MUSLIM HATE FOR MUSLIMS!
MUSLIMS RESORT TO VIOLENCE TO SETTLE DIFFERENCES
Richard Kerbaj
October 05, 2006
Taj Din al-Hilali yesterday accused the chairman of John Howard's Islamic reference board, Ameer Ali, of selling out his religion to gain the support and financial backing of Muslim critics.
Dr Ali said in The Australian yesterday that Mohammed had flaws, and criticised Muslims who blindly followed the faith and failed to question the veracity of the Koran.
Sheik Hilali, the head of Lakemba Mosque in Sydney's southwest, said Dr Ali's "defamatory" remarks were akin to those that in 1989 earned Rushdie a fatwa from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.
While Sheik Hilali backed Dr Ali's call for a reinterpretation of the Koran to fit modern times, he condemned his "dangerous" and "ignorant" comments about the prophet.
"We forbid such statements, from both Ameer Ali and anyone who has encouraged him to say what he said," Sheik Hilali said in an interview conducted in Arabic.
"We refuse to have him stand with us at any religious ceremony from now on, unless he revokes what he said about the faith and the prophet."
But the Howard Government yesterday strongly backed Dr Ali's comments, with Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration Andrew Robb saying Dr Ali should be congratulated.
"I do think that Ameer Ali seems to be encouraging the teaching and the practice of Islam in an Australian context, and I think that's to be warmly applauded," Mr Robb said.
"I think it's critical that Islam is presented to Australian Muslims in an Australian context."
Islamic Friendship Association president Keysar Trad said the Koran recorded that Mohammed was "rebuked" on a few occasions by God. "(But) that different outlook is not to suggest that his human judgment was fallible," he said. "On the balance of human judgment, it was a perfect judgment in the circumstances, but God's judgment is greater, God's judgment always has more wisdom."
Young Muslim leader Moustapha Kara-Ali attacked Dr Ali, accusing him of conduct akin to the Danish cartoons about the prophet and the comments last month from Pope Benedict XVI about Mohammed spreading the faith by the sword.
Mr Kara-Ali, who recently won a government grant to combat Islamic radicalisation, said Dr Ali's comments were at odds with those of Australian Muslims.
"Prophethood is a station that is chosen for some men by God," he said. "And to put flaw in the character of the chosen man is to put flaw in the wisdom of the God who chose."
He said the interpretation of the Koran was an ongoing scholarly project, but that didn't mean the text's veracity should be questioned.
Asked if he agreed with Dr Ali that the Koran should be interpreted metaphorically not literally, Mr Kara-Ali said: "If that means we question the veracity then no, definitely not."
50 Killed at Religious Festival in Iraq
By STEPHEN FARRELL
New York Times
August 28, 2007
BAGHDAD, Aug. 28 — A power struggle between rival Shiite groups erupted during a religious festival in Karbala today, as gunmen with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades fought street battles amid crowds of pilgrims, killing 50 people and wounding 200, Iraqi officials said.
Witnesses said members of the Mahdi Army, the militia of cleric Moktada al-Sadr, traded fire with security forces loyal to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government.
Amid hours of fighting, several vehicles and a hotel for pilgrims were set ablaze, and terrified pilgrims who had been praying at two shrines were trapped inside as clashes erupted nearby. Witnesses said buses that had been used to bring pilgrims to the city were bullet-shattered and bloodstained.
The government forces in Karbala and other towns in southern Iraq are dominated by the religious party the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its armed wing, the Badr organization.
Many of Badr’s fighters are veterans trained by Iran during two decades when they lived as exiles there under Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Tensions between the Mahdi Army and the Badr group have been simmering for months. Both are vying for control of the overwhelmingly Shiite regions of central and southern Iraq. This political and military rivalry is also fueled by competing loyalties to two of the most prominent Shiite religious families in Iraq: the Hakims and the Sadrs.
Mr. Sadr’s credentials as a religious leader are boosted enormously by the prestige of his late father and cousin, both revered Shiite leaders who were assassinated by Mr. Hussein. The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council was founded by Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, a well-known politician and cleric who was himself assassinated in 2003 and whose father was mentor to the founder of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Two provincial governors belonging to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council were assassinated in southern Iraq this month, although the Sadrists deny involvement.
