Shia.

This is coolbert:

The Battle of Najaf seems to be over. Al-Sistani has given the word, belatedly so, to stop fighting and Moqtadr [Mookie] Sadr's boys have seemingly laid down their arms and slipped away. A lot of wounded in the Shrine of Ali [probably will end up being treated by American military doctors too]. And dead all over Najaf, the "holy city". It is described as being a place where dogs are being shooed away after feasting on the dead.

What a guy that Mookie is!! Defiles his own holy place with his combatants and dares the U.S. forces to attack. Well, perhaps, at least in Najaf, the fighting is over. Perhaps not so in Sadr City, the over-flowing-with-sewage slum of Baghdad that is a place named after Mookie's father.

Mookie's boys did put up a determined but futile resistance. Large numbers [mostly dead now] of untrained and ill-equipped men fighting against a well-trained, well-equipped professional military.

I remembered reading in one of Joseph Campbell's mythology books about the Shia and their belief system regarding "martyrs". And so looked up the stuff from Campbell's book "Occidental Mythology" to satisfy my curiosity. As related by Campbell, the behavior of the "fighters" of Mookie is accounted for in their belief system in this manner:

"according to the Shia, martyrs in the cause of Ali suffer only in appearance. Their true bodies are lifted to heaven, while in the hands of their executioners mere substitutes remain. The popular Passion Play of Husain, representing his betrayal and murder at the battle of Kerbala in the year 680, is enacted every year on the tenth day of the month of Moharram. The muezzin cries that morning from the summit of the minaret: 'Oh, Shia, this day is a day of sorrow: the body of Husain lies in the desert, naked.' But those of extreme Gnostic persuasion give praise that day with joy, since the martyred one could not possibly have suffered, but in his true body returned that day, to heaven, while an unknown suffered death for him on the field."

This is really heavy stuff!!! Martyrdom for the Shia believer [and martyrdom would include being killed by American soldiers], is not a real death. YOU DO NOT REALLY DIE!! Your real body is taken to heaven while an image is left behind for your enemies to behold. AND MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT, THESE MEN FIGHTING FOR MOOKIE ARE TRUE BELIEVERS. To them, their religion is just not a belief system, IT IS THE REAL THING!!!!

coolbert.