers should fight the Americans -- that is a given -- but how to wage the war properly.
"The holy warriors should have a clerical leader with them to advise them on all points, such as how to properly treat the Americans they capture," he said just days before militants beheaded two American hostages.
And then we are supposed to believe that these "militants" are not treating the captives according to the dictates of Islamic law.
For Sunni cleric Abdul Sattar Abdul Jabbar, the question is no longer whether his followers should kidnap foreigners, but which ones."Isn't the trucker who brings supplies for the Americans and helps the occupation also part of the occupation? I think so," said Abdul Jabbar, a member of the Association of Muslim Clerics, the country's largest Sunni religious group.
Although Sunni religious authorities -- including the sect's highest authority, Grand Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi of Al-Azhar University in Cairo -- have condemned the beheading of captives, they have no such qualms about advocating violent warfare, including kidnappings and suicide bombings, in the battle to vanquish the Americans and their Iraqi allies.
Among Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, the United States can count on a few high-ranking moderate clerics to counter rabble-rousing preacher Muqtada al- Sadr's incendiary calls for holy war. But among the ulema -- the clerical leadership guiding Sunnis, who make up about a third of the Iraqi population - - calls for armed opposition to the United States have become increasingly strident.
"There is no discussion," says Imam Mahdi al-Sumaydai, a high-ranking Sunni cleric who was jailed for six months by the Americans for his inflammatory teachings. "Jihad is a must in the religion to defend your property, your honor or your religion. How can anyone deny our right to jihad?''
On the streets, the calls for jihad by clerics are rising and spreading into the mainstream. Young people are turning to popular media to learn more about the long-standing Islamic tradition of jihad -- a holy war waged to protect one's people or one's land. Videos of armed mujahedeen battling Americans sell briskly at CD shops and in bazaars. At Internet cafes, young people scan jihadi Web sites for news.
In all of human history we observe that whenever priests are endowed with the authority and power to deprive citizens of life, liberty and property, the people are always afflicted with tyranny and great suffering.
These wolves in sheep's clothing are no different from the high priest oppressors of the Pharoah, the cults of Rome, the subjugated Jews of 33 A.D., the Inquisitors of medieval Europe, or today's mullahs and ulema.
"Isn't the trucker who brings supplies for the Americans and helps the occupation also part of the occupation? I think so," said Abdul Jabbar, a member of the Association of Muslim Clerics, the country's largest Sunni religious group.
I have a simular question:
Aren't the "moderate" muslims who live in the west, who are hiding, defending, and refusing to condemn the islamic-jihad plotting and scheming to bring down our country, and the ones deliberately raising the muslim population above that of non-muslims, also islamic jihadists???
Whats good for the goose is good for the gander.
They want our "occupiers" out of iraq, we want their occupiers out of the west.
As for these brain-washing experts that dub themselves "clerics", aren't the CIA and MI5 supposed to have secret agents, and sniper-assassins to infiltrate enemy quarters, and take out the big-shots? Or have I been watching too many James Bond movies???
BTW- this is OT, but has anyone seen Collateral with Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx in it??? Watched it last night, damn good film!!!
I agree the US should assign the CIA with a new project. Pemnament removal of the inflammable Islamic clerics, not only in Iraq but world wide.
Doesn't the CIA have a chemical that mimics a heart attack. A daily dose to Islamic clerics would go a long way in attaining peace.
People are ignoring the influence of Ayatollah Khomeini because he is dead. KHOMEINISM is not, and it was Khomeini who literally ignited the jihad plaguing the world currently. This quote, from Amir Taheri's, Spirit of Allah, is right to the point:
"Those who oppose the mullahs oppose Islam itself; eliminate the mullahs and Islam shall disappear in fifty years. It is only the mullahs who can bring the people into the streets and make them die for Islam -- begging to have their blood shed for Islam."
He bundles the problem and the solution nicely, doesn't he?
Hulego Khan says: "In all of human history we observe that whenever priests are endowed with the authority and power to deprive citizens of life, liberty and property, the people are always afflicted with tyranny and great suffering."
I say: "Yup."
I further say: Since it will take Bush et al. a very long time to get real, we must find a way to protect all those who are trying to establish a secular government (this means that the government has no preferences with respect to belief and does not get into the business of enforcing a particular belief, thus resulting in total freedom of belief).
Since it is unlikely that Bush will try to take any clue about how to win this thing from a page from Khoumeini's playbook, quoted above by George Mason ("Those who oppose the mullahs oppose Islam itself; eliminate the mullahs and Islam shall disappear in fifty years. It is only the mullahs who can bring the people into the streets and make them die for Islam -- begging to have their blood shed for Islam."), and it is equally unlikely that anyone will extirpate the left amygdala from the brains of these people, then we must, at least, try to protect those who try to cooperate with us by surgically implanting homing devices prior to service in Iraq. This is a procedure that any decent plastic surgeon can accomplish invisibly.
They want a total religious war? I say give them what they want. No more gentleman's wars. Time to play by Roman rules. I would like to see us start in Fallujah and do the following:
1. Kill everyone there.
2. Raze every building to the ground.
3. Plow under every millimeter of farmland.
4. Poison every well.
5. Burn all crops.
6. Kill all livestock. Evey goat, sheep, and camel.
7. Sow the ground with salt.
A few such object lessons will work wonders.
Aw, let the poor goats, sheep, and camels go. Poor things.
GEORGE MASON
An excellent solution! If these simple people could see further than their noses, they would notice their Clerics INCITE violence and Jihad but make sure they stay safe and comfortable themselves. It is the children of poor Muslims who detonate as suicide bombers - they are expendable whilst the pampered offspring of Clerics are NOT.