IRAQI TRADITION FALL TO THE WAYSIDE IN VIOLENT TIMES

I think this is so sad. It will be a miracle if these people don't hate Americans when all is said and done.

Violence Changes Rituals of Death in Iraq
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer
11:54 AM PDT, May 19, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Jassim al-Kinani, a 34-year-old car mechanic, did all he could to follow Shiite Muslim traditions when his brother and three cousins were slain. But like so much in Iraq, the rituals of death have been knocked awry by violence.

Al-Kinani's efforts to honor his dead relatives provide a glimpse of the new Iraq, where even attending a funeral can be dangerous.

The agony began when a car carrying his brother, Hakim, 40, and three cousins was stopped one night last month at about 9:30 at what they thought was a police checkpoint in the capital's mostly Sunni Arab neighborhood of Azamiyah

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