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 ...
"My Give a Darn is broken."
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Or, in other words:
"My give-a-damn's busted."
I like to think that pork rinds are a pretty effective tool. Maybe just a few crumbs sprinkled here and there would do the trick.
Sure it is. Moslems have to be super-duper sensitive about their religion because deep down in their souls, I mean really deep down, they know that it is a phony-balony religion that has no real god behind it and they have to fight to the death to keep it alive or else it will die out.
Islam appears to match perfectly the "abomination that makes desolate" mentioned in the prophet Daniel and elsewhere.
Does this guy really think that because Christians don't riot when they are offended, that they hold their religion in lower regard than Muslims?
We need to hit the street in mass protest against that insane murder cult called islam, burning the koran for the cameras, spitting on it, stomping on it, just as muslims do to our flag. I'm sick of our gov't genuflecting to those demons from the Dark Ages.
I am not exactly sure where this is coming from- I am DEFINATELY not anti-Soldier, just anti-muslim.
I am not exactly sure where this is coming from- I am DEFINATELY not anti-Soldier, just anti-muslim.
With MSM return addresses.
So do I but I don't kill anyone for trashing it since that happens hundreds of times a day by lefty-kooks and the ACLU (but I repeat myself).
Time for the dumbass Moos to be concerned about the opinions of Normals.
That's not a bad idea.
In all fairness to Woodward, obviously a well meaning, tolerant, old-school liberal and others (like Fred Barnes who aren't quite so liberal), the Koran ranks higher than what Catholics would call a "sacramental" (a blessed rosary, a missal [in the old days], a scapula) but LOWER than what both have described as Christians' respect for the body of Christ (meaning the historical, physical, human body of Christ) and Catholics' respect for the Eucharist. The Moors and their contemporaries farther west apparently understood their Greek a whole lot better than their counterparts today in that a "copy" of the Koran (admittedly far more precious in preGutenberg times than now) was regarded as an anamnesis, a symbol of the highest order, but a symbol nonetheless--rather like Lutherans' and some Episcopalians' description of the Eucharist (a strong symbol--but emphatically NOT the actual Body of Christ).
Which would make sense (not that there's a whole lot of sense to derive from so deeply flawed a religion as offered by most sects of Islam): Because Muslims cannot control the production of what they consider sacred (i.e., beyond anamnesis), they self-impose a logically impossible burden in that they can't preserve, protect, and properly venerate their own "magic."
But this only begins to introduce much larger problems with that belief-system: the Koran is COMMON dogma, the absolute bottom of some seven tiers of "wisdom" not revealed to the "common" Muslim. So if the Koran's perceived as THAT "sacred," what status do the writings in the higher tiers of wisdom (exclusively claimed by Imans & ayatollahs) occupy? Would their destruction demand some higher reprisal than death?
I understand that the marines in fallujah infuriated them into suicidal charges against sniper posts... by making demeaning remarks about the size of the moos' ahem... manhood.
Probably not true however, because our politically correct and current administration is soooo senssiiiitive to the poor widdle arabscum's religious convictions.
sick aint' it.
A pile of shit on a koran is no atrocity...
this is.
Another atrocity...
Excuse me, but where the hell have you proven that the koran is much more holy than the Bible?
Let me clue you in, Americans do get it and we take our freedoms very very seriously. Muslims have a problem with that? Too bad.
Another note, when the first prisoners were placed in Gitmo, the reports stated that it was the moose-limbs who were flushing pages to try to stuff up the plumbing.....NOT GIs.
Nam Vet
I know .. I'm not trying to be difficult.
It's just that making a joke out of "Koran toiletpaper" is the same to me as what Newsweek did. It seems harmless but it could put the lives of our soldiers in danger.
Okay .. If we didn't have military there .. maybe it wouldn't upset me so much. But we've heard from soldiers in Afghanistan and the Afghanis who used to trust them now are supicious of them. After all our hard work at cultivating working relationships with the people and its all been wasted because of Newsweek.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.