Interview: Iraqi
cleric -- Civil war impossible:
By UWE SIEMON-NETTO, UPI Religious Affairs Editor
WASHINGTON, March 8 : For decades, Shiite
scholar Mohammed Mohammed Ali, 52, fought Saddam Hussein as a
top official of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, known
as the INC.
Now as he crisscrosses his homeland,
this eminent cleric is involved in a two-fronted struggle.In
Iraq, he heads the National Consensus Alliance, or NCA, striving
to unite all moderate forces -- Sunni, Shiite, Kurdish, Turkmen
and other.
And worldwide, he battles stereotypical
thinking, particularly what he calls the "media hype"
about the potential perils of a civil war between the two principal
Muslim groups -- the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority in
Iraq.
"There will be no civil war,"
Ali stated categorically in a telephone call from London, where
he is taking a little break from electioneering back home.He
said people should not be duped by the bloody activities of the
"groups of darkness" operating in Iraq.
"Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis have
always been moderate," he said."There are many marriages
between members of the two Muslim persuasions."Perhaps Ali's
most important argument against the talk of civil war is this:
"Cousins do not kill cousins.Many large tribes, such as
the Shammar and the Jaburi federations, have both Shiites and
Sunnis among its members.You can't seriously believe that tribes
will engage in internal wars."
Ali, whose NCA leadership includes Christians
as well as Muslims, insisted that historically the relationship
even between the faithful of these two monotheistic religious
has been harmonious.
"Who do you suppose cooked for
Shiites during the recent Ashura celebrations in Kerbala (they
were commemorating the martyred Imam Hussain, Mohammed's grandson)?"
Ali asked."Christians dressed in black like us.They do this
every year."
Of course, Ali allowed, Christians would
not go as far as to flagellate themselves during the Ashura processions,
as devout Shiite men do.
As for Muslim ecumenism, Ali went on,
it is not uncommon for Shiites to be led by Sunni imams in Friday
prayers."I have done this myself," he said."In
fact, some of our grand ayatollahs have written that it was all
right for Shiites to pray after Sunni imams during the Hajj (annual
pilgrimage) in Mecca."
According to Ali, some Iraqi villages
have both Shiite and Sunni residents but only one mosque.So both
groups worship in the same sanctuary.Ali insisted that even "regular
Wahhabis" -- meaning, not those of the extremist wing of
that Sunni sect -- get on well with other groups.
Westerners should not be misled by the
gruesome images from Iraq on their television screens, Ali said,
adding, "Moderation and tolerance have been a tradition
in present-day Iraq for centuries."
Albert Yelda, Ali's friend and erstwhile
colleague in the INC leadership and now Iraq's ambassador at
the Holy See, confirmed this: "The prophet Mohammed himself
issued a fatwa (legal instruction) to leave Assyrian Christians
in peace because he was so impressed with their scientific and
medical accomplishments."
The fatwa vanished in the middle of
the 19th century.And only then, in the declining decades of the
Ottoman Empire, did the Calvary of Christians in this region
commence.
So if moderation corresponds to Iraqi
traditions, who is it that sends suicide bombs to Shiite mosques,
killing scores of men, women and children? Who are the people
attacking churches, prompting tens of thousands of Christians
to go into exile? Ali -- who has just finished campaigning in
all of Iraq for his Alliance, which seeks to organize forces
representing moderate political and social entities from "the
whole mosaic of the Iraqi people" -- blames primarily outside
extremists plus local people they have bought, and former Baath
Party activists.
But, he insisted, "These groups
of darkness are not growing."As Ali sees it, there are two
reasons why they -- as opposed to the moderate majority of Iraqis
-- shape the image of the nation in foreign eyes.
"First, when some of them are captured,
they are not being dealt with swiftly," he said."They
should be tried and punished, and that means executed if they
have committed murder."
"The other point is that the international
community does nothing to support moderate Iraqi groups,"
Ali maintained."It costs $6,000 to $10,000 to run political
one-minute spots on al-Arabiya or other television channels.
"We pay for this out of our own
pocket and with the help of friends.We don't receive money from
abroad."
Ali's group fielded 45 candidates, including
five Christians and 17 women, for the recent elections to the
constitutional assembly; none of them -- intellectuals, petroleum
specialists, teachers, lawyers, former diplomats, accountants
and local government officials -- won a seat.
But convinced that his party, though
the underdog, is truly representative of Iraqis, Ali remains
undaunted."We'll try again in December," he said."That's
when we'll have the truly important elections -- for the national
Parliament."
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