U.S. sniper used Quran for target practice

The U.S. military reported today that they canned an American sniper after he used the Quran for target practice.

Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled Quran with graffiti inside the cover on a firing range near a police station in Radwaniyah, a former insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Col. Bill Buckner said.

I hope there is more veracity to this report than when Newsweek reported a soldier at Gitmo had flushed the Quran down the toilet. Not that I advocate desecrating sacred materials, but that toilet story turned out to be potty talk, and a handful of people died from the Muslim rioting that resulted and America's rep sunk a little lower.

Sectarian bloodshed in a familiar place: Lebanon

One of the most powerful, raw, emotional photos I've seen in a long time. This shooting, but one bout of recent warfare between Sunnis and Shiites, occurred during a funeral procession last week. The story is here.

Arab Israeli woman joins air force by mistake

Remember that story yesterday about concern over Jewish "dual loyalty?" Well, a similar fear bars Israeli Arabs and Muslims from the Israel Defense Force's elite units. That is, except for one Muslim woman allowed in by accident.

But after the mistake was discovered the unit's commander was so impressed with the woman's ability and achievements that he allowed her to stay, breaking all the rules.

The IAF's elite Airborne Combat Search and Rescue Unit 669 is normally involved in sensitive and highly classified Israeli Defense Forces operations and is considered one of the Israeli military's premier units.

Its main function is to rescue and extricate wounded soldiers from combat zones, under heavy enemy fire in most cases. The unit also often helps rescue civilians injured during various catastrophic incidents.

Due to the sensitivity of the unit Muslims and Arabs are prevented from joining. Israel fears a conflict of loyalties should Israeli-Arabs serve in Palestinian areas or fight Muslim states.

Most Israeli-Arabs, apart from the Druze, a schism of Shiite Islam who defected during the 11th century, are not required to undergo the compulsory military service that Jewish youngsters are.

This story is from the Middle East Times. Oddly, I've seen no coverage of this in Israeli media. The unidentified Muslim woman, from an Arab village in northern Israel, was allowed into Unit 669 after acing her medical training, and before anyone realized she wasn't an Israeli Jew.

"Contrast this Arab woman’s zeal to perform her duty as a citizen with an ever-expanding number of Israeli Jews seeking to avoid their compulsory army service; not to mention those Orthodox Jews studying in yeshivas who also avoid service," Richard Silverstein wrote.

Her service, however, does not signal a sea change.

Another Israeli-Arab's dream of being a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, however, remains a pipe dream. "Soldier C" as he is officially known, and also from a village in the north of Israel, finished high school with top honors and received a certified pilot license before enlisting with the Israeli Defense Forces.

"My dream and ultimate ambition is to become a fighter pilot. I know I have the potential and ability to fulfill my dream and serve as a combat pilot with the IAF," he wrote. "If deemed physically and mentally fit, I ask that I be able to serve in all of the elite units of the IDF, which are open to all other enlisted personnel."

The aspiring pilot's plea was unheeded by the Israeli Defense Forces, however, in spite of a letter of recommendation given to him by his flight instructor, a former major and combat pilot in the IAF, so he was forced to serve with another unit of the IDF where he currently remains.

Previously in women of the IDF: Stripper assassins and Holy Land hotties.

Vandals attack Muslim graves in France

Vandals desecrated 148 Muslim graves in France's biggest war cemetery, hanging a pig's head from one tombstone and daubing slogans insulting France's Muslim justice minister, officials said Sunday.

President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed "profound outrage" at the "sordid" attack on the Muslim quarter of the Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery, near the northern town of Arras on Saturday night. He vowed that those responsible would be punished.

The cemetery is France's biggest military graveyards and commemorates tens of thousands of victims of a series of long and bloody battles for control of northern France at the start of World War I.

The attack came almost exactly a year after a similar incident in which neo-Nazi vandals scrawled swastikas on 52 of the cemetery's Muslim graves.

"This is the most inadmissible kind of racism and the president of the republic shares the pain of France's entire Muslim community," said a statement issued by the presidency. France's Muslim community is Europe's largest at around five million.

"This hateful act is also a attack on the memory of all veterans of World War I, beyond the faith of each one," the statement added.

The state prosecutor for Arras, Jean-Pierre Valensi, said "the slogans directly target Islam and they gravely insult Rachida Dati, the justice minister," who is the daughter of north African immigrants.

