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Riots Across Pakistan as Slain Sunni Leader Buried (Fox News, October 07, 2003)

Rioters attacked police and burned Shiite Muslim mosques in several Pakistani cities Tuesday demanding revenge as a hard-line Sunni Muslim politician was buried a day after he was gunned down in the capital.

Three bodyguards and a driver also were killed in the assassination of parliament member Maulana Azam Tariq, the one-time leader of Sipah-e-Sahaba -- a banned extremist group known for attacks on Shiites.

In Jhang, the hometown of Tariq's violent movement, and in the normally tranquil capital, rioters exchanged fire with police, smashed shop windows and set ablaze Shiite mosques, gas pumps and a movie theater. At least one person was killed.

Many called for revenge against minority Shiites, raising fear the killing could lead to more sectarian bloodletting. [...]

The Shiite-Sunni split in Islam dates back to a dispute over the successor to the Prophet Muhammad after his death. Most of Pakistan's Sunnis and Shiites live together peacefully, but small extremist groups on both sides frequently launch attacks.

Last week, six Shiites were killed in an attack on a bus in the southern port city of Karachi. More than 50 Shiite worshippers were killed in an attack on a mosque in the southwestern city of Quetta in July.

Despite being the worst president in American history, Richard Nixon did have one key insight: the centuries long animus between Russia and China was more powerful than the temporary coincidence of their choice of totalitarianisms. Many were blinded to this reality because they greatly overestimated the strength of Communism generally and could not imagine serious divisions within the overall system. Something similar may be happening today with those who are terrified of a monolithic and mighty Islam. They fail to comprehend both its inherent weaknesses and the inevitable divisions--ethnic and sectarian--within.

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Resolute Iranian Pilgrims Meet Awed G.I.'s (IAN FISHER, October 7, 2003, NY Times)

The fall of Saddam Hussein has undammed a flood of Shiite Muslims across Iran's rough border here into Iraq, driven not by the desire to fight Americans but by a religious devotion that United States soldiers here are finding hard to contain or even comprehend.

In just over a month, American forces have stopped more than 17,000 people sneaking into Iraq near here with the goal of making a pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala south of Baghdad.

As many as 1,000 cross on any day -- wobbly old men and women, young mothers, babies -- into the hands of American soldiers, who are awestruck by the risks the pilgrims are taking. Carrying almost nothing, they can walk for a day or more across minefields, mountain passes and the hot desert. [...]

For decades, Mr. Hussein, a Sunni Muslim who brutally sought to limit the influence of the majority Shiites, kept tight controls on the number of Iranians, most of whom are Shiite, visiting shrines in Iraq. For the Shiites, Karbala and Najaf are the two most holy sites. Now, with Mr. Hussein gone, the Iranian Shiites' simple but determined desire to make a pilgrimage is complicating the job of the Americans in Iraq, as well as helping define a new era of relations between Iraq, Iran and the United States that no side seems quite sure how to handle.

After Mr. Hussein was pushed from power in April, the official American policy was to permit Iranian pilgrims with valid passports into Iraq. In August, however, that was put on hold after a suicide bomber killed more than 80 people in Najaf, and the border is now officially closed to pilgrims.

But policy seems a small thing against the larger forces at work among Shiites in Iran and Iraq. The spiritual center for Iranian Shiites seems to shifting away from Qum and back to the magnificent mosques and shrines of Najaf and Karbala, where Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad, was slain in 671 in the most significant battle of the Shiite faith.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 7, 2003 8:36 PM