The
War Becomes More Unholy
By Dahr Jamail &
Ali al-Fadhily
20 January, 2007
Inter
Press Service
FALLUJAH –
A stepped up military offensive that targets mosques, religious leaders
and Islamic customs is leading many Iraqis to believe that the US-led
invasion really was a "holy war."
Photographs are being circulated
of black crosses painted on mosque walls and on copies of the Quran,
and of soldiers dumping their waste inside mosques. New stories appear
frequently of raids on mosques and brutal treatment of Islamic clerics,
leading many Iraqis to ask if the invasion and occupation was a war
against Islam.
Many Iraqis now recall remarks
by US President George W. Bush shortly after the events of Sep. 11,
2001 when he told reporters that "this crusade, this war on terrorism,
is going to take a while."
"Bush's tongue 'slipped'
more than once when he spoke of 'fascist Islamists' and used other similar
expressions that touched the very nerve of Muslims around the world,"
Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubayssi of the Association of Muslim Scholars
(AMS), a leading Sunni group, told IPS in Baghdad. "We wish they
were just mere slips, but what is going on repeatedly makes one think
of crusades over and over."
Occupation forces claim that
mosque raids are being conducted because holy places are being used
by resistance fighters.
A leaflet distributed in
Fallujah by US forces late November said mosques were being used by
"insurgents" to conduct attacks against "Multinational
Forces," and that this would lead to "taking proper procedures
against those mosques."
The statement referred to
daily sniper attacks against occupation forces in Fallujah in which
many US soldiers have been killed.
Local people refute these
claims made by coalition forces.
"Fighters never used
mosques for attacking Americans because they realize the consequences
and reactions from the military," a member of the local municipality
council of Fallujah told IPS on condition of anonymity. "Nonetheless,
US soldiers always targeted our mosques and their minarets."
During Operation Phantom
Fury of November 2004, scores of mosques in Fallujah were damaged or
destroyed completely. Fallujah is known as the city of mosques because
it has so many.
Many of these are Sunni mosques.
AMS leaders are now enemy number one for US occupation forces as well
as the Shi'ite-dominated government.
Through continuous arrests
of its members and the raids against mosques all over the Sunni areas
of the country, including their headquarters on the outskirts of Baghdad,
the AMS has often expressed feelings of persecution.
On the other hand, the occupation
forces have been supportive of clerics who took part in the political
structure that the US coalition created in Iraq. These include Shi'ite
clerics and political leaders like current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
of the Dawa Party. Maliki has called AMS leader Dr. Harith al-Dhari
a "terrorist leader" and a murderer.
Many Sunnis who are more
secular also feel persecuted by the occupation.
"I am not a follower
of al-Dhari or any other leader," Prof. Malik al-Rawi of the National
Institute for Scientific Research of Baghdad told IPS. "In fact
most Sunnis do not literally follow any leader for religious reasons.
Yet after we found Americans targeting our religious symbols, we had
to stand together around the man who did not sell us to the occupation."
Dr. Rawi, avowedly a secular
Sunni, told IPS that the number of Iraqis who believe the occupation
is waging a "religious war" increased dramatically after the
2004 attacks on Fallujah.
"Those sieges, along
with all the events that followed in Samarra, al-Qa'im, Haditha and
now Siniya have led people to think of the crusades," he added.
"Americans do hate us for some reason and we do not find any reason
but religion."
It is not just Sunni Iraqis
who claim that their mosques are not respected by occupation forces.
The mostly Shi'ite city of Najaf was exposed to massive US military
assaults during August 2004. Many attacks came dangerously close to
the sacred Imam Ali shrine, damaging its outer walls.
Other US raids on Shi'ite
mosques in Baghdad have infuriated Iraq's Shi'ite population.
Some Iraqi analysts say the
perceived religious conflict seems to have expanded as the occupation
has progressed.
"The world must be aware
that this US administration is pushing the situation to the black hole
of a new religious conflict by giving the green light to their soldiers
to attack mosques and arrest clerics whenever they feel like it,"
Kassim Jabbar, an Iraqi political analyst from Baghdad University told
IPS.
"Even people with the
highest education standards are wondering why US leaders have not restricted
attacks upon religious symbols in our country."
Ali al-Fadhily is our Baghdad
correspondent. Dahr Jamail is our specialist writer who has spent eight
months reporting from inside Iraq and has been covering the Middle East
for several years.
(Inter Press Service)
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