Blame Where Blame is Due

While the usual suspects on the right are busy bashing Newsweek for its withdrawn claims of Quran desecration, I can't help wondering why these people should choose to direct their ire primarily at that news journal, when the primary recipients of blame quite properly ought to be the rioting Muslims themselves. Yes, Newsweek ought to have done its homework before running that story, but I can hardly think of a better example of Muslim oversensitivity and intolerance for differing viewpoints than that masses of people should take it upon themselves to unleash mayhem merely on the rumor that some persons half a world away had mistreated a book, however "holy" it may be to some group or other, and the notion that even the dreaded Christian "fundies" would ever do anything similar is so preposterous as to be dismissed out of hand. Things have come to a pretty pass when the opinionating classes and the US media engage in tiresome bouts of recrimination and self-flagellation over the excessively delicate sensibilities of religious lunatics who are clearly willing to riot at the drop of a hat over any trivial bullshit whatsoever* which happens to threaten their fragile sense of self-esteem: it certainly isn't an all-powerful Allah who needs defending by the likes of these mental cases. There is something seriously wrong with the Muslim "ummah", and this penchant for violence at any sign that the rest of the world doesn't share their complete devotion to their particular brand of superstition is a clear symptom of that.

*Yes, this is satire, but only barely so.

PS: I highly recommend this article on the same issue by Andrew McCarthy.

Comments

[Chuckles]

This variant of Islam is a disease, I tell you. Have a look at the following:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3686950.stm

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=40450&SelectRegion=West_Africa

http://www.biafraland.com/Muslim_rampage.htm

http://nigeriaworld.com/feature/publication/david-west/101901.html

It goes on and on and on and never stops. Folk should just stop spewing all that crap about Islam being a religion of Peace. There is simply no evidence to substantiate that viewpoint! Either from the Text, or from Practice. I mean, can't anyone see how laughable the entire "desecration" brouhaha is? The Muslim Ummah is sick through and through.

[Abiola Lapite]

"It goes on and on and on and never stops."

Tell me about it. Does anyone remember Gideon Akaluka, who was lynched and had his head mounted on a pike in Kano in 1996, simply on the basis of a rumor that he'd torn out pages of the Koran to use as toilet paper? The chief feeling I had on hearing of the riots was a feeling of deja vu - "here we go again!" I thought to myself.

[Darren]

I think you hit the nail on the head with this one, Abiola.

Incidentally, here's two columns dealing with the same idea:
http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200505171307.asp
and
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18108

The money quote from the second column is, in my opinion:

"The question here is one of proportionate response. If a Qur’an had indeed been flushed, Muslims would have justifiably been offended. They may justifiably have considered the perpetrators boors, or barbarians, or hell-bound unbelievers. They may justifiably have issued denunciations accordingly. But that is all. To kill people thousands of miles away who had nothing to do with the act, and to fulminate with threats and murder against the entire Western world, all because of this alleged act, is not just disproportionate. It is not just excessive. It is mad. And every decent person in the world ought to have the courage to stand up and say that it is mad."

[Abiola Lapite]

Darren,

Thanks for the pointers to the articles, especially to the NR piece by Andrew McCarthy, who gets to the bottom of the issue: even if the story *were* true, so bloody what? How does that give anybody the right to go on a rampage, and why are we all pretending that it does? To buy into this argument is to essentially say Muslims are a lower order of humanity who cannot be expected to abide by norms everyone else takes for granted.

[J.Cassian]

On a related note, I think we can rule out Christopher Marlowe's "Tamburlaine" playing at the Theatre Royal, Kabul any time soon.

TAMBURLAINE
Now, Casane, where's the Turkish Alcoran,
And all the heaps of superstitious books
Found in the temples of that Mahomet
Whom I have thought a god? they shall be burnt.

USUMCASANE
Here they are, my lord.

TAMBURLAINE
Well said! let there be a fire presently.

[They light a fire.]

In vain, I see, men worship Mahomet:
My sword hath sent millions of Turks to hell,
Slew all his priests, his kinsmen, and his friends,
And yet I live untouch'd by Mahomet.
There is a God, full of revenging wrath,
From whom the thunder and the lightning breaks,
Whose scourge I am, and him will I obey.
So, Casane; fling them in the fire.--

[They burn the books.]

Now, Mahomet, if thou have any power,
Come down thyself and work a miracle:
Thou art not worthy to be worshipped
That suffer'st flames of fire to burn the writ
Wherein the sum of thy religion rests:
Why send'st thou not a furious whirlwind down,
To blow thy Alcoran up to thy throne,
Where men report thou sitt'st by God himself?
Or vengeance on the head of Tamburlaine
That shakes his sword against thy majesty,
And spurns the abstracts of thy foolish laws?--
Well, soldiers, Mahomet remains in hell;
He cannot hear the voice of Tamburlaine:
Seek out another godhead to adore;
The God that sits in heaven, if any god,
For he is God alone, and none but he.

[Jim]

There is enough blame to go around. Newsweek might have at least guessed this kind of thing might happen - they are to blame for that failure of judgement. But the mobs are more of a problem. For one thing, they did the actual killing, didn't they?

It is getting hard to call Islam a religion of peace, but it is illogical to condemn it on the basis of the bloody parts of the Qur'an without blaming Judaism and Christianity for the bloody parts of the OT. Actually that whole line of thought is a waste, because nothing but the adherents' actions matter.

I keep hearing all these disgusting thing coming out of the north of Nigeria, and that is just what one uninformed foreigner hears about. Question - why isn't this kind of crap happening elsewhere in the Sahel?

[Darren]

Exactly Abiola, and what continually amazes me is that so few people actually seem to get this.
Why are so many people unable to understand that in their effort to be politically correct and tolerant, they're just making the paternalistic assumption that those cultures/people/etc are not worthy of being held to our standards?

