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The Al-Sadr Movement: An Audience with Sheikh Hassan Zargani
Sheikh Hassan Zargani at the Stop the War rally 18th March 2006
The Al-Sadr movement is described as the only real mass movement in Iraqi politics, one with a genuine grassroots support among the poor masses of Iraq. As such it is where the real challenge to the occupation and hope for the liberation of Iraq lies. The American occupiers fully realise this and have repeatedly tried to destroy the movement by any means possible including trying to silence it by closing down its media whilst at the same time creating black propaganda against it; by targeting its leaders -imprisoning them and placing bounties on their heads; by militarily attacking its armed wing - the Mahdi Army - in order to destroy it; and by collectively punishing the poor neighbourhoods whos people give their their support to the movement. Each time they have failed, and with each victory the Sadr movement grows stronger.
Sheikh Hassan Zargani (right) addressing over 100,000 people at the Stop the War rally on 18th March 2006
Despite this, very little is know about the Al-Sadr movement in the West, and of what little is known, most of it comes via the prism of the corporate media. With the Al-Sadr movement in Basra and elsewhere once again under attack from occupation forces we felt it useful at this time to make available a talk given by Sheikh Hassan Zargani, the external representative of the Al-Sadr movement, which was followed by an hour long extensive question-answer session. Sheikh Hassan Zargani was invited by the Stop the War Coalition to address the 100,000+ strong Stop the War rally on 18th March 2006, following this on 21st March 2006 he spoke at SOAS. Full video and audio of both programmes are provided below. Although two years old now, Sheikh Hassan Zargani's speech and the answers he gives are still surprisingly relevant today, giving us a good insight in to what the Al-Sadr movement is all about.
Sheikh Hassan Zargani (centre) at SOAS on 21th March 2006 John Rees (Stop the War, left), Sami Ramadani (Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation, right)
Page URL: http://www.inminds.co.uk/zargani.php
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Featured MP3 Podcast "You cannot simplify the question of violence.. You look at human history - the American revolution, the civil war, the end of slavery in the United States, the African National Congress, the end of colonialism - by and large these were some combination of popular social uprisings and social movements and non-violent protests AND armed resistance. Now that doesn't mean I'm advocating for any armed action today, I'm not. I'm committed to finding ways of acting and speaking and making people laugh and doing art and disrupting the war machine in other ways, but I think focusing on violence when we have the comfort of being protected by mass of armed violence is not non-violence at all.. if you are pointing to the mass of violence and who's doing the mass of violence in the world today, you have to look to state violence - that's people bombing whole cities from the air.. " A founder of the Weather Underground, a revolutionary group that waged war against the US government in the 70s in response to the Vietnam War. Interview, Radio Neatherlands (TSWI) 30 June 2007 [12min / 6Mb] [need flash]
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