Meanwhile in Iraq the brutality reaches new lows

[Memnoch]

This is just unbelievable. How can two groups of people hate each other so much that they would not only kill each other, but do so in the most painful, brutal and shocking ways?

Why so brutal? Isn't killing them enough they have to be made to suffer as well?

Shi'ite militia burn Sunnis alive in revenge attacks . November 25, 2006 - 2:49PM Page 1 of 2 | Single page . Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left prayers and burned them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking Baghdad today. . The attack in the Iraqi capital came a day after suspected Sunni insurgents killed more than 200 people in Baghdad's main Shi'ite district. . Iraqi soldiers at a nearby army post failed to intervene in yesterday's assault by suspected members of the Shi'ite Mehdi Army militia or subsequent attacks that killed at least 19 other Sunnis, including women and children, in the same area, the volatile Hurriyah district in north-west Baghdad, said police Captain Jamil Hussein. . Most of the thousands of dead bodies that have been found dumped across Baghdad and other cities in central Iraq in recent months have been of victims who were tortured and then shot to death, according to police. The suspected militia killers often have used electric drills on their captives' bodies before killing them. The bodies are frequently decapitated. . But burning victims alive introduced a new method of brutality that was likely to be reciprocated by the other sect as the Shi'ites and Sunnis continue killing one another in unprecedented numbers. . The gruesome attack, which came despite a curfew in Baghdad, capped a day in which at least 87 people were killed or found dead in sectarian violence throughout Iraq. . In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said. . Residents of the troubled district claim the Mehdi Army has begun kidnapping and holding Sunni hostages to use in ritual slaughter at the funerals of Shi'ite victims of Baghdad's raging sectarian war. . Such claims cannot be verified but speak to the deep fear that grips Baghdad, where retaliation has become a part of daily life. . President Jalal Talabani emerged from lengthy meetings with other Iraqi leaders late yesterday and said the defence minister, Abdul-Qader al-Obaidi, indicated that the Hurriyah neighbourhood had been quiet throughout the day. . But Imad al-Hasimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriyah, confirmed Hussein's account of the immolations. He told Al-Arabiya television he saw people who were drenched in kerosene and then set afire, burning to death before his eyes. . The Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni organisation in Iraq, said even more victims were burned to death in attacks on the four mosques. It claimed a total of 18 people had died in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque. . The extreme violence continued to tear at Iraq's social fabric even after the government had banned pedestrians and cars from the streets and closed the international airport until further notice in anticipation of a storm of retaliation for the five bombings and two mortar rounds, which killed 215 in Sadr City on Thursday. . The airport closure forced Talabani to delay his planned weekend departure for Tehran for meetings with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian leader also invited Syrian President Bashar Assad, but it now appeared he would not attend. . The chaos also cast a shadow over the Amman, Jordan, summit next week between Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and US President George W Bush. . Politicians loyal to radical anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr threatened to boycott parliament and the Cabinet if Maliki went ahead with the meeting. The political bloc, known as Sadrists, is a mainstay of support for Maliki. The Mehdi Army is the organisation's armed wing. . In Sadr City, clean-up crews continued removing the remains of the dead from wreckage of the car bombs, and tents were erected throughout the ramshackle district for relatives to receive condolences. . Hundreds of men, women and children beat their chests, chanted and cried as they walked beside vehicles carrying the caskets of their loved ones toward the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf for burial. Despite Baghdad's curfew, Maliki, himself a Shi'ite, ordered police to guard the processions. . As the funeral processions reached the edge of Sadr City in north-eastern Baghdad, the cars and minivans left most of the mourners behind and began the 160 km drive south to Najaf, a treacherous journey that passes through many checkpoints and areas controlled by Sunni militants in Iraq's so-called "Triangle of Death". . AP . Click here

[johnny]

What seems a bit strange to me is their their selective anger when it comes to attacking mosques. If a coalition plane or tank were to hit a mosque, the entire islamic world would be enraged, and we'd see the usual yelling, shooting in the air, and flagburning rituals we've seen so many times before. But now two mainstream islamic factions have an arguement with eachother, suddenly the mosques aren't that holy and sacred to them anymore.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by johnny: What seems a bit strange to me is their their selective anger when it comes to attacking mosques. If a coalition plane or tank were to hit a mosque, the entire islamic world would be enraged, and we'd see the usual yelling, shooting in the air, and flagburning rituals we've seen so many times before. But now two mainstream islamic factions have an arguement with eachother, suddenly the mosques aren't that holy and sacred to them anymore.

