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Traditional Islamic law forbids Christians to "display wine or pork" (cf. 'Umdat as-Salik, o11.4(6)). Modern Shi'ite Muslims in Iraq are applying this to Christians who sell liquor in that country — as part of larger initiatives to institute Islamic law there. This report is from AP, with thanks to Mary Beth Roderick and FreedomNowNews:
By most accounts, Sameer got off easy. The 42-year-old Christian liquor merchant received only a warning from the masked men who waved Kalashnikov rifles in his face and trashed his house in search of booze.Others weren't as lucky. Abid Slewa was shot in the head as he unlocked the front door of his liquor store. Bashir Elias, caught selling alcohol from the back of his car, was shot to death Christmas Eve on a street crowded with cheering onlookers.
Selling and drinking alcohol are legal in secular Iraq, even if many Iraqis avoid it for religious reasons. But as many as nine liquor-store owners, most of them Christians, have been killed in Basra since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April, according to merchants.
The U.S.-led coalition is concerned about the prospects for a tolerant and democratic society in a region dominated by increasingly powerful, and conservative, Shiite Muslim clerics.
British officials and Iraqi police say they have no firm figures on the numbers of people killed for selling alcohol, although they acknowledge that such killings have occurred. The officials and those who have been threatened say they believe that extremists from Basra's resurgent Shiite majority are responsible.
"There is an element emerging in the Shiite community that does bear arms, that may be violent," coalition spokesman Dominic D'Angelo said. "People are feeling threatened, and not without reason."
Basra's leading Shiite clerics deny involvement in the killings. But they acknowledge that their supporters have been warning people not to buy, drink or sell alcohol, which is banned under Islam.
"These liquor-shop owners, we talk to them and tell them that by selling alcohol they are injuring the whole community, bringing shame on all of us," said Sheik Abu Salaam, the Basra representative of hard-line cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
The influence of the top clerics is clear throughout the south, where posters bearing their images have replaced the once-omnipresent face of Saddam Hussein. With the new faces have come new fears. Besides the murders, dozens of liquor stores owned by Christians have been torched in recent months.
Nor is the terrorizing of liquor salesmen the only manifestation of resurgent Islamic law. Women are targeted for not wearing hijab (in light of the controversy in France, I wonder what became of their human right not to wear it), and even music has fallen into disfavor. After all, as I explained in Islam Unveiled, Islamic law still forbids music except in certain sharply defined circumstances.
Women in Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, say they have been admonished by angry men for leaving home without a head scarf."If I leave my house with my head bare, people shout at me -- they yell, 'whore,' " said Aida Wahid, a 41-year-old Christian who owns a beauty salon.
Men tell of being stopped at intersections by gangs of Islamic activists and ordered to shut off music.
Posted by Robert at January 20, 2004 11:08 AM
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Pace Stephen Schwartz, Reuel Gerecht, Amir Taheri et al., Shi'a Islam is not a whit less fanatical or anti-infidel than Sunni Islam. In Iran, according to anthropologist Lawrence Loeb, the treatment of Jews was particularly demonic -- they were not permitted to be outside when it rained, for fear that the water running down their skins would "contaminate" Muslims. The Ayatollah Khomeini, a learned Shi'a theologian, expressed sentiments not a whit less violent than those expressed by any Wahhabi, including Bin Laden. The temptation to set up a kind of shadow-play, with a "bad" sect or two ("Wahhabi" Islam appears to be isolated as the one dangeorus brand of Islam, which is "exported" -- when in fact Wahhabism is hardly different from the rest of Islam in its teachings about the need to subjugate all non-Muslims, and in its inculcated hatred of Infidels. The ability of a small army of apologists to keep us from learning what is not exactly a secret to any Muslim (the "extremists" tell the truth; the "moderates" practice taqiyya, like the cunning and mediagenic Tariq Ramadan, whose views do not differ a whit from those of his grandfather Hassan al-Banna. The belief-system of Islam, insofar as a Believer fuly subscribes to it, remains aggressive and hostile, and dangerous, to Infidels and to their entire way of life.
Must the cruelty of what subjugated peoples have felt through 1350 years of history be felt along the pulse before one, in the still-salvageable West, can be made to understand? Does the ample testimony of Hindus, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, through time and space, not matter? And if the testimony of the peoples subjugated by Islam is not enough, what about the complacent narratives of those Muslims who matter-of-factly describe what was inflicted on Infidels, for it seemed to be to them the most natural thing in the world. One thinks, for example, of the traveller Ibn Battut's Rihla, in which he describes the horrific (without being the slightest bit horrified) treatment of their Hindu subjects by Muslim overlords. Wisdom here consists in unflinchingly studying the theory, and practice, of Islam -- and avoiding wishful thinking, or sentimentalism about "one's of the world's great religions." When Bush and Blair fall all over themselves (see Ibn Rawandi on Blair) one wonders just how the uninitiated are to find their way.
Posted by: Hugh at January 20, 2004 3:29 PM
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