He said a pig's head was hung from one of the graves.

Dati issued a statement condemning a "hateful act" that "hurts the memory of our dead, of the veterans who gave their lives for France".

"Through its racist connotations, it is an assault on the values of the republic and an insult to all French people."

Read the rest from AFP here. And I thought swastikas were only used to attack Jews.

Christians fleeing Iraq; few entering U.S.

There have been long histories of discrimination in the United States against gays and Jews and other non-heterosexual WASPs, and I don't think it is too difficult for Americans to imagine gays in Iraq and Jews in Baghdad living under the hammer. But Christians?

Just like in the Palestinian territories, Christians in Iraq continue to see their situation get worse. The LA Times touches on their plight in a Column One about Robert DeKelaita, an Iraqi-born attorney handling asylum cases in American immigration court.

Repressed under Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Christian population has been decimated since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Muslim extremists have murdered priests and burned churches and Christian-owned shops and homes. Priests in Iraq estimate that fewer than 500,000 Christians remain, about a third of the number as before 2003.

On March 13, the body of the archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, was recovered, two weeks after he was kidnapped while leaving Mass. The slaying prompted Iraqi Christians to consider worshiping in secret; church services have also been attacked. Christian leaders say some Christians have been abducted and killed after refusing to convert to Islam.

"No group was happier than Christians when Saddam fell," DeKelaita said. "But no group is more disappointed with the way things played out."

Anguished over mistreatment of Iraqi Christian family members and strangers, DeKelaita long ago decided to dedicate his law practice to defending them. He is among a handful of immigration lawyers nationwide who specialize in representing Iraqi Christians, though he represents other clients.

"I know their pain; I feel it," he said of Iraqi Christians. "These are my people. I don't even have to ask them what they've been through."

Each Christian released from federal custody is a blessing, he said. But for the most part, "I deal in misery, unfortunately."

Frankly, I've never understood why we don't take more Iraqi refugees in. I mean, we unleashed this hornet's nest when we deposed that despot Saddam. Seems like we should take care of those endangered by the aftermath, whether it's because they are ethnic minorities or they work for the U.S. military or contractors. An assistant secretary of State gave this explanation to USA Today:

The United States has been unable to accept more Iraqis in part because of the time needed for background checks, which have become more stringent since 9/11.

To me it seems like a moral imperative that 10 years from now we will look back on critically, just like our response to Saddam while he was cleansing the Kurds.

Last fall, I put the question of what the U.S. should do to Bruce Einhorn, a recently retired immigration judge who is the "house Bolshevik" at Pepperdine, handled the L.A. 8 case and wrote an article about the refugees called "Freed to Flee."

"I find it appalling that having perhaps inadvertantly caused the refugee crisis in Iraq we have essentially pretended it doesn't exist. Clearly we overthrew a vicious, genocidal brute in Saddam Hussein. On the other hand, our occupation of Iraq after his overthrow has been a complete fiasco. Whatever terrorist organizations that didn't exist in Iraq do now, largely in resistance to us. And ordinary citizens are running for their lives," Einhorn told me.

"If the United States intervenes in a nation's affairs, ostensibly to restore or create human rights for the population, then it seems to me our government has assumed the burden of protecting those who become the targets of persecution as an inadvertent result of our involvement."

Atheist soldier sues Army

"There are no atheists in foxholes." That's how the saying goes. But last week a U.S. soldier again sued the Army for allegedly violating his right to be an atheist. No, not because they wouldn't let him into their foxhole during a firefight, but because, he claims, he was denied the ability to hold a meeting in Iraq to discuss his godlessness.

The suit was filed in September but dropped last month so the new allegations could be included. Among the defendants are Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Hall alleges he was denied his constitutional right to hold a meeting to discuss atheism while he was deployed in Iraq with his military police unit. He says in the new complaint that his promotion was blocked after the commander of the 1st Infantry Division and Fort Riley sent an e-mail post-wide saying Hall had sued.

Fort Riley spokeswoman Alison Kohler said the post "can't comment on ongoing legal matters" and offered no further statement.

According to the lawsuit, Hall was counseled by his platoon sergeant after being informed that his promotion was blocked. He says the sergeant explained that Hall would be "unable to put aside his personal convictions and pray with his troops" and would have trouble bonding with them if promoted to a leadership position.

Hall responded that religion is not a requirement of leadership, even though the sergeant wondered how he had rights if atheism wasn't a religion. Hall said atheism is protected under the Army's chaplain's manual.