The showdown will prove embarrassing for Prime Minister Maliki if his security forces are unable to control the Mahdi Army and restore order in a holy city that lies in his own Shiite heartland.
Security forces imposed an indefinite curfew on Karbala by nightfall, fearing that the Sadr-Badr tensions could escalate as both sides vied for control of the streets. The violence appeared to spread to other cities, although attacks on mosques and offices linked to the Badr group were on a much smaller scale. In Baghdad, the police said five people were killed and 20 were wounded in clashes between militiamen in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City.
Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman in Baghdad, told Iraqi state television that reinforcements were being rushed to Karbala from Baghdad and surrounding provinces. The American military did not intervene directly in the fighting, a spokeswoman said, though it sent jets to fly over Karbala as a “show of force” at the request of the Iraqi authorities.
Hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims had descended on Karbala in recent days to celebrate the birth of Mohammad al-Mahdi, the 9th-century saint and the last of 12 imams revered by Shiites. As pilgrims gathered in a plaza between the city’s twin golden-domed shrines, witnesses said Mahdi Army fighters took up positions around the shrines and traded fire with the police. Pilgrims fled in panic but were unable to get transportation out of the area as the police set up roadblocks to prevent Mahdi Army fighters from entering.
A policeman speaking from his position in the plaza between the city’s two shrines said: “Hundreds of Mahdi Army have occupied several hotels near the two shrines. The battle is fierce and we are defending our posts here.”
Amid the narrow, medieval alleyways of Karbala confusion reigned, with an unconfirmed report that the Mahdi Army had taken control of the shrines, while the security forces remained in control of their checkpoints in the center of the city.
One pilgrim reached by telephone at the height of the fighting said: “I am inside the shrine of Imam Hussein. The shooting is so heavy outside, and I can’t leave the shrine. I don’t know exactly what is going on outside, but the clashes seem close to the shrine.” The voices of women shouting in panic were audible in the background.
The tensions in Karbala began Monday, with confrontations between Sadr supporters and the Badr-dominated security forces around the shrines. Those forces are on a constant state of high alert after suicide bombings by Sunni insurgents at Shiite religious festivals in previous years.
Sadrists said the police who carried out body searches and magnetic scans at checkpoints provoked their followers by beating pilgrims who chanted pro-Sadr slogans. Other reports said that Mahdi Army followers accompanying pilgrims and claiming to be protecting them were prohibited from taking their weapons into the shrines.
Iraqi officials said those initial clashes escalated on Monday night when police attacked the al-Mukhayam mosque, a Mahdi Army stronghold in Karbala, and arrested around 20 fighters. The Mahdi Army retaliated this morning, the police said, by attacking security force positions.
Gunmen also attacked Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council offices and mosques in Sadr City, Shuala, Jadriya, Husseiniya, Khadimiya, and Diwaniya.
Haydar Abbas, a lecturer in law at the University of Babil in central Iraq, believed it was significant that the confrontation took place at a time when the Sadrists appeared to feel increasingly marginalized. Mr. Sadr’s followers left the government earlier this year over a disagreement with Prime Minister Maliki about the continued American troop presence in Iraq.
In recent days, after widespread criticism, Mr. Maliki’s government announced measures, however limited, to initiate reconciliation with the country’s disaffected Sunni minority.
Mr. Abbas noted that the Supreme Islamic Iraq Council’s influence is growing, especially after that agreement. “They have a lot of power over Maliki,” he said. “What is going on is a message from the Sadrists that we are here and we will not withdraw easily.”
“If we read the history of the two movements, the Badrists and the Mahdi Army, we see that both were military factions turned into political powers. This means that they might revert at any time to their military nature,” Mr. Abbas said.
Both sides last night sought to blame each other for the fighting. The Sadr office in Najaf issued a statement from Mr. Sadr appealing for calm.
“We want to clear up the misunderstanding that happened in Karbala. This crisis is not connected with the Mahdi Army or Sadr movement. The incidents that happened were between the pilgrims and the government forces.”
Prime Minister Maliki’s office issued a statement calling its opponents “armed criminals and followers of the old regime” and saying that order had been restored to the streets.
Separately, Abdul Jabar Al-Waga, the deputy oil minister, was released in Baghdad today after being kidnapped with four other ministry employees on Aug. 14. The government insisted that no ransom had been paid.