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Breaking News Us Military Forces

Juan Cole 04/21/2003

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*Breaking News US military forces arrested Shaikh Muhammad al-Fartusi and two other clerics at a Baghdad checkpoint. This arrest provoked a big demonstration of 5,000 Shiites in front of the Palestine Hotel. I saw it on Fox Cable News, as reported by Jennifer Eccleston. I could see placards in Arabic saying “We demand the release of Shaykh al-Fartusi by the American Forces.” Al-Fartusi had been sent by the Najaf Establishment last week to the poor Shiite quarter of Baghdad, now called Sadr City, to preach the Friday prayer sermon at the al-Hikma Mosque to a congregation of 50,000. Al-Fartusi said in his sermon that the US could not impose a formal “democracy” on Iraq that allowed freedom of individual speech but denied Iraqis the ability to shape their own government. (Al-Fartusi appears to have an uncanny understanding of the principles of the Bush administration, domestically and abroad :-). He and his two colleagues went to Najaf on the weekend for consultations with Najaf, and were returning when the US troops arrested him at the checkpoint. I saw one report that said al-Fartusi is in the camp of Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Today, Reuters is saying that he is thought close instead to Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sadr Movement, which was implicated in the murder a week and a half ago of Abd al-Majid Khu’i, an American-backed cleric just arrived in Najaf from London. It remains to be seen whether this incident is a blip or the beginning of a major rift between the Shiite clerics and the US.

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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