Johnny, Muslims have always committed worse atrocities and on a larger scale to each other than to anyone else. Sunnis don't even regard Shiites as true Muslims, they're heretics in their eyes. Heretics are worse than unbelievers.

Have a read about what happened in Saudi Arabia when the Wahabbists came to power. It's frightening.

It's so depressing. The whole thing.

You know part of the blame has to lie in the initial UN border creation after the Ottoman Empire fell. Why even create nations at all? Nations are a western construct. Just leave them in their tribal or pseudo-religious affiliations rather than draw imaginary lines in the desert that lump arch enemies together in the same nation.

Same goes for creating Kuwait - source of the initial Gulf War in the first place. Who the heck decided that a tiny part of mesopotamia: conveniently oil rich - should be seperate from the majority of people in the area?

It's messed up. The whole thing is messed up.

[Havock]

Maybe they took a page from the book used to justify the crusades. The page that says anyone who doesn't believe exactly the same thing as we do in exactly the same way we do is a heretic and should die.

[Yorick]

Suggesting the Crusades were motivated by that is like suggesting that Bush's motivations for invading the middle east were like that Havock.

The reasons for the crusades were many and varied. Fear and greed being the prime motivators. Organised religion hardly has a monopoly on those tendancies - tendencies found in every human being.

Anyway why bring the crusades up? Give it a rest. We're talking about Muslim vs Muslim. A well documented conflict dating back to Muhammad's death. The grievances each side has against the other are valid and cause for much anger and hurt.

But if there is to be peace, then they will need to take a leaf out of the words of their prophet Isa (that would be who we call Jesus) being that "turning the other cheek" and forgiving the person who hurts you no many how many times, is the key to world peace.

[JrKASperov]

Originally posted by Havock: Maybe they took a page from the book used to justify the crusades. The page that says anyone who doesn't believe exactly the same thing as we do in exactly the same way we do is a heretic and should die.

The crusades started as a large scale defensive action against muslim invasion. The Byzantine empire was getting sacked.

[Felix The Assassin]

Originally posted by Memnoch: This is just unbelievable. How can two groups of people hate each other so much that they would not only kill each other, but do so in the most painful, brutal and shocking ways? Why so brutal? Isn't killing them enough they have to be made to suffer as well?

Toot-TooT! This is exactly what I have been trying to get every one of you to understand over the last three years. You (we) as a Western society Cannot fanthom what these people are capable of! Unless you go there, and I don't mean through the history channel, or CNN. I mean go there personally, and spend a few days travelling the area, and observing, hopefully from afar, the "real" activity of this society, and then maybe, you can "See" what you have just posted, to be real, and not just something portrayed for political resaons, or justifible cause!

Additionally, this type of hatred is starting to wear on our troops down range, and (mark my words) you are going to start hearing more and more about coalition forces and brutality charges. Yet what you won't hear....

[Havock]

Originally posted by Yorick: Suggesting the Crusades were motivated by that is like suggesting that Bush's motivations for invading the middle east were like that Havock.

You mean thoes weren't bush's motivations? oh yeah,I forgot one, they are different AND they have oil.

The point I was trying to make is that they are BOTH muslims and they want to kill each other simply because they believe a slightly different version of faith. At its core it is still the same faith. Both sides still have the same medeval mindset that any difference makes someone and infidel and that they must be killed. They are still trapped 1000 years in the past hanging onto ancient grudges.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Havock: The point I was trying to make is that they are BOTH muslims and they want to kill each other simply because they believe a slightly different version of faith.

Simply not true. You need to apply scientific method in determining cause. The existence of reverse proof - that is Sunni and Shia who live together in harmony - is evidence that the causes are more political than theological.

The current situation in Lebanon, where "Christians" were fighting "Muslims" in the civil war years ago. Yet now you have a coalition of Sunni/Druze/Christians (supported by the USA) Allied against the Shia and a prominent Christian and his supporters (supported by Syria/Iran).

Faith has nothing to do with it. Politics has everything to do with it.

