Al-Qaida terrorizing Iraqi women

On orders of the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, men in black have begun terrorizing women who do not conform to their rules, it was reported.

Following a sermon by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Iraqi al-Qaida, new rules were announced regarding women's behavior, The Sunday Times of London reported.

"Women cannot drive; women cannot go out after midday; women and men are not allowed to go out and walk together, they must walk separately," a local official announced.

Violations will be punished sternly by men in black, all Sunni Muslims -- with punishments ranging from shaved heads to death. Women live in fear, while nothing is done to curb the ongoing terrorism, the newspaper said. "The police don't investigate because they are too afraid", a local politician who wished to remain anonymous told the Sunday Times.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060604-065417-1419r

Things are going according to plan in Iraq!

If the police are afraid to investigate, how do we know who is really behind this? I thought the Sunnis were secular.

There are huge variations in each group.

that will interpretate it. Obviously their are several groups 'in charge'--through fear, might......

Maybe we should send Pickles back to tell them how it really is.

In general, Sunni Muslims are less uptight than Shiite Muslims, so this seems backwards.

Way too many people see the url and automatically decide who wrote up the story, they need to remember now adays people mass copy storys from different sources.

They're not referring to the New York Times

Women's rights were quite well respected by his secular regime, from all that I have read.

In this

Bush = Bad
Hussein = Good

to remember just how poorly Iraqis, including women, were treated by Hussein? How many hundreds of thousands were killed under Hussein? How many people came forward to talk about their friends and relatives were abducted, tortured, or killed under Saddam's regime? Saddam's own sons raped how many women? Bush is a prick, for sure, but Hussein was no saint.

As long as Islam is the basis for politics women are going to get the short end of the stick... or just the stick, itself. Last I checked, Islam has been around a lot longer than George W. Bush. He didn't invent the mindset.

Iraqis specifically wanted a constitution based on Islam. Remember how happy we were supposed to be they could finally vote, thanks to GWB? Remember how much better democracy was supposed to make it? Well, hello dark ages. And they voted for this horseshit.

Let's wait and see how Hussein's trial goes. I know he was no saint, but on balance it seems obvious that Iraqis were better off then than they are now.

but the legendary al-zatqawi has little to do with this,regrettably there are fanatics on all sides that are punishing women.

...a Shi'a?

This is total BS. And anyone who's been reading Riverbend's blog knows these rules against women and their violent enforcement aren't anything new; they've been around since shortly after the US invasion, courtesy the Shi'a radical sects who immediately began taking control of neighborhoods.

Bin Laden, Zarqawi, and the Taliban are decidely not Shia.

I thought they were Shi'a because bin Laden hated Saddam so much. Never occurred it was only because he wasn't orthodox enough for them!

But the story still smells of propaganda and distortion. It makes it sound as if the Sunni radicals are the only ones doing this stuff, when the Shi'a Dawa and SCIRI groups (which are much bigger in Iraq) have been out engaging in these same activities from the very beginning.

for Bin Laden, Wahhabis, Zarqawi-style loons, and other extremely conservative forms of Sunni Islam, go with 'Salafist'. The core idea is that the early pious men (the Salafi) were more righteous, and the modern believer should emulate them, their attitudes, actions, and beliefs. Strip out the last 1000 years of Muslim thought, mostly, except for similar minded Salafists over time.

The Sunni Salafists--there's a deep strain of it in Western Iraq, i.e., Anbar Province--have been doing precisely this since 2004. The Shi'a have been doing it of late, but they got a late start. Encouraged, perhaps, by the example of the Sunnis? Or maybe embarrassed? Or perhaps they just realized that since the government couldn't stop the Sunni extremists, they wouldn't stop the Shi'ite extremists--after all, nobody would permit them to use the methods Saddam used, and it's looking more and more like Saddam had the right idea.

"Strip out the last 1000 years of (insert religion here) thought, mostly, except for similar minded (insert religion here) over time."

Usually they also want to strip out the last 1000 years of scientific thought.

'Salafist'. Handy word. Thank you for the education!

Bloodlust is not exclusive to any religion.

trust any article that doesn't put the Negroponte inspired death squads front and center in anything going on in Iraq. After ruling them out, then I would consider others.....

... According to statistics by Iraq's morgues institute, 6,002 corpses were found in the past five months: 1,068 in January, 1,110 in February, 1,294 in March, 1,155 in April and 1,375 in May.

Most of the corpses had gunshot wounds, while others showed marks of burns or electrocution.

Morgues institute officials said that since the institute was established in 1927, it had never received such a huge number of corpses as currently, with the daily average now 35 to 50 per day.

Before the US-led coalition invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the institute used to receive only seven to 10 corpses per day ...

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/article_1169847.php/More_than_6000_corpses_found_in_Iraq_in_five_months

Yes...people are being killed in Iraq every day. But Al-Qaida? Puleeeze.

The Neo-cons are getting ready for something. The terror warnings in todays news and now this story.

Not quite sure if the rightwing is exhibiting fear about losing their grip on Congress or they have something more sinister in the works.

Either way, the stories coming out fail the smell test.