Published on Wednesday, April 14.
by
Rahul Mahajan
Baghdad, Iraq
-- Aadhamiyah. The mosque of Abu Hanifa, built around the tomb of the
founder
of the mainstream Hanafi school
of Islamist
jurisprudence, has stood for 1250 years in the Aadhamiya quarter of Baghdad.
When Hulagu sacked Baghdad
in 1257,
he used it to stable his horses, but otherwise it has escaped
indignities from
the many invaders and foreign overlords to which Baghdad
has been subject. It is the most important (though not the largest)
Sunni
mosque in Baghdad, and a
site of
pilgrimage for Muslims the world over.
When the siege of Fallujah began and a call
was put out
through the mosques for donations of food, medicine, personal items,
blood, and
money (an earlier piece I wrote about this drive is available at http://www.empirenotes.org/april04.html#07apr043),
it was natural that Abu Hanifa mosque be the epicenter for the effort.
Afterward, as Fallujah was bombarded and
there was a massive
exodus of refugees, the operation of housing them with people in
Aadhamiyah was
again coordinated through Abu Hanifa.
So it was only natural that the U.S.
military, suspicious that military supplies are being smuggled into
Fallujah
and that mujaheddin are going both ways back and forth, would raid the
mosque.
Issam Rashid, chief of security for the
mosque, told us the
story. At 3:30 am on Sunday
morning,
100 American troops raided the mosque, looking for weapons and
resistance
fighters. They started the raid the way they virtually always do -- by
smashing
in the gates with tanks and then driving Hummers in. The Hummers ran
over and
destroyed some of the stored relief goods (the bulk of the goods had
already
been sent to Fallujah -- over 200 tons -- but the amount remaining was
considerable). More was destroyed as soldiers ripped apart sacks
looking for
rifles. Rashid estimated maybe three tons of supplies were destroyed.
We saw
for ourselves some of the remains, sacks of beans ripped apart and
strewn
around.
The mosque was full of people, including 90
down from Kirkuk
with the Red Crescent, arranging for further aid to Fallujah. They were
all
pushed down on the floor, with guns put to the backs of their heads.
Another
person associated with the mosque, Mr. Alber, who speaks very good
English,
told us that he repeatedly said, "Please, don't break down doors.
Please,
don't break windows. We can help you. We can have custodians unlock the
doors." (Alber, by the way, was imprisoned by Saddam for running a
bakery.
As he said, "Under the embargo, you could eat flour, you could eat
sugar,
you could eat eggs, all separately. But mix them together and bake them
and you
were harming the economy by raising the price of sugar and you could
get 15
years in prison.)
The Americans refused to listen to Alber's
pleas. We went
all around the mosque and the adjacent madrassah, the Imam Aadham
Islamic
College. We saw dozens of doors broken down, windows broken, ceilings
ripped
apart, and bullet holes in walls and ceilings. The way the soldiers
searched
for illicit arms in the ceiling was first to spray the ceiling with
gunfire,
then break out a panel and go up and search.
They even went and rifled through students'
exam papers. A feeble
old man with a limp who is a "guard" at the mosque (actually a poor
man with a large family who is given housing by the imam of the mosque)
was hit
in the head with a rifle butt and then kicked when he was down -- all
because
he was a little slow in answering the door. He says he never carries a
weapon
-- the whole mosque has only three Kalashnikovs, for security, kept in
the
imam's room (the soldiers confiscated their ammunition in the raid).
And, of
course, they entered the mosque with their boots on.
The American commanders will say this was a
necessary
precaution to make sure no military goods got into Fallujah and that
this was
legal under the laws of war. But the Abu Hanifa mosque was not involved
in any
illicit activities – nothing was found. The soldiers didn't bother to
ask. They
didn't go to the Imam and see if they could search to mosque. And,
after a year
of being stationed in Aadhamiyah, they didn't know the people well
enough to
know there would be nothing -- even though they were told repeatedly
that the
resistance in that area never fired from near the mosque because they
were afraid
of drawing return fire that would hit the mosque.
You can guess how many hearts and minds were
won by this
little operation -- the third time that the mosque has been raided
since the
war.
Abu Hanifa mosque has a tower that is being
reconstructed.
It was destroyed by the American attack during the war and is only now
being
finished, one year later. Rashid told me why. He said, "After the war,
the
Americans came and offered money to rebuild the tower. We told them no.
We will
rebuild the tower with our own money. We will take no money from you.
You can't
just destroy things and then win our goodwill by paying us off. This is
not a
game."
When I asked Rashid if we could use his full
name, he said,
"Why not?" It's a response we get more and more these days, from
people who would have been afraid but have lost their fears through
anger.
Dignity is one of the few things in Iraq
that is not in short supply.