"It shouldn't matter if one is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or atheist," said Pedro Irigonegaray, an attorney whose firm filed the lawsuit. "In the military, all are equal and to be considered equal."

The AP article also quotes Mikey Weinstein, the firebrand crusader who sued the Air Force for proselytizing and now runs the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which joined Hall in the suit. Weinstein calls the Army's actions are "beyond despicable, indeed wholly awful," which sounds like the kind of language and hyperbole that accompanies a lawsuit that probably will be settled quietly and for a handsome sum.

The real question, though, is whether Hall was discriminated against because his "religious beliefs" were out of line with the "established religion" of the military. (Just to be clear: The military has no established religion, though the chaplaincy program certainly favors Christians.) But, to be fair to Hall, does dogmatic opposition to religion count as its own form of religion? To answer that, I'd like to revisit an old post on a church of Christians and Jews that used marijuana to communicate with God.

"You have to give people a feeling or a sense of the sacred and then you have to bond them in community," Robert C. Fuller, a religion professor at Bradley University in Illinois and author of Stairways to Heaven: Drugs in American Religious History, told me. "The fact of the matter is anything that helps with those two function has religious values."

Now, Fuller isn't a constitutional lawyer, and certainly not a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, but based on his explanation, for atheists to be recognized as a religious group they would have to give fellow believers a "sense of sacred."

(Hat tip: GetReligion)

The religious impetus for a sovereign Kosovo

I've been looking for some discussion of the religious motivations behind the new nation of Kosovo but have been disappointed to see it left out of most media coverage. In fact, the headline for today's frontpager in the LA Times was "Kosovo takes a big leap of faith," but only offered this reference to religion:

Most of Kosovo's nearly 2 million people are Muslim but are largely secular and pro-Western. Serbia is an Orthodox Christian nation with historical cultural ties to the Kosovo region, part of the reason it is so valued by Belgrade.

As I imagined, GetReligion has gotten around to a pretty good run down of the the centuries-old conflict. See, the Balkans are viciously, well, balkanized among Albanian Muslims, Croat Catholics and Orthodox Christian Serbs.

(Coincidentally, I spent a bit of time writing about this yesterday for an article for this week's Jewish Journal about a Muslim from Macedonia who was the first to speak at the Orthodox seminary and helped diffuse a near civil war six years ago. I'm also reading "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," a Pulitzer Prize winner that began with Samantha Power's years reporting on the Serbian massacres of Muslims in Sarajevo.)

Here, Terry Mattingly of GetReligion quotes from a 1999 column he wrote trying to give context to the Balkans problem and the thugocracy of the late Communist ruler Slobodan Milosevic.

The roots of this crisis are astonishingly complex, ancient and bloody. . . . In 1389, Serbian armies fought — virtually to the death — while losing the Battle of Kosovo, but managed to stop the Ottoman Empire from reaching into Europe. The Kosovo Plain became holy ground.

Leap ahead to World War II, when Nazi Germany tried to use Albanian Muslims and Catholic Croats to crush the Serbs. Then Communists — such as Milosevic — took over. In the mid-1990s, the United States all but encouraged Croat efforts to purge Serbs from Krajina, where they had lived for 500 years. The West has been silent as Turkey expelled waves of Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Since morphing from Communist to nationalist, Milosevic has skillfully used Serbia’s array of fears, hatreds and resentments to justify terror in Kosovo and elsewhere by his paramilitary and police units. The Serbian strongman knows that Kosovo contains 1,300 churches and monasteries, many of them irreplaceable historic sites.

Retired New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal, who once won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in Eastern Europe, put it this way: “I do not get emotional about the history of Kosovo. I am not a Serb. Serbs do. . . . Serbs are as likely to give up Kosovo willingly because the Albanians want it as Israelis are to give up Jerusalem because the Arabs want it.”

(Map and image)

Olmert to declare Regev, Goldwasser dead?

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is planning on declaring the two soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah in the summer of 2006 dead, the German weekly magazine, Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

According to the report, no date has yet been set for an official announcement on the subject, but unnamed sources told the magazine that they expect it to be made soon.

Although the Prime Minister's Office did not immediately respond to the report, a government official told Israel Radio that there was still no new, definitive information about kidnapped IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

The official added that Israel still believes that the two reservists are alive, and continues in negotiations with Hizbullah through mediators.

