Islam is disrespected ... and for good reason

[Guest guest]

It was front-page news recently when Newsweek retracted a report claiming that a U.S. interrogator in Guantanamo had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet.

 

Everywhere it was noted that Newsweek's story had sparked widespread Muslim rioting, in which at least 17 people were killed.

 

But there was no mention of deadly protests triggered in recent years by comparable acts of desecration against other religions.

 

No one recalled, for example, that American Catholics lashed out in violent rampages in 1989, after photographer Andrew Serrano's "Piss Christ" n a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine n was included in an exhibition subsidized by the National Endowment for the Arts. Or that they rioted in 1992 when singer Sinead O'Connor, appearing on "Saturday Night Live," ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II.

 

There was no reminder that Jewish communities erupted in lethal violence in 2000 after Arabs demolished Joseph's Tomb, torching the ancient shrine and murdering a young rabbi who tried to save a Torah scroll from the flames. And nobody noted that Buddhists went on a killing spree in 2001 in response to the destruction of two priceless, 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha by the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

 

Of course, there was a good reason all these bloody protests went unremembered in the coverage of the Newsweek affair: They never occurred.

 

Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don't lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted. They don't call for holy war and riot in the streets. It would be unthinkable today for a mainstream priest, rabbi, or lama to demand that a blasphemer be slain. But when Reuters reported what Mohammad Hanif, the imam of a Muslim seminary in Pakistan, said about the alleged Koran-flushers n "They should be hung. They should be killed in public so that no one can dare to insult Islam and its sacred symbols" n was any reader surprised?

 

The Muslim riots should have been met by an international upwelling of outrage and condemnation. From every part of the civilized world should have come denunciations of those who would react to the supposed destruction of a book with brutal threats and the slaughter of 17 innocent people. But the chorus of condemnation was directed not at the killers and the fanatics who incited them, but at Newsweek.

 

From the White House down, the magazine was slammed n for running an item it should have known might prove incendiary, for relying on a shaky source, for its animus toward the military and the war. Over and over, Newsweek was blamed for the riots' death toll.

 

Then there was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who announced at a Senate hearing that she had a message for "Muslims in America and throughout the world." And what was that message? That decent people do not resort to murder just because someone has offended their religious sensibilities? That the primitive bloodlust raging in Afghanistan and Pakistan was evidence of the Muslim world's dysfunctional political culture? That the Bush administration would redouble its efforts to defeat the Islamofascist radicals who use religion as an excuse to foment violence and terror?

 

No: Her message was that "disrespect for the holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States. We honor the sacred books of all the world's great religions."

 

Granted, Rice spoke while the rioting was still taking place, and her goal was to reduce the anti-American fever. But what "Muslims in America and throughout the world" most need to hear is not pandering sweet-talk. What they need is a blunt reminder that the "real" desecration of Islam is not what some interrogator in Guantanamo might have done to the Koran. It is what totalitarian Muslim zealots have been doing to innocent human beings in the name of Islam. It is 9/11 and Beslan and Bali and Daniel Pearl and the USS Cole. It is trains in Madrid and school buses in Israel and an "insurgency" in Iraq that slaughters Muslims as they pray and vote and line up for work. It is Hamas and Al Qaeda and sermons filled with infidel-hatred and exhortations to "martyrdom."

 

But what disgraces Islam above all is the vast majority of the planet's Muslims saying nothing and doing nothing about the jihadist cancer eating away their religion. It is Free Muslims Against Terrorism, a pro-democracy organization calling on Muslims and Middle Easterners to "converge on our nation's capital for a rally against terrorism" this month n and having only 50 people show up.

 

Yes, Islam is disrespected. That will only change when throngs of passionate Muslims show up for rallies against terrorism and when rabble-rousers trying to gin up a riot over a defiled Koran can't get the time of day.

 

 

[Guest guest]

Very interesting and well written. What's the URL for this article?

[theist]

19 Killed in Explosion Targeting Pakistani Muslim Shrine

By Ayaz Gul

Islamabad

27 May 2005

 

 

A powerful bomb exploded early Friday at a religious gathering at a Muslim shrine in Islamabad, killing at least 19 worshipers and injuring dozens.

 

 

People stand around bodies of bomb blast victims covered with blankets at Bari Imam shrine on outskirts of Islamabad, Friday

Ambulances took the dead and injured to nearby hospitals as security forces rushed to cordon off the scene of the blast. Officials have not confirmed eyewitness accounts that it was a suicide bombing.

