Friday, December 17, 2010

Iraqi police officer makes ultimate sacrifice to protect civilians

Thanks Maury for posting the link.

'As the suicide bomber clutched the detonator to his explosive belt, preparing to spray fire and shrapnel into a religious procession here, an Iraqi police officer named Bilal Ali Muhammad faced a choice between his own life and something larger.

If he ran and took cover, Mr. Muhammad, 31, had a chance to save himself, to continue supporting his widowed mother, to help put his younger brother through college and to watch his three young daughters grow up.

Instead, the officer — a Sunni Muslim — threw himself onto the bomber, blunting the explosion’s impact on the Shiite worshipers.

“He gave his soul to the country,” said his mother, Alaahin Hassan, holding two of his daughters in her lap as dozens of black-veiled women filled her living room this week with ritualized wails of grief. “He believed in God. That made him great.”

In a country fractured by sect and ethnicity, from villages like this all the way to the government that is finally forming in Baghdad, Mr. Muhammad’s last act was a burst of heroism and humanity set against the viciousness that still stalks Iraq.

Many Iraqis see the police and the army as corrupt, incompetent and brutal, still unprepared to secure the country as the Americans withdraw over the next year. But Mr. Muhammad’s death, one of thousands among Iraqi security forces, offers a counterpoint to that view.

On Monday afternoon, Mr. Muhammad was guarding the edge of an annual religious celebration of Ashura as Shiites waved green and black banners and beat drums to commemorate the killing of one of their sect’s foundational members in A.D. 680. The ceremonies have been ripe targets for Sunni insurgents, and Iraq’s leaders have deployed swarms of security forces this year to guard against attacks.

At 2:30 p.m., according to witnesses and police officials, Mr. Muhammad spotted a suspicious man approaching the crowd, his hand wedged into his pocket.

Mr. Muhammad, a police officer for five years, stopped the man and asked him, What do you have in your pocket? The man replied, It’s none of your business.

Pulling open the man’s jacket, Mr. Muhammad found an explosive belt strapped to his chest. Whether from instinct or training, or sheer lack of any other options, he acted in that instant.

Shouting warnings to the crowd, he wrapped his arms around the bomber. As both men tumbled to the dirt, the explosion ripped through their bodies and raked the street, scarring the white walls of a schoolyard.

A woman and her granddaughter sitting nearby were killed and a dozen others were wounded. But the police said the death toll would have been drastically higher had Mr. Muhammad not thrown himself onto the bomber.

“He’s a hero,” said Mr. Muhammad’s uncle, Hamza Hassan, who spent the day welcoming well-wishers to a funeral tent outside Mr. Muhammad’s family home here in this farming town near the Iranian border. “The only choice was to become a martyr.”

Since 2004, about 2,200 police officers have been killed here in Diyala, a northeastern province that is a stronghold of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and a crucible of Iraq’s volatile mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. They have been killed in broad offensives against police stations, by magnetic bombs under their cars, by pistol shots at checkpoints.

At least three of them, confronting suicide bombers, have made the extraordinary decision to wrap their arms around their killers to absorb the blast.'

9 comments :

Dolly said...

May Allah burn him in the Fire.

Maury said...

When did Allah roll over and make Dolly God? Dolly thinks it's in her power to judge men's souls. To decide who gets to live, and who goes up or down. I've got news for you Dolly. God didn't die and leave you in control. It's something the two of you can discuss on the day of judgement. Something tells me you'll lose the argument.

David All said...

May Bilal Ali Muhammad be forever blessed as One of the Rightous.

Dolly said...

maury claims:
☼ Salafi's are devil worshippors.◄

No, do you know what it means. There is a hadeeth:

Khayru an-Nas qarni. Thumma lladheena yaloonahum, thumma lladheena yaloonahum.

The best generation is my generation. Then the one after it, then the one after it.

So the 1st generation is called Sahaba. (The 2nd Tabi'oon, the 3rd Atba' Tabi'een.)
But collectively the 3 generations are called Salaf ← i.e. predecessors.

So a Salafee is one who takes the affair back to the first 3 generations.

Iraqi Mojo said...

Did the first 3 generations kill a lot of innocent people?

Iraqi Mojo said...

It seems they did, to maintain power, kinda like they do today. They don't like democracy.

" 'Yazīd ibn Mu‘āwiya ibn Abī Sufyān Arabic: يزيد بن معاوية بن أبي سفيان‎ (born 645; died 683), commonly known as Yazid I, was the second Caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate (and the first one by heredity), ruling for three years from 680 CE until his death in 683 CE. The period of Yazid's rule is thought of as a contentious and unjust by many Muslims especially the Shia. Yazid was not chosen by election, or by council, but was appointed by his father, Mu'awiyah on the recommendation of Mughirah ibn Shu'bah. This was against the one of the main conditions of the Peace between Hasan ibn `Ali and Mu'awiyah ibn abu Sufyan. It was this break in treaty that compelled Husayn ibn `Ali to rise up to protect the Truth and fight against Yazid."

Iraqi Mojo said...

'Husayn ibn Ali did not give his oath of allegiance to Yazid. He stated, "no one like myself could ever give allegiance to someone like you", referring to Yazid's open deviations from Islam. He was living in Madina with his family, but Yazid considered him a threat to his rule and ordered his governor either to take an oath from Husayn or bring him his head. Husayn ibn Ali refused this demand and hence was pushed to a limit that he finally decided to leave Madina. He first went to Makkah with an intention to perform Hajj. But Husayn cut short his plan and performed Umrah instead of Hajj, as Yazid's assassins had been seen in Mecca.

Kufa, a garrison town in what is now Iraq, had been Caliph ‘Alī's capital and many of his supporters lived there. Husayn ibn Ali received many letters from the Kufans expressing their offer of support if he claimed the caliphate, but Kufans disappeared and betrayed him, finally making the way to kill Hussain.[citation needed] The Kufans do claim they were put under a great deal of duress by the then Governor of Kufa who had been sent letters by Yazid not to welcome the presence of Hussain. The Kufan population was subsequently threatened by the Governor and warned of the extreme consequences for any person who supported Hussain. They were also trying to restore Kufa's power against Damascus, the Umayyad capital, in which case they chose diplomacy with Yazid at the cost of rejecting Hussain from entering the city.

Abd-Allah ibn Abbas and Abdullah ibn Zubayr held a meeting with Husayn in Mecca to advise him to refuse to travel to Iraq. At the same time Ubayd-Allah ibn Ziyad, governor of Basrah, executed one of Husayn's messengers and then addressed the people and warned them to avoid the insurgency. Husayn departed towards Kufa despite many warnings and during the trip, he and many members of his family were killed or captured at the Battle of Karbala.'

Iraqi Mojo said...

My comment at 1:33 was published even though I got an error message (URL/Request too large) and it reminded me that Mister Ghost tried to post a comment (I got an email about it) but it didn't appear in the comments. I should publish it for him so that he doesn't think I deleted it, even though he accused me of being an apologist for Shiite terrorism.

Maury said...

"No, do you know what it means. There is a hadeeth:"

Nobody but God can judge men's souls Dolly. Yet, that's exactly what you and your Takfiri cohorts do on a daily basis. You twist parts of the Quran and hadiths to fit your convoluted ideology, and ignore other parts outright. Muhammad condemned your ilk from the beginning. These are his words, not mine.


A perfect Muslim is one from whose tongue and hands mankind is safe.

Happy is the person who finds fault with himself
instead of finding fault with others.

From morning until night and from night until morning
keep your heart free from malice towards anyone.