ZEYAD BLOG:
Dog day afternoon
Many people have been asking me about the Oil ministry incident last week. I also read a thread at LGF discussing the same subject, the thread contained many misconceptions and strange ideas which worried me. Riverbend has posted an entry describing the incident here.
The Oil ministry complex is one of the most heavily guarded buildings in Baghdad. It was the ONLY building protected from the looting and ransacking after April 9 along with a few presidential sites. It now houses 3 ministries together with the Oil ministry and hundreds of Iraqi employees work there. A friend who lives in that area told me what happened that day. The ministry employees were lining up in front of the complex waiting to be searched by IP and americans before entering the building to their offices. This is a daily and common process at all governmental offices, universities, large hospitals, banks, hotels, international NGO's, and public buildings. A necessary step to ensure that no trouble makers sneak inside among employees. I'm very thankful however that this isn't the case at the center I work at.
Anyway, the Americans have recently been using sniffer dogs to do their job, obviously to speed up the security checking. You can imagine how long it would take to search hundreds of civil servants each morning. A woman objected to the idea of a dog sniffing her handbag because she carried a small Quran in it. Not an uncommon thing, many women carry Qurans in their bags which gives them a sense of protection and safety.
At this point, some people say that the American soldier got aggresive and took the Quran from the bag and threw it on the ground and handcuffed the woman. Others say that didn't happen and they simply arrested the woman. Either case it was an unnecessary and irresponsible act. I'm sure even if that really happened, that the soldier was simply an unreligious guy and no other conspiracy theories are involved as some people have been saying. But, and this a big but, he should be more careful about insulting other peoples beliefs however ridiculous they may seem to him. This is a very sensitive issue for Iraqis.
I can only feel sorry for the poor woman. Imagining how she was feeling being handcuffed and humiliated in front of her colleagues. The solution would have been simply to ask the woman to take out her Quran from the bag, and to allow the dog to sniff it. Effective communication is the key here. I mean these people are your allies, why provoke them?
After that scene, the employees were enraged, they refused to be searched and grouped to form an anti-american demonstration in front of the ministry. IP officers threw their badges to the floor, saying we didn't join the force to be insulted this way. People were shouting 'Down America' and 'Down Bush'. The Americans shot a couple of bullets in the air to seperate the demonstrators and that was that. The Americans can thank God that those were educated people and supposedly allies. Otherwise I'm sure it would have been a different case. That was the story from what I've been told by a reliable friend.
By the way, I was at the Health ministry today for some business. I noticed while waiting in the line that there were Iraqi female FPS (I don't know what FPS exactly stands for, but they are security police guarding important facilities and buildings.) searching womens handbags. Now, couldn't they think of something like that before? Anyway, this was the first time for me to see Iraqi female police. I was impressed. We never had female police under Saddam. I imagined they would all be butch women or wearing scarfs or something like that. Actually they were very pretty. And I was wishing that I would get frisked by them as well, heh.
Anyway, back to doggies. What I want to mention as well, is that dogs are NOT considered unclean in Islam. There is nothing in the Quran that says so. There is a weak Hadith(saying) by Mohammed: "A house which has a dog or a picture in it is not entered or blessed by the Angels". By weak, I mean that its attribution to Mohammed is questionable, it has a weak 'Isnad'. Isnad is a term used by Muslim clerics to describe the generations of scholars mentioning the Hadith each from his predecessor. If the Isnad contains an unknown scholar or someone with a questionable authority, the Hadith is a weak one and should be doubted. Hope I made this clear, I'm not sure, these things are a bit hard to explain to non-muslims. Most educated Muslims today do not believe in most Hadiths. If they did, they would have to believe in some absurd ideas like a flat earth, magic, misogyny, stoning adulterers to death,..etc.
So people noticing these inconsistencies have decided to rely solely on the Quran (however they choose to ignore similar contradictions or ideas in it because its supposedly 'flawless'). Okay I know I'm going to be flogged for saying the above. Send your hate mail.
Many Iraqis have dogs as pets. My aunt, a very religious woman, had a cute Pekingese. My grandmother on the other hand was appalled by the poor thing. My cousins have a couple of hunting dogs. A friend of mine has a bulldog. And lets not forget Uday's sadistic fascination with dogs, the ones he used to feed with people. So it's very common actually. And it's not true that we regard them as unclean or anything like that. Maybe some fools do, but I can't say I comprehend their logic.
# posted by zeyad : 1:46 PM
comments (32)
What the f* is this??
I was so very very very dissapointed today after I heard Noori Al-Badran's (The minister of interior) instructions to Iraqi citizens regarding Ramadan.
He stated that "any Iraqi 'caught' publicly not fasting will be arrested and imprisoned for 3 days with a considerable fine to deter anyone who shows 'disrespect' for this holy month. All restaurants inside and outside the cities should close from dawn till sunset, except first class hotels restaurants. Alcohol selling shops should stay closed the whole month".
I wanted to kill someone after reading all that. Yes. Sure. Free country my ass. I never imagined they would come up with something even close to that. What should I do? Hide in a corner so I can smoke a fucking cigarette? Are they trying to force us to fast against our will? Am I supposed to fast just to show 'respect' to others who do? Why don't they show respect to people who don't fast? They can believe whatever the fuck they want, but I don't have to pay the price for their beliefs. Are we slowly reverting to what we were? Are we becoming another Iran or Saudi Arabia? Aren't we supposed to be a secular state? What was Al-Badran smoking when he decided that? What other shit are they planning to put in our Constitution?
We had something similar under Saddam during Ramadans. But there were always a few licensed restaurants open so we 'unbelievers' could have breakfast or lunch. A friend of mine went to jail for 3 days because he was caught smoking a cig in front of his house a couple of years ago. It was just one of thousands of reasons we despised Saddam. But there were people who commended him for that. Apparently our Governing Council are learning a few things from Saddam. I feel like we're living in Orwell's 'Animal Farm'. We the people are the ones to suffer always.
Some background about Ramadan. Ramadan is the ninth and holiest month in the Islamic Hijri calendar. It's the month in which Mohammed wrote the first....Sorry, recieved the first revelation from Allah. Muslims have to fast every Ramadan from sunrise to sunset. Fasting includes abstaining from food, drink, sexual relations, and any unacceptable acts to achieve spiritual purification. After sunset at futur, they can fill up their bellies until the countdown at imsak just before sunrise. Women cannot fast during their periods because they are 'unclean'. A few are exempt from fasting such as the sick, medically compromised, old aged or people in travel.
As a dentist I have to endure the foulest breaths from fasters. I have to help fasters out of diabetic comas due to the normal stress during dental procedures. As a member of society I have to mumble ramadan mubarak and other stuff I don't believe in to everyone. I have to pretend I'm fasting in front of people so as not to hurt their feelings. And I have to explain myself if I'm caught and go through the obligatory discussion about the benefits of fasting both spiritually and naturally. I have to smoke in stinky public toilets. I have to roam the whole city to find some 'illegal' booze. It's a month of hypocricy. Know why? Because the moment Ramadan is over, everyone stops acting pious and reverts to whatever despicable acts they used to do. But surely Allah wills it so, we unbelievers and kafirs should not question His wisdom.
# posted by zeyad : 1:45 PM
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