This report's veracity seems questionable. But then, sadly, so does hope at this point.

A religious call to stop waterboarding

A former CIA man blogged Sunday about the awkward juxtaposition last week between the National Prayer Breakfast and the Bush administration's assertion's that waterboarding is a permissable form of interrogation that does not qualify as "torture."

I missed the National Prayer Breakfast—for the 45th time in a row. But, as I drove to work I listened with rapt attention as President George W. Bush gave his insights on prayer:

“When we lift our hearts to God, we’re all equal in his sight. We’re all equally precious...In prayer we grow in mercy and compassion.... When we answer God’s call to love a neighbor as ourselves, we enter into a deeper friendship with our fellow man — and a deeper relationship with our eternal Father.”

Vice President Dick Cheney skipped Thursday’s prayer breakfast in order to put the final touches on the speech he gave later that morning to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Perhaps he felt he needed some extra time to devise careful words to extol “the interrogation program run by the CIA...a tougher program for tougher customers, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11,” without conceding that the program has involved torture.

But there was a touch of defensiveness in Cheney’s remarks, as he saw fit repeatedly to reassure his audience yesterday that America is a “decent” country.

After all, CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed publicly on Tuesday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other “high-value” detainees had been waterboarded in 2002-2003, though Hayden added that the technique has since been discontinued.

An extreme form of interrogation going back at least as far as the Spanish Inquisition, waterboarding has been condemned as torture by just about everyone—except the hired legal hands of the Bush administration.

Ray McGovern, who works with the publishing arm of the Church of the Saviour, goes on to compel American religious leaders to speak about the moral failures of permitting torture.

Sometimes it takes a truth-telling outsider to throw light on our moral failures.

South African Methodist Bishop Peter Storey, erstwhile chaplain to Nelson Madela in prison and longtime outspoken opponent of apartheid, has this to say to those clergy who might be moved to preach more than platitudes:

“We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white, and blue myth. You have to expose and confront the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion, and caring of most American people and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly or indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them.

“All around the world there are those who long to see your human goodness translated into a different, more compassionate way of relating with the rest of this bleeding planet.”

Catholics against war to deliver ashes to Bush

This is the kind of stunt designed simply to drum up media hits, and I'll oblige. An e-mail from Catholics for an End to the War in Iraq just arrived in my inbox stating that the group will mark tomorrow, which is Ash Wednesday, by delivering ashes to the White House.

The use of ashes at the White House is a sign of atonement for President Bush’s war in Iraq, his continued support of torture and for his squandering of our nation’s moral leadership in the world.

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a time when Catholics pray for forgiveness in preparation for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Catholics believe that Jesus’ death was an act of atonement for personal and social sins.

Fr. Joe Nangle OFM, a Catholic priest serving at Our Lady Queen of Peace in Arlington, will be present to bless the ashes. “The use of ashes is an ancient and sacred sign that we are ultimately accountable to a higher power. If anyone needs this pastoral advice, it is President Bush.,” said Fr. Nangle.

What did Israel really bomb in Syria?

The answer to many of the questions associated with Israel's summer air raid of a Syrian military facility remain unknown but to a few high-level Israeli and likely American officials, according to Seymour Hersh, who was on "Talk of the Nation" tonight discussing the "act of war," which he wrote about for this week's New Yorker.

At a news conference on September 20th, President George W. Bush was asked about the incident four times but said, “I’m not going to comment on the matter.” The lack of official statements became part of the story. “The silence from all parties has been deafening,” David Ignatius wrote in the Washington Post, “but the message to Iran”—which the Administration had long suspected of pursuing a nuclear weapon—“is clear: America and Israel can identify nuclear targets and penetrate air defenses to destroy them.”

It was evident that officials in Israel and the United States, although unwilling to be quoted, were eager for the news media to write about the bombing. Early on, a former officer in the Israel Defense Forces with close contacts in Israeli intelligence approached me, with a version of the standard story, including colorful but, as it turned out, unconfirmable details: Israeli intelligence tracking the ship from the moment it left a North Korean port; Syrian soldiers wearing protective gear as they off-loaded the cargo; Israeli intelligence monitoring trucks from the docks to the target site. On October 3rd, the London Spectator, citing much of the same information, published an overheated account of the September 6th raid, claiming that it “may have saved the world from a devastating threat,” and that “a very senior British ministerial source” had warned, “If people had known how close we came to World War Three that day there’d have been mass panic.”

