Burning Korans vs Killing Humans
Posted: October 10, 2010The agony that was visited upon our governing class, the media, cultural elites, religious leaders, and even top military brass at the prospect of Reverend Terry Jones burning Korans says much about prevailing cultural attitudes, norms, and prejudices. None of it, I'm afraid, is good.
Before the pastor had backed away from his decision, we had heard from President Obama, who said that it was "...contrary to our values as Americans." He also criticized it as a "stunt" and "a recruitment bonanza for al Qaeda." Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, called Mr. Jones to express "grave concerns" that it would imperil our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it "disgraceful." General David Petraeus wrote in an email to the Associated Press that it "... would be used by extremists to ... incite violence." General Ray Odierno, former lead commander in Iraq, warned also that extremists would exploit it against troops serving overseas.
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious leaders and organizations lined up to condemn the planned burning along with several G7 leaders, and even the Vatican, which denounced it as "outrageous and grave."
Muslim nations and various international Muslim organizations have also signaled their strong displeasure. And, of course, there have been the requisite death threats and calls for the pastor's killing by Jihadist groups from around the world.
And, so, the 58 year old Pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, with a congregation of 50, was very much at the center of the universe for a brief time. And the world very much in a panic.
We can consider the many slights taken against other faiths and note the relative lack of response by the media and the world community, or, for that matter, the members of the offended faith.
When the Taliban blew up the giant Buddha statues in the Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan there was a public outcry but certainly no violence by Buddhist communities around the world. The "Piss Christ" photograph that featured a crucifix submerged in urine, while offending many, also did not elicit riots or bloodshed by Christians. Bible burnings (not to mention church burnings, wafer and other Christian icon desecrations) occur commonly throughout the Muslim world including recently in Iran with generally little fanfare, social disruption or media interest. Synagogues have been destroyed in Arab countries including in Jerusalem. Flags of Israel and other Jewish symbols have been desecrated throughout the Muslim world on a nauseatingly routine basis without violent unrest.
But if someone upsets Muslim sensitivities, the response is different.
In 1989, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against Salmon Rushdie for his book, Satanic Verses, which led to any number of brutal slayings. There were violent responses to Theo Van Gogh's film, Submission, not the least of which was the butchering and partial decapitation of Van Gogh himself by an angry Dutch-Moroccan Muslim on the streets of Amsterdam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali born Muslim, feminist, critic of Islam, was forced into hiding for her part in the Van Gogh film and recieves the usual diet of death threats.
Other memorable moments in the recent history of Muslim eruptions include reactions to the Danish Jyllands-Posten cartoons, the Swedish cartoons, the Pope's speech at Regensburg, Geert Wilders film, Fitna, and the erroneous Newsweek story of Koran desecration at Guantanamo, among a multitude of other lesser-known infractions, all of which led to riots, violent protests, death threats, and killing.
The Muslim world was set aflame also over prisoner mistreatment at "Abu Ghraib" under American control yet fretted not at all when Saddam Hussein tortured, amputated, shredded, and brutally murdered countless Iraqis in the same prison during his reign.
Indeed, the Muslim world is a prickly place with incredibly selective displays of outrage.
Let us examine the hypocrisies.
First, from our political and governing class.
Obama, Gates, Clinton, Petraeus, Odierno, et al., all busied themselves over the antics of Pastor Jones who issued no death threats, kill anyone, burn down a mosque, blow up a crowded market, fire a Kassam rocket, or kidnap, torture and behead anyone, nor call for "death to the infidels," all deeds committed routinely, if not daily, by Muslims. His actions, however offensive, were well within accepted norms of a free and lawful society.
Wouldn't it be grand if our leaders took equally strong stands against more significant pathologies such as honor killings, genital mutilation, or the stoning of apostates, say, as they do toward an obscure country infidel threatening to cook a book?
Obama and other liberal leaders were also remarkably quick to defend Imam Rauf's first amendment rights to construct a Mosque near the sacred soil of Ground Zero, something that was profoundly offensive to most Americans.
Is it necessary for our leaders to genuflect every time Muslims are offended and yet treat our own sensitivities with condescension and scorn?
What, then, of the hypocrisy of secular liberals and the media? What are we to make of their sudden infatuation with Islam, a religion that agrees with virtually nothing of their social, cultural, or political agenda?
What, for example, is Islam's position on women or gay rights? Or freedom of speech and religion? What does Islam have to say about secularization in general, separation of church (mosque) and state or school prayer? Or abortion?
It is safe to say that there is precious little that Muslims and liberals would agree on. And, yet, liberals appear utterly smitten by Islam and the Koran.
Why would that be? Why would liberals, who are often hostile to religion (especially Christianity) take up Islam's mantle?
The answer is found by understanding the standard leftist narrative regarding class and oppression. Muslims are the latest darlings of the left because they have now officially entered the left's canon of "oppressed" minorities, alongside blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, and the "poor." Muslims enjoy "protected" status and their actions, however heinous, must be defended or at least understood. As "victims" they are also not responsible for their behavior. Bigotry, anti-Semitism, misogyny, cruelty, xenophobism, despotism, racism, terrorism - none of it matters. It's not their fault.
