With Iraqi Courts Gone, Young Clerics Judge -NYT

NAJAF, Iraq, July 30 — An obviously agitated young man walked into the Islamic court of Najaf and confessed to the sheik serving as chief judge that he had killed his mother.

"I was merciful with her: I emptied a full magazine because I didn't want to make her suffer," explained the man, Mukdar Jabar Ali. He did it, he said, because he was sure his mother had been sullying the family name by committing adultery since he was a boy. He got a gun two weeks ago, he said, and did what he had wanted to do for years.

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Sheik Shaibani said an important purpose of the Islamic courts was to investigate the killing of Ayatollah Sadr. His group seized all the local records from the secret police and is slowly working through them.

They have also given religious approval to those who wish to kill members of the old Baathist government. The sheik would not say how many had sought such permission, and emphasized that the court would not carry out any death sentences itself. But he said such rulings were based on guidelines issued by the grand ayatollah in the Iranian holy city of Qum. That alone gives the court the proper standing, he argued.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/04/international/worldspecial/04COUR.html?hp

Is being filled by Islamists?

Naa, never would have predicted that :eyes:

for democracy, justice and secular notions of law and equality. This is a most disturbing story of a young man who shoots his mother to avenge his father because of his infant memory of her adultery. And of the vacuum created by the occupation which the Islamists are only too ready to fill.

for democracy, justice and secular notions of law and equality. This is a most disturbing story of a young man who shoots his mother to avenge his father because of his infant memory of her adultery. And of the vacuum created by the occupation which the Islamists are only too ready to fill.

These religious reactionaries are consolidating their power and biding time: if an attempt is made to establish an "Iraqi" government that is not to their liking in future, they will resist it with violence, and at a level which will make the current resistance seem like a live-fire exercise.