Some interesting observations from representatives of the Religion of Peace™ in Iraq, calling on the tiny minority of extremists to wage an internal struggle for self-improvement.

This particular internal struggle also involves killing lots of infidels. Senior Sunni cleric calls for holy war against US forces in Iraq.

“I ask US President (George W.) Bush to withdraw from Iraq or else Ramadi will become a graveyard for US soldiers,” declared Sheikh Akram Ubayed Furaih at weekly prayers in the city, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad.

“I call upon my brothers the Shiites and on all other religious groups to embark on a Jihad (holy war) against the US military to force them out of Iraq,” said the cleric, who spent three months in a prison after being arrested by the US military and whose home was also raided last week.

“I urge all the Iraqi people to fight a holy war against the Americans,” said the cleric, among the most respected figures in this Sunni rebel bastion. …

Among Iraq’s majority Shiite community there also came condemnation of the interim Iraqi government and fresh demands for the death of jailed dictator Saddam Hussein.

“We refuse to submit to terrorists and the occupiers are the worst of all the terrorists … We denounce anything that is named by the occupier,” said Sheikh Jaber al-Kafaji, speaking in the name of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, in reference to the new administration.

Kafaji said he suspected the United States of wanting to release Saddam Hussein.

Washington “has started to prepare this by saying that he had no weapons of mass destruction and nothing to do with what took place in the United States,” Kafaji said, referring to the terrorist attacks there on September 11, 2001.

And Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani wants to see heads roll. A certain head in particular.

In the holy city of Karbala, a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani launched a harsh attack against Arab lawyers who have offered to represent the ex-president.

“It sickens us to see them rushing to defend this fallen man taking the dollars of his wife (Sajida Saddam Hussein). You have to cut off his head and this is the minimum that we want,” he said.