The following is courtesy of my other half. I’m biased, to be sure, but I found this to be quite touching.
-Fashion Mujahid

City between two rivers Ibrahim’s Iraq war

by Bashir al-Hamim

I am drowning in my own pain the world is different my hand is called. In the sea of blood I am lost afloat on a Qur’an that is dead, and a faith that has gone mad.

I don't know what it is about wartime prayers, but something about them makes me shudder.

These are Israeli gunners at prayer near the Lebanese border early today, right beside their artillery piece. When I saw this picture, it reminded me of three pictures I remember seeing in a newspaper during the 1980's, under the title, "Let Us Pray:"

The first one was of an orthodox Jewish soldier wearing a prayer-shawl and praying with a prayer-book.

The second was a PLO fighter in sujud (prostration), with his machine-gun propped up on the wall in front of him.

The third showed a Lebanese member of the Phalangist militia kneeling in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary in a church, his gun lying beside him on the steps.

At the time, I was struck by the irony of it all—-the three Western monotheisms, Abrahamic kissing-cousins, all turning to God, perhaps within a few miles of one another. Yet if they were to meet, they would probably kill one another if they could. And think that by doing so, God would be pleased.