Baghdad
Islamic extremists have been blowing up liquor stores all over Iraq, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. Six stores in Baghdad and a few elsewhere were bombed in July, and since then other store owners have received death threats. Iraq has always been more secular than many other Muslim countries, and it has a tradition of drinking. Under Saddam Hussein, liquor stores were plentiful. Police suspect the wave of bombings is the work of the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. His followers give out leaflets that call for executing those who sell alcohol.
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