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Iranian Students Ready to Defend Iraqi Shrines
A group of Iranian theological students have called on Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to allow them to go to Iraq to safeguard holy Shi'ite Muslim shrines, a newspaper said on Sunday. Shi'ite Muslim Iran has given repeated warnings to U.S. and British forces not to damage sites in the southern Iraqi cities of Kerbala and Najaf which are home to some of the most sacred shrines for their branch of Islam. "Basij (volunteer) clerics are ready to take your orders to protect with their lives their Muslim brothers and sisters and the holy sites in Iraq if needed," the hard-line Kayhan newspaper quoted the letter as saying.And so begin the first steps of the aftermath... The letter was written to Khamenei by religious students in the northwestern city of Tabriz. Kayhan said Iran's religious seminaries would abandon classes on Monday to stage nationwide demonstrations against the war in neighboring Iraq. "The Islamic world will not tolerate any aggression or disrespect to Iraqi holy shrines and attacks on Iraqi civilians," it quoted a statement by an unnamed seminary school in the city of Qom, where most of Iran's religious schools are based. Eager to minimize U.S. accusations of interference in the war, Iran has closed its border with Iraq and said it will not allow Iranians or Iraqi exiles to cross over and join the fighting. But this is different, of course... But damage to holy sites, such as the golden-domed shrine of Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammad, in the heart of Najaf, would enrage Iran's Shi'ite clerical establishment. So would most other things, of course. And we all know that no Muslim is able to control his rage whenever it arises... In a letter to the British embassy in Tehran, a group calling itself the Islamic Society of Students also warned U.S. and British forces to respect the Shi'ite shrines in Iraq. Should they be damaged, "we will even sacrifice our lives to put in danger all the interests and sites of the American and British aggressor governments," the letter said, according to the hard-line Jomhuri-ye Eslami newspaper. Sounds exactly like a threat to me. I'm really getting tired of half-wits, cheap politicians, and holy men feeling free to threaten the U.S. and Britain. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-04-06 |
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