Posted on 05/20/2005 9:43:01 PM PDT by quidnunc
Three-and-a-half years after 9/11, you would think that we Americans would get it: Muslims take their religion very, very seriously. Now 17 people are dead, Afghanistan is on edge, and there are protests in Pakistan, our most vulnerable and valuable ally among Muslim states — in part, it seems, because of six words in a brief item in Newsweek magazine. The offending passage, a small but colorful detail in a story on the investigation of abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, reads in full: "Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell Newsweek: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet."
This was not the first time a major news organization had reported allegations that copies of the Quran belonging to detainees had been desecrated in this fashion — the Washington Post, the BBC and the New York Times all got there first. For this reason, perhaps, my colleagues at Newsweek, where I spent 38 years as religion editor, did not foresee how this single example among others mentioned in the story might incite Islam's most rabid anti-Americans. Neither, apparently, did the Pentagon official who read the Newsweek story before it went to press — a precaution the Newsweek editors took — and made no objection to the passage.
I am in no position to pass judgment on my Newsweek colleagues, nor would I want to. Among them are highly sensitive editors who frequently caught errors in my own copy. My concern is that all Americans understand how deeply sacrilegious such an act as Newsweek described would be to Muslims, and why it is not like flushing pages from the Bible down the drain — as Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and other commentators have suggested.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
What a sick perverted joke. We are worried about how people who interpret a book as justifying murder feel? F'em all. bWe are worried about Saddam in his underpants? Give a break.
I have to admit, the administration has gone so PC and created the climate where we are tip toeing around these monsters while it should be the other way around.
If we continue this nonsense, we are doomed!
Has anyone marketed a Koran urinal target yet? Or a Newsweek one?
I would have continued on exactly those lines. It's unaccommodating. Strange necessity for a religion--but what allows its civilization to flower or progress. They had to have had it once; where did it go? Several answers come to mind, but even taken all together don't explain today's flaws and what you rightly call ethical shallowness (probably the kindest criticism you could apply). Their intellectuals translated the Greeks before the Europeans, exposing a tiny percentage of the Muslim world to the best of preChristian philosophy but never allowed the Greek works to circulate (following religious proscription) EXCEPT among would-be great leaders who then had the advantage of "outside" (and extremely useful) knowledge denied their subjects; and their armies adopted, successfully, the structure of their religious administration (the Ottomans, in particular), an odd pyramid of rank and corresponding authority wherein every soldier answered to one and only one soldier of the next-highest rank--meaning all but the very lowest on the nearly countless rungs of nearly countless ladders held absolute power over one subordinate! Until the top of the pyramid of ladders. How this ever worked is beyond me. But like so much in Islam, rules and procedures for the masses differed from those of their leaders.
But .. the relationships I was talking about were the average townspeople - who hated the Taliban. What is so wrong about cultivating a "working relationship" with those people.
Also .. the majority of the people of Iraq DO NOT SEE US AS BAD .. it's only the terrorist groups .. and there is a distinct difference. If you can't see that - and you're judging everyone as a terrorist - you are making a mistake.
It should be hung on the bathroom wall for emergancies only since I doubt that they use high enough quality paper to make it acceptable for daily use.
From the writers that advocate tearing the Ten Commandments off our buildings.
It's no more holy than the Bible. Which is Holy. They just think they are better...
Newsweek puts out one...it's called Newsweek.
/sarcasm
"Let me clue you in, Americans do get it and we take our freedoms very very seriously. "
With the obvious exception of Muslim American Citizens...
Mohammed the warlord and political leader claimed the angel Gabriel told him all this stuff - trouble is, his mixture of Nestorian (Christian sect) stories, jewish stories and other fables and admonitions has more holes than swiss cheese, and in the end, his Meccan followers adopted the 'moon God' Kibla-worshipping practices and called it Islam. Along the way, he slanders Jews and Christians, and tells his followers to make them 2nd class citizens. He's no prophet, just another renegade, who eventually used/abused his power to do things like marry 9 times, including to a child; Mohammed was a poster child for why politics and religion are best left unmixed. he left behind a psychotic set of moral beliefs for a religion - including the all-important "jihad", his way to get followers to die for his political aims. Now we suffer today because of his 7th century phony stories about paradise. Moron Arab teenagers even today buy it.
The Quran is no more "Holy" than
"Dianetics" or "The Da Vinci Code" or Al Franken's or Anna Quindlen's latest whines. To pretend it has any real value is to insult the more decent religions of the world (which are most of the rest - buddhism, judaism, christianity, etc.)
"I get it just fine. The practitioners of the religion of peace are for the most part little more than fanatical savages bent on forcing their death cult on the rest of the world. After reading the self serving schemes interspersed with incoherent ramblings written by that little pervert Mohamed, I'd say that if the Newsweek article isn't true, It sure should be. Islam, it's not a religion. It's an induced mental disorder."
Nice, Michael Savage-like riff there... I think Mr Savage (the ranting talk show host) is too hard on liberalism with his latest book title (called "Liberalism is a mental disorder").
OTOH, you are on to something... I can envision a book called "Islam is a mental disorder". And it could make a lot of sense.
When Israel belonged to the Arabs , the Wailing Wall, sacred to the Jews ,was purposedly used as a garbage dump
In Indonesia and other places Christians were /are killed for practicing their religion by Muslim extremists.
One of the greatest and most venerated Golden Buddhas on the planet was blown into pieces by radical Muslims in Afghanistan a few years ago
You cannot bring a Bible to Saudi Arabia. If it is in your luggage when you arrive it will be confiscated.
Uh, people make fun of and denigrate the Catholic Eucharist all the time. Remember that guy that put a wafer on eBay that was supposedly blessed by John Paul II? And remember a few months ago when NBC's now-cancelled sitcom "Committed" did an episode with a plot revolving around, yes, a Communion wafer (at least, what they thought was one) being flushed down a toilet?
Millions of Catholics were outraged by both events. Yet I don't recall any riots resulting from either event, nor any deaths.
"I do my best to shrug it off. Many of the people such as yourself simple piss on the carpet and are not interested in any honest intellectual debate."
He kind of comments are un-called for and unworthy of even reply.
Hang in there, expatguy... it's easy to cast stones behind the security of a computer in good ol' USA. Your insight of someone living out there is worth 1000 peanut-gallery comments.
Whoa? And to think I've got one sittin in the muck at the bottom of my outhouse crap hole here at the farm. If I'd known the Koran was so sacred, I would not have put it down there this morning. But now what can I do?
Woodward: "I am chagrined by the realization of how little impact that story made in the long run on the education of Americans about Islam and its holy book, how quickly it was all forgotten."
Oh, what b*ll he is spreading...
we learned PLENTY about Islam from the very news that they killed folks over this *false report*.
A false and violent religion is what Islam is.
"You cannot bring a Bible to Saudi Arabia. If it is in your luggage when you arrive it will be confiscated."
Wonder why they would do that ?
Well then, I suppose it's time for a fatwah against UPS and the USPS -- after all, they deliver this "divine" object from Amazon and elsewhere all the time. It's thrown on various floors, like all packages in transit, and handled by various infidels along the way.
OTOH, except for some smart-a##es on E-Bay, the Eucharist is not regularly sold in stores.
If Muslims want to prevent desecration of the Koran, they should stop selling/printing it, and confiscate all existing copies. I love books, but the world would definitely be better off without this one.
Obviously the Saudis are afraid of the messages of other religions.
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