Wall Street Journal Online BY ALI AL-AHMED Friday, May 20, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Muslims should show some respect to others’ religions.
With the revelation that a copy of the Quran may have been desecrated by U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay, Muslims and their governments–including that of Saudi Arabia–reacted angrily. This anger would have been understandable if the U.S. government’s adopted policy was to desecrate our Quran. But even before the Newsweek report was discredited, that was never part of the allegations.
As a Muslim, I am able to purchase copies of the Quran in any bookstore in any American city, and study its contents in countless American universities. American museums spend millions to exhibit and celebrate Muslim arts and heritage. On the other hand, my Christian and other non-Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia–where I come from–are not even allowed to own a copy of their holy books. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately.
Go here for interesting reading on Islam and its realtions to others, the dhimmies I guess. It helps sometimes to listen to what they actually say:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=15888_PA_Sermon-_Muslims_Will_Rule_the_World_Jews_Are_a_Virus&only
and while you’re at it, read Victor David Hanson as well….
Not to mention the continuing enslavement and persecution of Christians in the Sudan, the unwillingness of the “secluar” governement of Turkey prevent the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul from decaying, etc., etc., etc.
I have a report from a very reliable source disproving the *Newsweek* report about Koran desecration. We know this source is reliable because he’s anonymous, which means he isn’t a cheap publicity seeker with a motive to exaggerate. Here is the source’s account:
“I was shocked that *Newsweek* would run a story about the U. S. military flushing a Koran down the toilet. If they had only done their homework, they would have found that this is impossible. I’ve done numerous experiments and I can authoritatively state that a Koran is much too big to flush down a toilet all at once. The only way I’ve been able to flush the Koran has been in installments. What I do is, whenever I feel the call of nature, I rip out several pages and wipe my ass with them. Then I flush. I make the Koran available in the bathroom so my guests can do the same. Through this gradual process, I have been able to dispose of two and two-thirds Korans over the past five months. In this way, I have been the first person in history who actually found a good use for the Koran.”
Victor Davis Hanson – “Only democracy and freedom, not Western money or cheap guilt, will remedy the deep sickness of radical Islam that now so tires and sickens the rest of the world that daily has to watch and endure it. ”
No. Democracy in a Muslim state usually means that the population votes for a fundamentalist government. The Turkish military has overthrown the government four times since WWII in order to keep the fanatics on a short leash (not that a military that murders in the millions could be considered ‘reasonable.’). Even there the military gave up and allow a ‘soft-Islamic’ party to achieve power. In Algeria, the pro-Western military cancelled a fundamentalist electoral victory. In Iraq, the foreign minister of Iran was just treated to royal honors by the Shiite-dominated government we helped install.
The local elections in Saudi Arabia recently? Dominated by religous parties who proclaim that the Saudi monarchy are too Western. Across the Middle East, the loudest voices for Democracy are organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood. They have the votes, after all, and would win if the elections were fair. Is that going to be a good thing?
Democracy is a solution to the Middle East? Freedom to vote in the Sharia is a solution? Mr. Hanson is as delusional as the rest of the pretend conservatives at NR. Religion is the source of culture. Politics and political systems are not. As long as Islam has no concept of ‘render unto Ceasar,’ the state will continue to be a religious institution. That will continue the current trend. If you managed to reform Islam to the point that it could conceive a state which did not enforce Muslim law, then it would cease to be Islam.
That is not a bad thing, though rather than waste all that effort reforming a false religion, perhaps we should just put more effort into evangelization. Jesus saves, not mob rule.