Subject: [Homestead] A few straws iin the Iraqi wind
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 11:51:14 -0500
Talk is cheap as we have learned from Bushbabble on the wonders of tax
cuts for the rich, and the beauty of huge deficits to be paid by our
grandchildren, but occasionally something good might creep through the
crap. This sermon by the Imam of the Grand Mosque of Makkah is almost
without precedent in a sea of Wah-habis---and Shiite assurances that
Iraqi government will not be headed by a cleric gives some hope it will
have some vestiges of secular freedom and decency in trying to paste
Kurds, Moderate Sunni's and Shiites together in a quasi-functional
democracy where only the Kurds have a successful background---which they
developed in the years 1993 to 2004l
little good news from the abyss
By Wesley Pruden
Sometimes unsophisticated people can be the most sophisticated of all.
The conventional wisdom of the chattering class at home, still in
mourning over John Kerry and November 2, is that George W. Bush has been
blowing smoke at the Middle East, where nobody is really interested in
liberty, freedom and uprooting tyranny. The sophisticates in America
have seen the insurgency in Iraq, and it works. Or it terrifies, and to
the easily frightened sophisticates, that's usually the same thing.
But a lot of people in Iraq are getting excited about Sunday's
elections, nobody more so than the al Qaeda operatives who are growing
terrified themselves as election day approaches. It may be a day of
reckoning. Over the next six days, we can expect more bombs, more blood,
more bombast in a region where blood and bombast surpass even oil as the
chief exports to the world.
The Iraqi politicians, new to the game, are learning. The leaders of
the United Iraqi Alliance, endorsed by major Shi'ite divines, yesterday
tried to reassure reluctant Sunni voters that the government that
Shi'ite pols are eager to deliver is secular, not religious, and would
not threaten Sunnis. Talk is cheap everywhere, nowhere cheaper than in
Arabia, but this was nevertheless unusual in a region where the braggart
rules unchallenged.
Not just in Baghdad. Millions of Iranians in Tehran and other cities
called in sick on Thursday and stayed home Thursday night, at the
beginning of the Muslim weekend, to watch or listen to George W.'s
inaugural address. Skeptics all, they wanted to see what he said about
tyrants, in the Middle East and elsewhere, and about liberty, freedom
and all the good things democracy promises.
"The speech and its package of hope have been, since late yesterday
and this morning, the main topics of most Iranians' conversations during
their familial and friendly gatherings," an Iranian student Web site
reported on Friday. There was a buzz in the taxis and buses, on the
streets and in the coffeehouses, where groups of young Iranians gather
on Fridays.
"Many were seen showing the 'V' sign or their raised fists. Talks
were focused on steps that need to be taken in order to use the first
time ever favorable international condition."
In Saudi Arabia, where millions of Muslims marked Eid al-Adha, one
of the most important Islamic holidays, the imam of the Grand Mosque of
Makkah delivered a remarkable rebuke to Islamists who preach unremitting
terror against "infidels" in the name of Allah. He told Islamic scholars
they have a duty to preach moderation, that it's not nice to behead
Christians or blow up Jews as an expression of the religion of peace.
Muslims have a further religious duty to protect unbelievers,
Abdulrahman al-Sudais told his congregation. "Militants are using
misguided interpretations of Islam to justify violence. Because Muslims
have strayed from moderation, we are now suffering from this dangerous
phenomenon of branding people 'infidels' and inciting Muslims to rise
against their leaders to cause instability."
It's important as always not to try to read a lot into anecdotal
evidence of good news, but the sheik's sermon is important both because
he's a prominent imam and he delivered the sermon to pilgrims returning
from the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. It's the message that good
Muslims have been reluctant to get caught saying in the months since
September 11. The message from the White House may be making it through
the static of chatter, both domestic and foreign.
The news yesterday from Iraq was, of course, grim enough to suit the
sophisticated taste in the newsrooms of the mainstream American media. A
suicide bomber detonated a bomb outside the prime minister's party
headquarters, punishment for "agents of the Jews and the Christians."
The explosion followed closely the boast of a speaker claiming to be
Abu Musab Zarqawi that al Qaeda had declared a "fierce war" on the very
notion of democracy, and repeated the threat that anyone who
participates in Sunday's elections would be regarded as an infidel.
Since Zarqawi and his assassins teach religious doctrine with bombings
and beheadings, his voice is a loud one.
Nevertheless, his is not the only loud voice. Moderation in all
things may be a good thing, as the wise man said, but even a little can
go a long way in a region where keeping your head is not easy when
others all about you are losing theirs.
/Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times./
[Homestead] A few straws iin the Iraqi wind,
tvoivozhd, 01/25/2005