Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

J. Adam Huggins for The International Herald Tribune

Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat State in India, who seeks re-election, has been blamed for failing to stop riots in 2002.

Amelia Gentleman, Bloodshed in ’02 Shadows Indian Politician in Race That Tests Nationalist Party - New York Times, December 11, 2007

AHMEDABAD, India — Five years after more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed as riots swept through the Indian state of Gujarat, the man censured by the courts for failing to stop the violence is in a tight race to keep his job as the state’s chief minister.

The contest is being closely watched as an indicator of the strength of his party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which is still struggling after its defeat in the 2004 national elections. The local election, which starts Tuesday, could also shape the party if the chief minister, Narendra Modi, is re-elected, increasing his eventual chances of taking over the party’s leadership.

Mr. Modi, 57, is a cult figure to his followers, but a pariah to most outside his party, largely because of the upheaval in Gujarat, one of the worst outbreaks of sectarian violence since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The debate about him has only grown in recent weeks after an influential magazine presented evidence suggesting that he may have supported the violence, a contention he has dismissed as politically motivated.

For all the outside scrutiny of the vote and what it says about his party’s view of sectarian tensions, the killings have barely merited a mention from either Mr. Modi or the leadership of the rival Congress Party. Instead, both parties are focusing, at least on the surface, on whether Bharatiya Janata has done enough to further economic development in Gujarat, in western India.

Mr. Modi’s image makers have advised him to concentrate on the economy in an effort to recast himself. When he last sought re-election, in 2002, soon after the riots, he fought on a platform of Hindutva, his party’s trademark Hindu nationalism, which calls for Hindu unity and fans fears about Muslims.

Cult/Sect Overview - Apologetics

1. Cults and sects usually claim to be biblically-based, Christian organizations. For example, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) maintains that it is a Christian church centered on Christ and His teachings. The Christian Science church also often refers to itself as a Christian movement.

Ann Scott Tyson, U.S. Commanders Say Iraqi Police Can Be Reformed - washingtonpost.com, December 11, 2007

U.S. military commanders in Baghdad have concluded that Iraq’s 27,000-member national police force has made progress in weeding out officers involved in sectarian violence and should not be disbanded, countering the judgment of an independent commission that last fall deemed the police corrupt beyond repair and recommended that the force be eliminated.

The Iraqi efforts are “bearing fruit,” said Army Maj. Gen. Michael Jones, commander of the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, which advises the Iraqi Interior Ministry. “We have seen a significant change in their performance and behavior. For the most part, they are doing a good job.”

The new assessment follows a classified U.S. military review of Iraq’s Interior Ministry and its security forces completed in late October. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, ordered the review after the commission, led by retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, issued a report on Sept. 6 that described the Interior Ministry as dysfunctional and said the police force was “not viable in its current form.”Although U.S. commanders in Iraq acknowledge serious problems within the national police, they said such issues in part reflect larger struggles in Iraqi society and are unlikely to be eliminated by scrapping the police force and starting over. Instead, the Interior Ministry intends to adjust the mission of the national police, gradually withdrawing its forces from neighborhoods and moving them to regional garrisons across the country, where they will serve as an emergency response force, according to Maj. Gen. Michael Jones, who advises Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani. As part of the shift, the force may be consolidated, he said.

Jamie Gumbrecht,  Iraq awaits a fiery Shiite cleric’s next move, McClatchy Washington Bureau | 12/09/2007

BAGHDAD — After Friday prayers in Sadr City, 300 women in black shuffled slowly, quietly down a narrow street toward a billboard-sized photo of Muqtada al Sadr, the fiery young leader of their Shiite Muslim movement. Holding banners and flags, the women protested the U.S. presence in Iraq and the detentions of hundreds of the radical cleric’s followers.

“Anything that comes from Sayed Muqtada is good for us,” said Hannah al Rubaye, using the honorific title for descendents of the prophet Mohammed. “After this step, we expect other orders from Sayed Muqtada. Patience has limits.”

Sadr issued a heated anti-American statement last week, but he instructed his increasingly restless followers not to act. Their demonstration was organized without his orders, and their silence quickly gave way to agitated shouts.

Sadr himself has remained mostly silent since his 60,000-member Mahdi Army militia began a ceasefire three months ago. Sectarian violence and attacks on U.S. forces have dropped as a result, buttressing the case for the withdrawal of some U.S. troops from Iraq and encouraging some to believe that Iraq has had enough of killing.

Now Iraqis and Americans alike are awaiting Sadr’s next move, which could alter both his hold on his own followers and his relations with rival Iraqi leaders and, above all, help to determine whether Iraq is seeing the ebbing of a violent storm or merely the eye of it.

With the U.S. recruiting and arming opposing Sunni volunteer groups, Sadr’s passivity risks alienating his restive followers, the poor and underserved Shiites whose loyalty he inherited from his father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Mohammed Sadeq al Sadr.

Nevertheless, said Hazem al Araji, an aide to Sadr, the Mahdi Army ceasefire is likely to extend beyond the planned six months. While this would please U.S. commanders and many Iraqis, it would bolster Sadr only if his followers agree that they’re likely to gain more by keeping their weapons in their closets than they are by pulling them out again.

Sam Dagher, Iraq’s Sadr uses lull to rebuild Army | csmonitor.com, December 11, 2007

Karbala, Iraq - For more than three months, the Mahdi Army has been largely silent. The potent, black-clad Iraqi Shiite force put down its guns in late August at the behest of Moqtada al-Sadr.

The move has bolstered improved security in Baghdad, even though the US says some Mahdi Army splinter groups that it calls “criminals” or “extremists” have not heeded Mr. Sadr’s freeze.

Away from public view, however, Sadr’s top aides say the anti-American cleric is anything but idle. Instead, he is orchestrating a revival among his army of loyalists entrenched in Baghdad and Shiite enclaves to the south – from the religious centers of Karbala and Najaf to the economic hub of Basra. What is in the making, they say, is a better-trained and leaner force free of rogue elements accused of atrocities and crimes during the height of the sectarian war last year.

Many analysts say what may reemerge is an Iraqi version of Lebanon’s Hizbullah – a state within a state that embraces politics while maintaining a separate military and social structure that holds powerful sway at home and in the region.

“He is now in the process of reconstituting the [Mahdi] Army and removing all the bad people that committed mistakes and those that sullied its reputation. There will be a whole new structure and dozens of conditions for membership,” says Sheikh Abdul-Hadi al-Mahamadawi, a turbaned cleric who commands Sadr’s operation in Karbala.