London protest against Samarra mosque bombing

So, I made it back to London just in time to catch up with the protest that was going on in London that Musarrat mentioned in a comment to the earlier protest I attended in Dusseldorf. I could see the group as I walked up to my front door and by the time I dropped my bags off and gathered my camera equipment and got downstairs, they were already gone...almost missed it! But anyway. This protest was not as impressive on it march organization, but that could be because of the larger number of people in attendence. No one ever really tried to provoke the demonstrators except one American trying to be "funny" and yelling "USA" out his hotel window half naked. One old lady was quite annoyed with the protest because it was preventing her bus from picking her up and taking her to the theatre. She kept insisting the protest keep moving along (they weren't stopping). At first some young ones reacted back to her not really understanding why she was harassing them, but finally one of the organizers approached her to calm things and the cops came in to take control. It was all nothing really but rather funny. Two generations not stopping to listen to each other and thus getting upset for nothing. The demonstration ended at Trafalgar Square where there proceeded to be speeches made by a few men. They talked against the extreme Muslims and encourage non-violent reactions to the bombings. Oh, one thing I noted about this demonstration was that there was not such a separation of the genders. While in general the genders stuck with their own, it was not the case that all women were behind the men. I don't know if you can see in the last picture, but the men are flogging themselves with chain whips. I believe this was to demonstrate their grief.

As I was using my new, more professional camera, I was asked a number of time what news agency I worked for. I responded I was freelance. I must say that I think I'm getting over my shyness of putting a camera in a strangers face to take a picture. I was surprised at the lack of media attention compared to how much media was at the one in Dusseldorf. I only saw a few photographers during the march but more showed up at the speaches afterwards. It will be interesting to see if it makes much news.

A young Muslim woman approached me afterwards asking if I understood what was going on. I told her that I knew the specific purpose of the protest, but that I didn't really know a lot of the history. So she told me about the history of the Shias, Sunnis, and a group I had never heard of, the Wahabi. According to her, the Wahabis are a violent splinter group of the Sunni tribe. This is the group that Bin Laden belongs to. She says the Wahabi are doing a lot of propoganda and stirring up problems with the Muslims and that it is this group of Muslims that are behind most of the bombings and terrorism. She said their false propaganda is inciting some Sunnis to violent actions, but it is usually out of lack of information and knowledge that the Sunnis believe the false propaganda. Her uncle was the Minister of Information (or something like that) in Iraq and was imprisoned and tortured for 20 year under Saddam. He was killed last year in Iraq after being release for a little while.