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Posted by Farid (Moderator) - Sunday, November 30 2003, 18:21:32 (EST)
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Christians block planned mosque in Iraq

Posted By: An attack on one Oppressed Group is an Attack on ALL Oppressed Groups (cpe-24-165-84-156.socal.rr.com)
Date: Sunday, 30 November 2003, at 11:00 a.m.

www.thestar.com

80 families — united as Kurds, torn by faith
Christians block planned mosque with militia's help Disunity harmful when Saddam is foe common to all

SANDRO CONTENTA

HERMUTA, Iraq—Behind the Roman Catholic church in this Kurdish village of stone houses is a shallow hole that brought a generation of peaceful co-existence between Muslims and Christians to a end.

For the two religious communities here, the days of working and mourning together are over, and Ramadan and Christmas celebrations are no longer shared.

The break occurred last May, when the 30 Muslim families here decided to build the village's first mosque.

The diggers barely started work on the foundation when leaders of the 50 Christian families got wind of the plan.

They appealed to regional Kurdish authorities, and work on the mosque was ordered stopped.

Since then, relations between the two groups are as cold as the wind that lashes down from the snow-covered mountains above.

"This is a village that belongs to Christians," says Danha Jabbar, 65, Hermuta's primary school principal.

"This mosque would deform the appearance of the village"

Muslim resident Mahmoud Rasoul says, "We didn't want to build a mosque to compete with the Christians. We just wanted a place to pray."

The religious dispute in Hermuta, about 60 kilometres east of Arbil, is a local example of the ethnic and religious fault lines that have made Iraq a fragile nation since it was pieced together by the European powers after World War I.

It remains an artificial collection of competing tribes, faiths, regions, languages and ethnic groups.

Held together for the past 20 years by the brute force and terror of Saddam Hussein's regime, it risks falling apart if the United States and Britain proceed with war plans to topple the Iraqi president.

In a post-Saddam Iraq, British and American forces occupying the country could be embroiled in a long-term effort to prevent Iraq from breaking into a Shiite Muslim enclave in the south, a Sunni one in the centre, and a Kurdish one in the north.

Hermuta's dispute shows just how powerful religious or ethnic divisions can be, even in a village of 80 families where everyone is a Kurd.

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