October 9, 2006

Sunnis in Iraq are studying Shia religious history and customs to enable them to bluff their way through illegal checkpoints set up by Shia death squads.

Relatives and neighbours meet to share knowledge on the 12 imams revered by Shias Muslims, test each other on the dates of Shia festivals or advise on where best to buy fake IDs with Shia names, in case they are challenged at gunpoint. Websites have also been established to help Sunnis learn how to pass themselves off as Shia.

Such knowledge can be a matter of life and death as Shia militias stop cars in the capital and demand to know if the driver is Sunni or Shia.

The sectarian violence that followed the destruction in February of the Golden Mosque at Samarra, a revered Shia shrine, shows no sign of abating.

Any driver identified as Sunni risks being kidnapped and tortured.

Their bodies usually found dumped in the River Tigris or on a rubbish tip. Since Saturday at least 74 bodies have been found around the capital — often, Sunnis claim, killed with the complicity of the predominantly Shia police force in the city.

Last week an entire Iraqi police brigade of 800 men was demobilised and sent for retraining after it was found to be helping Shia death squads in north-west Baghdad.

It was fear of such a fate that led Omar, a van driver who takes food produce to markets around the city, to decide last month only to travel if he had two ID cards on him. Omar is one of the most recognisable of Sunni names, so for $25 (£13) he paid a friend with contacts in the printing industry to have another printed for him with his name as Haider, a typical Shia name.

He also carries in his car a round piece of clay, which Shia Muslims place on their foreheads when they pray.

A green cloth, the traditional symbol of the Shia, is kept in the glove compartment for him to place over his car's gear stick when he enters Shia neighbourhoods. "I am fortunate because my cousin's wife is Shia so she helps me and my family learn how to act like a Shia," he said.

"I make all of us learn what she says. My children can now name all the imams and the year they were born and died.

"My oldest son even has a Shia religious ringtone on his mobile phone he switches to when he has to go to Shia areas."

The doctrinal differences between Shia and Sunni date back to the death of the Prophet Mohammed and a dispute about who should lead the Islamic community. Sunnis believe that it should have been Mohammed's companions, while Shia say that it should have stayed within his bloodline, through his son-in-law Ali and grandson Hussein.

Just two years ago the suggestion that relations between the two sects in the country could ever reach such a nadir was ridiculed by Iraqis, who would describe how for generations Shia and Sunni Muslims had intermarried, lived on the same streets and worked beside each other.