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September 17, 2005
Amazing Restraint
A few days ago, it was day laborers. Yesterday, a bomb went outside a Shiite mosque killing dozens. Today a bomb in a market in the poor Shiite part of town, killing at least 30.
A car bomb ripped through a market in a poor Shiite Muslim neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad at sunset Saturday, killing at least 30 people and wounding 38, police said....
Interior Ministry police Maj. Falah al-Mhamadawi said an explosives-packed car was parked in front of fruit and vegetable stands in the market at Nahrawan, about 20 miles east of Baghdad, a poor suburb heavily populated by Shiites.
He said at least 30 people were killed and 38 wounded.
I'm losing count but the death toll in last week seems to be closing in on five hundred. There have lately been some attempts by the Sunni clerics to try distance themselves from this vicious campaign. But, overall, I must say that I am surprised by the restraint that the Shiite clergy has been able to impose upon their community.
Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who claims to lead Al Qaeda in Iraq, has taken responsibility for some of the worst violence. He declared war on Shiites in retaliation for a joint Iraqi and American offensive on the northern city of Tall Afar.The declaration so shocked Iraqis that even the Muslim Scholars Assn., an organization of hard-line Sunni clerics with alleged ties to the insurgency, demanded in a statement issued today that Zarqawi "retract these threats" because it hurts the Sunni Arab cause.
"It harms the image of jihad, obstructs the success of the resistance in Iraq, and leads to more innocent Iraqi bloodshed," the statement said.
Iraq's Shiites have grown increasingly angry about the violence directed at them. But in Najaf, prayer leader Sadr din Qubanichi of the Imam Ali shrine, the most revered holy site in Iraq, asked followers to turn the other cheek.
"Submitting to one's passion and confusion will bring us to domestic sedition and eventually lead us to failure," Qubanichi, a disciple of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, told worshippers. "We must go forward, be patient and carry on building the new Iraq."
This point was also reported by the Post:
Shiite preachers addressed the violence in their Friday sermons.In Sadr City, Abdul Zahra Swaiedi condemned "the mass killings and explosions that target innocents all over Iraq," saying they were meant to distort the image of Islam. Swaiedi accused American forces of supporting the attacks to justify the U.S. occupation. "No to terrorism, no to terrorism," Shiite worshipers chanted in response.
There was no call for retaliation. In Baghdad's Buratha mosque, which is linked to Iraq's main Shiite political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Dhia Edeen Ahmadi urged restraint in his sermon.
"The aim of this criminal wave of killing is to draw us into a sectarian war, but that shall not succeed," Ahmadi said.
He urged Shiites to stay focused on national elections on Oct. 15 and Dec. 15, when Iraqis are to vote first on a new constitution and then a new government. Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population, have strong hopes of seeing their aims prevail in the balloting.
"We know who they are. They are the thugs of the Saddam regime who are trying to avenge their loss after losing power and the nice, affluent life they had," Ahmadi said of the insurgents, referring to the decades when Iraq was ruled by Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party. "But history will not go back. This is our destiny, and no matter how many are killed, whether hundreds or thousands, we shall not turn back."
Pretty amazing, if you ask me. Yes, obviously, they are making the correct calculation both politically and morally that drowning the country in blood will not help anyone. Still, how many instances have we seen where the majority group manages to hold back a campaign of fury and vengeance for so long, while their people get killed in places of worship, markets, neighborhoods, schools, just going about their business.
Posted by zeynep at September 17, 2005 03:11 PM