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Shiites politicians condemn attempt to spark sectarian war { May 21 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001568.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001568.html
Sunnis Close Mosques to Protest Killings
Iraq's Shiite Politicians Condemn Attacks as an Attempt to Spark Sectarian War
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 21, 2005; A01
BAGHDAD, May 20 -- Weeping and raising open hands to the sky, a Sunni Arab clerical leader announced an extraordinary closing of Sunni mosques across Baghdad on Friday to protest killings that some have blamed on militias allied with Iraq's new Shiite-led government.
Ahmed Abdul Ghafur Samarrai said Sunni mosques in and around Baghdad would be closed for three days. "So when the muezzin finishes his call to prayer, he will say, 'Oh, worshipers, pray at your homes.' God bless you," Samarrai said.
In another part of Baghdad, Shiite worshipers pumped fists in the air in a show of resilience after two mortar rounds landed near their mosque, one of the capital's leading Shiite places of worship, during Friday prayers, wounding two people. Shiite political leaders, clerics and some worshipers urged restraint in the face of tit-for-tat killings, which they called an effort to draw Iraq's newly dominant Shiite majority and disgruntled Sunni minority into sectarian war.
"Let them express their hatred in the way they know best," Jalaledin Saghir, a cleric, said quietly after the mortar shells landed a few dozen feet from the thousands of Shiites gathered at the Buratha mosque. Mosque walls bore black fliers announcing the killings of three Shiites in recent days, including a relative of the cleric.
The fortunes of Iraq's Shiite and Sunni communities have changed drastically since the fall of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government two years ago. The Shiite majority controls the country's new legislature and cabinet, while Sunnis have been at the core of the insurgency. In recent days, even as insurgent bombings and other attacks have subsided without explanation, killings of clerics and their aides have escalated.
The killings of two Sunni clerics -- whose bodies were found Tuesday -- helped spark the Sunni protests. Sunnis also complained that security forces had raided their mosques. On Friday, in the central city of Baqubah, three Shiites who owned stationery stores were shot to death, provincial spokesman Ahmed Karim Hasan said. Gunmen asked to see posters of Shiite religious leaders, then killed the store owners when they produced them, Hasan said.
Also on Friday, a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding five, police said, according to the Reuters news agency.
A leading Shiite cleric, Abdul Aziz Hakim, met Friday with newly appointed Defense Minister Sadoun Dulaimi, a Sunni, and urged "unity against any attempts at discord that aim to divide Iraqis." Hakim is head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's dominant Shiite political party.
Mosques, meanwhile, became forums for the tensions.
"Some will ask, 'How could you do something like this?' and I will say that Muslim blood has greater sanctity than the holiness of this mosque," said Samarrai, the Sunni cleric who announced the closure of Sunni mosques.
Holding his hands high in prayer, the cleric wept as he recalled clerics slain in the past week, by killers he said included men in the uniforms of Iraq's security forces. Many wept with him, calling, " Allahu akbar ," or "God is great," when he was overcome with tears.
"This is the first step, a peaceful protest," Samarrai said, calling for "calm, self-control and stability."
"More steps will follow if our sons and our mosques will be exposed to these massacres," he said.
"Give us the order, and we will destroy the world for you," a young man told the cleric after prayers.
Checks of Baghdad's Sunni mosques after the service showed them locked.
In Islam, faithful are called upon to pray five times a day. Although only the most observant go to mosques outside of Friday prayers, closing mosques as a form of protest is rare. Samarrai said the move was a first for Iraq.
Jaffar Sadiq, a Sunni vendor of spare parts, said shutting down the mosques would draw the world's attention to the error of U.S.-guided policy in Iraq. "It's something amazing to close a mosque," he said. "Every Muslim in the world will hear this, and he will go crazy and ask, why are we doing this?"
"We know the terrorists are trying to incite sectarian war, but they will not succeed," said a Shiite, Haider Abdul Hameed, who was following Saghir in prayer when the mortars struck.
"I wish they would abolish these words of 'Sunnis' and 'Shiites,' " said bookstore owner Mohammed Hindawy, another Shiite worshiper. "I appeal to wise men on all sides to calm things down or we will see a blood bath here."
Saghir, in his sermon, accused Sunni clerics of aligning with the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Jordanian-born Abu Musab Zarqawi, by trying to draw Iraq into religious war.
Many recent killings of Sunnis have been attributed to the Badr organization, a militia tied to Hakim's Supreme Council, and to Shiites in Iraq's new security forces. The secretary general of the Badr militia, Hadi Amiri, said Iraqi security forces must distinguish between insurgents and innocent Sunnis. "That's the way to get through the difficult time the country is in now," Amiri said by telephone.
Also Friday:
· Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, visiting Turkey in his first trip abroad since taking office last month, said Iraq would send a delegation to Syria soon to ask that country to help stop the flow of insurgents into Iraq, news agencies reported. Iraq and the United States accuse Syria of allowing open movement of fighters and arms across the border.
Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, meanwhile, told reporters during a World Economic Forum regional meeting in Jordan that Syria must pull its intelligence agents out of Lebanon and accused Iran of funneling "millions of dollars per month" to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.
· An American soldier died in a vehicle crash following a bomb blast in central Iraq, the military said. More than half of the American military deaths in Iraq have been caused by insurgent bombs, the military said.
· Rockets hit the U.S. military-run Abu Ghraib prison compound, injuring five detainees, the military said. The prison, scene of a detainee abuse scandal, has been the target of repeated insurgent attacks.
· Shiite worshipers at some mosques in Iraq wiped their feet on U.S. and Israeli flags painted on the ground, heeding a request by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr to protest alleged desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Agence France-Presse reported. About 2,000 people marched in Nasiriyah, south of Baghdad, in a related protest, the news agency said.
Special correspondents Naseer Nouri, Khalid Saffar and Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad and Salih Saif Aldin in central Iraq contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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