Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki attended a traditional Ramadan feast at a Queens mosque on Monday night, telling a multinational crowd from Iraq, Iran, India and beyond that the enemy bringing down the minarets of Shiite mosques in Iraq was the same enemy who brought down the World Trade Center.
These are people who "have a sick interpretation of Islam," he said, attributing most of the violence in Iraq to a few religious clerics and others who had turned away from the religion. "This is an open front against civilization, so it is the duty of all governments to fight in the face of this challenge."
Al-Maliki, who signed the death warrant that sent Saddam Hussein to the gallows, also blamed Iraq's current problems on the dead dictator, saying he had left "a heavy difficult inheritance that we still suffer from."
That legacy included sectarian tension and the lack of trust between factions, he continued, worse even than the destruction that he said al-Qaeda was now visiting on the country.
The prime minister said Iraq would take over responsibility for his country's security as soon as the US determined it was time to withdraw, a statement that has drawn criticism in the past for being unrealistic.
He also said it was too early to determine what the long-term military relationship between the two nations would be, saying it was premature to draw parallels with a place like South Korea, which senior US officials sometimes mention as a model.
The crowd of several hundred people filling the mosque in the building that also houses the offices of the Al-Khoei Foundation was mostly sympathetic, prone to dismiss the criticism from US senators and other officials that al-Maliki should be replaced.
Much of that criticism centers on his failures to overcome sectarian differences in Iraq, the lack of an agreement on such key factors as dividing the country's vast oil wealth and his inclination to remain too sympathetic to his own Shiite faction.
"He is trying to put all the Sunnis and Shiites together, but the Sunnis push him away," said Mustapha al-Nasiri, 46, an Iraqi petroleum engineer now selling real estate in Boston. He argued that while not all Sunnis are bad, they formed the core of the Baath Party and of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a home-grown insurgent group that US intelligence agencies say is foreign led.
Another Iraqi immigrant worried that all the criticism would only help Iraq's enemies.
"They make him weak," said Hussein Al-Jabouri, a 41-year-old businessman from Dearborn Heights, Michigan. He said he also wanted to know what the prime minister's plans were for developing mostly Shiite, southern Iraq, plans he said were long overdue.
Maliki, however, was long about the difficult struggles still ahead but short on specifics.
"The deeper it goes, the more complicated it gets, so Iraqi politicians stay on the surface," said Sheik Husham al-Husainy, a visiting cleric from Dearborn. "Besides, when it comes to Iraq, on a lot of questions only God knows."
Still, audience members like Sheik Husainy and Jabouri said they got what they came for -- a little taste of Iraq.
The prime minister, surrounded by his top aides, sat at the end of one such row with Sheikh Fadhel al-Sahalani, the director of Al-Khoei Foundation in New York and the North American representative of Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the top cleric in Iraq.
Sahalani introduced al-Maliki by asking everyone to say a prayer for all Iraqis and others who sacrificed themselves in fighting for the country.
"We are still waiting for a change for the better," he said.
When it came to the question and answer period, some of the faithful asked when Iraq would be peaceful enough for them to visit, including making the pilgrimage to the holy city of Najaf. Shiite Islam broke away from the main Sunni branch in the fights over succession in the years after the Prophet Mohammed died in 680, with the Shiites backing Ali, the prophet's son-in-law and cousin. A huge mosque has been built around the shrine in Najaf, where tradition holds that he was buried.
"When will Najaf be safe enough to make the pilgrimage?" yelled out Azzam Mirza, a 60-year-old Indian-American.
"You can come with us now!" responded the prime minister.
"He said he wanted to visit, not to die there," quipped Sheik Husham al-Husainy, a visiting cleric from Dearborn.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS