Story by Nabil Salih
BAGHDAD, IRAQ—Through two improvised checkpoints, men filed into Al-Ummah Park in central Baghdad’s Al-Tahrir Square on Friday to mark the celebration of Al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day). Behind the artist Jewad Selim’s Monument to Freedom, a relic from a secular society that seemed so out-of-place and obsolete, a few hundred mourners gathered underneath a sea of paramilitary flags. A succession of defiant chants came in unison, condemning the U.S. and pledging loyalty to the Supreme Leader in Tehran. Projected on a giant screen before them were the smiling faces of Ruhollah Khomeini and his successor, the recently murdered Ali Khamenei. The image soon gave way to another, with Ali’s son, the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, flanked by his elders and crowned with the words “fa‘azazna bi thalithin,” a cursive allusion to a Quranic verse from Surat Yasin: “We sent them two messengers, but they rejected both. So We reinforced the two with a third.” Continue reading “As the Gulf Burns, Political Uncertainty Looms Over Iraq”
President Trump officially fired Catholic activist Carrie Prejean Boller from the White House Religious Liberty Commission on Thursday