Muslims: a Muslim’s worst enemy?
Jul 11th, 2007, 11:49 pm
Given the tremendous growth of violence between Muslims over the past few decades and in recent years, I can’t help but wonder whether the real threat to the ummah comes from within. Take the latest string of suicide bombings in Iraq, for example:
Saturday’s blast, at around 8:30 a.m., destroyed several mud homes in the village of Armili, and victims had to be transported in farmers’ pickup trucks to the nearest health facility, in Tuz Khormato, 27 miles to the north, said Capt. Soran Ali of the Tuz Khormato police. Police said one man fled the truck before it detonated with another man still inside.
Saleh Ali, a medic at Tuz Khormato hospital, said 25 dead and 100 wounded were brought to the facility. Residents of the village said more victims remained trapped under destroyed houses and shops, and doctors said many of the wounded were in critical condition, meaning the toll could rise…
The village, 100 miles north of Baghdad is mainly made up of Shiite Turkomen, an ethnic minority that is spread across north-central Iraq, though most of its members are Sunni Muslim.
The night before, a suicide bomber detonated a boobytrapped car at around 9:30 pm outside a cafe near a market stocking Iranian goods in the Shiite Kurdish village of Ahmad Marif, killing 26 and wounding 33, said an official at the joint security coordination committee of Diyala province, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The village - 85 miles northeast of Baghdad in a remote corner of Diyala province - is home to about 30 Kurdish families who had been expelled under Saddam Hussein’s rule and returned after his fall. Many Kurds in the area are Shiite Muslims.
A half hour after that blast, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt in a funeral tent in another Shiite Kurdish village, Zargosh, west of Ahmad Marif. The blast killed 22 people and wounded 17 others, said the head of Diyala provincial council, Ibrahim Bajilan, and a police official in the provincial capital of Baqouba, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
So much for Muslim unity.