Violence Leaves Young Iraqis Doubting Clerics

[DeSwiss]

Violence Leaves Young Iraqis Doubting Clerics

New York Times - ''Generation Faithful''
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: March 4, 2008


Johan Spanner for The New York Times
Muath, 19, a Sunni, joined an insurgent group in Baghdad last spring to help support his family.

BAGHDAD — After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach. In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.

“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”

Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.” The shift in Iraq runs counter to trends of rising religious practice among young people across much of the Middle East, where religion has replaced nationalism as a unifying ideology.

While religious extremists are admired by a number of young people in other parts of the Arab world, Iraq offers a test case of what could happen when extremist theories are applied. Fingers caught in the act of smoking were broken. Long hair was cut and force-fed to its wearer. In that laboratory, disillusionment with Islamic leaders took hold.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/world/middleeast/04youth.html?_r=1&ex=1362286800&en=f15bb13606d4f07d&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin">MORE

- “The religion men are liars."

I wonder what it was exactly that tipped him off.......
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DeSwiss

[wtmusic]

1. Clerics? Feh.

"The violence of religious extremism" wouldn't exist in Iraq without the war our own "religious extremists" started.

[DeSwiss]

3. You said it! n/t

[uberllama42]

2. As the article says, all of this is anecdotal

If 5% of the population turns away from clerical leadership, and they are noisy about it, then the press reports it. That doesn't mean that they are necessarily making progress. It's hard to expect reason and compassion to flourish in a war zone.

I'd like to see some broader poll numbers on this phenomenon. Anecdotes are nice but not substantial.

[DeSwiss]

4. Agreed....

...on the other hand, its a start.

[Ramonna Villota]

5. Violence

Destroys all. Even a violent thought will darken ones mind. Sometimes when I have bad thoughts I pray. Sometimes I plant something sometimes I make something. But I must do something to overcome these thoughts. Sometimes I dance :)


Those poor children must be tought something pure something divine. To transfer the rage into something of beauty