[Memnoch]

Here's the latest atrocities - mosques being used as torture chambers by both Sunni and Shia, against the other. This is really sad. These guys are using religious places, and religious names, to commit common crimes like murder and kidnapping.

Slaughter in the mosque: a new terror for Iraqis Ned Parker and Ali Hamdani, Baghdad Hassan Mahmoud has the build of a bouncer. But as he sits on a couch and talks about Iraq’s secret religious prisons his broad frame shakes, he clutches himself and weeps. “It hurts me when I remember what happened,” he says, recalling his brush with death inside a Shia prayer room where he witnessed the beheading of a fellow kidnap victim. In the war for Baghdad, mosques serve as garrisons. Sunnis use religious sanctuaries as strongholds to fight for mixed neighbourhoods. Shia extremists convert their mosques and prayer rooms, called husseiniyas, into execution chambers. As Iraq falls apart, people like Mahmoud are now terrified by Baghdad’s places of worship, which they regard as potential gulags and gallows in the Sunni-Shia war. In a quiet voice he tells of an ordeal many have suffered but very few have survived. In late August he was waiting for a lift home after registering for a training course at a technical college in southeast Baghdad. His decision to take a minibus would prove disastrous. Before it had gone 50 metres two men and a woman pulled out rifles and ordered Mahmoud and three other male passengers to put their heads down. Soon he had been whisked into Iraq’s fundamentalist netherworld. The next 24 hours in a Shia husseiniya brought him deep into the world of militiamen — where executions are carried out on a whim and ransom money is extorted from victims’ families. He remembers how he and his companions were dumped from the minivan and dragged into separate corners of a brick room where three guards shouted at them to keep their heads down and took their phones and money. There they waited for the sayed — the Shia prayer leader. The sayed wore a black turban and cloak — the mark of a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad — and had a pistol tucked by his side. He asked each man where he was from. The first answered Amariyah — a Sunni enclave that Shia extremists believe is a terrorist den. Mahmoud’s stomach sank. Mahmoud realised that if they knew he was a Sunni he would die. “I’m from the Mussawis in al-Amal,” he lied, giving the name of a Shia tribe. The sayed warned him they would see if his story added up. The final two captives were also questioned. Before leaving the sayed asked each one to identify his mobile and give the name of a relative to ring. First they came back for the man from Amariyah. Then it was Mahmoud’s turn. They put a gun to his head as they pulled his body and dumped him in another room. He could hear the sayed’s voice above him. The sayed demanded to know more about his family and where they lived. He mentioned an acquaintance from college who had joined the Mahdi Army and was killed recently. One of the sayed’s men whispered in his boss’s ear. “We have our own intelligence. I was there the day of his funeral, tell me about it,” the henchman said. Mahmoud knew the right answer. He described how his old colleague’s funeral tent had been pitched alongside that of another Mahdi Army member. Mahmoud glanced up. The guards grabbed him and returned him to his corner. All the captives waited now for hours. At 2am the guards handcuffed them with white plastic-cuffs and bound their legs. First they grabbed the man from Amariyah and took him to an adjoining room. Mahmoud watched from his corner. “They wrapped him in a nylon sheet. They held him on his side. He was begging. One man sat on his legs, the other on his hips. A third guy, in black, remained standing and took the sheath off his knife and yanked the guy’s hair and recited ya Allah, ya Mohammed, ya Ali (the revered Shia figure) and then called out the names of the Imams (Ali’s descendants) and rested the blade on the Amariyah guy’s throat. “The guy begged them and screamed for God to save him.But the man started to cut and shrieked ya Allah, ya Allah. Then there was a cracking sound like a sheep being slaughtered. The man pulled off the Amariyah guy’s head. His eyes were still open. “He wiped his blade with a cloth. I waited four hours but it felt like 400 years. When they came for me, I collapsed. They pulled me from under my arms. The sayed was there. I begged him, for God’s sakes, my father is sick and old. He will die from shock.” The sayed smiled and told Mahmoud they were releasing him. He was thrown in the back of a car, blindfolded, and taken to the Karrada district of Baghdad . Only when he got home did he discover that his family had paid $10,000 — a huge sum in Iraq — to free him. Mahmoud still dreams of the man being murdered. He wakes up screaming: “Don’t slaughter him. Please don’t kill him.” The Times is the only British newspaper to maintain a full-time Baghdad bureau Source: The London Times