Fifteen years after America’s invasion, Iraq is getting back on its feet {mosque attendance drops}

Economist ^ | 31 Mar 2018 | Economist

[Cronos]

WHISKY is back on the tables in Mosul, one of Iraq’s biggest cities. Until last year, boozing was punishable with 80 lashes...Families queue at restaurants on the banks of the Tigris. There is not a niqab, or face-veil, in sight.

...Now Iraq, home to nearly 40m people, is righting itself.

.. About 45,000 Sunnis mustered alongside the Shia-led Hashd al-Shaabi, or “popular mobilisation units”. And millions of Sunnis fled the would-be caliphate to seek refuge in Kurdish and Shia cities.

Religious minorities feel safer, too. Over 70% of the 100,000 Christians who fled to Kurdistan have returned to their homes on the Nineveh plains, says Romeo Hakari, a Christian parliamentarian in Erbil. Sunnis from Mosul joined Chaldean Catholics to celebrate mass at their church in Bakhdida, whose icons IS used for target practice.

There has been a striking backlash against organised Islam. Mosque attendance is down. Although Sunnis are rebuilding their homes in Falluja, the minarets and domes in the city once known as “the mother of mosques” lie abandoned and ruined. “Only old men go to pray,” explains a 22-year-old worker mixing cement. Designer haircuts and tracksuit tops are the latest male fashion, because IS banned them. “Our imams radicalised us with IS and terror but refuse to admit it,” says a Sunni final-year student at Tikrit University with a bouffant hairdo.

Secularism is making inroads even in the holy city of Najaf, the seat of Iraq’s ayatollahs, which has thrived on Shia pilgrimage since the American invasion. The new public library at the golden-domed shrine of Imam Ali includes sizeable collections of Marx’s tracts and non-Muslim scriptures. Shia clerics who until recently banned Christmas trees and smashed shop windows displaying love-hearts on Valentine’s Day now let them pass.

[Cronos]

I've told that to Kuwaitis in 2004 and they agreed with me. I told that to expatriate Iranians (not a good reference I agree as these were people who fled the revolution in 1979) and they agreed with me.

in 2002, Saddam threatened no one outside his country. He was a broken, wasted man.

[Iron Munro]

That woman [April Glaspie] was an idiot.

And no doubt still is.

How many thousands upon thousands of lives are lost because of one idiot airheaded elitist from the Uniparty?

How many trillions of taxpayer dollars were wasted because of her foolishness?

How many mid-east countries thrown into turmoil and upheaval?

You can even trace a direct link from her asinine statement to the events leading to the slaughter of the Benghazi-4.

[huldah1776]

Yes, he was a non-religious wack. More Christians are being murdered now than since the last tribulation. With Tech, I can see the prep for the great trib. Hence the reaping.

The Reapers of Revelation

14 Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and sitting on the cloud was one like a son of man, having a golden crown on His head and a sharp sickle in His hand. 15 And another angel came out of the temple, crying out with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, “Put in your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe.” 16 Then He who sat on the cloud swung His sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped.

There could be a reprieve with an end to pre-born genocide.

[bray]

Is there any easier job than an Monday morning QB, especially when you can make your own facts?