 

The explosion occurred early Friday at the main compound of Bari Imam shrine on the outskirts of Islamabad. Several thousand mostly Shiite Muslims had gathered there to celebrate an annual festival.

 

One of the worshipers, Talib Rizvi, says many were injured by the bomb. "They [police] have taken over 60-70 injured and they were very, very seriously injured. It seems to be a suicide blast," he said. "They have taken one of the heads, which they feel is the head of the suspect."

 

Police have launched an investigation but have not made any arrests. It is unclear whether the attack is linked to rivalry between militant members of Pakistan's Sunni majority and its Shi'ite minority. The week-long annual celebrations attract thousands of Pakistanis from each of the Islamic sects to the Bari Imam shrine, but they hold separate services inside the main compound.

 

 

Muslim women mourn the victims of a suicide bombing at the Bari Imam shrine on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, Friday, May 27, 2005

Many Shi'ite worshipers blamed authorities for not preventing the attack.

 

Islamabad's police chief, Talat Mahmood, dismisses these suggestions. "This [religious festival] thing has been going on for the last one week. The entire police force was here with all the officers," he said. "[but] if it is a suicide bombing, then you know how difficult [it should be] to stop a suicide bombing."

 

President Pervez Musharraf has condemned the attack as a terrorist act. Sectarian violence in Pakistan has claimed hundreds of lives in recent years.

 

 

[krsna]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4587679.stm

 

 

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[krsna]

Get the Islamists to chant their names of God!

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Names_of_God

[Guest guest]

Cleveland Jewish News.com

[Guest guest]

we aren't supposed to attack religious people, especially Muslims, who are probably most devoted to their God. Better repent and apologize to the next Muslim you see, for you've sinned. To flush a religious scripture down the toilet is bad enough, but to say Muslims deserve to be disrespected is unforgivable. You've committed vaisnava aparadha.

[Guest guest]

Post deleted by rand0M aXiS

[Guest guest]

Do you accept Bhagwat gita? Do you accept SP? SP said Prophet Mohammad was Krishna's messenger. Are you disputing him? SP called Mohammad a great religious figure, koran a great religious book, are you disputing SP then?

 

Be clear on who and what you are. Are you a sincere devotee, or do you just want to have a good time on the net, abusing great prophets.

[Guest guest]

Post deleted by rand0M aXiS

[Guest guest]

to register, so I am posting as a guest. If that were wrong, there wouldn't be a 'guest option' to begin with. Anyway, you haven't answered my questions. Do you follow SP or not? Are you rejecting his words of wisdom? It is not too late, you can drop your blind hatred and change for the better. This is what Sp would've wanted.

[Guest guest]

terrorists are asuras and must be killed. But you abuse muslims, their holy book and prophet. That's the central issue here, not whethr or nor asuras should be killed.

[Guest guest]

Power will not moderate them, let's not be naive and make even more problems for the Middle East.

 

The following may soon be true – the good news is that Islamists are not committing terrorism; the bad news, that they are running the governments.

 

Welcome to the latest Western debate: Should Islamists be helped to run in elections in order to moderate them? Both in Washington and Europe this idea is seizing people's minds. The European Union advocates dealing with Hizbullah and may decide the best way to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace is to strengthen Hamas. In Washington the main example of such thinking is to help the Muslim Brotherhood run in fair Egyptian elections.

 

The short answer is that radical Islamists will not be moderated by participating in elections or gaining power. The Communist party in Russia and the Nazi party in Germany ran candidates for .. Yet the retort to criticism of this latest bad idea seems to be "there certainly seem to be a lot of them, don't there?" For example:

 

The Oslo peace process was based largely on the idea that once Yasser Arafat and his colleagues governed Palestinians and dealt with daily problems, they would be more moderate, responsible and abandon terrorism.

 

In Algeria an imminent Islamist electoral victory sparked a military coup and bloody warfare. Blocking Islamists when they play fair, it is claimed, will only means more civil wars and instability.

 

Many American experts predicted in 1978 that once Islamists gained power in Iran they would be easy to live with.

