Divinely Inspired

It is sectarian violence that drives the incessant levels of vicious attacks within Iraq. Such incendiary hatred expressed in service to a religion that its adherents claim is basically one of peace and goodness. Islam has bred divisions between the main branches of its devout; not a new disturbance between Shia and Sunni by any means, but one which dates back to the death of the Prophet Mohammed. Had he but named a successor...?

Perhaps no religion, not Islam nor any other, could surmount the bitter tribal animosities that pre-dated its introduction. In a part of the world where clan and tribal brutalities one against the other remains a part of the heritage, the tradition, the culture that reflects the harsh conditions that desert dwellers once lived in, vying with one another for ascendancy leading to territory, respect, wealth. The people have not advanced one iota humanely.

The strict demands of Islam, and the interpretations by generations upon generations of clerics who jealously guard their own power, have kept Muslims in a world of backward enslavement to tradition. Entering the modern world of technology, industrialization, communications; enlightened observance of social responsibilities on a wide scale leading to respect for human rights appears to have eluded the countries of the Middle East.

With American forces drawn back from Iraq's urban centres, confined to their barracks, and the Iraqi government proudly boasting that it has the resolve, the dedication and the power to advance the best interests of all Iraqis, the atrocities continue unabated. Numberless series of bomb attacks killing hundreds of people daily, wounding many more, has become the norm in that country.

Violence between Shia and Sunni, between the Arab and the Kurds, simply continues as though a thousand years and more hasn't separated the inception of an inclusively brotherly religion that seeks harmony between its disparate parts. Flatbed trucks fitted with bombs set up to simultaneously explode to destroy a village while the villagers were asleep. One uncivil, religion-inspired catastrophe after another.

Day labourers, market areas, police stations, mosques are all targeted. Roadside bombs are detonated, bombs placed in trucks, in buses, in mosques. How is it possible that jihadists, claiming to be inspired by passages in the Hadith encouraging violent jihad think nothing of slaughtering their co-religionists, of destroying their mosques? Tribal vengeance transcends the gentler, infinitely more human translations of sacred passages.

The recently-assassinated Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, a leader of a fanatical interpretation of Islam, had explained: "Only jihad can bring peace to the world". Lunacy incarnate. The peace of the dead.