The Islamic State? The Iranians, hoping to goad the U.S. into more effective action against the Islamic State?
“US Embassy in Baghdad Shelled With Rockets: Reports,” RIA Novosti, October 22, 2014:
BAGHDAD, October 22 (RIA Novosti) – The US Embassy in Iraq located in central Baghdad has been shelled with rockets, Al-Mustakillah news agency reported Wednesday citing a security source.
“On Tuesday night the US Embassy was hit with three rockets. They were fired from a park area in the Dora district [in southern Baghdad],” the agency’s source said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Al-Sumaria TV channel reported a mortar shelling of the so-called “green zone” in the center of the capital, housing government buildings and foreign missions. Security forces surrounded the area to repel a potential attack.
Don McKellar says
Indeed it is the nature of moslems that the rocket fire could be from ISIS or from Iran or from Iraq itself, with equal probability from each. All have strong motives for wanting US troops on the ground to show up so they can put the squeeze on the infidel.
Jack Diamond says
A fascinating interview care of MEMRI with Shiite cleric and Iraqi MP Ayad Jamal Al-Din (source Hugh Fitzgerald, New English Review). As a Muslim he uses the fallback position of laying all responsibility for ISIS, jihad violence and Islamic supremacism on fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence, to still somehow protect the “real Islam” of “compassion and peace” from blame, when pressed by the interviewer. However, Islamic law and Islam are clearly synonymous. Nonetheless, he doesn’t mince words (unlike American politicians) and makes the choice clear and stark between following “man-made civil enlightened” law and the fiqh of Islam–Shiite and Sunni– “in which case ISIS is more or less right.” That is the stark choice all Muslims should be forced to make. Zero tolerance for shari’a and “fiqh.”
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/4556.htm
“Both the Shiite and Sunni fiqh say that the Yazidis should be killed…Christians and Jews are considered the People of the Book…but as for the Buddhists, they should all be killed. This is according to both Shiite and Sunni fiqh. The problem lies with our fiqh and therefore I say that either we follow the fiqh, in which case ISIS is more or less right, or else we follow man-made civil enlightened law according to which the Yazidis are citizens just like Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
“That’s why ISIS are saying that they have not invented anything new but are merely following the fiqh. The Yazidis can either become Muslims, or be sold on the market as slaves. Both the Shiite and Sunni fiqh are in agreement on this. We must make a decision whether to follow man-made civil law legislated by the Iraqi parliament or whether to follow the fiqh issued by Islamic jurisprudents. We must not embellish things and say that Islam is a religion of compassion, peace and rose-water and that everything is fine. Brother, your Islamic history is full of wars, raids..from Tunisia alone, one million boys were taken as slaves to Damascus..
“ISIS is a phenomenon with extensions all over the world, not only in Muslim countries. Even in the US there are many ISIS mosques. There are thousands of mosques that are preparing people to join ISIS…I am not talking about a handful of mosques of about just a few people…these mosques are calling, day in and day out, for the revival of the Caliphate. There are school curricula that glorify the Caliphate, saying that the past of the Muslims is better than their present. I believe that the opposite is true…ISIS is just the tip of the iceberg. It is one of many groups. ISIS is based upon a certain fiqh. In my opinion the fiqh is more dangerous than nuclear technology.
“If the Shiites, Sunnis, Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Yazidis, Christians and Sabeans cannot agree among themselves to unite under the banner of a single Iraq, ISIS will not be defeated..If we raise the (Shiite) banners of Hussein on the tanks we will be inadvertently strengthening ISIS. (In Iraq) either we establish a civil state which relies on man-made law based on equality between citizens or else we establish a state based on fiqh and on religious law. If we establish a state based on fiqh, partitioning into a Shiite state, a Sunni state and a Kurdish state is inevitable. Alternately, we could establish a civil state in which all citizens are equal in the eyes of the law.”
Of course, the partitioning of Iraq may be a foregone conclusion at this point
Dan says
I was in Iraq twice. Once, in early through mid-2003 and again from mid-2004 through mid–2005.I have maintained Iraq should have been partitioned from the beginning. Of course the end state could have been exactly what we have now or something not unlike the entire last three decades of the Balkans.
From my experience I do not believe followers of Islam are inherently evil or caliphate supporting. Most of the Iraqis I interacted with on a daily basis were secular-minded.
It is painful to see democracy disentegrate so quickly and imagine the new onslaught of suffering being perpetrated upon the Iraqi people. It seems wistful to have once believed a unified, democratic Iraq had a chance to succeed. It is soul crushing to see Servicemembers’ lives and years of our time having gone to waste due to corruption and inaction. Enshallah?
gfmucci says
Trying to democratize a nation believing in and deeply influenced by a savage ideology, despite how “secular minded” its citizens appear to be, was a futile exercise from the beginning.
How can Muslims, Iraqi or otherwise, whose declaration of faith presumes agreement with Muhammad and all he represents, NOT be inherently evil or caliphate supporting? That is the essence of Islam in contrast to other belief systems. Your statements make little sense when viewed in light of logic.
Jack Diamond says
I don’t take issue with your hard-earned perceptions. The vilayets cobbled together to make Iraq were never going to be eternal, the fissures too deep (we were going to solve the Sunni-Shi’a conflict? how? why? does internecine conflict in Islam not ultimately weaken Islam?) ; no foundation for democracy in law or personal liberty (held together by a brutal dictator); and a society permeated with Islam and the worldview it inculcates. The projects in Iraq and Afghanistan that went from destroying an enemy to become about winning hearts and minds and saving the Muslim world from itself (“you break it you own it”) was doomed from the start. Because you are an infidel. Because most Muslims are not as secular as we liked to think and the ones that are don’t much count in the end, they don’t have influence. They are cannon fodder. Because Islam in itself is violent and supremacist, because its texts are immutable, unchangeable. Our mission should be self-preservation, what weakens the “camp of Islam” and forestalls the jihad against us– period. A jihad funded and abetted by the wealthiest Muslim states for whom terrorists are proxies. Caught up in no-win situations that squander billions of dollars and thousands of precious lives is a hard way to learn a lesson.
David, Thailand says
Paid for by Qatar, or Obama?
southeuropean says
Fruitful dissc