The thinking is similar to the kind of thinking one saw in South Africa for most of the first half of the 20th century, with the completely stupid idea that "the Native is at a lower state of development and should not be expected to be able to integrate into Western society. Therefore we will forbid him from taking part in Western endeavours, such as Western education and jobs." - yet today it seems perfectly acceptable for some to blatantly announce that liberal democracy is incapable of working in the Middle East because "they have a different culture", or "We can't try impose our system (read 'our standards') on others."

Jim, I agree. It's time we acknowledged that there are some serious flaws in this form of Islam at least. Much of Islam today is no more a religion of peace than Christianity was in the Middle Ages.

[Chuckles]

[...It is getting hard to call Islam a religion of peace, but it is illogical to condemn it on the basis of the bloody parts of the Qur'an without blaming Judaism and Christianity for the bloody parts of the OT. Actually that whole line of thought is a waste, because nothing but the adherents' actions matter.

I keep hearing all these disgusting thing coming out of the north of Nigeria, and that is just what one uninformed foreigner hears about. Question - why isn't this kind of crap happening elsewhere in the Sahel?...]

1. It is true Jim, that there is bloodiness in the O.T. But I think it is dishonest to compare the central messenger of Xtianity (Jesus) with Mohammed. Jesus was no Caravan raider or Jihadist.

2. Actually, this kind of news is not restricted to Northern Nigeria. The conquest of much of what is Nigeria now in the 17th and 18th century by Jihadist mobs was left incomplete; and there are those who preach that it is their job to finish it. The population of Nigeria also produces a multiplier effect with regards to victims. Folks from Chad, Niger etc who arent Muslim will generally have the same story about Islamic intolerance but absolute numbers are much smaller than in the case of Nigeria.
The 50-50 ratio; plus the ethnic nature of religious affliation translates into ethnoreligious competition for the National cake in the case of Nigeria. Add to that the vigorous, evangelical nature of Nigeria's pentecostal Xtianity and the general insecurity of Muslims and you have a recipe for disaster. The bottom line is that Xtians, Muslims, Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo all see Nigeria as a prize to be won.

[Jim]

Darren,,

Tolerance of this kind of crap is a flat insult to decent Muslims. It puts them at physical risk too, but that is a whole different discussion. Here in Seattle for instance there is a commuity of Somalis. I wouldn't think of even bringing this up for dsicussion with most of them because this crap is so far from their experience they would just not have anything to say. Weird as it may sound, they have a basicaly Jacksonian view of life and they can't imagine forcing religion on anyone (outside their own group) simply because they can't imagine anyone managing to force hios religion on them. it is just not an issue they have ever given any thought - they are that secure and confident - and healthy in their belief.

Chuckles,
Where Jesus (whom I don't really compare to Muhammad or anyone else), and modern Judaism, in a different way, differ from Muhammad is that they have moved away from the violence. They plucked the diamond from the muck. Heretics like Cromwell and Paisley and Falwell are heretics exactly in that they have deviated back to these portions of the OT. They got/get a thrill off this s**t.

Good point about the recentness of the spread of Islam in the Sahel - that is conveniently forotten among American converts, who are really only rebelling against Daddy anyway. It makes sense that Muslims in Nigeria would be more insecure because for the reasons you describe. Similar reasons apply here for the Evangelicals and Bible Belt types, though obviously in a much milder form - they have been an "oppressed" religious minority in their own minds since the Civil War. Now some of them talk like they want to scrape core parts of the Constitution. That's God's judgement on us for our leniency towards them. We should have treated them like the Lakhota and Cheyenne and resettled the whole region with Germans.

[Andrew Reeves]

The thing about desecrating a Koran is that it's about the equivalent to, I dunno, shitting on a consecrated host in front of a Roman Catholic. When you're dealing with a major world religion and are as light as the U.S. is in the area of ground troops, you should at least make noises about being nice to their religion if for no other reason than that it makes it easier to work with locals. Because your other option is one that involves a huge draft, massive tax increases, and war that goes on for a very long time.

[Abiola Lapite]

"The thing about desecrating a Koran is that it's about the equivalent to, I dunno, shitting on a consecrated host in front of a Roman Catholic."

So what? Who's ever heard of Catholics running amok and lynching bystanders because of an alleged desecration of the host?

"When you're dealing with a major world religion and are as light as the U.S. is in the area of ground troops, you should at least make noises about being nice to their religion if for no other reason than that it makes it easier to work with locals."

No one's disputing the pragmatic case for humoring local superstitions. The point is that people who go on sprees of rage because some inanimate object associated with their religion hasn't been treated the way they'd like it to are little better than animals, and it's past time that people said so instead of blaming Newsweek for exercising its freedom of speech.

[Jim]

So far the US Army is well practised on humoring local superstitions, especially their own, reference the expensive and counter-productive policy regarding gays in the military. The point is that humoring people will only take you so far and then after that you are just enabling their dysfunction. Tolerating this hypersensitivity is basically no differnet from tolerating cooperative dictators. It's just another form of appeasement. And who knows? You may very well gain more allies among people who would love a chance to be moderate than you alienate among the fanatics.

Making nice towards Muslims, for instance in stopping genocide in one case and ethnic cleansing in another in the Balkans, hasn't endeared us that deeply to those Arabs and/or Muslims who prefer to hate the US. In some cases it has happened,; the polls show a better feeling among Indonesians twords the US after the tsunami response, but that's Indonesians. They prefer Chinese to Americans when it comes to mindless hatred. Actually what tends to work with some people is throwing as big or bigger a tantrum then the original spasm. This may be counter-intuitive to a reasonable person, but as has been pointed out, these are believers.