In "Newsweek Story: Missing the Woods for the Trees," American Muslim columnist Ramzy Baroud fumes about Jeff Jacoby's Qur'an flushing column, which was remarkably similar to one I wrote a day earlier. From Aljazeera.net via Arab News, with thanks to Skeetstreet:
Jeff Jacoby, a columnist for the Boston Globe, chose to push the limits of cultural insensitivity to downright insult in his piece entitled, “Why Islam is disrespected.”He opens his article with imaginary scenarios of Christians, Jews and Buddhists violently rioting in response to the desecration of their religious symbols. This was to draw a comparison between the “barbarism” of Muslims and the nonviolent and civilized everyone else.
The message was: Christians, Jews and Buddhists don’t lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted.
Well, do they? If Ramzy Baroud is going to find this insulting, he should supply incidents in which Christians, Jews or Buddhists lashed out in homicidal rage when their religion was insulted. Otherwise he has no leg to stand on.
In fairness to Ramsy Baroud, we've had groups like tha KKK who claimed to be "Christian"--and they weren't always marginal in our society. As for Buddhism, ask the Tamil Hindus of Sri Lanka and the Karen and Kachin Christians of Myanmar if Buddhism is always so famously "tolerant"-- or the fifth- and sixth-generation descandants of Chinese Christians who went through the Boxer rebellion about whether Chan (the real name of Zen) is all quizzical smiles. And, if we banish theistic sectarian struggles, we can have violent secularists coarsening public discourse, as we had in the interwar years all over Europe and Asia, and in the 1960's and '70's, with campus radicalism in America (with which we are still stuck).
Yet Jacoby is nonetheless right about the arrogance that Islamicist organizations have shown in pushing their agendae, and the willful blindness of too many in positions of leadership in government, the media, and academia to the source materials of Islam presenting a very different stance than the foundational documents of the other Abrahamic religions.
Re: Kepha _ Tamil Hindus
I have never seen the government of Sri Lanka try to use Buddhist philosophy as a justification for their actions (good or ill). In fact I cannot think of a Buddhist being violent towards others and using Buddhism to validate it. Also to note, the Tamil Tiger rebels are motivated by Marxism not Hinduism (I am getting to violent Hindus below). They come from Hindu backgrounds to be sure but are known to revile all religion. As I live in Tamil-Nadu, this struggle is on my doorstep.
Shame, shame on all the Hindutva Nationalists and other violence-minded Hindus. Hinduism should be on this list of non-reactants, but the influence of Islam on our faith is easily marked by the horrible acts of violence carried out by 'Hindu' mobs. I am ashamed to admit this about many Hindus, but the truth is there is a violent undercurrent in India at present. If a lesbian film can start riots, then I am sad to say a desecration would cause worse reactions.
My understanding of Jacoby was that he was not saying that no Christians, Buddhists, etc. would be motivated to violence by such an act of desecration, but that those people would be a fringe minority. I question though how Zionist Jews would react to the Torah being put in a toilet. This is not meant to inflame but as a sincere question. Any relevant evidence in an Israeli context?
Please take a look at www.melaniephillips.com/diary and scroll down to "An Average Day in Londonistan".
kali,
" I question though how Zionist Jews would react to the Torah being put in a toilet. "
Israelis did not go on the rampage after the Jacob's Tomb was destroyed and a rabbi killed trying to save a sacred torah scroll.
The destruction was on all the major networks, so there was no doubt about its authenticity.
Sharon and religious leaders did not go on TV calling for all manner of horrible acts to revenge the desecration.
Worse acts have been carried out over the centuries on those scrolls but have never been met by "homicidal rage".
This kitman, an attempt to shift the blame to someone else and using faulty logic. His charge of "cultural insensitivity" is a matter of the "pot calling the kettle." For some reason his own arrogance and insensitivity doesn't seem to register, a disease endemic to Islam.
Kepha-
The 'Boxer Rebellion" had nothing to do with Buddhism, ZEN, or Ch'an (which is really 'Dhyana', from the original Hindu) but was a nationlistic revolt against the colonial invaders from England, America, etc.- using martial arts tactics (approximated as 'boxers' by Western journalists). The KKK died out as a political force in America in the 1920's. The Jews have never rioted over a desecrated Torah scroll that I can remember. (They usually just weep.) Hindus, sadly, do seem to be mimicking Muslim behavior for defending their extraordinarily rich and not-traditionally intolerant religion. (How do you get homicidally mad about a god like Ganesh?)
BUT-
We are talking about NOW.
Every faith has a red sore in its history.
Islam, however, is slicing off my neighbors' heads TODAY.
We have to stop letting the argument get shifted back to INSOLUBLE 'historical wrongs'.
(It's an old soviet-era trick to deflect from their own gulags and state terror. They usually brought up the "genocidal treatment of the American Indians by the racist Yankees" to whitewash their ONGOING crimes against their own people, and the world).
The problem HERE, NOW, TODAY, is Imperialistic Islam.
Let's keep our eye on the REAL & CURRENT threat.
The past can take care of itself.
The future, however, is as fragile as a wish.