Posted on 07/12/2008 5:06:57 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
As al-Qaeda in Iraq’s fortunes wane, it has no one but itself to blame. President Bush’s troop surge indisputably has crushed al-Qaeda and other terrorists, while Iraqi soldiers have honed their ability to hammer deadly insurgents.
But much of al-Qaeda’s damage has been self-inflicted. Largely overlooked is the Islamo-puritanism that it inflicted on the Iraqi territories it seized. Rank-and-file Iraqis tasted life under bin Laden-style Islam, and they gagged. They responded by collaborating with American and Coalition forces to expel these mad zealots from their midst.
At one level, al-Qaeda’s religious decrees have been nearly comical.
As the Institute for War and Peace Reporting’s Sahar Hussein al-Haideri revealed before she herself was murdered in June 2007, terrorists targeting what they considered pagan symbols bombed a statue of several women hauling jars on their shoulders.
“Do these statues work with police? Were they translators for the Americans or members of the dissolved Ba’ath party?” Mosul police spokesman Brigadier-General Sa’eed Ahmed al-Juburi asked the Institute. “Those terrorists are a bunch of idiots.”
Al-Qaeda’s agenda for Mosul included a decree that clothiers cover the heads of their in-store mannequins. Some relented, and shrouded their mannequins with plastic bags.
“I don’t know where these groups came from,” shop owner Mutaz Ahmed told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. “They want to take us back 1,400 years. But if you want to stay alive, you have to obey their orders.”
Extremists banned soap in public baths because the Prophet Mohammed lacked it back in the 600s.
Al-Qaeda took particular interest in clamping down on various food items.
“Sammoun,” a type of bread popular in Mosul, was prohibited, since Mohammed never ate it. Islamo-puritans found the sight of cucumbers and tomatoes side by side sexually charged, so they ordered produce stands to keep them apart, and told restaurateurs like Khalaf Khalid to serve them on separate plates.
“We obey them because they threatened to blow up the restaurant and kill us if we didn’t,” Khalid said, back when al-Qaeda was in command.
Al-Qaeda also took a “Just Say No” attitude toward ice. Mohammed didn’t have it, so Mosul’s residents could not, either.
“They prevented production and sale of ice in Mosul from last year,” Khalaf Abed Al-Hadidi, an ice manufacturer, told Agence France Presse. “Last summer was tough for us, but we couldn’t use the ice factory.”
As part of a general crackdown on public displays of joy, al-Qaeda even banned wedding parties in Mosul.
As James Glassman, the State Department’s chief of public diplomacy, observed at Manhattan’s Council on Foreign Relations, “What began to turn the tide in Iraq was when Iraqis began to realize that this was a murderous ideology that was killing Muslims and justifying it by saying, ‘If I think you’re not a good Muslim, it’s OK for me to kill you.’ ”
“They threatened to kill me if I used an electric shaving machine,” barber Atta Sadoun told Agence France Presse. He added that al-Qaeda forbade the removal of men’s facial hair and forced him to install a sign saying he used scissors but no electric shaver. He said several colleagues who refused were killed. Al-Qaeda also bombed women’s beauty parlors.
According to restaurateur Hashim Abdullah Al-Hamdani, al-Qaeda murdered two of his employees and injured his son. Why? His establishment served both male and female students from local colleges.
Episodes like these eventually led exasperated Iraqis, including Sunni imams, to work with American and Coalition forces to boot al-Qaeda from Iraq. This has helped Iraq enjoy its current relative peace.
These bizarre, frightful incidents illustrate the bottomless depravity of America’s chief enemy in Iraq. This is a glimpse of how Iraq could look if U.S. forces prematurely withdrew, and the bad guys returned. This also is a cautionary tale of the insanity that likely would erupt wherever al-Qaeda or any of its allies gained power.
Finally, al-Qaeda’s chilling tenure in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq puts the lie to the notion that Islamofascists merely are defending themselves against America’s allegedly over-assertive foreign policy and Israel’s supposed anti-Muslim menace. Combating ice, cucumbers and wedding gowns has nothing to do with the policies of the Pentagon or the Knesset. It’s all about building a bridge to the 7th Century.
Iraq ping.
As I read through this, I am struck by the parallels between Al Qaeda and liberals in how they demand absolute obedience to their bizarre religious obssession (global warming and “diversity”, among others, on the lib side). Except that liberals don’t kill you for not obeying them slavishly - yet.
Liberals courageously kill babies in the womb.
The new ice in the “pipsi” thing is actually pretty common. An arab Catholic priest friend of mine was mocked for having ice in his drink. WHen he came down with laryngitis, they blamed the ice.
So, if there is no ice to be used, how can they use AK-47s, formed shaped charges, RPGs, the internet, etc?
Would anyone wax about the demise of the VC after TET? Like it could possibly be a bad thing?
So, let me get this straight. People alive today can enjoy none of the benefits of human invention...those that prolong life and make life healthier and happier...because the wonderful “Mohammed” never had them.
But the people alive today can use plastic explosives, IEDs, gunpowder, automatic weapons, the Internet to broadcast murder...to destroy lives...even though the wonderful “Mohammed” never had them.
Brilliant logic, you Islamofascist pukes.
They will. Leftist idealists always come to that. They have to weed out those not capable or unwilling to become New Men. When that doesn’t purify humanity sufficiently quickly they must institute he Terror, not the bombings and all the stuff we now call terrorism but The Terror as it was used in revolutionary France and in the RSFSR (early USSR), that is RANDOM killings and “disappearances” to cow the entire population into stupefaction and blind obedience to the whim of the saviors.
THEY can use anything they can kill people with.
It wasn't the atrocities of al Qaeda that turned the tide, but American and coalition forces going into Mosul and killing al Qaeda that gave the citizens of these cities the hope that this evil force could be conquered.
After they saw it could be conquered, they realized they could be free. That is the underlying cause. The hope for freedom.
Of course, this is not the type of “hope” that Hussein Obama keeps pushing with his studied pauses. His “hope” is that the government will become the great equalizers in society, the great confiscator and redistributor of personal and corporate profits. His “hope” is more aligned with al Qaeda’s than with that spirit of freedom that is overcoming that tyranny.
Yes they do. They just do it in smaller increments, dragging it out over a longer period of time.
But the liberals in our country want the working people to drive 55 miles an hour while they fly over our heads in private jets.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Good question. But You can’t expect logic from religious fanatics and madmen.
Only because they couldn’t. When is the last time you see a liberal decry a murderous dictator. More often than not, just like AQ or Saddamn, they are supporting them. If they had absolute power they would be killing absolutely.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
Muhammad was one magic Muslim! Maybe he had all those things "back in the day". It doesn't need to make sense to practice vicious beheadings and human slaughter as a sacrament in the Religion of Peace.
So far, it's very quiet and the locals tell me things have been getting better over the two and a half months I was away.
The only bad thing happening now is a sandstorm.
I can live with that. ;-)
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