Aquila, As I said in my post, it is several years since I lived in Iraq and I would not want to live there now. Although Saddam Hussain waas not the most popular person he did keep peace between the three main groups - Sunni and Shiite muslims and the Christians. Iraq was also a fairly liberal society with women having equality and the country even having breweries and pubs/clubs. Gays were tolerated rather than accepted. Since the removal of Hussain there has been an increasing move towards religeous extreamism and the examples you quoted. There are now attacks on christian churches and regular revenge killings between Sunni and Shiite factions. Now there seems to be a clamp down on alcohol in Baghdad with the nightclubs moving to Kurdistan. All in all, a real triumph was USA/UK involvement.
As for walking down the street with a cross on your hat to proclaim you are a catholic, I would not even risk that in Northern Ireland let alone Pakistan. I did object years ago when an immigrant family tried to get a court order preventing their British landlord from cooking beef on the basis that it offended their religeous beliefs - we are a fairly easy going nation but that was crazy. Happily their case failed.
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