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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived
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To: gao seng who wrote (2129)2/14/2002 4:11:42 PM
From: one_less  Read Replies (1) of 7720
 
"So, how serious are the religious differences between Babylon and Persia?"

The differences are slight. The seriousness is beyond measure for these two religious Nations. Think of Israelies and Palestinians. They worship the same God. Both believe the Torah is the word of God. Neither believes Jesus is God. Compared to Christianity vs Jewdaism or Christianity vs Islam; they are practically identical. The forbidden's and the allowed's are identical. They even call each other cousins based on the Ismael and Israel link. Yet look how serious they take their slight differences. Multiply that many times and you have an idea of the seriousness of the difference between the Shiites and the Suni culture. The basis of their culture is not a fundamental belief in human rights it is a fundamental belief in religious doctrin. Each considers the other to have corrupted the one true religion. If someone threatens our fundamental belief in what is inherently right for human beings we get very serious. In the wars between the Iraqis and the Iranians terms like "escape" were forbidden. You either win or die in the effort (or you slip off to spain and eventually find your way into the US and pretend you are a Mexican).

There are remote regions in Southern Iraq that are populated primarily with Shiite Persians (this is who the Americans were helping to escape in the movie "Three Kings"). Saddam would love to wipe them all out and has done his best to do that periodically. He simply doesn't have the resources. So, while there is no direct threat to him he tolerates their existence. If we declared them as our enemies and threatened to bomb Iraq if they were allowed to remain in the remote regions, he'd be after them in a moment.

Iraq and Iran are both ID'd by us so it makes sense that Saddam would throw in with Iran for the sake of survival; but it is not because they are friendly on any other level.
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