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Chicago Trib: “The visitors call the dead ‘martyrs’ and the U.S. forces who killed them ‘infidels.’ But they mean that in the nicest way”

Jun 13, 2005 4:10 pm By Robert Spencer

Yes, they hate you and want to kill you, but very nicely. Dhimmi absurdity from “Afghans seek cures at shrine for Al Qaeda” in the Chicago Tribune, with thanks to LH:

NEAR KHOST, Afghanistan — Some men want to walk without crutches, and some women want to get pregnant. A few Romeos stand in front of the graves and ask for love. Others pray for the souls of the dead.

Everyone has a wish at this Al Qaeda cemetery.

“I have an ache in my left leg,” said Khanema, who like many Pashtuns has only one name. “I have a backache. Sometimes it hurts so much, I can’t sleep. So I came here to pray to the martyrs. I came from Pakistan only for this shrine.”

The men buried here at Martyrs shrine and another shrine nearby were killed in late 2001 during the U.S.-led war against the Taliban. On the second night of Ramadan, the fasting month for Muslims, U.S. forces bombed a mosque in the southeastern town of Khost. Dozens of Taliban and Al Qaeda members were killed.

The mosque has been rebuilt, light green and peach, with large windows and a sunlit prayer room. But the two shrines for the dead and another in eastern Afghanistan have turned into pilgrimage sites, almost tourist attractions featuring Al Qaeda dead.

Villagers sometimes travel for hours to go to these shrines to pray. They stop as they return home to Afghanistan from Pakistan, where they had been living as refugees. They visit every day, or once in a lifetime.

The shrines show the logic of some people in the new Afghanistan, particularly those in the south and southeast, where the influence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda has been strongest. Those who come here do not necessarily support terrorists. Many say they do not hate the Afghan government or the U.S. forces. They welcome the upcoming elections and do not want war.

But these people are often desperate, for whatever reason, and they believe the dead men might help them. The visitors call the dead “martyrs” and the U.S. forces who killed them “infidels.” But they mean that in the nicest way. They see no contradiction.

“People love the shrine, and I love it,” said Marjullah, the Martyrs caretaker, adding that he helped carry the bodies of the dead to the shrine. But he says he also likes the Afghan government. And he says the U.S. forces should stay as long as they help rebuild the country.

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