Afraid to Pray

MSNBC and the Washington Post have an intriguing article today about how some Muslims in Iraq are choosing between praying at mosques or praying on their own. Some are giving up on praying at mosques because of the perception that going to mosques is dangerous.

Well, let's start with the basics. Who is targeting the mosques? Islamic terrorists.

Fellow Muslims are attacking mosques, hoping to incite sectarian conflict. Coalition forces have strict rules of engagement that essentially put mosques off limits to attack. They're working with Iraqi forces to try and protect mosques and other meeting places from attacks, but the terrorists and insurgents know that mosques are easy targets for killing large numbers of people with little effort.

And Sunni and Shi'ite leaders know that the mosques and attacks on mosques are as much a political issue as they are a religious one:

At a Shiite mosque in central Baghdad this week, Sheik Fadha Messam Salum al-Dafai said attendance has nevertheless remained steady.

"A person who comes to the mosque knows that he will be a martyr and be sent to God if he is killed while he is praying," he said, resting his folded hands on a cane while he sat in the mosque's courtyard. "The attacks have maybe increased the number of worshipers who come to mosques."

Other religious leaders, particularly Sunnis, report a striking downturn in attendance, especially since the destruction of the golden dome of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, which unleashed a torrent of sectarian bloodletting and reprisal attacks on mosques.

In the predominantly Shiite southern city of Basra, for example, nearly all of the Sunni mosques have closed to protest the killings of religious leaders, according to the Sunni Endowment. "The mosques were closed to save the lives of innocent people," said Khalid Hamdan, a member of the endowment. "The number of the attendants has not only decreased but almost vanished in Basra."

The one thing that goes unmmentioned by those leaders is that it is fellow Muslims who are killing people going to pray at the mosques. That's a most curious thing - unless you realize that everyone knows that this violence is being perpetrated by Muslims and know that this kind of internecine violence between Sunni and Shi'ite has been going on as long as there have been the two sects.

One interesting possibility is that without praying in groups, people may not get exposed to the kind of firebrand mullahs who readily exhort followers to commit more violence. It could actually spur greater change in Islam by forcing a greater and greater number of people to reexamine what is causing so many Islamic terrorists and insurgents to target fellow Muslims at prayer.