Riverbend's latest
post from Baghdad is dated May 31, nearly a month after her last one. I was getting worried that perhaps Iraq's "girl blogger" and her family had become refugees or victims of violence. But she's still OK, with these thoughts about World Cup soccer fans in Baghdad and their problems with Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Iraqi leader who has pronounced a fatwa against soccer.
It's darkly funny to see what we've turned into, and it is also anguishing. Muqtada Al-Sadr is a measure of how much we've regressed these last three years. Even during the Iran-Iraq war and the sanctions, people turned to sports to keep their mind off of day-to-day living. After the occupation, we won a football match against someone or another and we'd console ourselves with "Well we lose wars- but we win football!" From a country that once celebrated sports - football (soccer) especially - to a country that worries if the male football players are wearing long enough shorts or whether all sports fans will face eternal damnation... That's what we've become.
Riverbend says she listened to Muqtada's fatwa against soccer and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Foreign occupation and being a part of a puppet government- those things are ok. Football, however, will be the end of civilization as we know it, according to Muqtada.
She compares Bush and Muqtada Al Sadr:
It's amusing- they look nothing alike- yet he reminds me so much of Bush. He can barely string two sentences together properly and yet, millions of people consider his word law. So when Bush raves about the new `fledgling Iraqi government' `freely elected' into power, you can take a look at Muqtada and see one of the fledglings.
and provides this insight into the changes occurring in Iraq now.
He is currently one of the most powerful men in the country for his followers.... Sadr's militia control parts of Iraq now. Just a couple of days ago, his militia, with the help of Badr, were keeping women from visiting the market in the southern city of Karbala. Women weren't allowed in the marketplace and shop owners were complaining that their businesses were suffering. Welcome to the new Iraq.
Riverbend tells of a shopkeeper (G.) who proudly displayed the flag of Brazil in his window until a young cleric entered the shop and said he was a `representative' from the Sadr press bureau. The cleric asked G. whether he had any national pride or religion, and if he needed a flag in his window, why wasn't it the Iraqi flag? But, despite the advice of his entire family, G. kept Brazil's flag in his window. Then,
two days later, he found a rather dramatic warning letter slipped under the large aluminum outer door. In a nutshell, it declared G. and people like him `heathens' and demanded he take down the flag or he would be exposing himself to danger. It takes quite a bit to shake up a guy like G., but the same day he had the flag down and the display was back to normal.
Important note: Islamic Sharia does not prohibit soccer/football or sports- it's only prohibited by the version of Sharia in Muqtada's dark little head.