However, in three months of reporting for this article, I was repeatedly told by current and former intelligence, diplomatic, and congressional officials that they were not aware of any solid evidence of ongoing nuclear-weapons programs in Syria. It is possible that Israel conveyed intelligence directly to senior members of the Bush Administration, without it being vetted by intelligence agencies. (This process, known as “stovepiping,” overwhelmed U.S. intelligence before the war in Iraq.) But Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations group responsible for monitoring compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, said, “Our experts who have carefully analyzed the satellite imagery say it is unlikely that this building was a nuclear facility.”

Safe (for now) in Sderot

Marcell Bar-On, whose family has lived near the Gaza border under the constant shelling of Kassam rockets since the attacks began almost seven years ago, sent me this e-mail in response to my post yesterday about the rocket that almost hit their house while her children were still sleeping:

We are fine but have been experiencing daily Kassam attacks (morning, noon and night) for the privilege of being on Hanukka school vacation this week. Also, I saw on the news that the IDF made an incursion into Southern Gaza today, which automatically means that we will soon experience an increase in the frequency and amount of Kassam bombs.

No sign yet of any funding from the government for safe rooms. Unbelievable! What can you do. We live in hope that one day we will be able to live a normal life again.

A modern-day Chanukah miracle along the Gaza border

When I traveled to Israel last August, I spent two days appreciating the precariousness of life along the Gaza border. Three times Kassam rockets were shot in my direction, including five minutes after I arrived at Kibbutz Nir-Am to share Shabbat dinner with the Bar-On family.

The Bar-Ons became the focus on my story for The Jewish Journal when I returned, and this past weekend, Marcell Bar-On sent me a long letter detailing how life hasn't become any safer.

The attacks are unprovoked, unpredictable, and continuous, and their effect has been close to catastrophical for us, both economically and psychologically. Our every action, our every waking moment, is geared toward minimizing the impact of living under enemy fire. Our first concern is always for our elderly and our children. My son Gabi, who turns ten in December, was three years old when the bombings started, and doesn’t remember life without Kassam bombs. There are no reinforced rooms in our homes, and the old communal shelters cannot be reached in the 5-10 seconds it takes a Kassam bomb to travel between Beit Hanoun and Nir-Am. So our family does what all the other families do: when we hear the “Tzeva Adom ” (Red Light) alert, we huddle in a small windowless area (in our case, a small passage between bedrooms), our bodies and the tiled roof the only barriers between our children and the incoming bomb. We silently count the seconds to impact; I often need to remind the children to breathe – they are frozen in total terror. And we pray that this time, too, we will be spared.

The effect has been most obvious on our children. At home: bedwetting, aggressive behaviour, extreme moodswings, insomnia, loss of appetite . . . . and at school: lack of concentration, absenteeism, hyperactivity, outbursts of anger and physical and verbal aggression. But no-one is spared the psychological warfare we are all victims of: almost as many adults are in councelling as are children in an attempt to cope with the harsh reality of our daily lives. In fact, as parents we carry the additional burden of guilt for not being able to protect our children; we feel responsible for what is happening to them.

Driving with car windows open, even in the heat of summer, so that one can hear the alert and perhaps have a chance to stop the car and get to some kind of shelter . . . children playing outside, always acutely aware of exactly where the nearest house or tree is, so that they can run for their lives and find what inadequate and pitiful protection they can . . . cellphones for every child of schoolgoing age, so that we can stay in contact with them when they are not at home , and so that we can call them to see whether they are safe after every bomb has fallen . . . how can I describe the long moments waiting for my child to answer the phone after a Tseva Adom alert?

(skip)

On the first day of Hanukka this year, at 6.30 a.m., a Kassam bomb fell less than five meters from where my son Gabi and daughter Mayan were sleeping. I had been busy in my home office when the Tzeva Adom alarm sounded. I could not hear the children running for our little “safe corner” and I immediately realised that they had not heard the alarm and were still asleep in their beds, even as the bomb was already on its way from Gaza.

I ran in the direction of their bedroom, shouting for them to wake up; as I reached the bedroom door, they jumped from their beds but a second later the bomb struck. It did not explode upon impact, but penetrated deep into the soft earth and later had to be retrieved with the help of a bulldozer.


Our personal Hanukka miracle had just occurred: had the bomb fallen one week earlier, before the first winter rains when the earth had still been hard, it would have exploded on impact and the result could have been catastrophic for our family.

