Abe Greenwald from Commentary points us to a lead story in the New York Times which shows that young Iraqis are tired of violence and death and are blaming...nope, not the Americans as certain groups would assume, but the religious clerics that use violence and extremism and claim it is done in the name of Allah.
While religious extremists are admired by a number of young people in other parts of the Arab world, Iraq offers a test case of what could happen when extremist theories are applied. Fingers caught in the act of smoking were broken. Long hair was cut and force-fed to its wearer. In that laboratory, disillusionment with Islamic leaders took hold.
A Shiite sheik from Baghdad says that the term Allahu akbar, which is a phrase that means "God is great" and is used when extremists behead people, is turning the youths off and making them blame Islam itself, he adds, "The young people, they think that is Islam. So Islam is a failure, not only in the students’ minds, but also in the community."
It is not only Shiite;s that are pointing this out as evidence by a moderate Sunni Cleric, Abu Mahmoud, that helps to deprogram religious extremists who says that where people used to give their "eyes and minds to the clerics" and trusted them are now saying "You cost us this."
One comment from Bushra, a professor at Baghdad University’s School of Law, says that youths have started started to hate the religion and are disgusted by the religious men that use violence in the name if Islam.
The article points out that much of the insurgency had little to do with religion and more to do with the violent extremists that offer cash as a recruitment tool and that at first it was easy to "romanticize" that is was a violent struggle against "Americans", but that has changed in the eyes of the young and their parents.
It point to a young girl, a 24-year-old Iraqi college student, who says, "I used to love Osama bin Laden," stating that at first the attack on America on 9-11 was a "strike at American supremacy" and the deaths abstract.
Now her attitude, in her words, "Now I hate Islam. Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing."
One Falluja father with a 20-year-old son, Mohammed Ali al-Jumaili, tells reporters that parents used to worry about their children smoking or drinking but now their focus is keeping their children away from terrorism.
It is a three page, lead article in the New York Times and the full thing should be read to get a gist of how violence, once the only thing Iraqi's knew, is a difficult cycle to break but the people of Iraq are standing up and breaking it.
Freedom isn't free...
That is an expression that many claim the "neo-cons" use to because they "like" war, but throughout history we have seen that Liberty and Freedom isn't free. It requires the sacrifice of men and women that believe freedom and liberty is worth the price.
Two examples of that price would the American Civil War, known as the deadliest in American history, which caused approximately 620,000 soldier deaths and an undetermined number of civilian casualties and although the cause was different it brought about the freedom of slaves, ending slavery in the United States.
Another example was World War II, which was the single deadliest conflict the world has ever seen, where the estimated cost of life was 72 million people.
The fact is Freedom is not free, as history teaches us, and the youths in Iraq are a new generation that are becoming aware, as stated in the original article, that religion is not an excuse for murder and destruction and that freedom and liberty are something that once tasted, is not something that will easily be let go of.
It has been a long road and these young people will be the ultimate winners when all is said and done.
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