{"id":7066,"date":"2004-08-01T20:56:25","date_gmt":"2004-08-02T01:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2004\/08\/01\/iraqi-muslm-cleric-who-dresses-like-the-virgin-mary\/"},"modified":"2004-08-01T20:56:25","modified_gmt":"2004-08-02T01:56:25","slug":"iraqi-muslm-cleric-who-dresses-like-the-virgin-mary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2004\/08\/iraqi-muslm-cleric-who-dresses-like-the-virgin-mary\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraqi Muslm Cleric who dresses like the Virgin Mary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"articles\">&quot;I love America,&quot; Rashid said, with passion. &quot;Americans are so beautiful.&quot;<\/p>\n<p class=\"articles\">Resplendent in a cream-colored gown and a white gauze turban around his boyish face, the 40-year-old Rashid looks more like a Catholic nun than a Muslim cleric. The similarity is deliberate &#8212; he readily admits that he models himself after Mary, the mother of Jesus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"articles\">Although Islamic doctrine considers Mary the virgin mother of a prophet &#8211; &#8211; a status almost as revered in Islam as it is in Christianity &#8212; it is unheard of for a Muslim cleric to adopt Christian-style garb, much less a woman&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"articles\">Rashid says Mary appeared to him in three visions telling him to follow her. He adopted the style when he was a seminary student in Baghdad in the early 1990s, but it has become more pronounced since his mosque came under U.S. protection after the April 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein&#8217;s regime.<\/p>\n<p class=\"articles\">Rashid&#8217;s close-cropped beard is dyed blond, in keeping with his all-white image &#8212; a sign of purity, he says &#8212; and he wears patterned contact lenses. <br \/>\n[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?file=\/chronicle\/archive\/2004\/07\/31\/MNGDM80L0P1.DTL\">Full Story<\/a>]\n<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/chronicle\/pictures\/2004\/07\/31\/mn_iraq.jpg\" width=\"590\" height=\"396\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&quot;I love America,&quot; Rashid said, with passion. &quot;Americans are so beautiful.&quot; Resplendent in a cream-colored gown and a white gauze turban around his boyish face, the 40-year-old Rashid looks more&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}