Religious Leaders Call for Calm in Iraq

Clerics issued calls for calm as well as entreaties to defend communities Friday to a nation grappling with an anti-government insurgency and ongoing sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims that left at least 19 Iraqis and a U.S. Marine dead.

In the capital, during the first Muslim day of worship without a vehicle ban since late February, Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir of the Bratha Mosque told his Shiite followers that the battle against “terrorism” had no limits. A Shiite shrine was bombed Feb. 22, and subsequent reprisals have left hundreds dead.

“They trampled upon our dignity and our values,” said Saghir, a high-ranking member of a Shiite political party that is part of the government’s ruling coalition. “Our street must not be satisfied with merely expressing sorrow, but must participate in getting rid of this danger.”

In largely Shiite Basra, the Friday prayer leader of the city’s main Sunni mosque issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on believers to arm themselves.

“All Muslims should have a weapon in their home for protection of yourselves and your honor,” Sheik Ibrahim Hassan told worshipers. “Instead of buying a satellite dish, buy a weapon.”

“This is a fatwa,” he added, “and anyone who will not follow it is a coward.”

U.S. and Iraqi officials hoped that the formation of a national unity government drawn from all of Iraq’s ethnic and religious groups would help ease tensions between the country’s majority Shiites and once-dominant Sunni Arabs, stanch the insurgency and allow for the withdrawal of at least some of the 150,000 U.S. and other foreign troops deployed in the country.

But the process of creating a four-year government after the Dec. 15 elections got bogged down, with elected officials not expected to convene parliament until March 19.

To guard against further violence, Iraqi security forces stepped up patrols around religious sites Friday. At Abu Hanifa, a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, 10 Iraqi soldiers stood guard.

Those entering the mosques were subject to body searches.

“All Muslims must keep their eyes and ears open to stay alert so the plans of our enemies will fail,” Sheik Ahmad Taha of Abu Hanifa told worshipers.

Unlike the leaders of most Arab countries, Iraqi government officials do not control or censor politically charged Friday sermons. Clerics have assumed prominence in Iraq as civic and political leaders in the power vacuum that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime nearly three years ago.

On Friday, many warned of fitna, or internal strife. The Arabic word also refers to a series of civil wars that cemented the Shiite-Sunni divide in the decades following the 7th century death of the prophet Mohammad.

“Fitna has opened its doors these days,” Sheik Mahmoud Sumaidaie told worshipers at the Umm Qura Mosque, a major Sunni house of worship in Baghdad. “One word can calm or inflame people, and we must say things that calm people.”

In Kirkuk, long seen as a powder-keg of rivalry between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens, Sheik Adnan Mohammed Tahir called on Iraqis to set aside differences. “We are all Muslims,” he told worshipers at the Imam Wasity Mosque. “God created different people. God sees them all as equally Muslims.”

However, violence flared around the country.

In Samarra, a Sunni-dominated city that is home to the venerated Shiite Muslim shrine destroyed last month in an act that sparked sectarian reprisals, attackers killed at least four people and injured 10. A car bomb targeting a police vehicle killed a cleric at a nearby mosque and injured seven people. A roadside bomb outside another mosque killed three and injured three. The attacks prompted security forces to shut down roads into the city and dispatch U.S. helicopter gunships.

In Fallouja, a suicide bomber rammed a car into a checkpoint manned by Iraqi and American military personnel, killing one Marine, one Iraqi soldier and three civilians, the U.S. military announced.

In the capital, a car bombing near the Baghdad airport killed one Iraqi soldier and injured three.

Insurgents also destroyed a U.S. tank in east Baghdad, U.S. officials and Iraqi police said. One roadside bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy along the Canal Highway set a tank ablaze, and another targeting a police convoy killed one officer and injured two near the capital’s Yarmouk Hospital, police said.

Authorities discovered nine bodies around the capital, each handcuffed and with bullet wounds to the head, the latest in a wave of slayings with apparent sectarian overtones.

Human rights and political groups allege that death squads with ties to the Shiite-dominated Ministry of Interior are responsible for the killings, which have targeted those suspected of having ties to Sunni Arab insurgent groups. An additional 23 bodies were found earlier this week.

“We place full responsibility for this incident on occupation forces and the government,” said a statement issued Friday by the Muslim Scholars Assn., a Sunni clerical group. “They know very well about these [death] squads, who formed them and the political parties that participate in and benefit from them.”

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Times staff writers Shamil Aziz, Raheem Salman and Caesar Ahmed in Baghdad, and special correspondents in Basra, Kirkuk and Ramadi contributed to this report.