[iraq] there are things which don't add up here

Happier moments in Iraq

The Reuters headline said it: Mosques torched after worst Iraq bombing. It doesn’t add up. There are too many anomalies here. For a start, it was done ‘untroubled by a curfew enforced in the capital by U.S. and Iraqi forces’. How so? Then there was the simple fact of Muslims burning down their mosques. Then this: One witness said 14 people were killed in his mosque during Friday prayers: "It was attacked by rocket-propelled grenades. That had to have been funded and the hardware had to actually have been brought in.

The original split between the sects came in the 7th Century over what was essentially a political dispute over who should lead Islam after the Prophet Mohammed. The Shiites wanted the leadership to pass through the prophet's family. When his cousin Ali was passed over for the job, his followers became known as the "Shiat Ali," or "partisans of Ali." Sunnis and Shiites live and work side-by-side, intermarry and, broadly speaking, follow the same core religious tenets. So how can they rocket attack and burn buildings dedicated to Allah? Torch each other – that’s possible.

In Algeria, there’s a clue: The GIA [Muslim guerillas] started coming up with new touches to keep the game interesting: burning people alive, bayoneting babies, raping and killing children in front of their parents. All in the name of God, you understand. Then came the GIA splinter group I read about - the Disciples of Satan. They started out as GIA fighters, but they got so messed up by what they'd seen and done that they decided there must not be a God at all. They turned into Islamic Satanists and went around trying to find newer and sicker ways to kill people as a way of making Satan happy. So they were doing the same sick stuff as ever, but in Satan's name instead of Allah's. He appears to be alive and well in Iraq as well. After all, the I—tar Gate is a national monument in Iraq and you know whom that’s dedicated to.