{"id":9258,"date":"2014-06-11T19:53:45","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T19:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=9258"},"modified":"2014-06-11T19:53:45","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T19:53:45","slug":"we-should-defend-iraqs-holy-sites-muqtada-sadr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/we-should-defend-iraqs-holy-sites-muqtada-sadr\/","title":{"rendered":"We should defend Iraq&#8217;s holy sites: Muqtada Sadr"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"divLead2\" style=\"color: #000000;\">\n<p><strong>Influential Iraqi Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, has called for the formation of a special force to defend religious sites in Iraq.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Sadr, who once ran the powerful Mahdi Army, said in a statement on Wednesday that he was ready to help create \u201cpeace units to defend the holy sites of both Muslims and Christians in Iraq, in cooperation with the government.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">The development comes as the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants have not yet been able to infiltrate into areas where the country\u2019s holy sites are located.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">However, they have already captured some chunks of land in Nineveh and Salahuddin provinces.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">On Tuesday, militants of the al-Qaeda-linked ISIL also took six different areas of Kirkuk Province.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">This is while, earlier on Wednesday, Iraqi forces took back the control of a major region near the northern city of Kirkuk, breaking the momentum in a surprise offensive by the most ferocious of militant groups.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said the government would arm citizens who volunteer to fight militants.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">The Iraqi premier also asked the United Nations, the European Union, and the Arab League to help the country fight the terrorists.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">In March, al-Maliki said Saudi Arabia and Qatar were responsible for the security crisis and growing terrorism in his country, denouncing the Al Saud regime as a major supporter of global terrorism.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Violence has also raged elsewhere in the country with bombings and shootings across Iraq.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presstv.ir\/detail\/2014\/06\/11\/366508\/we-should-defend-iraq-holy-sites\/\">Press TV<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Influential Iraqi Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, has called for the formation of a special force to defend religious sites in Iraq. Sadr, who once ran the powerful Mahdi Army, said in a statement on Wednesday that he was ready to help create \u201cpeace units to defend the holy sites of both Muslims and Christians in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[381,911,50,676,905,351,910,912,163],"class_list":["post-9258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-islamic-research","tag-al-qaeda","tag-bombings","tag-iraq-2","tag-isil","tag-isis","tag-militants","tag-muqtada-al-sadr","tag-terrorisms","tag-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9260,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9258\/revisions\/9260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}