SeekerBlog

This is encouraging – Mohammed reports on Salafi leaders supporting free Iraq:

In an interesting development, a group of clerics from the Salafi trend (which
is the most extreme trend of Islamic factions) visited Dr. Jafari in Baghdad
to congratulate him on forming the new government. Although this might be
late but it’s still a good step when comes from Salafi groups.

The clerics said that they clarified to Jafari that their groups are trying
hard to raise the voice of reason among the extreme mosque preachers and
that they’re leading an educational campaign to counteract the "takfiri" ideology
(takfiri means considering anyone who disagrees with your view of religion
an infidel).
They said that their campaign includes convincing people that using arms against
American forces is useless and illogical for the huge difference in capabilities
that makes it crazy to fight a superpower.

The clerics also voiced their concerns to Jafari about the intensified raids
of the security forces in their regions and that they’re not feeling "safe" because
the majority of Iraqi forces are comprised of She’at Iraqis and those She’at
members of the forces think that everyone with a beard is a terrorist.

And in a new experience for Al-Iraqia TV, they hosted three of those clerics
in a talk show. The three men were Abu Manar (the manager of the Sunni properties
in Tikrit) and Abu Safwa and Abu Al-Harith from the department of Sunni properties
in Mosul.

Everyone talked in the show with considerable frankness and openness and no
phone calls were ignored. This in my opinion is pretty good in spite of the
deep differences; transparency and addressing differences with such openness
is a very good initiative and it comes instead of the dark mysterious statements
that we can’t verify their sources in many cases.

It was good to see that everyone tolerated criticism and most of the phone
calls were trying to focus on one idea that is we are all Iraqis in the 1st
place and we still have the desire to work as one hand.
The show was very interesting indeed.

Abu Manar said "people were looking at us with suspicion and a look of
surprise was on their faces when the three of us were walking in Baghdad streets
wearing our beards that clearly indicate that we’re Salafis and it seems that
people still think that everyone wearing a beard is a terrorist. This belief
is in fact a result of the doings of "mufsidoon" and we disagree
with such doings like killing people indiscriminately and attacking people
with explosives. We’re trying to tell the people that there are Salafis who
are ready to work with the people against the terrorists".

Abu Manar gave an interesting example; he talked about his meeting with Abu
Al-Walid who’s the commander of the Wolf Brigade, the officer asked the cleric
about the reason behind the relative stability of Tikrit when compared to Mosul
and the people who attended the meeting answered that it’s clerics like Abu
Manar who continuously encourage people to stay away from violence that keep
their city quiet.

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