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From: Newsday.com



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Excerpts of Remarks by Iraqi Ayatollah
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By The Associated Press

May 10, 2003, 4:31 PM EDT

Quotes from a speech in Basra by Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, head of the largest anti-Saddam Shiite Muslim organization, after returning to Iraq from more than 20 years of exile in Iran. The comments were made in Arabic and translated by The Associated Press:

"Our Arab and Islamic world is full of dictatorship ... This dictatorship (of Saddam Hussein) confiscated all rights of the Iraqi people, even the simple ones, interfered in all the details of the Iraqi person, even inside his home. ... The Iraqi person became a slave."

"We have some freedom, but it is not complete. When we want to move, we find foreign troops, limitations on our movement to reach our goals ... (A future government) must be a system based on the will of the Iraqi people, elected by the Iraqi people."

"The system must respect the makeup of the Iraqi people. Shiites have their cultural specifics, Kurds, and Turkmens, Sunnis and Christians have theirs which are related to their identities."

"(The new government) will be a modern Islamic regime...to go along with the modern world, today's world ... and it will be able to bring Iraq to its natural place in the Arab and Islamic word."

"We don't want extremist Islam, but an Islam of independence, justice and freedom."

"We have to know that when we say and we make these slogans that people call `religious slogans,' and that we speak apart from life and that we know nothing about this world, tucked away in mosques... That is not true. We also want to build a modern state ... Some people think that women should stay at home. Now, women these days are half of society ... They should be a principal part of this society."

Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press

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This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-ayatollah-quotes,0,348903.story

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