Samarra’i calls for Military Resistance
Sunni preacher Shaikh Ahmad al-Samarra’i accused Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of being an American agent in his sermon on Friday. He addressed Allawi from the pulpit, saying, “Have all noble persons disappeared, that you have come and sought assistance from foreigners?”
‘ And in one of Baghdad’s largest mosques, a Sunni Muslim cleric implored veterans of Saddam Hussein’s military to join the insurgency against the United States.“Where are the military? They have indisputable experience and their silence means they keep their knowledge to themselves,” Sheikh Ahmed Hassan al-Taha al-Samarai told worshippers at Abu Hanifa mosque in the capital’s Sunni stronghold of Adhamiyah.
“The absence of combat experts from the battlefield is treason, in all senses of the word. It’s treason against God, the prophet and the nation the experts belong to,” he said. ‘
Meanwhile, Edward Cody of the Washington Post reports that 80% of Iraqis now have a negative view of American troops. (This figure is probably also the same proportion who want US troops out of the country). He quotes a sly sermon by a Sunni preacher on the meaning of liberty in American-occupied Iraq:
‘ “It was discovered that the freedom in this land is not ours. It is the freedom of the occupying soldiers in doing what they like, such as arresting, carrying out raids, killing at random or stealing money,” Sheik Mohammed Bashir declared in his sermon Friday at Um al-Oura, a Sunni Muslim mosque in the middle-class Ghazaliya neighborhood.“No one can ask them what they are doing, because they are protected by their freedom,” he continued. “No one can punish them, whether in our country or their country. The worst thing is what was discovered in the course of time: abusing women, children, men, and the old men and women whom they arrested randomly and without any guilt. They expressed the freedom of rape, the freedom of nudity and the freedom of humiliation.” ‘
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