BAGHDAD, April 18: Iraqis poured out of mosques and into the streets of Baghdad, calling for an Islamic state to be established, after the first Friday prayers since US forces took control of the capital.
Carrying copies of the holy Quran, prayer mats and banners, tens of thousands of people marched in the city’s biggest protest since US forces toppled President Saddam Hussein more than a week ago.
“Leave our country, we want peace,” read one banner aimed at the Americans, who failed to check looting, power blackouts and chaos in the aftermath of the demise of Saddam Hussein.
“No Bush, no Saddam, yes yes to Islam,” read another. “No Shias, no Sunnis, yes yes for united Islam,” yet another banner read.
The organizers called themselves the Iraqi National United Movement and said they represented people belonging to Sunni and Shia sects.
The marchers came from several mosques and converged in a central district, Aadhamiya, for the peaceful protest.
The imam, Ahmed al Kubaisi, said in his sermon that the United States invaded Iraq to defend Israel, and also said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
“This is not the America we know, which respects international law, respects the right of people,” he said.
His followers poured out chanting anti-US slogans and waving banners that read “No to America. No to secular state. Yes to Islamic state” and “We reject American hegemony”.
Standing on and all around a tanker truck crawling down the road, the men, some in turbans and with long beards, chanted: “We are Sunni and Shia brothers, we will not sell this nation.”
“We will give the American troops a few months to leave Iraq. If they do not, we will fight them with knives,” one demonstrator said.
A statement issued by the movement urged Iraqis to oppose a “federal government that the United States wants to set up in the coming few days”.
“Our movement wants every Iraqi to take part in rebuilding Iraq and set up a new modern state,” said the statement, signed by Ahmed Kubaisi.
In the Shia-majority suburb of Sadr City, formerly Saddam City, some 50,000 people jammed the Al Hikma mosque and surrounding streets, patrolled by Kalashnikov-wielding guards.
The imam, Sheikh Mohammed Fartusi, did not name the United States in his sermon. But he said the Shias would not accept a brand of democracy “that allows Iraqis to say what they want, but gives them no say in their destiny.
“This form of government would be worse than that of Saddam Hussein,” he said.
Sheikh Fartusi urged the faithful to follow the dictates of the “Hawza”, the council of senior Shia scholars.
He spelled out a four-point code of conduct, including a ban on music and the imitation of the western “infidels”, the obligation for women to wear a veil and the primacy of Islamic over tribal law.
KARBALA: The imam leading Friday prayers at the shrine of Hazrat Imam Hussein in Karbala denounced the presence of US troops, saying it amounted to imperialism by unbelievers.
“We reject this foreign occupation, which is a new imperialism. We don’t want it anymore,” Sheikh Kaazem al Abahadi al Nasari told thousands of worshippers.
“We don’t need the Americans. They’re here to control our oil. They’re unbelievers, but as for us, we have the power of faith,” he said.—Reuters
