Al-Zarqawi clashes with mentor over suicide attacks

Iraq's al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi reproached his spiritual mentor for criticising suicide attacks in Iraq, saying this only weakened the jihad, according to an internet statement attributed to him on Monday.

Issam Baraqi, better known as Sheik Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi, last week told Al-Jazeera television that random suicide bombings in Iraq were not valid and that it was wrong to "declare Shiites infidels or make them equal to Jews or Christians".

Al Qaeda Organisation for Holy War in Iraq, led by Zarqawi, has carried out some of the deadliest attacks against US forces, the Iraqi Government and forces and Shiite Muslims.

"This [criticism] does not harm me as much as it harms this jihad ... the blessings of which are apparent to anyone who has eyes," said the statement apparently signed by Zarqawi.

"Do not follow in the devil's footsteps or you shall perish, and beware, our virtuous sheik, from the cunning of God's enemies and from being lured into dividing the mujahideen [holy fighters]," said the statement posted on an Islamist website.

Zarqawi said he shared some of Maqdisi's beliefs but did not "follow him blindly". The Sunni Muslim militant has in the past defended the killing of innocent Muslims in suicide bombings, saying it was permitted by Islam for the sake of jihad.

Zarqawi has long been accused by US military and Iraqi officials of seeking to provoke a sectarian civil war in Iraq.

Last Tuesday, Jordan rearrested Maqdisi, who says he remains committed to Sunni orthodoxy, for alleged contact with terror groups. The arrest came a week after he was freed from six months behind bars.

Sources said the authorities were upset the cleric did not disavow Zarqawi although he criticised some of his methods.

Muslim scholars say Maqdisi's teachings have influenced Zarqawi's mindset since they shared a jail cell in Jordan. Both were freed in 1999 under a general amnesty, but Maqdisi was later detained in another case and Zarqawi went to Afghanistan.

Victor Davis Hanson has pointed out that many of the critics of the US and the coalition of the willing behave as if they can sort of opt out in a struggle with the terrorists. His point is that they seem to believe that unless the US is perfect and unless the US fights this war in a perfect way then the Left should not support the war. Of course, he's right, but it also shows that the Left would rather tie the US's hands and see reactionary terrorists theocrats succeed than to admit that Bush and Blair are right to defend civilization. There is a huge irony in this. The Taliban and al Qaeda are the real reactionaries, the real chauvanistic theocrats, the real homo-phobes, and the real misogynists. But the Left would rather rant about the "Religious Right" in the US!

Great points. By the end of 2001 I was perplexed--though I shouldn't have been--by the reluctance of the left to condemn the Islamic fundamentalists with as much gusto as they condemn the American religious right. A writer I respect, Harlan Ellison, actually wrote that the terrorists who flew the planes on 9-11 were "the same" as Jerry Falwell and his followers. He didn't say Falwell had done anything like that, but he said it was the same impulse, the same mentality, etc.

That's just stupid. It's like saying a criminal who swiped a loaf of bread and one who stole a car at gunpoint are the same.

This all goes back--in my theory--the very roots of one being a leftist in this day, after all the history showing the absolute disaster that follows when far-left ideology is adhered to: Emotion. Liberals are people who are led around by the nose by their emotions. I've seen it so many times that sometimes I play with liberals by bringing up certain subjects, discuss FACTS, and then watch the liberal squirm as he struggles to NOT say "Yeah, but..." THEY ALWAYS DO! They will follow you point by point, agreeing with you as you bring up facts about, say, abortion. You get the lib to agree that, yes, the fetus is obviously a human being in development, that, yes, the liberal wouldn't be able to have this discussion if his mother had chosen abortion, and a fetus is killed so it must be alive, right? And then you see the head shake, the eyes roll, and then it comes: "But the woman's got the right to choose..." Totally leaving the trail of logic you've been agreeing on.

It's the same with terrorism. You could dig up an old pre-9-11 article written about the horrors of Saddam or the Taliban, and how papers like the Village Voice condemned it. You could dig up old quotes from leftists who whined that the US military is never used for humanitarian purposes, that we're always looking away from terrorism and dictatorships, that Clinton and Carter "tried" in the Middle East but didn't actually accomplish anything in terms of movieg democracy forward in the Middle East, etc. etc.

Bush's actions against anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-freedom thugs gets them nothing because he's doing so out of an ideological framework they don't like. It's CHILDISH--he is achieving goals liberals have supposedly been promoting for decades, and they hate him more than they hate the terrorists. Look at DU and notice how many rants are posted about Bush--miles of hate. Now go through, and pull out the hate expressed towards the terrorists--I'd be surprised if you could fill one side of an index card with such comments.

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