Why one UCLA soldier went to war

Lt. Mark Daily was the first UCLA alum to be killed in Iraq. (A plaque was recently hung in his honor in front of the Student Activities Center off of Bruin Plaza.) His death touched thousands upon thousands not simply because he was young and it was tragic, but because of the writings he left behind and a story in the LA Times that was e-mailed around the world.

One recipient was Christopher Hitchens, the atheist superstar and author who Daily credited with convincing him of the moral imperative of the war. In this month's Vanity Fair, Hitchens describes feeling ill upon learning this and seeking out Daily's family to clear his conscience.

In his brilliant book What Is History?, Professor E. H. Carr asked about ultimate causation. Take the case of a man who drinks a bit too much, gets behind the wheel of a car with defective brakes, drives it round a blind corner, and hits another man, who is crossing the road to buy cigarettes. Who is the one responsible? The man who had one drink too many, the lax inspector of brakes, the local authorities who didn't straighten out a dangerous bend, or the smoker who chose to dash across the road to satisfy his bad habit? So, was Mark Daily killed by the Ba'thist and bin Ladenist riffraff who place bombs where they will do the most harm? Or by the Rumsfeld doctrine, which sent American soldiers to Iraq in insufficient numbers and with inadequate equipment? Or by the Bush administration, which thought Iraq would be easily pacified? Or by the previous Bush administration, which left Saddam Hussein in power in 1991 and fatally postponed the time of reckoning?

These grand, overarching questions cannot obscure, at least for me, the plain fact that Mark Daily felt himself to be morally committed. I discovered this in his life story and in his surviving writings. Again, not to romanticize him overmuch, but this is the boy who would not let others be bullied in school, who stuck up for his younger siblings, who was briefly a vegetarian and Green Party member because he couldn't stand cruelty to animals or to the environment, a student who loudly defended Native American rights and who challenged a MySpace neo-Nazi in an online debate in which the swastika-displaying antagonist finally admitted that he needed to rethink things. If I give the impression of a slight nerd here I do an injustice. Everything that Mark wrote was imbued with a great spirit of humor and tough-mindedness. Here's an excerpt from his "Why I Joined" statement:

Anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception (though there are countless like me).… Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics.

'The New Wars of Religion'

THE four-hour journey through the bush from Kano to Jos in northern Nigeria features many of the staples of African life: checkpoints with greedy soldiers, huge potholes, scrawny children in football shirts drying rice on the road. But it is also a journey along a front-line.

Nigeria, evenly split between Christians and Muslims, is a country where people identify themselves by their religion first and as Nigerians second (see chart 1). Around 20,000 have been killed in God's name since 1990, estimates Shehu Sani, a local chronicler of religious violence. Kano, the centre of the Islamic north, introduced sharia law seven years ago. Many of the Christians who fled ended up in Jos, the capital of Plateau state, where the Christian south begins. The road between the two towns is dotted with competing churches and mosques.

This is one of many religious battlefields in this part of Africa. Evangelical Christians, backed by American collection-plate money, are surging northwards, clashing with Islamic fundamentalists, backed by Saudi petrodollars, surging southwards. And the Christian-Muslim split is only one form of religious competition in northern Nigeria. Events in Iraq have set Sunnis, who make up most of Nigeria's Muslims, against the better-organised Shias; about 50 people have died in intra-Muslim violence, reckons Mr Sani. On the Christian side, Catholics are in a more peaceful battle with Protestant evangelists, whose signs promising immediate redemption dominate the roadside. By the time you reach Jos and see a poster proclaiming “the ABC of nourishment”, you are surprised to discover it is for chocolate.

(skip)

In fact, religious front-lines criss-cross the globe.

Most obviously, Americans and Britons would not be dying in Iraq and Afghanistan had 19 young Muslims not attacked the United States in the name of Allah. The West's previous great military interventions were to protect Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo from Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croatians. America's next war could be against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Other conflicts have acquired a new religious edge. In the poisonous war over Palestine, ever more people are claiming God on their side (with some of the most zealous sorts living miles away from the conflict). In Myanmar (Burma) Buddhist monks nearly brought down an evil regime, but in Sri Lanka they have prolonged a bloody conflict with Muslims. If India has an election, a bridge to Sri Lanka supposedly built by the god Ram (and a team of monkeys) may matter as much as a nuclear deal with America.

