"Un-Islamic" Savagery

Shiite Muslims beg for mercy, blood steaming down their heads, soaking their robes. A crowd of Sunni Muslims representing the true religion of peace and brotherhood press about them chanting "Allahu akbar". God, most certainly, is great. Others surrounding the misery of those being sacrificed for Allah snarl at them "You sons of dogs!".

There is one video that has an especial highlight for the delectation of the sanctimonious who will view them with huge satisfaction that they have done the work that Allah has charged them with; the defence of the authority of Islam...by showing a man being dragged, motionless and bloodied by a rope hauled in triumphalist victory by a young man.

The body of a bloodied Shiite Muslim man is dragged along a street in the village of Abu Mussalam after he and others were attacked by a mob when they allegedly refused to leave a house where they had gathered, on June 23, 2013. (-/AFP/Getty Images) 

 

Of those who were killed there was a well-known Shiite cleric, Hassan Shehata. After his slaughter a witness, a local Shiite activist, claimed in written and video-taped accounts of the atrocity posted online that the attackers, in a stupor of shared euphoria congratulated one another on their bold and courageous move to prove their piety.

That witness, Hazem Barakat, described the impetus of the carnage, that in previous weeks fanatical Salafist clerics in the area around the village of Zawiyet Abu Musalam, near the Giza Pyramids, had been agitating against Shiites. The cheering Sunni Muslim mob that attacked the Shia Muslims in their ceremony celebrating a heritage Shiite event represents a regional spread of the Syrian conflict.

In the village of Zawiyet Abu Musalam, thirty members of the Shia community were marking a religious occasion with a shared meal when hundreds of young men converged upon them, as they sat in a private home. Young men armed with metal and wooden clubs, swords and machetes then proceeded to beat the assembled Shiites on the head and back as they were trapped in the narrow confines of the house.

Egypt's President Muhammad Morsi has yet another concern in his troubled country to address. Since former president Hosni Mubarak was removed from office and replaced by a non-military rule in a democratic election, violence and criminal activity in the country have risen steeply. The once-feared police have lacked in their apprehensive response to these events.

Mobs in rural areas of the country have taken it upon themselves to lynch suspected criminals resulting from a rise of gangs who have robbed motorists and banks. Police hardly stir themselves to stop the crimes. Egyptians alarmed at their growing vulnerability to street crime of every kind have grown increasingly frustrated, on top of the economic hardships and shortages of basic necessities.

As far as opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi, he is held to be partly responsible for his support of the Salafists elected second in numbers to the Muslim Brotherhood. As Syria's civil war continues to advance and take its toll on the population of Syria through reciprocal regime and rebel attacks which have become code for Shia and Sunni rage against each other, the virus of that rage has spread throughout the region.

Egyptian authorities have responded to the urging of their own Sunni clerics, demanding a holy war against the Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian-Hezbollah Shia coalition that has been preying on their Sunni counterparts, transforming a political war into a secular one that has gradually and inevitably pulled in divisions that exist in surrounding countries of the Middle East.

A week earlier President Morsi appeared with clerics denouncing Shiites as "filthy". Now he has condemned the brutal killings of Shiites by cheering Sunnis. The proverbial mixed message. The Muslim Brotherhood, through a spokesperson has condemned the killings. That they were Shiites were bypassed in a Facebook posting that identified them as "the four dead who have beliefs of their own that are alien to our society".