A daily collage of of religion news from the war in Iraq.
Also new on The Revealer today: The Rise of Religious Studies.
Dawn of the Dead
“Most of Muqtada al-Sadr‘s fighters are young, and the name of their organization, the al Mehdi Army, is taken from an historical figure who is prophesied to return from the dead to liberate the oppressed around the world. They say they are waiting for an Islamic messiah, to defeat the enemy and deliver justice. But Muqtada al-Sadr’s people are not really waiting. Al Mehdi could come today, one minute from now, or tomorrow, the followers tell me, but their job is to make sure he has an army ready when he gets here.”
—Phillip Robertson reports from inside Najaf. Read more…
“Our Thugs”
From Rahul Mahajan, on “Democracy Now!”:
How religious fundamentalism feeds on nationalism:
“The same people that have said, you know, ‘Al Sadr’s people are thugs,’ well, some of them still say it, but now they say it, in a sense, ‘they’re our thugs and they’re protecting us against the brutal occupiers.’ People of Fallujah say that the Mujahadin, they’re our boys and our people and, you know, we support them.”
What U.S. troops know about it:
“[These soldiers] were there in Sadr city because of clashes with Al Sadr’s Madi army. So, I asked them, ‘What do you think about the stuff with Al Sadr. What do you think about the Madi army?’ They said, ‘What? Who is that? Who are they?’ In fact one of them was very curious and came up and asked us several questions trying to figure out who these people were. They were thrown in here.”
How much of this we’ve read in the mainstream press:
….?
It’s Religion, Stupid
Investigative reporter Jason Vest has obtained a scathing memo from an unnamed U.S.Coalition Provisional Authority official that cites a pre-war U.S. study predicting difficulty winning the peace, given “that insufficient attention had been given to the political complexities likely to crop up in post-Saddam Iraq, a scene in which religious and ethnic blocs supported by militias would further complicate a transition to functional democracy in a nation bereft of any pluralistic history.” More…
Not This Way
“The pastor at First Pentecostal, the Rev. James Bucy, conducted the funeral and noted that [Marine Lance Cpl. Torrey Stoffel-Gray, killed in Iraq] had found God about two years ago.
“Bucy said, ‘He lived and he died for our freedom.’ He quoted passages from Psalms and the New Testament, including Jesus’ words, ‘Greater love hath no man than he that layeth down his life for his friend.’
“Bucy concluded, ‘I’ve always wanted to see this church full of people. I just didn’t want to see it this way.'”
–Robert Goodrich, St. Louis Post-Dispatch