The Economist, not often a magazine I'd turn to for religious reportage, just published this 18-page special report on "the new wars of religion," complete with nine stories and a disclaimer that concludes the main article:

First, many numbers in religion are dodgy: most churches inflate their support and many governments do not record religion in their censuses (in Nigeria the best source is health records). Second, in a field where many believers claim to know all the answers, it poses mainly questions. And lastly, given the emotion the subject arouses, the chances are that some of what follows will offend you.

I could hardly discuss all the stories here, but here's one of the sidebars "Holy Depressing."

SHEIKH Yazid Khader and Rabbi Yaacov Medan both live in the occupied West Bank. Both are devoutly religious men who feel they have been betrayed by secularists. The sheikh, a local Hamas leader, has just emerged from another bout of Fatah custody (depressing when the rival Palestinians, he says, should both be fighting “the Zionist enemy”). The rabbi, a leader of the settler movement, is still seething about the Israeli government's forcible ejection of its own settlers from Gaza. Both men are obstacles to any chance of peace in the Middle East.

Not that they see it that way. Both insist that their religions are peaceful ones and each has solutions to the current impasse. Of course Israel should keep its settlements in the West Bank (illegal under international law), argues the rabbi: it is part of the land God gave it. But a system of tunnels could be constructed for the Palestinians to find their way round them. For his part, the sheikh refuses to accept Israel's right to exist: Palestine is a waqf, land placed by God in Muslim hands for eternity. But if Israel retreats to its 1967 borders, Hamas would generously grant the infidels a hudna or truce, initially for ten years.

If you are concerned about religion's effect on politics, there is no more discouraging place to visit than the tiny sliver of land that is Israel-Palestine. Forty years ago the trouble there amounted to a territorial dispute between two fairly secular tribes. Religious Zionism—as opposed to the traditional, secular kind—was a fringe movement. Many of the Palestinian leaders were Christians or Marxists. But the six-day war of 1967 set off a chain of sectarian reactions on both sides. Polls show that most people on both sides still want a two-state solution, but many of the growing number determined to stop such an outcome now enlist God on their side of the argument.

They're right: That will definitely offend some people.

Refugees in their own land

Another story from Najaf, Iraq, not about how the drop in killings is hurting gravediggers, but about the sad lives of those stuck in a Shi'ite refugee camp.

The men gather somberly at midday on soiled straw mats under a makeshift canvas canopy in a valiant effort to simulate the traditional Arab formal reception room, but here they have no fans to keep the flies from landing, no sweets or tea to offer strangers.

They hoped that this city, holy to their Shiite sect, would welcome them and begin to heal their grief. But instead they have found themselves in a refugee camp outside the city, far from jobs and shops, squeezed five to a tent, sleeping on squalid blankets smelling of sweat, and drinking cloudy brown water hauled from a nearby ditch.

Most galling for these Shiite refugees is that they feel abandoned by the government, which is run by fellow Shiites. “When Maliki came to Najaf he didn’t even come to see the camp; he didn’t even visit his own people,” said Issa Mohammed, 47, a dignified man wearing the black checked scarf favored by tribal sheiks, referring to Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

The scope of sectarian killings in Iraq and the relocation they have caused have yet to be publicly acknowledged by the Iraqi government. But a visit to Najaf, whose refugee population is typical of the southern provinces, lays bare the vast needs of displaced Iraqis and the rough road ahead for the project of national reconciliation.

Last week, a reporter for The Washington Post was killed while speaking to Iraqis about sectarian violence. One can hope, dream and even pray -- especially pray -- but it's hard to imagine things getting better in Iraq. Sectarian violence is not the kind of conflict that fades over days or even a few years.

Gravedigging down with deaths in Iraq

NAJAF, Iraq — At what's believed to be the world's largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and millions already have been, business isn't good.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq .

"I always think of the increasing and decreasing of the dead," said Sameer Shaaban, 23, one of more than 100 workers who specialize in ceremonially washing the corpses. "People want more and more money, and I am one of them, but most of the workers in this field don't talk frankly, because they wish for more coffins, to earn more and more."

This story from McClatchy Newspapers, courtesy of Luke Ford, puts a macabre twist on all that bloodshed. It reminds me of one of the best stories I've ever read: "Angels of Mercy and Death," by LA Timeser Bruce Wallace in the wake of the 2004 tsunami.

