Intra-Sectarian Peace?

One guesses there comes a time when even the most rabid insurrectionist has had his fill of savagery. So here is Muqtada al-Sadr washing his hands of his out-of-control militia's hand in the latest scene of carnage that took the lives of 52 Muslims and injured 300 others. It was his Mahdi militia in battle against their rivals - both incidentally Shia.

Oops. Not enough that Sunni battle, brutalize and murder Shia and vice versa, but we also see Sunnis battling Sunni, and Shia fighting Shia. How very instructive about the pacifying effects of a peace-loving religion. No, it isn't Islam, it's the various allegiances and interpretations seen as blasphemous in nature and just deadly unacceptable. Discourse, anyone?

And like all families that don't always get along, there are differences in opinion. Just that Muslims appear to gravitate toward the unorthodoxy of murder more frequently than do others; unorthodox since there aren't many religions that officially subscribe to murder as a handy device through which to solve inter-denominational differences. In this modern age.

It's the excitable nature of the beast. Something about the air and ancient grievances incapable of nicely dissolving into the past. Aided and abetted by self-serving Ayatollahs, Imams, Mullahs, and imperiously reigning monarchs and brutally demagogic dictators too, one supposes. Which should lead us to believe that all is well with the world, since such matters are in such capable hands.

It's been said that the carnage hit the proverbial fan when pilgrims left Karbala in fear for their lives, interrupting a sacred yearly pilgrimage. And let's face it, bombing mosques and the faithful is simply not a nice way to go about settling multifactional disagreements. Imam al-Sadr agrees, having ordered his army to suspend all 'activities'. Paving the way for the pilgrims to resume their sacred duty.

And lending him the opportunity to attempt to cleanse his organization of those he claims have infiltrated as rogue elements, immune to his charges, respecting nothing, it would seem, but their nihilistic aims. Of course it is both the Mahdi and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council's militias preparing to gain ascendancy in Basra.

Soon as that vacuum has been created by the pull-out of British troops, that is. To secure for themselves the oil riches from those wonderful fossilized deposits that have so enriched the area. It's even possible that in their zest for oil and war the two opposing Shia entities may deliver to the region a searing wind of war the like of which has not yet been seen in Iraq.

As though the current rate of murder and atrocities haven't been enough to persuade the world that severe dysfunction exists in the potential for human relations in this part of the world.