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Veil the women, grow your beards
There's a great picture of this guy at the above link. I think I saw him in a old Sinbad the Sailor movie.An Iraqi Shiite Muslim cleric said at a sermon Friday in a run-down Baghdad neighborhood that bars should be closed, women should be veiled and men should grow their beards. Sheikh Jaber Khafaji told tens of thousands assembled outdoors in the area formerly known as Saddam City that Muslims and non-Muslims alike should follow those rules. "From now on, I tell you don't allow the women to go out without veils, not one bit of their hair should appear," he said. "Most ulemas (religious scholars) agree that shaving your beard is forbidden; why do you continue to do so now that you have no reason to fear" the secular regime of ousted president Saddam Hussein, he asked. Ah, because they don't want to? "Why do you obey the miscreant West and disobey your ulemas?" asked Khafaji, a cleric close to Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, the young heir of the influential al-Sadr religious family persecuted under Saddam. "Don't let the bars open; tell them to close," said Khafaji. From what I've read about Iraq, I don't think that will go over too well. "Those rules should be implemented on everyone, Muslims and non-Muslims, and the Muslims should implement them with more fervor," he said. "Cuz we're holy!" The United States has made clear it will not accept a future Iraq run by Muslim clerics although religious leaders have been invited to help form a "mosaic" interim government. Khafaji asked the population not to mix with US troops, who he accused of inciting the widespread looting that followed the collapse of the regime and of corrupting the population. "I sometimes see women and children gathering around coalition forces. The soldiers give them sweets and candies but also immoral magazines," he alleged. Khafaji urged the population to obey the directives of the theological school of the holy Shiite city Najaf known as the Hawza, which he said was "the target of the miscreant enemy and Israel." "Obey, obey, obey!!! Hey, come back!" Last week, another close aide to Sadr, Sheikh Mohammed Yacubi, spelled out the conditions for the future government and constitution in Iraq, saying the ruler should be a Muslim and the laws in line with Islam. No Posted by: Steve 2003-05-02 |
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