'Blood and guts - and tender remembrances of home'

The soldier's messages back to his wife, Diana, father, stepmother and five siblings alternated between gruesome details of the horror of battle - a dog dragging away a corpse's head, a body identified only by its shoes because nothing else remained, trucks awash with blood and guts - and tender remembrances of home.

He called Diana frequently and sent her love poems.

"He'd ask me to pray for him and his soldiers," she said. "He said, `I hope you won't look at me differently for the things I had to do.' I told him, `Don't stop and think, just do what you have to."'

And sometimes, those things were terrible.

He pulled a comrade from a Stryker whose legs stayed behind in the wrecked armored vehicle. He killed at least eight men. He'd smelled the stink of death before and ducked bullets as an emergency medical technician in Compton, but he was profoundly affected by the war.

These are some of the disturbingly evocative words from Brent Hopkins' tale of a grieving father who flew to Baghdad to follow in his soldier son's final steps. It is a searing reminder of what this war is costing us -- humans -- not just in dollars and lives, but in mental suffering and unwashable memories.

Roaming Iraq with a heavy metal mercenary

Washington was abuzz today with the 3 1/2 hour testimony of the head of Blackwater USA, whose appearance reminded some people of Oliver North's two decades ago. Blackwater is the biggest provider of diplomatic security in Iraq, and its been accused of killing Iraqi civilians in firefights that it most often initiates.

The rise of American guns for hire reminded me of a piece from Rolling Stone two years ago that was included in the Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005. It dealt with Wolf Weiss, a rock 'n' roll merc whose father was assassinated when he was 11.

"He was found with over seventy percent of his bones broken, shot twice at point-blank range in the back of the head, wrapped up in a blanket with a yellow ribbon and a bow tie and then put in the back of his Rolls-Royce." Weiss says this in an almost neutral tone, as if he's stating where he went to high school.

The piece is titled "Heavy Metal Mercenary." It's raw, evocative and shows why these "contractors" are risking their lives in Iraq. (Hint: $20,000 a month.)

"Locked, cocked and ready to rock!" Scott shouts to Weiss over the radio. As he guns the Yukon through the crowded streets, Weiss views the drivers all around us not as fellow motorists but as potential terrorists -- and we are their target. The director of a private security company that escorts supply convoys between cities and ferries clients to work, Weiss is a private gun for hire, part of the vast and growing army of for-profit contractors who are providing much of the firepower in Iraq. There are now an estimated 20,000 "operators" or "shooters," as they're known on the ground, making corporate soldiers the second-largest contingent in Iraq after the American military. For better or worse, these private military contractors have become an integral part of the occupation, the only force available to protect workers and officials as they attempt to rebuild schools and restore power. By government estimates, the for-profit militias could wind up costing American taxpayers more than $4 billion - a quarter of the cost budgeted for reconstruction. "A lot of people are calling us private armies -- and that's basically what we are," says Weiss. "This is not a security company. This is a paramilitary force."

Some of the private warriors sport such neat haircuts and tidy polo shirts that they look, at first, more like golf pros than gunslingers. Wolf Weiss, as his name suggests, is not the polo-shirt sort. He wears his body armor, and his bravado, at all times. He is not tall -- only five feet eight -- but his barrel chest is bursting out of his black bulletproof vest. His dark, crinkly hair, which hangs halfway down his back, is pulled back in a braid. His left bicep features a long, curling tattoo of a panther; the right displays a smaller one of the Grim Reaper playing the guitar. Beneath his vest, covering every inch of his back, is a tattoo that Weiss considers "a good representation of myself and my ideals in a nutshell" -- a full-color, full-face rendering of a wolf about to pounce. "If you look into the eyeball," he tells me later, "you'll see a hunter with his hands up." Sure enough, in one of the gleaming oracular pools, there is a tiny reflection of a predator, helpless in the knowledge that he has become the prey.

"The wolf is obviously me," Weiss says. "The man in the eyeball is Evil." As he drives, Weiss keeps changing lanes abruptly, cutting off other drivers in a high-octane dash for the desert. "Speed is security," he likes to say. If anyone evil manages to get close enough to look in on us, the first thing he sees will not be faces but muzzles poised to fire. So when a car pulls alongside the Yukon, Weiss floors it and swerves away. "Kedar, get him!" he yells. "Get him!"

Kedar swings his weapon around and trains it on the car. The driver takes the hint and immediately peels off.

Read the whole thing here.