In Iraq: One Religion, Two Realities

[leftchick]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12383-2004Dec19.html

~snip~
BAGHDAD -- In a ritual practiced thousands of times, the men gather at two mosques -- Um al-Qura in a Sunni neighborhood, Baratha in a Shiite one -- at the appointed hour. The phrase "God is greatest" is uttered four times, and the men line up in successive rows. An hour or so later, crowds spilling into the halls, they bow their heads in graceful uniformity. Silence ensues, and they pray.

The words uttered in between, though, echo across a yawning divide.

Sunni Muslims attend Friday prayers at Um al-Qura mosque in Baghdad, where the Iraqi insurgency is celebrated as an act of resistance against a faithless and deceitful American occupier. U.S. attacks on insurgents in Iraqi cities such as Mosul, Fallujah and Ramadi, are denounced as "genocide against Muslims." (Khalid Mohammed -- AP)


Each week in Baghdad, sermons to the faithful offer a tale of two Fridays. Both sermons -- one Sunni, the other Shiite -- dwell on the issues that color Baghdad's weary life: the insurgency, elections planned for next month and the U.S. military presence. But the messages are so diametrically opposed as to speak to two realities and two futures for the country.

In Um al-Qura, built by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein as the Mother of All Battles Mosque, the insurgency is celebrated as an act of resistance against a faithless and deceitful American occupier. In no less strident rhetoric, at the venerated Baratha mosque, that same insurgency is condemned as wicked and senseless violence waged by loyalists of Hussein and foreigners. Elections are subjugation at the Sunni sermon, liberation at the Shiite one. And at each, the community's patience, the preachers insist, is wearing dangerously thin after yet another provocation or slight.

[0007]

1. Now that the Yahoos & the Houyhnhnms have invaded their country

the Iraqis don't have much time for heat scores, 'eh?

Since the fall of Hussein in April 2003, Iraqi communities have resisted the impulse to settle scores, some of which are based on grievances dating back decades, even centuries. But in the words that fill the halls of Baratha and Um al-Qura are signs of what some in Iraq fear may lie ahead. Across a divide between sects who split in a 7th-century dispute over leadership of the Muslim community, each sermon offers the same combustible mix. There is utter certainty, blessed by God and justified by faith."