Several Iraqi Sunni Muslim clerics renewed their call during Friday sermons in Baghdad for a three-day prayer strike in mosques, an unprecedented movement to protest against anti-Sunni assassinations.
”It has been decided to close mosques as of this afternoon and until Monday afternoon,” said an imam belonging to the influential Committee of Muslim Scholars.
”It is a peaceful protest against heinous crimes and it will be repeated if these attacks happen again,” Sheikh Ahmed Abdel Ghafur al-Samarrai said in his Friday sermon.
”We must unite,” he said, announcing that a gathering of no fewer than 1 000 Sunni leaders will take place on Saturday, in a bid to ”create a leadership” for the community.
The former ruling Sunni Arabs are under-represented in the new Iraqi executive after insurgent threats and boycott calls led to appalling electoral results for Sunni candidates.
The minority community failed to find a common political stance, and a growing sense of marginalisation has fuelled the Sunni-based insurgency and sectarian rivalry with the newly empowered Shi’ites.
The Committee of Muslim Scholars, which controls about 3 000 Sunni mosques across the country, recently accused the government and Shi’ite militias of being responsible for the killing of several Sunnis, including three clerics.
At least 46 mutilated corpses, some of them Sunnis, were discovered last Sunday, in the latest escalation of tit-for-tat sectarian killings. — Sapa-AFP