IRAQI VICE: Freedom From Choice

Ever wonder what life would be like under Sharia Law? No, me neither. But check it out: There wouldn’t be no TV commercials with funny black dudes goin’ Wasssssuuuuuuuuuuup on the phone. No beer pong, no beer goggles, no kegstands, no keggers period. Which is a shame if you ask us, but be that as it may this is really quite fascinating and worth the five minutes of your time. It’s a super-short documentary on how Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army cracks down on alcohol sellers in Basra. Under Sharia Law alcohol is forbidden, of course. It opens with an Imam addressing a large gathering in the streets. He makes it clear that alcohol offends God and that anyone caught selling it will be punished. Then we see the Mehdi Army rolling out to crackdown on booze-sellers in the market. Cut to chaotic scenes of masked men brandishing weapons. Then we see prisoners swept up in the raid, bound and blindfolded, and on their knees. Their interrogators offer them cigarettes and a light. Cut to a scene outside of veiled woman pleading with one of the interrogators to let her husband go. “Sometimes there are problems in the family, ” she says. Then it cuts back to the prisoners, and one is telling his captors what they wanted to hear, that those wine sellers were blaspheming. And then another prisoner shouts “We were saved from tyranny! And you brought another! When Saddam fell I rejoiced, but now I am again blindfolded, how can it be, brother?”