Posted on 10/28/2004 9:30:10 AM PDT by Fatalis
This year's holy Ramadan has indeed turned out to be 'holier' than that of last year. Last year, the Mujahideen received Ramadan by bombing infidels and crusaders at the Red Cross and several police stations. This holy month, however, has a peculiar flavour.
Another series of unsuccessful attacks were carried out against several churches. Iraqi Christian women have been offered a choice between 'observing the holy month' by covering their sinful heads or to face death. I kid you not. This threat was not carried out by foreign terrorists, Zarqawi or Al-Qaida, but by Muslim Iraqi student unions at Mosul University.
Leaflets and handbills signed by Ansar Al-Sunna have been circulated in Mosul starting from early Ramadan warning women of a terrible fate if they venture in public without the hijab. At Mosul University, several student groups handed notices to Christian students also warning them from showing up at college with their heads uncovered. As you know, Mosul is inhabited by the largest Christian community in the country, so we are talking of thousands of students here not a hundred or two. The Chaldo-Assyrian student union has been issuing statements of condemnation for days but no official move has yet been made to ensure the safety of Iraqi Christian students at university. Several thousand students have gone on strike while a few have chosen to accept their fate and cover their heads.
Ironically, this reminds me of all the hype in the media and the 'Arab street' about the French hijab ban. I lost count of the number of talk shows and symposiums condemning the cruel and barbaric French decision and lamenting 'basic human freedoms'. As far as I know, French Muslim girls have not been threatened with death or beheading if they wear the hijab in public. Is it then impudent to ask Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiya for one single talk show with a seething enraged fist-shaking table-banging Arab 'intellectual' or commentator denouncing the act of Muslim student groups in Mosul? ... I thought so. We are always the loudest people to ask for rights while we offer none to others.
We may go on endlessly about the rights of our religious minorities in the Arab world, about our solidarity and peaceful coexistence, etc. Sadly though, it would be hollow speech because actions on the ground are the true indicator. Once political Islam takes hold of our societies, peaceful coexistence goes out the window, and it sets out to achieve its vision of an Islamic Ummah where religious minorities "pay the Jizya with the hand of humility." But no, that is surely not the real Islam, I can hear someone say.
Ramadan has also witnessed an increase in assassinations of Iraqi public figures and professionals. Several members of municipal and local councils have been targeted in Ba'quba, Hilla, Kirkuk, Ammara and Mosul. The Sheikh of the Ghrair tribe south of Baghdad was assassinated. Two mutilated corpses of a doctor and his fiancee were found in Al-Qa'im close to the Syrian border. They were kidnapped three weeks ago near a hospital in Nahrawan, 20 kilometres east of Baghdad. Two female employees at the Iraqi conference center were killed in broad daylight while they were returning home from work. A former Iraqi embassador to the UAE was assassinated yesterday in Adhamiya, he had just returned to the country. Several people were beheaded in Kirkuk and a closed liquor store was blown up. 3 DVD rental stores were blown up in Karbala by fundamentalists. Fundamentalists in Baghdad have been touring several coffee shops (which usually prosper during Ramadan after the Iftar) around the city warning customers from playing dominoes, backgammon or cards because that is 'haram'. I know at least 4 coffees shops that have been threatened this week.
Sataniclly driven reliegous customs that have taken some 1400 years to foment are not going to stop in a few years.
As long as the many redical sects of Islam are allowed to freely mandate to their adherents what they believe, this stuff will continue going on. It has gone on for some 1300 years prior to any western undertanding of Islam and it's practices. The western world only very slowly is learning of how evil and distorted in nature, most Islamic teachings are. Regardless of the outcome in Iraq in setting up some form of democratic government or a republic based on a constitution etc., the religous thoughts will not be altered. They appear mostly to be put in place by Satan over a long period of time. They are here to stay...until
the Lord returns.
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