Word: ite
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When he learns that I live in New York, Ridha Mohammed leans toward me and lowers his voice to a conspiratory whisper. "I will tell you a secret that the Americans don't know," he says. "Their next President is a Shi'ite...
Ridha Mohammed is an exception, however: he trained as an engineer at Baghdad University and owns a flourishing plumbing business. He lives just outside Sadr City, Baghdad's giant Shi'ite slum, where preachers at several mosques routinely assure their congregants that Obama is a fellow sectarian. "When Obama won," says Mohammed, "it was a big day in Sadr City. Many people felt, Now we have a brother in the White House." (Sadr City - estimated pop. 2 million - is a bastion of anti-Americanism, where the radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia, the Mahdi Army, hold...
...notion that Obama is a Shi'ite may be traced to Iran. In the run-up to the U.S. presidential election, state-run papers published articles claiming that the Democratic nominee's paternal ancestors had hailed from southwestern Iran. In reality, of course, Obama's father and his ancestors came from Kenya, where Shi'a Islam is rare. Most Kenyan Muslims are Sunnis and leaven their faith with pre-Islamic African traditions and beliefs. Obama himself has said he has no idea if his paternal grandfather (who converted from Christianity) was Sunni or Shi'ite...
...week later, in Ramadi, I saw tribal sheiks gather to support Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Status of Forces Agreement he has negotiated with the U.S. A couple of years ago, many of the sheiks were backing the Sunni insurgency and refusing to recognize Maliki's Shi'ite-dominated government. Now, Sheik Mohammed al-Hais told me, "We are closer to Maliki than any Shi'ite group...
...Bridged. The Bridge of the Imams connecting the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya to the Shi'ite district of Kadhamiya was reopened on Nov. 11, and it was rightly hailed by Iraqi politicians as a turning point in sectarian relations, because the bridge had acted as a barometer of ties between the two communities. In August 2005, a stampede by thousands of Shi'ite pilgrims on the bridge left nearly 1,000 dead; hundreds plunged into the Tigris below and drowned. Despite sectarian tensions, many Sunnis in Adhamiya rushed to help rescue survivors. One young man, Othman al-Obeidi, rescued...