Another Freedom Cut Short

Women have been assailed for not wearing a veil or head scarf. Athletes have been killed for wearing shorts, because some consider it un-Islamic to reveal thighs. Liquor stores have been attacked, and male doctors have been killed for treating female patients. In Sadr's stronghold of Sadr City and other Shiite-dominated areas, Islamic courts deliver strict, homegrown justice.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

In early August, a group of armed men walked into Abu Ahmed Jassim's barbershop in southeast Baghdad. They shot dead his 23-year-old brother and another barber, as well as two customers. Before they left, they set a bomb. Jassim arrived an hour later to find the charred carcass of his shop.

On Monday, Jassim, a short man with a ruddy face, was still visibly distraught. He had just returned from placing a framed picture of his brother at his grave in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

In a low voice, he spoke of the handwritten note a child delivered to a barber in his neighborhood last year. It listed the names of eight barbers from five hair salons. It included Jassim and his brother. "Your destiny is very near," the note said.

Jassim said he knows why they were targeted. Shiite barbers like him practice khite , an ancient way of removing hair from cheeks and eyebrows with twists of a cotton thread. Radical Sunnis consider this ritual, as well as trimming or removing beards, to be prohibited under Islam.

"This is because of the Takfiri interpretation," said Jassim, referring to Islamic extremists who adhere to codes of conduct dating to the earliest days of Islam. "We are targeted 100 percent because we are Shiite."

In the past year, he said, he knew 13 barbers and two customers who were killed in the Baghdad neighborhoods of Adil, Shaab and Mashtal. Dozens more quit the business. "Many of the barbers have closed their shops, and the ones who haven't closed keep a gun in their shops," Jassim said.

He said he is making plans to seek asylum in Lebanon: "I've lost my spirit to work."

In a hair salon in the upscale Karrada neighborhood last week, Sameer Youssef, 32, a Christian, was snipping away at the coal-black hair of Walid Abdul Zahra, 27, a Shiite from the Dora district. He is among dozens of customers who drive through a tangle of checkpoints and barricaded roads to better neighborhoods to get a haircut because there's a shortage of barbers in their own volatile areas.

"I used to get my hair cut in Dora, but now all the barbers have closed their shops or have been killed," said Abdul Zahra, who has been coming to the salon for the past six months. "My barber was threatened and had to shut down."

Abdul Zahra said he wanted only an ordinary haircut, nothing "fancy" that would draw the attention of the Sunni extremists in his neighborhood. "I don't want to show too much skin," he said.

Even though Karrada's barbers have not been targeted, Youssef and colleagues on his corner have taken precautions. To prevent car bombings, they do not allow parking in front of their shops. Suspicious walk-in customers are politely turned away. And they keep their professions a secret.