Iraqi minister lashes out at Saudi Arabia

LazerLordz SG

Iraqi minister lashes out at Saudi Arabia

AMMAN (AFP) - Iraq's interior minister delivered a scathing attack on neighbouring Saudi Arabia, saying his country would not be lectured by "a bedouin on a camel" about human rights and democracy.

"We do not accept a bedouin on a camel teaching us about human rights and democracy. In Iraq, we are proud of our civilisation," Bayan Baqer Sulagh told a press conference in Amman after talks on boosting border security.

The Shiite minister said the oil-rich Sunni-ruled kingdom had several problems of its own to take care of.

"Saudis should first allow women to drive, as is the case in Iraq," he said Sunday, adding that "four million Shiites live like second-class citizens in the Saudi kingdom."

He was responding to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal's accusations that Iran was seeking to spread its influence in Iraq and that sectarian divisions were threatening to break up the country.

Prince Saud said last month that splitting Iraq into Shiite south, Kurdish north and central Sunni Arab states would hamper Iraq's Arab identity and drag other countries in the region into the conflict.

The Saudi statements "do not reflect the reality of the situation," Sulagh said. "We understand the scope of these statements and their true objectives."

Shiites make up about 10 percent of the population in Saudi Arabia, and live mainly in the oil-rich Eastern Province near the borders with Kuwait and southern Iraq.

The interior minister's comments came as Arab ministers were preparing to meet in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah to discuss ways to support Iraq, including the possibility of sending observers to monitor upcoming elections.

Sulagh's brother was kidnapped by armed men in Baghdad on Saturday, in a move the interior minister said was aimed at pressuring him personally.

iveco SG

Don’t forget most of teh funds going to Al-Qaeda comes from Saudi Arabia. In fact, the extremist Wahhabi scholars have the House of Saud at gunpoint.

robertteh SG

It is my opinion that there is a lack of rationalizing of the past and present.

New muslim scholars and leaders have the responsibilities to rationalise past conflicts with the present.

It looks like for centuries the problems remain the same - attacks and counter-attacks,and incessant clashes of civilizations for no particular higher idealism or ratinale except to fight it out. It seems that the basic belief is based on suspicions and feuds or religious nationalism or tribalism - once an enemy forever an enemy.

The ordinary citizens enjoy modern computers or planes from other civilizations but there is no aspirations to derive modernism or progress from applications of any knowledge or solutions to problems. Yet their people need all of these to further sustain their wellbeing especially after the oils run out. So ordinary citizens have to rely on employment of modern science and technologies to give their citizens better lives.

Moderate muslim countries are more likely to be those in transitions from the old to the new being compelled by the need for their own families to live better lives. These groups are not in the majority and cannot change their past ideologies and religious hardline beliefs. The change will happen from within these groups. Who are these groups of modernised or modernising muslims the world will have to find and get them to rationalise for peaceful coexistence with the rest. Of course there was the old religious conflicts as recorded in their history and it is up to them to decide whether these conflicts are worth persisting in a more rational world.