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[Iran News Digest | Stay Informed. Stay Green.] WASHINGTON POST: Fearing Protests, Iran Quashes Shiite Religious ...: Iranian officials have cancelled or downgraded major Shiite religious events during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, fearing the opposition might use them to stage protests.  A typically massive evening celebration at the South Tehran mausoleum of Islamic republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini scheduled for next weekend was cancelled “due to problems,” the site’s public relations department said in a statement.

[Faster, Please!] Faster, Please! » The Full “Corner” Post: That 31-year old Iraqi whose claim that his people don’t believe in liberalism or secularism seems conjured out of a hat, frankly.  I thought most people agreed that the last Iraqi elections showed the growth of less sectarian parties.  As for Iran, that’s a country with a tradition of secular self-government, where the Islamists are now so deeply scorned that I cannot imagine a man with a turban being freely elected to anything.  Unlike Iraq, where democracy must be learned, the Iranians know all about it.  Indeed, if you read the statements of the many dissident ayatollahs these days, you can see that they believe that Islam has been discredited by the regime.  You can hardly miss this:  every night millions of Iranians take to the rooftops and chant “Allahu Akbar,” Allah is great.  They shout this, not to praise the theocratic regime, but to mock it.  For those words are immediately followed by “Death to the Dictator!”

[Breaking News] Influential Iraqi Shiite leader who rose to power in post-Saddam ...: Body of revered Shiite leader arrives in BaghdadBAGHDAD ”” The body of a revered Shiite leader arrived Friday for burial amid tight security that saw portions of the Iraqi capital sealed off, signaling fears the funeral procession may be targeted by insurgents to stoke sectarian tensions. The body of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim was met by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and hundreds of political and religious officials, marking the second half of a two-day funeral procession through the Shiite heartland that began in Iran and has seen thousands take to the streets in mourning.

[News, Opionion and Features from Asharq Alawsat English Edition] Iraqis mourn death of key Shi'ite party leader Asharq Alawsat ...: ISCI and Maliki's Dawa party swept to power in 2005 polls as part of a broad Shi'ite coalition, but over the past year wrangling over alliances has intensified against a backdrop of continued violence that, as U.S. forces prepare to withdraw, raises doubts about the durability of Iraq's security gains.

[Talk Islam] post at my other weblog on albania. i am”¦ « Talk Islam: This syncretism formed the perfect ground for the spread of Albania’s second-most-popular faith, Bektashism, a secretive, heterodox Shiite sect with which roughly 40 percent of the country’s Muslims identify (the rest are Sunni). The Bektashi are one of several Shiite sects known by Muslim heresiographers as Ghulat (”exaggerators”): those who have exceeded the proper bounds of religion by ascribing divinity to human beings (typically, to Ali, the first Shiite imam).

[PUK Media Central Office "PUKmedia"] PUKmedia :: English - Iraq leaders mourn death of key Shi'ite figure: ISCI and Maliki's Dawa party swept to power in 2005 polls as part of a broad Shi'ite coalition, but over the past year wrangling over alliances has intensified against a backdrop of continued violence that, as U.S. forces prepare to withdraw, raises doubts about the durability of Iraq's security gains.

[Cairo] Blog: Middle East Diary: Iraqis didn’t buy it, either, especially when they saw Badr forces continue to fight in the south, where their supremacy was challenged by the Sadrist movement and other Shiite subsets. And in our reporting of the past few years, we had confirmation from several trusted Iraqi and U.S. military sources that elite members of the Badr Corps were carrying out what were described as “surgical strikes” against members of the former regime, oftentimes at the request of Iran.

[The Nation: All Weblogs] 'Iraq Will Be A Colony of Iran': When you keep in mind that over 20,000 Iraqi babies have been saved by improved health care, and the end of sanctions, and the possibility of another genocide averted, and decades of rule by Saddam's even nuttier sons who would have ensured an even more bloody inevitable collapse when they died unless there was a Saddam 3 to succeed them successfully (the Baathists would have been able to cultivate the same sectarian violence and ultimately would have been able to provoke a mass genocidal civil war without an American intervention in the event of such an outcome), and when you keep in mind that Iraq will soon be a stable and prosperous country in which America will have built schools, hospitals, water purification facilities, ect., only the most deluded among us could deny Bush has saved Iraqi lives. Even Obama admits that Iraqis are far better off, he just takes a Gore Vidalian view on the issue.

[Breaking News] Car bombs target Iraqi forces ahead of funeral of top Shiite ...: Al-Hakim’s political bloc, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, became the most influential Shiite political force following Saddam Hussein’s collapse, working with American forces in Iraq while keeping its ties to Iran as the Islamic regime expanded its influence with Iraq’s Shiite majority.

[Global News Blog Headlines] Lebanon Crisis Monitor - Sex for sale: the dark side of tourism in ...: “Hariri doesn't want to form the cabinet, rather he's playing with the lineup according to his mood,” former General Michel Aoun , a Maronite Christian and a key ally of the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah and Amal movements that form the .A new film by Israeli director Samuel Maoz draws on his memories as a young soldier in the 1982 Lebanon war, powerfully rendering fear and claustrophobia by shooting most of the action from inside a tank.

[blog.Tribulationperiod.com] blog.Tribulationperiod.com » Blog Archive » The Common Hatred ...: Parallel to this, a Hizbullah-led structure has also been revealed in Egypt in recent months. In April, Egypt announced the arrest of 49 people said to be involved with a network led by Hizbullah member Mohammed Mansour and personally sanctioned by movement General-Secretary Hassan Nasrallah.

[SWJ Blog] 25 August SWJ Roundup (SWJ Blog): If confirmed, such a result would eliminate the need for a runoff election in October between Karzai and his top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, but could raise questions about the vote's credibility. Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwol, citing partial and unpublished vote tallies, told journalists at a dinner that support for Karzai was high enough across the nation to cancel out the problem of low voter turnout in the south.

[Breaking News] Yemeni government forces bomb Shiite rebel stronghold near Saudi ...: Yemeni government counters a Shiite rebellionSAN'A, Yemen ”” Yemeni government forces used artillery and aircraft to attack Shiite rebels near the border with Saudi Arabia in an escalation of the five-year-old conflict, rebels and local officials said Wednesday. The government offensive, which is believed to have started late Tuesday and continued Wednesday, followed reports Tuesday of rebels seizing more control of the northern Saada province from government forces.

[Baghdad Bureau] Podcast: Election Veto Exposes a Shiite Rift - At War Blog ...: If the Maliki government under U.S orders continues to disrupt the political process based on the fear that Anglo-American oil interests in Basra might be threatened due to Sadrists’ rejection of the occupation for geo-strategic and corporate interests, we would know why.

[Gene Expression] Gene Expression: Those tolerant Bektashis!: The Bektashi are one of several Shiite sects known by Muslim heresiographers as Ghulat ("exaggerators"): those who have exceeded the proper bounds of religion by ascribing divinity to human beings (typically, to Ali, the first Shiite imam). ... That's a pointer to another distant, but very likely, connection with the Bektashis have: with the Safavid dynasty of Iran. The Safavids started out as a Turkish Kizilbash movement, out of the same religious milieu as the ...

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