Dr. Mohammad T. Al-Rasheed in Arab News (thanks to Nicolei) writes well about the recent massacres of Shi'ites by Sunnis in Karbala, and the absurdity of the general tendency to blame America for everything:
What is overwhelming, however, is the reaction while the blood is still hot and streaming down the streets of Iraq. A few Shia clerics, including prominent ones in Lebanon, have declared that America is to blame for this atrocity. How so, pray tell? 'It did not provide security,' is the answer. Mind you, this America is the one the same the Shia are now talking to so they can finally govern themselves for the first time in 1400 years. If I were a Shia and from Iraq, I'd pray to the Almighty that America remained in Iraq until the country was stable and on its feet again. Otherwise, the Karbala massacre will be just a trailer for the full version of an unbelievable horror show.My point, however, is not America's role. It is something I have written about many times: the Arab tendency to blame others and shun the facts. Shia and Sunni know perfectly well who the perpetrators are. There might be 'foreign fighters' responsible for this, but foreign and Iraqi members of this group come under the heading of "Arab." They also come under the sub-title of 'theological elitism' -my own euphemism for what cannot be spelled out in print.
In this he is likely referring to those who massacre in the name of "pure Islam" -- the Salafi Wahhabis who dominate Saudi Arabia.
Shouldn't the Shia clerics name names and point fingers in the right direction? We are sick and tired of this kind of behavior. We honestly have had enough of it and cannot blame the world for looking at us and wondering if we retain any shred of humanity. The creed that sanctions blowing up worshipers in mosques (or any other religious venue for that matter, including office buildings since Islam says that work is worship) should be declared the public enemy of humanity. The UN should vote on that publicly and let us count the votes and identify those who vote against the motion.
This is laudable, but it would be better, circumstances and Islamic law being what they are, if Rasheed spelled out the monstrousness of a creed that targets unbelievers for massacre. He seems exercised about Muslims killing Muslims, which is indeed a heinous crime in Islam (see Sura 4:92-3); however, since Islamic law mandates a lesser punishment for those who murder non-Muslims, and sanctions warfare against them, it would be a great step forward for him to include this also, explicitly, as a crime against humanity.
Outspoken he may be, but Mohammad al-Rasheed still cannot bring himself -- how could he, after all? -- to recognize the murderousness toward Infidels. Or perhaps it does not exercise him, and all that matters is the outrageousness of Muslims who kill Muslims. The more one studies the words of the most seemingly plausible and brave Muslims, the more one is struck by their inability, in the end, to tell anything like the full truth about Islam. One must conclude that too much of their entire being, their sense of themselves, is wrapped up in Islam, and to see it steadily and whole, would involve, for them, turning their back on their ancestors, their past, their entire civilization. Some cling to myths -- the "myth of the convivencia in Andalucia"; others may actually believe that there are elements of "tolerance" and "peace" in Islam, or at least allow themselves to deny all the evidence to the contrary, evidence that goes back 1400 years. It is the most extraordinary thing.
Examples of this inability to come to grips with the nature of Islam abound. There is Kanan Makiya, an admitted atheist, who nonetheless waxes poetic about the devoutness of his "Shi'a grandmother" and cannot tolerate the truth-telling of Bat Ye'or. There is Fouad Ajami, wonderful on the wilderness of lies of Arab society, but still disinclined to confront the treachings and tenets of Islam itself, which in fact he has shied away from studying. And there are many others.
No, for real information about Islam from within, one will have to rely on those who have made a clean break -- such as the clear-eyed Ibn Warraq, with his books and the articles at his website (www.secularislam.org). Like defectors from Communism who informed the West fully about what the KGB and the Politburo was up to, it is only defectors from Islam who tell the full truth about the experience not only of listening, week after week, to the khutba (sermon), but what it really is like, what the atmospherics and attitudes are like, within Muslim society, and even more so, in those Muslim Arab societies, where the self-esteem of the population is even more inextricably linked to the idea of the greatness of Islam. But Islam has been, everywhere it has conquered, a disaster, political, economic, intellectual and moral.
Radical Islam Jihadis need to know one thing. Since they're always hiding behind theor Qur'an, there's a place in the Holy Bible that makes a very clear statement: (It takes evil to defeat the wicked.)
The wicked Jihad of radical Muslims will be stamped, stomped, crushed and obliterated.