 

This discouraging record does not mean that pious Muslims cannot be real democrats. A Middle Eastern equivalent of European Christian Democratic parties might eventually emerge. Though Turkey is often used as an example of such a prospect of Islamic moderation, the Turkish case, with its more moderate brand of Islam and entrenched democracy, is quite different from Arab countries'. Turkey's governing Islamic party knows it must act moderately enough to avoid antagonizing the secular-oriented majority and army.

 

In addition, Turkey had three vital preconditions for creating Islamist democrats that don't exist in the Arab world: a clear split between radical Islamists and moderates, a charismatic leader with the courage to reshape Islamism, and an explicit and real change in ideology.

 

An obvious but vital point is that radical Islamist groups do not commit terrorism for its own sake. Their objective is to seize power for specific purposes. Once in power, Islamist parties would change laws and society to produce more Islamists. Such regimes will use foreign policy adventurism – including attacking the West and Israel – to mobilize support and distract attention from failures at home.

 

The result will be to replace one repressive authoritarian regime with another, adding two more generations to the process of real moderation and democratization of the Arab world. What is going to stop this from happening, assuming that Islamist parties have enough votes?

 

HERE THE debate gets silly. To quote a liberal Arab reformer I respect, "This does raise questions about who would guarantee that all parties abide by the rules of the game." He suggests the courts do this, concluding, "There must be faith in the system."

 

Given the risks involved – a bloody, repressive dictatorship, foreign wars and the Islamization of society – basing one's future on faith in a system that does not yet exist and on rulings from courts that are notoriously impotent is not quite sane.

 

Of course, each specific example is important, so let's take three. Hamas wants to rule a country extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea based on what amounts to an openly genocidal attitude toward Jews. It will use any power it obtains, including a large share of the Palestinian ., create a base for more terrorism, including social and educational changes to ensure a 100-year-long war with Israel.

 

Hizbullah wants to take power in Lebanon but cannot since Shi'ite Muslims are only 40 percent of the electorate. It demands proportional representation to give it the largest possible influence. The Christians, Druse and Sunnis resist. What Hizbullah will win is the right to remain the country's only armed militia, and control over the south. It will bide its time looking for future opportunities.

 

Lastly, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood already participates in elections using front groups. It is barred from running itself because the government insists, not unreasonably, that no party can claim a monopoly on proper Islam. If it is legalized, its ambitions will grow.

 

Two key points to keep in mind. First, the factor most likely to moderate larger Islamist groups is their knowing power is beyond their reach. Hamas never challenged the Palestinian leadership because it knew it would be crushed in a civil war. In Jordan and Egypt, Islamist parties take the quota of parliamentary seats permitted them and cause no trouble because they know beating the regime is impossible.

 

Once they conclude they can win, however, the result will be instability and more militancy.

 

Finally, the most likely result of any Western belief that power will moderate radical Islamists will be unilateral Western concessions to such groups. They will be given immunity for past terrorist acts, diplomatic backing against the local regimes, money and other benefits in exchange for promises to be good. They will then break these promises, most likely without cost.

 

Let's not be na ve about radical Islamism and make even more problems for the Middle East.

 

[krsna]

More than any other religious group anywhere, Hindus and being persecuted and murdered by fanatical members of other religious groups, and even by the Government of India itself. In the supposedly "secular" country of India, we find that the minority religions are given special treatment and allowed to manage their own affairs. Muslims in India are offered a financial subsidy to pay for their religious pilgrimage to Mecca (the Hajj Subsidy), and Christian missionaries are allowed to run rampant using various forms of deception and material promises to convert entire villages, while the Hindu religion is denigrated in India's universities. Patriotic Hindus are called fundamentalists and fanatics, while Muslim and Christian terrorists carry out an unprecedented campaign of murder and violence against Hindus. Hindu temples are not allowed to be managed by the Hindus themselves, rather huge amounts of donations are collected by the "secular" government and pocketed by non-Hindu officials while the Temples are left to fall into ruins. At the same time, Muslim "Madrassas", or religious schools, are growing by leaps and bounds, and left free to preach their hatred against Hindus. Muslim and Christian separatists threaten to tear Mother India apart even more than she has already been in order to secede and carve out new nations from India based on religious governments, rather than on secular lines that insure religious freedom for all.

[Guest guest]

isnt it hindu tradition to give and never ask anything in return? I mean, dont hindus follow vedic examples like karna, bali and always give to others, including muslims and christians? Maybe, that's what hindus are doing, giving generously and freely.