Thursday, August 16, 2007

Al Qaeda Does Some Religious Cleansing in Iraq

A U.S. commander in northern Iraq said it was “ethnic cleansing” when al Qaeda in Iraq killed as many as 500 members of an ancient religious sect on Wednesday. (“'Act of ethnic cleansing'.”)

“’This is an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will, almost genocide,’ Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, told CNN.”

But as the Detroit News report indicates,

“The victims of Tuesday night's coordinated attack by four suicide bombers were Yazidis, a small Kurdish-speaking sect that has been targeted by Muslim extremists who consider its members to be blasphemers.”

Killing people because you think they are blasphemers isn't ethnic cleansing, but religiously-motivated murder. Motivated, that is, by the Islamic religion, which considers blasphemy against Islam a sound justification for homicide.

Gen. Mixon is correct that the murders were “almost genocide.” But we’d all be better off if we could be more careful to understand what the actual motive for the genocide is.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"But we’d all be better off if we could be more careful to understand what the actual motive for the genocide is."

How would we, or the cleansed, be better off?

Religion, colour, ethnicity, location to oil fields?

No excuse is justifiable under any situation.

CA