On September 25th, in 2003, Iraqi politician Aqila al-Hashimi died of wounds she suffered 5 days earlier when six heavily armed men shot her multiple times in the abdomen.  She became the first member of Iraq's Governing Council to be assassinated while in office.

Although a Shi'ite, al-Hashimi had been active in the Ba'ath party while Saddam was still in power.  She was an aide to Tariq Aziz, and ran the oil-for-food program under the watchful (and corrupt) eye of the U.N. while serving in the Foreign Ministry.  When Saddam was overthrown, she was the only former Ba'athist, and one of only three women, selected to serve in the interim Iraqi Governing Council set up by the Coalition forces.  She was expected to become the Iraqi ambassador to the U.N.

She had been preparing to fly to NYC to attend a U.N. General Assembly meeting.  She left her house around 9am.  Gunmen in a pickup truck and two sedans attacked her car with rocket propelled grenades.  When those missed, the six men opened up with automatic fire from Kalashnikovs, eviscerating her.  Two of her bodyguards were injured as well.  She lingered for five days before succumbing to her wounds.

After Saddam's removal, Shi'a such as al-Hashimi became victims of Sunni gunmen, as the minority Sunnis were reluctant to give up the positions of power they enjoyed over the majority Shi'a while Saddam ruled.  It took several months, and assistance from Iran, for the Shi'a militias to begin to flex their muscles over the Sunnis.  When the Shi'a militias did begin to attack Sunni Al-Qaeda members in Iraq, the naive kufirs interpreted this as proof that the Shi'a wanted "democracy", that the Shi'a were our "allies" in the "war on terror".  In fact it was just the millenia-old internecine war for supremacy within Islam.

After al-Hashimi's death, she was replaced on the Council by Salama al-Khufaji, another Shi'ite woman.  In May 2004, her car was fired on by Sunnis, wounding her, killing her bodyguards, and killing her teenage son.  She also survived two subsequent assassination attempts.

Western pundits do not understand that, besides the Shi'a/Sunni conflict motivating these attacks, that mainstream Islamic belief itself motivates these attacks.  There are several factors that make Islamic belief incompatible with democracy, or, as Muslims call it, "kufirocracy":

-  Islam makes a very explicit and very fundamental division between Muslims and non-Muslims.  It is haram to give equal votes to both, or worse, to allow non-Muslims to rule over Muslims.
- Islam treats women as inferior and as property of men.  Women have subservient rights when it comes to giving testimony in court, and when inheritance is divided.  It is haram to give men and women equal votes, or worse, to allow female Muslims to rule over male Muslims.
- Islam already has a system of law and jurisprudence, called sharia.  It comes directly from Allah, and cannot be overruled by any laws created by mere men.  It is haram to give laypersons and Islamic scholars equal votes, or worse, to allow laypersons to dictate law to Islamic scholars.
- Mohammad did not rule by committee, or by taking votes.  He was a dictator who took his guidance only from Allah, not men.  A "truly" Muslim ruler must be obeyed no matter how despotic his rule;  a non-Muslim (or not-Muslim-enough-Muslim) ruler cannot be obeyed by Muslims whenever his or her decisions are contrary to sharia or the ahadith.
- Christianity has the concept of a distinction between the rule of God and the rule of man ("Render unto Caesar that which is Caesars, and unto God that which is God's").  Islam makes no such distinction.  Sharia governs every facet of life, from how a ruler should rule, to how to punish crimes, to what food is permissible, to how to go to the bathroom.  "Render unto Allah that which is Allah's, and everything is Allah's".[/i]