It's worth mentioning that Sadruddin Qabbanji, a Friday preacher for Shiite Muslims in the city of Karbala, urged the Iraqi government to follow [the concept of] "the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice," and stated that what the Iraqi army did was "correct."
The Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is an Islamic law that permits clergy to impose punishments on anyone who commits a violation of Islamic law.
The department, which was established after 2003, stressed that "Iraqi religious minorities, particularly the Yazidis, suffer from difficult circumstances, death threats, harsh marginalization and persecution." Meanwhile, the statement held, "the security force is responsible for what happened, due to its failure to defend the lives of the people and protect them from terrorism."
The Lalish Center, a civil society organization concerned with defending the rights of Yazidis in Iraq, said in a statement Al-Monitor received via email, "It's interesting and worth noting that (the attacks against alcohol vendors) occurred in an area that is heavily fortified by the security services."
The center clarified that "the militants carried out their crimes in cold blood, after storming a police security checkpoint. They did not kill any police officers, they merely tied them up and then attacked a number of shops that employ Yazidi workers, whose economic conditions force them to risk their lives to provide for their families."
As I was writing this story, eyewitnesses told Al-Monitor that the security forces had ordered all shops that sell alcohol to close. Al-Monitor's source said that soldiers told them they were preventing them from [selling alcohol] to limit armed attacks on the lives of shop owners.
Ali Abel Sadah is a Baghdad-based writer for both Iraqi and Arab media. He has been a managing editor for local newspapers as well as a political and cultural reporter for more than 10 years.
Comments are closed.