And while liberals and the media exhibit such solicitous concern for the sensitivities of Islam, they would verily lay down their lives to defend the freedom-of-speech rights of pornographers, newspapers printing national security secrets, traitors, terrorists, anti-Christian artists, Muslims (at, for example, Ground Zero), bible and flag burners - just not Koran burners.
Leftists are also old hands themselves at desecrating sacred symbols, they the original (American) flag burners from the glory days of the sixties. It is the radical left that bequeathed us a nation without taboos or restrictions including the defilement of icons sacred to others. Bibles have been incinerated. Christians have been forced to endure images of the Virgin Mary covered in excrement. Or books and plays that lampoon Jesus.
If Christians protest, liberals label them as racist boobs and bigots. But let someone violate Muslim sanctities, the Koran or Mohammed, and liberals have a tantrum. But not the Bible, Jesus, or our flag, which many of them regard with contempt.
The third and greatest hypocrisy, though, comes from the Muslim world itself, which ignores the exponentially greater sins ocurring under its own nose. For if Islam is a "religion of peace" than many Muslims insult and defile that religion routinely, and in far more grievous fashion.
What, for example, are we to make of the poverty and illiteracy of so many Muslim nations? Or the backwardness, corruption and autocratic natures of Muslim regimes, devoid of human rights or civil liberties, many of which employ torture, maintain barbaric conditions for prisoners, and mete out brutal punishments such as stonings, amputations, and beheadings? Or the lack of free speech or freedom of concience or religion? Or the genocidal behavior of the Sudan? Or the second class status of women in much of the Muslim world, the forced marriages, polygamy, genital mutilations, honor killings, and the burqua, which effectively converts women into social non-entities? Or the dhimmi status of non Muslims living in Muslim nations, many of whom face intimidation and the threat of violence. Or the killing of apostates and Muslim reformers, or the stoning of women, or the various repulsive maimings and mutilations. Or the prohibition against building churches in Saudi Arabia or of even possessing a Bible? Or the general extremism, corruption, incitement, conspiracism, bigotry, apocalypticism, intolerance, and cruelty that characterizes many parts of the Muslim world?
And what of the unending cycle of violence perpetrated by Muslims against themselves and others. Why is there no outcry by our government or media or cultural and religious leaders of the ongoing massacare of innocents in Mosques, markets, and schools by various Jihadist groups and individuals under the banner of Islam through out the Muslim world, Muslims killing Muslims in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
Or its many attacks against the West and others: in Bali, Bombay, Madrid, London, and 9/11.
Or the continued firing of Kassam missiles into Israel. Or the ongoing call for the destruction of Israel by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran? Or the effort by Iran, a terror sponsoring state, to obtain nuclear weapons? Or the burning and desecration of Israel's flag or other Jewish symbols by Muslims everywhere? Or the vile anti-Semitic filth that appears in the state run media of multiple Muslim nations, or in mosques, schools, and at public rallies?
Muslim atrocities and inequities, no matter how egregious, always seem to get a pass. From the international community - and themselves.
It is a sign of the moral relativism and cultural decay of the West, when our leaders are unable to distinguish between an obscure individual engaging in a publicity stunt while the world burns around them; where reasonably large percentages of the population of a major world religion have fallen under the sway of a toxic ideology that calls for Jihad, employs regularly acts of terror against members of its own faith and others, and seeks to dominate the world and install a primitive, seventh century Medieval caliphate under Sharia law over the rest of us, devoid of the precious rights, liberties, and freedoms many of us take for granted.
When Muslims attacked us on 9/11, no one was burning Korans. Nor had anyone blasphemed Islam before the Iran Hostage crisis in 1979, the massacare of Marines in Lebanon in 1983, the first World Trade Center bombing, the attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the assault on the USS Cole, and numerous other terrorist acts perpetrated against us through the decades. We were attacked for simply being.
We do not have to live in fear of Muslim rage. We do not have to be intimidated by Muslim reaction. We should not be held hostage by Muslim threats. We have a Constitution and Bill of Rights. We have freedom of speech. They are as sacred to us as the Koran is to Muslims. They are also critical to the functioning of our democracy, culture, and way of life. Our leaders should protect them.
Liberals who attack the sanctity of Christian or American symbols while defending Islamic icons, and agonize over every percieved slight against Muslims are hypocrites; they are also cowards. After all, it is far easier to mock or defame Christianity. The risks increase substantially, when Islam is the target. And Islam, I would argue, is in far greater need of reform today than Christianity.
We cannot prevent every slight to Islam perpetrated by individuals. Individuals have the right to express themselves in the West even in ways considered profane or insulting. Islam is not threatened by someone burning a Koran in Florida. The Muslim world needs to grow up; it needs to embrace Western notions of freedom and democracy and not the other way around.
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